The Painted Darkness (10 page)

** From the introduction to Everything’s Eventual, reprinted with the permission of the author and his publisher.

INTERVIEW WITH RAY BRADBURY: “WE HAVE TOO MANY INVENTIONS!” by Jonathan R. Eller
J
onathan R.Eller,the co-founder of The Center
for Ray Bradbury Studies, conducted this interview in March 2010.
Jonathan R. Eller:
Are E-books the future of reading?

Ray Bradbury:
Absolutely not. Three different groups have called me during the last three weeks. I had another offer last week from a big company back East. But my response was, “Prick up your ears, and go to hell.” That was my response.
JE:
So they will not replace the book?

RB:
They don’t smell good. Books have two smells—a new book smell is very good, but an old book smell is even better. It smells like ancient Egyptian dust. That’s why I think the book is important.

JE:
It’s a link to history, isn’t it?
RB:
You’re damn right, yeah.

JE:
But you can carry hundreds of books in your pocket on a little disk. Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?

RB:
If you are doing research, it could be very important. If you want to look at a lot of books in a single day, yes, it could work very well.

JE:
Do you think E-books will affect censorship and the banning of controversial books? Do you think they’ll try to censor E-books, or do you think E-books will help do away with censorship?
AN INTERVIEW WITH RAY BRADBURY

RB:
There is no censorship. There’s no censorship in this country. In China, yes.
JE:
That’s right, and that goes way back to the Cultural Revolution?
RB:
And in Russia too. And in Germany, until we won.
JE:
So censorship is not the problem in America anymore.

RB:
It never has been. We’ve never had it. When Hitler burned the books, when I was fifteen, it killed my heart, because I was, at heart, a librarian. To see the books burn, burned my heart.

JE:
So you think that E-books have a place, but they won’t take over.

RB:
You can’t be definite about that. The future is too indefinite. We’re being dominated by machines today. The cell phone is a terrible invention. If I had my way, I’d burn cell phones, because people are always calling on them—unnecessary calls to people who don’t want to have them. Sometimes you see people talking to each other in the street, they’re only ten feet apart.

JE:
Oh yes, I know; it’s insanity. And E-books are just more of the same?

RB:
We have too many inventions. Too many radios, and too many TVs with bad programs. That’s why I keep the Turner channel on, because it’s a time machine. It takes me back to when I was three, I was ten, when I was twenty, when I was forty. So I go back in time, and it’s a valuable stimulator of my past. So that’s the only station I keep on.

Jonathan R. Eller,
Professor of English, Co-founder, The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, Co-editor, The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury, Textual Editor, The Writings of Charles S. Peirce, Textual Editor, The Works of George Santayana, Senior Textual Editor, Institute for American Thought, Indiana University School of Liberal Arts.