Рэй Брэдбери - Yestermorrow - Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures

I was tremendously excited by the concept, having never heard of it. The more I thought on it, the more excited I became.

“I have always loved world’s fairs and the arts and sciences exhibitions there,” I said. “Someday, by God, someone will give me a chance to help design an Art Gallery of the Future. At the center of it, I want to act out the very process you’ve described, using three-dimensional models and film. Let a visitor press a button at the front of the exhibit and watch the ink go down an eighth of an inch in the inkwell, revealing the miniature David. Then, to one side show a twenty-foot-tall projected image of the waiting marble. As the ink lowers in the real well, the film moves, the rock shatters under an invisible hammer, and the top of David’s head thrusts high up out of the stone. In 60 seconds flat, your curious gallery-ite would watch head, torso, arms, legs, cut from the rock, even as he touched the button to drain the ink.”

“Bravo!” said B.B. “Write it down. Someday—do it!”

One day, I did. The idea has been fed into the concepts for a technological art museum to be built somewhere in the United States in the next few years.

But meanwhile, the last wineglass was emptied, the last good-byes said. “And you’re not to call me Mr. Berenson anymore. It’s B.B. And you must write often and come back soon. Good-bye children, good-bye.”

The next day, in the hour before leaving Venice on the train, I wandered a last time in the Academy, and, on impulse, hurried to B.B.’s hotel and sent twenty dozen flowers up to his room.

Marguerites, they were, and I would have sent more, but I had bought out the supply.

We sailed for home, thinking we would never see him again, But, as he said later, he had books to read and books to write and pictures to look at and honorary sons like myself to tend to.

We began a tennis-match correspondence, which lasted, with Nicky’s help, to within a few weeks before his death.

I cannot convince the reader how important these letters were. Remember, those were still lonely times for me. The Space Age, I repeat, was only a rumor beyond a horizon so far off it was ridiculous to contemplate. Science fiction was hidden away with the dust in the libraries. None of it, absolutely none, was taught in the schools. We writers of speculative nonsense were the lost tribe of literature, wandering the earth, begging for a crumb of attention. I got my precious crumb from B.B. when, in letters like this, waiting for me when I reached home, he spoke the needful words that made me want to go on writing and living for him:

June 29th, 1954

Dear Ray:

Before leaving Venice today I want to tell you how much, while here, I have been thinking of you, and enjoying reading reviews of your writings, both in England and in France… all so favorable. Dear Boy, you have a wonderful future before you. Get us none of the wax, and let us have the bare bones of your gifts. You have such a clean and deep insight into human nature, and a talent for communicating it to others that your responsibility is great….

Did ever such a son have such a father?

What an army we made, he to lead, me to follow, he promising to read any damn thing I dared to write, and me storming my typewriter because of that promise.

More letters followed, and I sent B.B. not only books but individual stories, one of which he responded to as follows:

…Do you own my Painters of the Renaissance ? If you do, turn to that section about Raphael in which I asked the same questions (as in your story).

…I heartily approve of your keeping away from the critics… even though it may entail privations. I have never known an author who did not lose by it, in creative zest.

…I long to see you and your beloved wife. You cannot come (here) too soon.

Again and again in our writing back and forth, B.B. and I circled ’round the touchstone that was our constant center: the joy of creation, the passion with which I tried to do things born of pure love or pure hate (when something was truly worth hating), and the fact that I threw up, as I put it, every morning, and cleaned up after lunch. The creative explosion first, then the critical clearing of the concussion area. I told B.B. that I had had a sign by my typewriter for years that read: Don’t Think, Do!

Plenty of time to think after your love is accomplished.

B.B. approved.

The praise he ladled on me, with intimations of his own mortality, could not but have caused a crisis in my life:

August 18, 1955

…You have imagination and psychology together, and when combined cannot fail to be suggestive of allegory, of prophecy…. How I wish I could live to see the full ripeness of your gifts.

April 4, 1956

…Dear Ray, if only you were here, what talks we could have. How absurd that you, who produce so much for the public, lack the money to come over. Let me hope that you will succeed in doing so very soon. Remember that I am within weeks of being ninety-one, and I neither expect nor want to live very much longer….

This last did it. Tears sprang to my eyes. I took one look at my wife, as she read the letter. She nodded, reading my thoughts. I picked up the phone and called my film agent. “Get me a job, any job, anywhere in Europe,” I said. “We’ve got to make it to Italy this summer!”

My agent called back an hour later with incredible news: “You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “How would you like to go straight to Florence, Italy, and settle in to write a film based on the life of Lorenzo de’ Medici?”

I was stunned, and gave a great shout. My agent filled in the details. It seemed that Tyrone Power was behind the project. He was working with a number of people whom my agent named. The more he talked, the quieter I became. With all the details given, I knew these were simply the wrong people to go live and work with.

I thanked my agent, said no, and cabled B.B. to hang on, live! until we could make it over. I followed it with a letter. B.B. wrote back in July:

…I am deeply disappointed that you are not coming over soon. Shall I ever see you again? I already am a month in my ninety-second year….

…Very interesting the article on your script of Moby Dick …. I believe that any instrument can be used as the painter uses his brush, and the writer words, to produce a work of art… provided the user of the instrument is a heaven-inspired artist and not merely a day laborer…. My complaint against cinema and television is in the first place that I cannot linger contemplating over them—they pass so swiftly, and then that they are so bad for these eyes.

…When I read, I can sip and gestate and stop to dream and wonder. The cinema is “Faster, faster, Circe Goddess. Let the bright procession, the eddying forms, sweep this, my soul!”

…I want tranquility in enjoyment.

…Do not cinema and TV contribute to the hideous pace of today, events crushed by those just behind them?!

In January 1957 a note came from B.B.

Dear Ray:

Not even a Christmas card? Why, why, why?

I cabled B.B. telling him that cards had been sent, but that the Italian mail service had a way of dumping mail off Capri if it suited them. A long letter to him followed. Then, a few months later I was able to write and tell him better news. Graham Greene had given a story of mine to Sir Carol Reed, the director of Odd Man Out and The Third Man. Reed had flown to Los Angeles to meet with me, and we were to return for a summer of screenplay writing in London.

The summer was perfection with Sir Carol. The screenplay finished, we headed south to B.B., who, with his sister and Nicky, was avoiding the hot Italian weather in his retreat at Vallombrosa.