Ray Bradbury: Library Love
INTERVIEWER
You’re self-educated, aren’t you?
BRADBURY
Yes, I am. I’m completely library educated. I’ve never been to college. I went down to the library when I was in grade school in Waukegan, and in high school in Los Angeles, and spent long days every summer in the library. I used to steal magazines from a store on Genesee Street, in Waukegan, and read them and then steal them back on the racks again. That way I took the print off with my eyeballs and stayed honest. I didn’t want to be a permanent thief, and I was very careful to wash my hands before I read them. But with the library, it’s like catnip, I suppose: you begin to run in circles because there’s so much to look at and read. And it’s far more fun than going to school, simply because you make up your own list and you don’t have to listen to anyone. When I would see some of the books my kids were forced to bring home and read by some of their teachers, and were graded on—well, what if you don’t like those books?
I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week. I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school.
INTERVIEWER
You have said that you don’t believe in going to college to learn to write. Why is that?
BRADBURY
You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught. The library, on the other hand, has no biases. The information is all there for you to interpret. You don’t have someone telling you what to think. You discover it for yourself.
Read an excerpt from the Paris Review interview.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
April 21st, 2010 at 01:13
Ang Taray!
April 21st, 2010 at 13:52
Wow. I just bought his Now and Forever book, containing 2 novellas (Somewhere a Band is Playing and Leviathan ’99), for P75. What a steal.
April 21st, 2010 at 20:05
I’ve never read any of his works, and I’ve only heard mention of him vaguely. But after reading bits of this interview, I love him! He’s the man! Have you ever had some kooky ideas which you’re really reluctant to try out just because they’re so unconventional? I’ve had the same thought running through my head before, about self-education in a library, but I was just too distrustful of the unconventional to do it. It’s so cool to hear about people who have the guts to purposely miss out on college and mark out a different path.
April 21st, 2010 at 21:01
Makes sense. You know another great writer who never went to college? Nick Joaquin. He was too shy to go to school. He just taught himself how to write by inventing fabulous tales and by reading,and the rest is history. You can spend ten years in creative writing class,but if you got no talent you might as well consider doing other things.