Hertz On Bradbury: Lest We Forget

By John Hertz:  Tributes to Ray Bradbury continue.  The ones I’ve seen have been wonderful and the others must be too.  He was.

He started humble, he rose like a rocket, and as his stars burst in shimmering brilliant colors and his clarions rang he stayed humble.  When he was striving he was helped, he kept that in mind, and when his work ignited he helped others.

We remember him as a lyricist of the human spirit, of youth and age and memory, of the rightness of attention and the wrongness of inattention.  His praise and protest each set off the other.

He reached people.  How widely.

In ceramics, where a noble bowl is breathtaking, its holding wine or water is only an aid to beauty.

In pyrotechnics where we love to see a flag or a dragon what rouses us is that they are afire.

Bradbury was a fine writer.