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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 Cover images © Shutterstock.com 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. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. 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
