INCREASE-DECREASE

Yesterday at the McNally bookstore on Prince St. there was an interview with Ray Bradbury (author of Fahrenheit 451, the Martian Chronicles and hundreds of others). I was actually just stopping in to read some magazines and kill some time, but the place was so packed I knew something had to be going on. Once I found out it was a Ray Bradbury interview, I was kinda perplexed only because I know that Mr. Bradbury is pretty old, and because, well, he’s a legend. Like, LEGENDARY. Like, I doubt he’s leaving California to do a quick talk at a tiny bookstore that by no means, has the money to pay for this guy. And I was right, and wrong.

Ray is old now. 90 to be exact. And he wasn’t actually there. They skyped him!  To see the face of arguably the father of science fiction, to witness the man who “predicted” so much, like the mind control that television and technology would and now does have over so much of us, to see him there talking with such candor and humility was amazing.

Some gems he dropped:

The original draft of Fairhenheit 451 (which Farhenheit 911 got its name) was written in nine days! He didn’t have a typewriter at the time, so he had to go to the library and use theirs for 10cents a half hour. Knocked it out in nine days, because if not it would’ve gotten expensive.

 He believes that love is everything.

His favorite story is Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol. He said it’s about death in the center of life, and life in the center of death. A reawakening, and reckoning so to speak. He said, he is Scrooge telling everyone to come live with him forever.

He’s working on a new collection of short stories right now. At 90!

He told the crowd to never think, just to do. Don’t think, just do. “If there are any students in that room, get the hell outta there and go do it!”

Amazing.

Oh, he also cracked a joke about Mel Gibson, which was poignant and right on time.