I guess this isn't what he'd had in mind.
Fiscal threats to libraries deeply unnerve Mr. Bradbury, who spends as much time as he can talking to children in libraries and encouraging them to read.
The Internet? Don’t get him started. “The Internet is a big distraction,” Mr. Bradbury barked from his perch in his house in Los Angeles, which is jammed with enormous stuffed animals, videos, DVDs, wooden toys, photographs and books, with things like the National Medal of Arts sort of tossed on a table.
“Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’
Full New York Times story.
3 comments:
In this article, Bradbury says he thinks the Internet isn't real. I beg to differ. I can do so much with the Internet and while I still love libraries, I find the Internet an astonishing treasure trove and admittedly a huge distraction without self discipline. Check out our new library where I can bike in 25 minutes. It is nice.
http://www.pbclibrary.org/branch-lan.htm
Nice library!
It's true; I feel both appreciation and wariness toward my computer; it's both a tool and a distraction.
I love the idea of being the NYT reporter who got to call up Yahoo! and say, 'So did Ray Bradbury tell you to go to hell or what?' If there were any editorial assistants around, you could probably raffle off that opportunity for a handsome sum.
It's kind of odd, a sci-fi/fantasy legend like Ray Bradbury unable to get his head around the concept of a computer-linked world, that he'd find that so alienating. I wonder if he has no problem "believing" in television?
When I was still in high school, I went thru a bit of a stealing binge. Not booze, not condoms, not porn mags. No, it was always paperback books for me. I'd amassed over 100 tomes, mostly via the five-finger discount, until the day I got my hands on Ray Bradbury's works. I remember there were 17 different titles, and I had to have them all. By the time I left the bookstore/junk store, I had books stuffed down my pants, under my shirt, and in all the pockets of my huge puffy down parka. I was a walking bookcase. Funny thing is, after I made my successful haul, I got really scared, like where was this stealing spree going to end--grand larceny, perhaps? And that was it, the abrupt end of my career in crime. I have an 88-year-old man to thank for that.
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