Citizen Reader

I finished my re-read of Fahrenheit 451 this week, and I must say I found it just as interesting as I did when I first read it in junior high school. I hope to be able to read it again in a couple of decades or so and see how it hits me then.

In the meantime, I was blown away (no pun intended) by the following paragraph, in which Bradbury describes the (nuclear? maybe) bombing of a city:

"The concussion knocked the air across and down the river, turning the men over like dominos in a line, blew the water in lifting sprays, and blew the dust and made the trees above them mourn with a great wind passing away south. Montag crushed himself down, squeezing himself small, eyes tight. He blinked once. And in that instant, saw the city, instead of the bombs, in the air. They had displaced each other. For another of those impossible instants, the city stood, rebuilt and unrecognizable, taller than it had ever hoped or strived to be, taller than man had built it, erected at last in grouts of shattered concrete and sparkles of torn metal into a mural hung like a reversed avalanche, a million colors, a million oddities, a door where a window should be, a top for a bottom, a side for a back, and then the city rolled over and fell down dead." (p. 160.)

Can't you just SEE that? For my money Bradbury's the most vivid descriptive writer out there. I also enjoyed the interview questions with Bradbury that were included in the 50th anniversary edition paperback that I read--made me want to revisit Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews. For a guy who seemed to write a lot about the dark sides of human nature he sure did love life. It makes you think.