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Ray Bradbury.2.08Ray Bradbury on Literature and LoveSteve Wasserman: Ray Bradbury.Ray Bradbury: Yeah.Wasserman: Thank you for sitting down to talk with us this morning, on a daywhich sees—in Los Angeles at least, and probably throughout the rest of thecountry—a growing number of bookstores ending, shuttering, declining, a growingnumber of book review sections starting to close. Barely a handful of Americannewspapers any longer bother to review books, much less have a separate section.Bradbury: That’s right, yeah.Wasserman: And I understand that the Los Angeles Times, after 33 years, will beending their publication of a separate section devoted to the review of books. Ispeak as someone who for nearly 10 years had edited that section. I wanted tosit down with you because you’ve been so outspoken and eloquent the whole ofyour life, and most recently at the sight of Acres of Books in Long Beach, thethreatened closure of that remarkable secondhand store. And I remember very wellin 1997, just as I was assuming the editorship of the Los Angeles Times BookReview, at that very moment you were given a lifetime achievement award by theL.A. Times, and you took the occasion very memorably to denounce the L.A. Timesfor its meager coverage of books, and you admonished the Times to live up to itsown ambitions. And I admired your ability to both bite the hand that feeds aswell as to speak truth to power, even though I have to confess it hurt a littlebit. So tell me—you grew up in Los Angeles very largely, or least you moved herewhen you were how old ... ?Bradbury: Thirteen years old.Wasserman: Thirteen years old. And at the time when you moved here, you wereliving in what is downtown Los Angeles.Bradbury: Almost downtown, yeah.Wasserman: Almost downtown. And at that time, were there bookstores thatflourished in Los Angeles, which for you became places of magical transport?Bradbury: Sixth Street was fantastic. There were eight bookstores on SixthStreet ... along, from Hill Street all the way up to Figueroa. You could go inall kinds of bookstores. And that’s where I met my future wife. I went and foundSeite 1
 
Ray Bradbury.2.08her brother’s bookstore and the young clerk waited on me, and she discovered Ihad written a story she read. And I took her to dinner a couple of weeks laterand I held her hand and engaged her and married her. So that’s the bookstores onSixth Street for you.Wasserman: Right. And do you remember what it was about the physical contactwith books which seemed to be so exciting for you?Bradbury: A lot of it is the smell of books. There are—a lot of those bookstoreswere used bookstores. Some were high-quality used books and new publications,but the other bookstores were ... a lot of used books, and there’s thousands ofthem in there, and they were covered with dust and the smell of ancient Egypt.So, you go into a used bookstore and surprise yourself. Surprise in life shouldbe everything. You shouldn’t know what you’re doing. You should go into abookstore to be surprised and changed. So the bookstores change you and revealnew sides of yourself. That’s the importance of a used bookstore.Wasserman: And is something being lost with the disappearance of thesebookstores, even as the technology for conveying to people the contents of booksseems to every day advance?Bradbury: The bookstores are there for you to stumble over yourself. Youmust—that’s the trouble. ... Universities do not teach you; they do not discoveryou. I raised myself in used bookstores. I went in looking for myself and Ifound me on every shelf. I opened strange books. I saw a mirror image of myselfin there and said, “Oh, my God, that’s me! I’ll take that. I’ll go home.” Soused bookstores are surprise boxes to be opened constantly. And they’re notthere now, so there’s no chance of revealing people to themselves. They don’tget revealed with these new inventions, with the, the telephones that they use,with the Internet and what have you. That’s no surprise—it doesn’t work.Wasserman: As you’ve lived the literary culture of Los Angeles and have been oneof its defining personalities—as you look back over these five or six or moredecades in which you’ve been, you know, part of the very fabric of Los Angelesliterary culture, what’s changed most dramatically for you, either for good orfor bad?Bradbury: Well, we don’t have the authors here that we used to have. Sixty yearsago, all the major science fiction authors lived in the L.A. area, and RobertHeinlein became my friend and my teacher, and he sold my first short story forme. It went into Script Magazine. And all the other writers became my friends.Leigh Brackett was a leading science fiction writer. I used to meet her everySunday down in Muscle Beach, and she read my terrible stories and I read hergood ones. So over a period of five years of going to Muscle Beach and meetingSeite 2
 
Ray Bradbury.2.08my favorite writer, I became a writer. But that environment is no longer here.Those writers don’t exist anymore.Wasserman: Well, some would argue, and perhaps convincingly, that those writershave been replaced by other writers who are writing about all kinds ofthings—whether it’s science fiction or the politics of assimilation of the newwaves of immigrants who’ve come to Los Angeles—that there’s new and fresherwriting. But what disturbs many of us, of course, is that in a region sogeographically sprawling as Los Angeles, that there exists no particularpublication any longer that provides a central clearinghouse by which writersmight meet and recognize and critique each other’s work.Bradbury: Absolutely. In fact, I helped a couple of bookstores along the way puttogether a literary meeting place. There should be a fireplace in everybookstore with comfortable chairs and tables and drinks every afternoon [sothat] you can come sit with the other writer friends and assimilate ways ofbecoming a writer.Wasserman: Right. And what are the obligations, if any, of those people whoyearn to become readers? Are newspapers as they existed helpful for people whoaspire actually to become a reader? I mean, I note that the Los Angeles Timesdid report last week that one out of every three high school students in LosAngeles drops out before the end of high school. And so, it seems the very ideaof being able to read itself seems to be challenged.Bradbury: We have to go—right now we have to rebuild our total education systemin the entire United States over and beyond the book reports and the bookpublication and what have you. We’re trying to educate people when they’re inthe fifth, sixth and seventh grade—it’s too late. You cannot teach a 10-year-oldchild to read and write. It begins when they’re 4 and 5—when they’re mad tolearn. See, the good thing about young children is they’re passionate aboutlife. And, if you look at them, they’re eager. They run around grabbing thingsand you give them really good books when they’re 5 years old—they’re gonna eatit. We’ve got to teach children to eat books—to devour them—to be passionateabout life by the time they’re 6 years old in the first grade they’re ready forall of life. We’re not doing it.We’ve got to change the whole educational system right now, completely, from topto bottom. You cannot learn by hearing. You have to learn by reading. So we’vegot to eliminate hearing and the Internet and give books back into the hands—I’mdictating my books now. I had a stroke a couple years ago; I can’t type anymore.So I dictate my books and it’s terrible, cause I can’t see them. And the nextday, my daughter sends me the typed ... I can look at it type and go through andcorrect it. But I’ve learned from dictating books, you cannot learn ordictate—it’s wrong. I don’t like doing that. It’s changed my style; it’s changedSeite 3
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