Ray Bradbury, American author of Fahrenheit 451, is today’s spotlight. S.O. to birthday-er Claude Debussy as well. A prose poem by Walt Whitman.
The date is August 22nd, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR.
Today is the birthday of Ray Bradbury, American author. Bradbury is best remembered for his novel Fahrenheit 451.
When Ray was 14, the Bradbury family moved to Los Angeles from their small town in Illinois. Ray’s father had been out of work and was searching in booming Southern California.
When his father came home one day and announced he’d found a steady full-time job, Ray was ecstatic. The young Bradbury had already fallen in love with Hollywood.
Bradbury was an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy and a regular at bookstores and libraries. In high school he was active in the poetry club and drama club, as many are wont to do in Los Angeles.
Graduating high school during the Great Depression, Bradbury admits that the family simply didn’t have money to send him to college. In lieu of university, Bradbury claims to have gone to the library 3 times a week for 10 years post-graduation.
When he was disqualified from serving in the US forces due to poor eyesight, Bradbury doubled down on devoting himself full-time to writing.
Bradbury’s first novel, The Martian Chronicles, was written out of necessity. He and his wife Maggie were expecting their first child. Bradbury was consistently publishing short stories, but with a baby on the way, the couple was going to need a larger income.
Bradbury took a bus from Los Angeles to New York City in order to find a publisher for his short stories. After being turned down by more than ten publishers, he found hope in a meeting with an editor at Doubleday. The editor told Bradbury that short stories weren’t going to get him very far – he needed a novel to show around. Bradbury did not have a novel. The editor then suggested that Bradbury put together a bunch of his short stories in a collection about life on Mars.
That night, in his room at a YMCA in NYC, Bradbury typed up an outline for what would become The Martian Chronicles. He stayed up all night and showed the outline to the Doubleday editor the next day. The Doubleday editor gave Bradbury $750 as an advance.
Over the course of Bradbury’s 70-year career, he wrote over 600 short stories and published 27 novels and collections of his work. Fahrenheit 451 remains Bradbury’s best-selling book, with an estimated 10 million copies in circulation. More on Fahrenheit 451 in October on the anniversary of its first publication date.
Today is the birthday of Claude Debussy, French composer. Debussy most popular tune is “Clair de Lune,” third movement of Suite bergamasque, which he composed in 1890 at the age of 32.
Despite having undeniable talent on the piano Debussy received mixed reviews from his instructors at the Conservatoire de Paris. Some labeled him an excellent student, attentive to direction, where others found him lazy and defiant. He was eventually disqualified from the piano department on account of failing his piano performances. However, he was able to remain at the Conservatoire and enrolled in harmony and composition courses.
A mentor helped Debussy find summer work as a private piano player for a wealthy household. Debussy quickly found that he wouldn’t mind living in such splendor. Another summer he was placed at the home of Nadezhda von Meck the patron of Tchaikovsky.
Debussy spent his 20s and 30s finding his own musical voice. His compositions showed promise and he was well regarded by fellow composers and musicians. However, his more “bohemian” style had yet to be widely accepted. At age 40 in 1902, his operatic rendition of the play Pelléas et Mélisande gained him acceptance into the international music scene.
Debussy was a certified romantic. He fell hard and fast for talented female conversationalists, whether they were married or not. A few of his personal affairs in his 20s and 30s were possibly the reason he didn’t make it big sooner. They were chiefly a distraction to Debussy who appears to be prone to obsession.
His final affair with a married Emma Bardac would result in her divorcing her first husband and marrying Debussy. The couple was forced to flee Paris for London for a time while the drama cooled. They had a daughter together, Debussy’s only child.
In London, Debussy’s work, including compositions from his 20s and 30s, began to gain recognition and his reputation flourished. Sadly, he also was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. A surgery in 1915 stopped the pain temporarily, but Debussy would succumb to the cancer three years later in 1918. He was 55.
I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
Walt Whitman
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,
But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,
I know very well I could not.
Wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening.