The Bradbury Chronicles (42 page)

On November 24, 2003, at 3:15 in the afternoon, Marguerite Susan McClure Bradbury passed away. She and Ray had been married for fifty-seven years. Like all married couples, Ray and Maggie had shared their ups and downs, but through it all Maggie had been Ray's adviser, his staunch supporter, the love of his life, the woman who “took a vow of poverty” when she married a relatively unknown pulp writer who had nothing more than big dreams. He told her he wanted to go to the moon and he wanted to take her with him. And she went.

The funeral service, kept simple and intimate, was held on Friday, November 28, at Westwood Memorial Park Chapel. On that day, the sun was bright and the sky was blue, the requisite L.A. smog on temporary hiatus. Ray had chosen that particular cemetery to bury Maggie because it was small, close to home, and practically a Who's Who of twentieth-century entertainment—there lie Marilyn Monroe, Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, the original “Odd Couple,” Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon; singers Peggy Lee, Roy Orbison, and Mel Tormé. He had purchased a plot for himself, as well.

Inside the A-frame chapel, family and friends gathered—the Bradbury daughters and grandchildren, Forrest J Ackerman, Norman Corwin, Sid Stebel, Bill Nolan, Stan Freberg, and dozens more. Maggie lay at rest in her casket, a stuffed animal—a black cat—and a comic-book adaptation of Marcel Proust's
Remembrance of Things Past,
which Ray had slipped in, nestled by her side. Eschewing the traditional standard service, since they'd only attended church a handful of times over the decades, Ray invited those in attendance to share their memories of Maggie. Forrest Ackerman spoke, reminding Ray that Maggie, his wife of fifty-six years, had always “looked out” for him and was now watching from above. After a few more brief, respectful remarks from others, Ray stood to offer his own reflections. He began at the beginning, recalling his courtship with Maggie and the early days of their marriage. Those were the days he most cherished. “We were so in love and it was so wonderful,” he said.

With Maggie's passing, Ray was left all alone in the big house in Cheviot Hills. However, he carried on and continued writing. Loss, though, seemed to be all around him. On Sunday, February 8, 2004, Ray's longtime friend and his first agent, Julius Schwartz, died at Winthrop Hospital in New York from complications due to pneumonia. He was eighty-eight years old.

On the afternoon of April 3, 2004, Ray spoke by telephone to his brother, Skip, just as he did every Wednesday and Saturday. The last thing Ray said to his older brother was, “I love you.” Later that night, Leonard “Skip” Bradbury Jr. passed away in his sleep at his home in La Pine, Oregon. He was eighty-seven.

“Everyone around me is dying,” Ray said. Sitting in the breakfast room of his house, sunlight falling through the slats of the white wooden window shutters, Ray pondered the future. His future. Our future. He had long been respected as a visionary and he was often asked where humankind was headed next.

“We're going to make it. We're going to be all right. First, we're going back to the moon. Then, we're going to Mars. After that, we're headed to Alpha Centauri,” Ray said, pausing for a moment to reflect. “And you know what? I'm going with you.”

And he was right. Mr. Electrico had been right, too. Ray would live forever. Through his work. As so many around him were departing, Ray found solace in the fact that he would be here long after his physical self was gone, buried at Westwood Memorial Park next to Maggie.

“The thing that makes me happy,” he said, “is that I know that on Mars, two hundred years from now, my books are going to be read. They'll be up on dead Mars with no atmosphere. And late at night, with a flashlight, some little boy is going to peek under the covers and read
The Martian Chronicles
on Mars.”

For certain, this child of modern popular culture had earned his own rightful place as a central figure in the annals of twentieth-century Americana. Even the language of this multimedia Renaissance man had entered the national lexicon. In May 2004, Academy Award–winning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore premiered his politically charged motion picture
Fahrenheit 9/11
at the Cannes Film Festival. The movie skewered the policies of President George W. Bush that led the United States to war in Iraq in 2003. The documentary film title was an obvious homage to Ray's seminal novel of social commentary,
Fahrenheit 451
. Like so many, Michael Moore had grown up on the works of Ray Bradbury. In the post–September 11 world, many readers—Moore included—believed that
Fahrenheit 451,
with its themes of censorship, individual empowerment, and looming government control, was now more relevant than ever before. Moore even felt that his title was carrying on a proud Bradbury tradition, of respectfully borrowing lines from classic literature for titles, just as Ray had done with Shakespeare's “Something wicked this way comes,” Yeats's “The golden apples of the sun,” and Whitman's “I Sing the Body Electric.” But when Ray caught wind of Michael Moore's intentions, he was upset and tried in vain to reach Moore by telephone, to ask him to drop the title. Ray wished that Moore had at least asked him for permission; Ray also worried that his novel would somehow be confused with Moore's film. Academy Award–nominated screenwriter and director Frank Darabont (
The Shawshank Redemption
) had recently completed a much-anticipated new screenplay of
Fahrenheit 451
with the hopes of releasing the film in 2005. Ray worried that some might confuse Moore's film with the Darabont movie. Ray was vocal to the press about his displeasure with Moore. “Give me my title back,” he stated in numerous television and print interviews. On the afternoon of Saturday, June 5, 2004, Moore finally called. The U.S. release of his film was just two weeks away. Ray was sitting in his oversized leather chair in his television room when Moore phoned. The filmmaker was soft-spoken and gentle. Ray responded in kind and suggested that they hold a joint press conference, in which Moore would hand a copy of
Fahrenheit 451
back to him as a metaphorical gesture. During the proposed conference, Moore would announce that he was changing the film's title. But when Ray presented this idea, Moore said that the film and all of its marketing had been set into motion long ago. It was too late to change the title, and Moore was apologetic that it had come to this.

When Ray's feelings on
Fahrenheit 9/11
hit the news, a firestorm ensued. Many noted the irony of Ray Bradbury attempting to censor Michael Moore. After all,
Fahrenheit 451
was one of the great emblematic works of anticensorship. Ray insisted that politics had nothing to do with his feelings. He steadfastly maintained that he had no party affiliation, was not offended on behalf of the Republican Party; in fact, he said that if he were to be classified at all, he was an Independent. Ray argued that it was a matter of principle, if only Moore had called him before he had chosen the title. Ray defended himself and his use of titles from Shakespeare, Yeats, and Whitman; in each instance, in the front of Ray's books, he had credited the respective quotes from the original authors.

Upon its release,
Fahrenheit 9/11
broke records, becoming the first documentary ever to open at number one at the box office; the film grossed $23.9 million during its opening weekend alone.
Fahrenheit 9/11
well illustrated just how profoundly Ray Bradbury had imprinted popular culture. In November 2004, his influence became ever clearer. On November 17, Ray received the highest national honor given to artists by the United States government. Accompanied by three of his four daughters—Susan, Bettina, and Alexandra—and Patrick Kachurka, Ray flew to Washington, D.C., to accept the National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush, presented under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Arts.

It was a crisp, sunny autumn day. As Ray got ready to go to the White House, he couldn't help but think of Maggie, and wish that she could be with him to enjoy this unprecedented honor. He thought, too, of his mother and father, and how proud they would have been to see how far he'd come—all the way to the White House!—from the little house in Waukegan.

Upon their arrival, Ray and his guests were escorted to the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing, just off the Oval Office, where they were asked to wait. Moments later, a door opened, and a Marine Corps captain pushed Ray's wheelchair across a short hallway and into the office of President George W. Bush. Standing alongside the commander-in-chief was First Lady Laura Bush, along with Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and several others. Like so many people, Gioia, a renowned poet in his own right, had grown up on the words of Ray Bradbury. Gioia had personally recommended to the President that Bradbury be awarded the Medal of Arts.

“The author of
The Martian Chronicles
and
Fahrenheit 451,
” wrote Gioia in the official NEA announcement, “Ray Bradbury is the greatest living American writer of science fiction. His singular achievement in this genre is rooted in the imaginative originality of his works, his gift for language, his insights into the human condition, and his commitment to the freedom of the individual.”

President Bush placed the heavy medal around Ray's neck and shook his hand. Ray smiled broadly, savoring the exhilarating moment, the apex of his decades-long career. Since his earliest days in “Green Town,” Illinois, he had always believed the future to be full of promise. And, from the Great Depression through to the Space Age, as he dreamed of the future—imagined it, wrote about, embraced it—he had inspired some of the most renowned individuals of several generations, from filmmakers to musicians to politicians to astronauts to writers. Many of them would go on to leave their own marks, to establish their own legacies, and many of them owed a debt of sincere gratitude to Ray Bradbury for being an early inspiration. Ever since he walked out of a dark movie theater in the winter of 1924, his mother by his side, Lon Chaney in his heart and his mind, Ray Bradbury was forever forged of popular culture. Now, eighty years later, he claimed the same influence on others. His impact was widespread. From a crater on the moon, to a classroom in Tokyo, to an instantly recognizable amusement park ride rising out of the Florida swampland, to a small park in Waukegan, Illinois, named in 1990 “Ray Bradbury Park,” he was everywhere. And even if he wouldn't be a part of the future he so eloquently envisioned, he was all around us.

“Get your work done,” was one of Ray Bradbury's favorite mantras. And he followed his own sage wisdom. Since the 2005 publication of the hardcover edition of
The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury
, the man stayed remarkably busy. While he was mostly wheelchair-bound because of his strokes, he continued to actively lecture across Southern California. He still did book signings and, most important, he continued to write.

Ray's greatest passion throughout his eighties was the theater. His own production company, the Pandemonium Theatre Company, regularly staged productions of his novels and short stories. Perhaps Ray's personal favorite was
Falling Upward
, his semi-autobiograpgic Irish play about the boyos at Heeber Finn's pub. He staged versions of the production at houses in Burbank, North Hollywood, and Pasadena. He attended shows nearly every weekend when the play was up.

“Every time I see the play,” he said, “I feel like I'm in Kilcock, Ireland again and it is 1953.”

Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars
, a book of essays, was published by William Morrow in 2005.

“In three dozen pieces sometimes prickly and always passionate, SF/fantasy legend Bradbury fires off opinions galore on books, movies, SF and the people and places in his life,” stated
Kirkus
.

The book was separated into sections with new, as well as previously published but uncollected essays on “Writing,” “Science Fiction,” “People,” “Life,” “Paris,” and “Los Angeles.” The essays were written over a span of more than 40 years—well illuminating the evolution of Ray Bradbury's writing style. Much of the lavish description and metaphor-rich language so inherent in his earlier fiction and nonfiction had been dialed back in his later work.

“My writing is more succinct,” he said at the time. “I think it is a bit more minimal. Get to it! Most rewriting is cutting. A writer doesn't need to go on and on.”

The earliest essay in the book was “The Ardent Blasphemers,” notable as it was originally published as an introduction to a new edition of Jules Verne's
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
It was this essay that prompted the organizers of the 1964 World's Fair in New York to approach Ray to design the United States pavilion at the fair. Ray had other favorites in the book, including his love letter to locomotives, “Any Friend of Trains is a Friend of Mine,” published only once in the August 2, 1968 issue of
Life
magazine. This latter essay reflected much of the childlike wonder in Bradbury, as well as the rich prose of his earlier career:

“So the night went, the train gliding among stilts of fire, huge laboratory experiments of electric flame, then rumbling coughs of thunder as great blind hands of shocked air clapped tight, the night's echoing applause for its own words.”

In 2006, at the gentle prodding of his longtime friend and editor, Jennifer Brehl at William Morrow, Ray went back to his files yet again. This time he dusted off the fifty-year-old manuscript to
Farewell Summer
, the unpublished second half of the classic and beloved 1957 story cycle,
Dandelion Wine
.

“Ray was a great re-worker,” said Jennifer Brehl in a 2012 interview. Brehl served as Ray's editor from 1996 on. “Most of the books we worked on, except for the mystery
Let's All Kill Constance,
which he loved
,
were things that had been around in his files for a long time. They were things he had been thinking about and wanting to do for years.”

The stories in
Farewell Summer
were written in the 1940s and 50s. And while many of them were complete, the book still needed considerable rewriting and editing.

“I would mark things up,” recalled Brehl, “and I'd write notes very big, like a size 20-type because of Ray's eyesight at this point, and I'd send them to him and he would go over them with his daughter Alexandra, and we went back and forth like that through the entire manuscript.

The process was not particularly enjoyable for Ray. As a completely intuitive writer, the meticulous nature of rewriting and line editing was, at times, grueling. But he persevered.

Brehl felt that even his late-in-life work still deftly displayed the Bradbury signature.

“The love of life and the exuberance and the desire to convey passion for life never changed,” she said in a 2012 interview, looking back on their long and close professional and personal association.

As the editing on
Farewell Summer
concluded, Ray wrote Brehl a letter, summarizing his gratitude for their work together:

 

Friday, July 28, 2006

 

  Dear Jenny,

At long last it's time for me to finally let go of
Farewell Summer
. I've checked through the proof pages two or three times now and have found nothing. You've done a fine job of picking up any errors along the way. Above all, I want to thank you for all these years of work and instruction on this and on
From the Dust Returned
,as well as my other books. When I think how both of these books remained in my files for so many years and now they are out in the open, I'm truly amazed. I look forward to helping promote the new book in the fall. Now, Onward….I love you very much, dear Jenny.

 

Farewell Summer
was published on October 17, 2006.

He continued to write new scripts, stories, essays, and poems through dictation to Alexandra, and to raid his own voluminous filing cabinets for work written during his golden era.Awards and accolades continued to roll in, too. Ray had lived to witness a rarity of sorts for writers—the arrival of his own legend. On April 16, 2007, he was given a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize Board for his “distinguished, prolific and deeply influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy.” At the age of 86, Ray no longer traveled. His last trip out of California had been to the White House in November 2004. Ray sent Michael Congdon, son and business associate of his longtime agent Don Congdon, as his emissary to the Pulitzer ceremony.

“Ray's doctors at that point didn't want him to fly,” recalled Congdon in 2012, adding with a chuckle, “and it really didn't bother Ray that much because they don't allow recipients to give a speech or say anything at the ceremony!”

“All of these things,” added Congdon, “validated what Ray had been striving for in the 1940s and 1950s, and it was wonderful for him to see that in his lifetime, as it was for all of us.”

But it was, perhaps, one award more than any other that truly stood out for Ray. In 2007, he was given the prestigious Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) from the government of France. The honor was in recognition of his significant contributions to arts and literature. Since his first trip to France in September 1953, Ray always considered France his second home. The ornate gold and green medal was intended to be worn around the neck, which Ray did, immediately. It also, officially, made Ray Bradbury a “Commandeur” of Arts and Letters.

He was ebullient. He wore the medal nearly everyday. And when he would deliver a speech, or welcome an audience to a production of one of his plays, he always concluded his remarks by saying much the same thing:

“The government of France has recently made me a Commander of Arts and Letters,” he would say, clutching the proud medal around his neck. “So I command you to love me!”

Ray was still very engaged, he surrounded himself with friends and family; he loved to get out and socialize, and to dine out at the Pacific Dining Car in Santa Monica, or at El Cholo, a favorite Mexican restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard.

When people visited, they were startled by the amountof personal belongings and career ephemera in his den, the room where Ray spent most of his time. There were piles of papers; stacks of books; oversized-toys; sculptures of dinosaurs; even a scale model of Captain Nemo's submarine,
Nautilus
. They often had trouble navigating around the mementos, curios, and “metaphors,” as he called them, from his long life.

“Just move that pile and pull up a chair,” he would say, jovially.

At this time, the household was now down to but one cat,Hally (named for Halloween) and Ray loved her completely. She sat on the chair with him each day. When television crews came to the house, Hally was always there, in frame, sitting by the side of her friend. She figured prominently in the production of a documentary made for the National Endowment for the Arts “Big Read” community reading initiative. Hally passed away in 2010 and Ray wrote a brief, rarely seen, heartfelt tribute, titled “A Friend Waiting Out in the Rain.”

 

Hally, you say? What does the name Hally mean? Why, it's short for Halloween.

When she came into my life and into the house about eight years ago, she had a streak of burnt pumpkin across her face and I looked at that streak of burnt pumpkin and I said, “That's Halloween. That must be her name.”

So I called her “Hally.” And she became part of my life and she lived with me, and followed me around all day and slept with me each night.

 

The loss of “Hally” deeply saddened Ray. All the while, more longtime friends and lifelong collaborators also said goodbye. His stout black leather telephone book continued to morph into, as he called it, “a book of the dead.”

Forrest J Ackerman, Ray's childhood friend, the man who had paid for Ray to go to New York City in 1939 for the First World's Science Fiction Convention, died on December 4, 2008. Don Congdon, his agent “for life,” passed away at the age of 91 on November 30, 2009. This loss was particularly difficult. Bradbury had first corresponded with Congdon in 1945. They formalized their business relationship the very same week Ray married Maggie in 1947. Soon after, Ray went out and got a crew cut to look just like the man he so admired, his agent, Don Congdon. Congdon had always been there, protecting Ray and guiding his career. Ray was comforted in knowing that Congdon's son Michael and their agency, Don Congdon Associates, Inc., would carry on representing his literary interests.

Despite the departures and losses, Ray kept his spirits up. He was defiant. Everyone who visited commented thathe left them feeling inspired by his outlook and attitude, even as he was on the precipice of turning 90.

“It's been ninety goddamn incredible years!” he said. “Every day, I've loved it. Because I've remained a boy. The man you see here is a twelve-year-old boy, and the boy is still having fun. You remain invested in your inner-child by exploding every day. You don't worry about the future, you don't worry about the past, you just explode. If you are dynamic, you don't have to worry about what you are. I've remained a boy, because boys run everywhere. They keep running, running, running, and never looking back. That's me, the running boy.”

Even at 90, his memory was encyclopedic. He could recall where he saw a movie when he was a boy, he could name the cast and crew of a film; he could remember virtually everything.

On November 20, 2008, Ray was over-the-moon to serve as guest programmer with Robert Osbourne on his favorite television network—Turner Classic Movies. Ray's cinematic selections for the day were
Phantom of the Opera
,
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
,
Rebecca
, and
Citizen Kane
.

 

      Because of the rapidly shifting publishing landscape and the possibility for new sales, it was time to bring Ray into the digital age. Ray had famously lambasted the new e-book era, saying, “You can't smell a Kindle…There are two perfumes to a book; a book is new, it smells
great
; a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt. So a book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hand and pray to it. You put it in your pocket and you walk with it. And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn't do that for you.”

Ray resisted moving his books into the new, pixilated world. But through some convincing by Congdon and his daughters, Ray's agent began negotiating e-book amendments to the contracts for many of his old titles. Perhaps most significantly and symbolically, Congdon negotiated a new book deal including digital rights with Simon and Schuster for
Fahrenheit 451
for what he described as a “substantial sum.” This, along with new e-book editions for many of his titles published by HarperCollins, and with the sale of film rights for
The Martian Chronicles
to Paramount Pictures, meant that Ray's finances were in solid shape.

Ray ventured out of the house for a June 2010 book signing in Glendale; for a joyful pilgrimage to Comic Con in July; and for a standing room only on-stage interview at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California. Los Angeles held a series of events throughout the city, officially proclaiming it “Ray Bradbury Week,” from August 22 through August 28 and Ray was there.

Yet more and more, he was at home. Still, he proclaimed to all that he would live to 100, if not forever, as Mr. Electrico had long ago prophesied.

Friends visited Ray at home, sharing a meal (very often, hamburgers from L.A.'s renowned “Apple Pan” restaurant) when he had the appetite, and reading to him in bed, most often from his own books. He watched movies; he slept, yet stayed remarkably positive. He even occasionally dictated an essay, including one for
The New Yorker
magazine for their June, 2012 “Science Fiction” issue, compiled from materials he'd previously written and included in interviews he'd conducted with Don Congdon in the 1970's. It was a reflective piece on Ray's childhood discovery and love of science fiction, and the death of his beloved grandfather, entitled “Take Me Home.”

In May of 2012, weakened and with labored breathing, he was brought to Cedar Sinai hospital in Los Angeles. Ray had taken a few trips to the hospital in the past decade, so everyone expected him to soon return home. But on the day after publication of his essay, Ray Bradbury, always one to think and speak and even act in metaphors, fulfilled the title of his
New Yorker
essay. On June 5, at 8:47 pm, with Patrick Kachurka, Ray's longtime line-in nurse Santiago Montejo, and his eldest daughter Susan by his side, Ray Bradbury, indeed, went home.