A Gracious Salute

Mark Sevi’s post about Ray Bradbury for the Orange County Screenwriters Association captures in rich, poetic language the experience of reading the master:

Reading a Bradbury story is like sipping ice tea on a summer dusk when it’s warm and friendly – and then slowly beginning to notice that as it grows darker, it gets colder and those nice tree shapes are starting to look vaguely threatening in the pale light of the rising moon. You start to edge closer to the front door where you can eventually flee because dark thoughts have begun to infect your mind. As they fester you suddenly realize that you’ve been duped into treading into boggy, sickening places where no person has any business going.

Bradbury’s stories, his elegant prose, romances you like the endless blue of the ocean. You don’t realize how far out you are from shore until suddenly your feet no longer touch sand and there’s an undertow snatching at you, trying to drag you away to black waters. Before you fully understand what’s happening you’ve been pulled under and you can no longer breathe.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]