Ray Bradbury Dies at 91
“Man is in love, and loves what vanishes.” – W.B. Yeats. Preface to Something Wicked This Way Comes.
I always loved Ray Bradbury. He wrote about the sort of places I grew up: small towns with modest employment, with cozy Carnegie libraries, surrounded by plains that brought wind, sharp turns in the weather, and the sense of something distant and compelling. I suspect I am not the only one who superimposed my childhood onto Bradbury’s stories and novels. I know this, but I am still surprised at the intimacy of his novels and at the extent to which (even as an adult) I’m able to read my own beloved byways into the nooks and crannies of his books.
I always loved Bradbury, but never quite so much as on a long drive from Louisiana to Indiana, when I read Dandelion Wine out loud to my travel partner. We read without a break, over hours of driving. We arrived in Bloomington without quite finishing the novel, and despite the endless cramp of the car we parked in front of my house to finish the book under the light of a streetlamp.
There are not many authors I would trust to so long a trip, not many books for which I would read myself hoarse.
