Bradbury on Dunsany (and Sime)

So, Ray Bradbury's passing reminds me of his brief account about the time he went to see Lord Dunsany on one of the latter's trips to America near the end of his life, in the mid-1950s.

"The Seeming Unimportance of Being Sime"

At UCLA some 25 years ago* Lord Dunsany stood before a mob of students and was about to name the finest writer of English during our century.

He hestitated before giving us the answer. My mind flashed authors at me. Aldous Huxley? Thomas Hardy? Writer of English? Well, after all, Hemingway did write English, yes, and what about Faulkner, or even Steinbeck? Then back to the English -- English: Shaw. Yes, Shaw must be it!

No.

Lord Dunsany waited on himself, and made us wait as he gathered the name like a dry wisdom in his mouth. Then he uttered it.

Rudyard Kipling.

A gasp ran through the crowd. A shocked laugh knocked itself out of my throat. Good old Ruddy Rudyard, of course. An old love of mine, lately gone out with the tide, but perhaps now coming back.**

Indeed, Kipling has come back. Not all the way, but he will survive because he is truly excellent.

Meanwhile, Lord Dunsany himself went out with the tide. But as with all things of varying quality, especially fantasy writers, he is re-appearing in our midst.

And Someone named Sime with him.

--at this point, Bradbury goes into an discussion (interesting, but tangental to our purposes) of how the young generation were teaching their teachers the value of science fiction and fantasy: "Heinlein and Tolkien and Clarke", while at the same time rediscovering for themselves "the imaginative calligraphies of Escher, the storm-wracked arthritic landscapes of Rackham, the shadowed haunts of Dore, the delightful animal and bug frolics of Grandville, and perhaps now into such territory as Sime seems to have inhabited". He concludes with the possibly rhetorical query: "Can you name another time in history when such a literary and artistic rediscovery rused and fired by teenagers -- existed or existing -- succeeded and prevailed? I can think of none."

--Introduction to SIDNEY H. SIME: MASTER OF FANTASY, cmp Paul W. Skeeters [1978]

*this was written in 1978 --JDR

**given that folks have been predicting Kipling's come-back since 1939 at least (cf. Auden's poem on Yeats' death), I'm thinking it's time we stopped waiting for that Godot. Ain't gonna happen. --JDR

So, an interesting little glimpse into a great writer of one generation coming all too briefly into contact with a great writer of a previous generation. I'm glad we have this little vignette; wd that we had more like it.

--John R.

Ray Bradbury: The Greatest Science Fiction Writer

So, today came the sad new that Ray Bradbury, the greatest living science fiction writer, has now become the greatest science fiction writer, period.

Here's what the NYP obituary had to say (thanks to friend Richard for the link):

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/books/ray-bradbury-popularizer-of-science-fiction-dies-at-91.html?_r=1&hp

Jeff Grubb has a moving personal response about what Bradbury meant to him:

http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/06/singing-bradbury-electric.html

My own personal favorite wd have to be "The Utterly Perfect Murder", a story that shows Bradbury understands everything about growing up, and holding grudges, and letting go. I think that was the point at which I realized Bradbury was not just a major (I wd say the major) science fiction writer of his time but a literary figure, the one most responsible for elevating science fiction into "literature".

It was also about that time when I discovered that Bradbury was a pretty good poet (at least when he cd shake off the malign influence of Melville and Whitman, which was not always the case). And what's kept coming back to me today is my favorite among his poems, I Have a Brother, Mostly Dead:*

I have a brother, mostly dead

And angels perched upon his head

Most of my life, mostly unseen

And yet I feel with him I've been

A cohort playmate friend of Poe

Who tours me where live friends can't go.

He teaches me his mortal park

And where the firefly stops for spark

And how the shade within the night

Is a most fine delicious fright.

I give him words, he gives me bone

To play like Piper when alone;

And so my brother, dead, you see,

Is wondrous literate company.

Thus if my Muse says: Nevermore!

I hear a tapping at my door;

My brother comes to saviour me

With graveyard biscuit, rictus tea,

That tea in which, perused awhile

One finds a lovely mummy's smile

And then again, he bids me snuff

Egyptian dust . . .

So Idea Ghosts sit up again . . .

And shape themselves with words for clothes.

All this my long lost brother does,

This sibling spent before my cause.

He moves my hand and Lo! O Lord!

His tombstone my Ouija Board.

He shouts: Stay not in buried room,

Come forth, sweet brother, flower my tomb

With words so rare and phrase so bright

They'll bonfire burn away the night.

All this to me lost brother is

And I his live sweet Lazarus.

His shout ignore? his cry refuse?

No, no! Much thanks, long-dead fine Muse.**

*I've provided the stanza breaks.

**from WHERE ROBOT MICE AND ROBOT MEN RUN ROUND IN ROBOT TOWNS [1977]

...........................................................

It was a good long life (almost 92 years). The world is a better place for his having been here.

--JDR