High Fidelity

Weller, Sarn

BOOKS IN REVIEW "High Fidelity"(throughout his campaign, he kept a copy of the Iliad, annotated by his tutor, Aristotle, under his pillow). His army committed atrocities, but for the most part these were no more...

...Such inconsistencies may not mean much when Bradbury himself is mining events for his short stories—"autographical fantasies"—as he calls them...
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...Bradbury's insistence, for example, that his uncle died over a particular, privately symbolic holiday weekend, despite being presented with newspaper clippings that clearly prove otherwise, calls into question everything else that cannot be verified...
...In other words, those truly interested in maintaining the natural magic and mystique surrounding a work of fiction would be well advised to avoid biographical accounts of its author...
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...The fan Weller paints a scene wherein Bradbury repeatedly spurns the advances of his mistress for years before finally relenting, without ever asking why in the world Bradbury continued to meet alone with this woman if he really wanted to avoid an affair...
...And while The Bradbury Chronicles is filled with wonderful portraits of a burgeoning science fiction scene, the development of a young writer into a legend, and candid portraits of every82 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2005 Health News—Eye Protection To some, sunglasses are a fashion accessory...
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...In one of the most heroic episodes of the book, more than a dozen pages are dedicated to Bradbury's fight against the McCarthy-era Hollywood blacklist, a struggle that included an open letter to Republicans from November 10,1952...
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...In an introduction to a collection of short stories, Bradbury once wrote of finding inspiration in being present at the tragic drowning of a young girl he was playing with at a lake, but Bradbury now contends she was not even an acquaintance, which introduces an element of doubt to all the other details he provides...
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...Cleitus was probably drunk, too, and didn't know when to shut up...
...It is possible that his decision to burn the Persian royal palaces at Persepolis was made while drunk...
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...High Fidelity JOURNALIST SAM WELLER'S RECENT EBULLIENT, at times embarrassingly gushing biography of fantasy-literature legend Ray Bradbury, The Bradbury Chronicles, lodges many indelible images in readers' minds...
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...in Weller won't allow more than a paragraph addressing real concerns in the science fiction subculture that Bradbury was more than a little lax in his descriptions of technology—the "science" part of "science fiction," as it were...
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...The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury, Predicting the Past, Remembering the Future by Sam Weller (MORROW, 400 PAGES, $26.95) Reviewed by Shawn Macomber JULY/AUGUST 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 81 BOOKS IN REVIEW been expected to accept the consequences of the knowledge that we seek...
...There are several places in The Bradbury Chronicles where Weller attempts to promote his autonomy by noting discrepancies between Bradbury's story and the historic record or, even worse, Bradbury's own previous accounts...
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...You cannot unlearn Still, despite the cousins, prostitutes, and mistresses, Bradbury comes out of his biography better than most, in no small measure due to the fawning fandom of his "authorized biographer" and Bradbury's own unabashed proclivity for fancifully mythologizing his own life...
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...Alexander, however, like any figure, cannot be honestly judged by a few incidents, as dramatic as they might be...
...He was a binge drinker with a quick and violent temper...
...His army committed atrocities, but for the most part these were no more foul than those committed by his opponents...
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...And that one paragraph ends with a swift dismissal: "The purists, in their myopic love affair with hardware," Weller writes, "did not understand that Ray Bradbury cared little about technological accuracy...
...84 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2005 LUBLIMELSIMWZIII I ii!Pi rAMIIMILIil 41Eiminwmwwwwwwim SPECTATOR Welcome to AmSpec Modern The Digital Spectator The American Spectator is now available online...
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...One of the most telling examples of this comes when Weller gingerly broaches the topic of Bradbury's marital infidelities with the line, "Ray Bradbury, like all of us, was human...
...Some, perhaps, may also find it difficult to read Fahrenheit 451 ever again without the intricacies of Bradbury's high school romp with a "plump" prostitute invading their consciousnesses: "She washed me off," Bradburytells Weller...
...He insists on using the "culturally sensitive" BCE rather than BC, which only serves to confuse, and ignores the fact that whether it's "BC" or "BCE" we're still counting from the birth of Jesus Christ...
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...Thus, the central question of The Bradbury Chronicles emerges early on: Is this the true story of Bradbury or a great storyteller's heroic yarn easily sold to the clearly eager-to-please Weller...
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...A mother nurturing an imagination with trips to see Lon Chaney films in Waukegan, Illinois, the town that would serve as background for such classics as The Martian Chronicles (1950), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), and Dandelion Wine (1957...
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...Fields to classic film star Marlene Dietrich and fantasy-literature giant Forest J. Ackerman, Weller provides precious little perspective when it comes to Bradbury's dealings with anyone or anything outside his fictional creations...
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...And the witnessing of a tragic car accident and the death of a woman that so scarred Ray Bradbury that he never learned to drive...
...Rogers's prose is rarely sparkling and at times his recounting of the often-told history comes across as perfunctory...
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...No one is asking for a dry, dispassionate day-byday inventory of a life or even necessarily something fair...
...which inspired the boy to find immortality through the written word...
...At a drinking party his general Cleitus—who had saved Alexander's life at the Granicus by chopping off the arm of a Persian cavalry officer who was about to put a sword through an exposed Alexander—criticized Alexander's ego and his policy of bringing Persians into his ranks...
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...Occasionally the autobiographer admits a character-building screw-up, thus proving one's flaws are not being ignored, but even these are accompanied by a multitude of excuses, dismissals, and rationalizations...
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...Weller shows no interest in entertaining the merits of any literary criticism of Bradbury's work, ignoring the fact that, while criticism may oftentimes be unfair, it is rarely totally unfounded...
...Yet, motorists struggle on despite being blinded by the sun's glare and cause countless accidents every year...
...Still, despite the cousins, prostitutes, and mistresses, Bradbury comes out of his biography better than most, in no small measure due to the fawning fandom of his "authorized biographer" and Bradbury's own unabashed proclivity for fancifully mythologizing his own life...
...Conveniently, Weller's failure to ask any further questions lifts any direct complicity from Bradbury's shoulders, while shamefully placing the onus on both his supposedly over-aggressive mistress and, unbelievably, his wife, who, Bradbury contends, drove him to cheat by once threatening to divorce him...
...Weller paints a scene wherein Bradbury repeatedly spurns the advances of his mistress for years before finally relenting, without ever asking why in the world Bradbury continued to meet alone with this woman if he really wanted to avoid an affair...
...The classic short story "The Fog Horn" coming into being during a late night walk on a beach during which Bradbury and his wife came upon the abandoned hulk of a serpentine roller coaster half-buried in sand...
...A request under the Freedom of Information Act showed the FBI had the author under surveillance for completely unfounded suspicions of possible Communist connections...
...Bradbury seems to have feuded bitterly with nearly everyone he met up with, but here Weller clearly takes his favorite author's side in every petty fight with boyhood chums to peers in the film and pulp-writing industries, nearly all of whom are accused of being jealous of his godlike talent or plagiarizing him to one degree or another—as if Bradbury himself didn't owe a debt of inspiration to the Space Age writing of H.G...
...Or Bradbury blaming his wife for driving him to infidelity, when she obviously did nothing of the sort...
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...Deadly accidents are regularly caused by such blinding glare...
...But inconsistencies actually do matter when one is writing a book based almost entirely on interviews with Bradbury...
...Since most fiction writers are imagining lives more exciting than their own, the truth can often as not be—Ernest Hemingway notwithstanding—a bit underwhelming...
...the impetus or inspiration for a story, and knowing, for better or worse, will forever color your experience with characters and events...
...BOOKS IN REVIEW (throughout his campaign, he kept a copy of the Iliad, annotated by his tutor, Aristotle, under his pillow...
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Vol. 38 • July 2005 • No. 6


 
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