i ought to practice what i preach

GET in line

i often think about that, because the experience changed me. probably no other book made a bigger impact at an impressionable age. probably no other book better shaped my sense of story. the martian chronicles taught me that it was possible to conjure up both distant alien landscapes and far more familiar feelings in text. that the point of journeying to another planet in a novel was to better understand our own.

it’s almost impossible to imagine a teacher getting away with reading such a book to a group of ten-year-olds now. these days, some parent would get wind of the Cultural Themes and Critiques that bradbury lays bare and they would text the parental whatsapp group chat (“brayden is learning that colonial genocide in outer space is bad!”) and throw a fit and involve the principal and fox news and get the best teacher i ever had fired. thinking about it now drives home just how much we’ve gone backward.

ray bradbury excels at diving into imagined futures with all the sins of our past. there will come soft rains is a masterwork of short story. it is five pages long. you can read it here for free.

Struck, NYC