Zen in the Art of Writing
Ray Bradbury
HarperVoyager an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk
Published by HarperVoyager 2015
First published in Great Britain by Joshua Odell Editions 1994.
Copyright © 1994 Ray Bradbury Enterprises
Owing to limitations of space, acknowledgements
to reprint may be found on the acknowledgments page.
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
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Ray Bradbury asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008136512
Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780008120870
Version: 2015-04-22
TO MY FINEST TEACHER, JENNET JOHNSON, WITH LOVE
Table of Contents
RUN FAST, STAND STILL, OR, THE THING AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS, OR, NEW GHOSTS FROM OLD MINDS
DRUNK, AND IN CHARGE OF A BICYCLE
INVESTING DIMES: FAHRENHEIT 451
JUST THIS SIDE OF BYZANTIUM: DANDELION WINE
The Author-In-Residence
Green Town, Illinois, 1923
Sometimes I am stunned at my capacity as a nine-year-old, to understand my entrapment and escape it.
How is it that the boy I was in October, 1929, could, because of the criticism of his fourth grade schoolmates, tear up his Buck Rogers comic strips and a month later judge all of his friends idiots and rush back to collecting?
Where did that judgment and strength come from? What sort of process did I experience to enable me to say: I am as good as dead. Who is killing me? What do I suffer from? What’s the cure?
I was able, obviously, to answer all of the above. I named the sickness: my tearing up the strips. I found the cure: go back to collecting, no matter what.
I did. And was made well.
But still. At that age? When we are accustomed to responding to peer pressure?
Where