Speed of Life

Ray Bradbury Santa Monica, California 2009 Photo by Gregg Chadwick The author Ray Bradbury died yesterday in Los Angeles. He was 91.  Gerald Jonas in t he New York Times describes Bradbury as " a master of science fiction whose lyrical evocations of the future reflected both the optimism and the anxieties of his own postwar America." After atomic weapons obliterated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, fears that science had become more of a threat than a boon found their way into science fiction films and stories that depicted a dystopian future. Bradbury used the magic of stories to create literary works that used this threat as a source of tension in works that often left an impression of hope rather than horror. For the book loving Bradbury, his novel  Fahrenheit 451  - whose title refers to the temperature at which paper ignites - seems to be the most harrowing of his works. A future America that would burn books and thus control the river of ideas...

by Gregg Chadwick “Dear Mr. Sendak,  How much does it cost to get to where the wild things are? If it is not expensive, my sister and I would like to spend the summer there.”  -From a letter sent by an eight year old reader to Maurice Sendak Maurice Sendak   Where the Wild Things Are Pen and ink and watercolor on paper  1963 Maurice Sendak was an artist in love with the world and with things that go bump in the night. Sendak looked deeply at the world around him. His vision included the visible nature of  our existence and the invisible, but no less real, world of dreams. Sendak's beautifully crafted artworks for his books began with simple pencil sketches that were then enlarged and fleshed out with pen and ink which was then layered with glowing watercolor washes.  The finished paintings on paper reflect what Dave Eggers described in a Vanity Fair article on Sendak as the "unhinged and chiaroscuro subconscious of a child." Sendak's...