A tribute to Ray Bradbury

In moments of anguish, I ask myself: what is the purpose of man’s need for permanence and what his duty to posterity is?

Well, Ray Bradbury gave me the answer with his writing: Dipped in immense amount of love, fun, affection and generosity he made our world a more joyous, pleasant, rich and optimistic place to live in

Like many other writers whom I have discovered late in life, I came to know of Ray Bradbury and his books through the book section of The Guardian. The first book of his I read was Fahrenheit 451. Instinctively, I knew that here was a great and important writer whose book I was reading. Then followed his collection of short stories “The Illustrated Man” and the fabulous collection of essays on the craft of writing in his “Zen in the art of writing” and an odd story here and there from his abundant output of short stories. From the word go, I was completely captivated by the imaginative quality, zest and the extraordinary richness that he brought to the art of storytelling. Somebody once said that the world is at least 51% in favour of us and that is why we are able to live. And into those 51% favours, I unhesitatingly count the joys of reading Ray Bradbury’s books, stories and essays.

I believe that one should read with calm but mad abandon till about 55, then choose about 200 books from what one has already read and begin re-reading them till one dies. At least that is what I am planning to do.  Into that precious list of mine, I will have the fattest volume of Ray Bradbury’s short stories included

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray set down a tough yardstick for measuring a writer when he wrote

“The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies”

Ray not only did touch life but he very often enlivened it. Thank you Ray. May your soul rest in peace