Remembrance, Ray Bradbury
Remembrance, Ray Bradbury
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Remembrance
Selected Correspondence of Ray Bradbury

Author: Ray Bradbury

Narrator: Dan Bittner, Jacques Roy, Fred Sanders, Byron Wagner, Eunice Wong

Unabridged: 13 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/07/2023


Synopsis

Ray Bradbury, the iconic author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, believed that a collection of his letters could someday illuminate the story of his life in new ways. That story emerges across time and memory in the pages of Remembrance.

Ray Bradbury was one of the best-known writers and creative dreamers of our time. The many honors he received, which included an Emmy and Academy Award nomination for adaptations of his work, culminated in the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a 2004 National Medal of Arts, and a 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation. For many years NASA and the Disney Studio felt the impact of Ray Bradbury’s creativity, and his fiction has found its way into hundreds of anthologies, textbooks, and the National Endowment for the Arts’ Big Read program. His enduring legacy as a storyteller, novelist, and space-age visionary radiated out into popular adaptations for stage, film, and television, and now the fascinating narratives and insights of his personal and professional correspondence are revealed for the first time.

Remembrance offers the first sustained look at his life in letters from his late teens to his ninth decade. Bradbury’s correspondence was far-reaching—he interacted with a rich cross-section of 20th-century cultural figures, writers, film directors, editors, and others who simply wanted insights or encouragement from a writer who had enriched their lives through his stories and novels.

Bradbury scholar and biographer, Jonathan R. Eller, organized this volume into categories of correspondents, showing Bradbury’s progression through life as he knew it, and not necessarily as the public perceived him. Letters to and from mentors and other writers are followed by correspondence with such film directors as John Huston, François Truffaut, and Federico Fellini. Letters with publishers and agents are followed by letters that capture moments of national and international recognition, the shadows of war and family members who shared the memories of his life. Among the writers whose letters illuminate Remembrance are Theodore Sturgeon, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Twilight Zone writers Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson, Dan Chaon, Bernard Berenson, Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell, Graham Greene, Anaîs Nin, Gore Vidal, Carl Sandburg, and Jessamyn West.

Remembrance illuminates the most elusive aspect of Ray Bradbury’s wide-ranging writing passions—the correspondence he sent and received throughout his long life, each letter intended for an audience of one.

About Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) was the author of more than three dozen books, including Fahrenheit 451The Martian ChroniclesThe Illustrated Man, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, as well as hundreds of short stories. He wrote for the theater, cinema, and TV, including the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick and the Emmy Award–winning teleplay The Halloween Tree, and adapted for television sixty-five of his stories for The Ray Bradbury Theater. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and numerous other honors.

About Jonathan R. Eller

Dr. Jonathan R. Eller is a Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus and cofounder of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University’s School of Liberal Arts. His most recent books include the biographical trilogy Becoming Ray Bradbury, Ray Bradbury Unbound, and Bradbury Beyond Apollo, which was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2021. Since 2011, he has prefaced and prepared new historical sections for Simon & Schuster’s latest editions of Catch-22, Fahrenheit 451, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Four of Professor Eller’s books on Bradbury have been Locus Award finalists for best nonfiction title in the science fiction and fantasy field.


Reviews

Goodreads review by nigel (nicole) on November 06, 2023

"Remembrance: Selected Correspondence of Ray Bradbury," offers a captivating glimpse into the life and mind of the legendary author, Ray Bradbury. This collection of letters is a treasure trove for any admirer of Bradbury's work, providing a profound and intimate perspective on the man behind the li......more

Goodreads review by Jamie on January 08, 2024

Oddly enough, despite being a collection of letters, it is probably the single best book about writing and a writer's life that I have come across. So much to take from this that I will have to read it again.......more

Goodreads review by Marie on March 27, 2025

More of a textbook than some light reading, I enjoyed many of the great writer's bon mots, as well as seeing him as a struggling, anxious "Why am I getting all these rejections??" newbie. That said, I didn't like the organization of the book, and found the introductions to the letters to be largely......more

Goodreads review by Henry on April 09, 2025

" I came upon an oak when I was twelve I had climbed up and screamed for Skip to get me down. It was a thousand miles to earth. I shut my eyes and yelled. My brother, richly compelled to mirth, gave shouts of laughter And scaled up to rescue me. "What were you doing there?" he said. I did not tell. Rather......more

Goodreads review by rye on April 24, 2024

Warm hug of a book but maybe only for me and other big Ray Bradbury heads? The art of correspondence is so well seen in this book. Loved seeing the back and forth between some of the letters. Very cool that some of them were located. He was so funny, smart, and his little insights and philosophies w......more