He was a riot of rockets and fountains and people, in such intricate detail and color that you could bear the voiced murmuring, small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body.
The Illustrated ManRay Bradbury brings wonders alive. A peerless American storyteller, his oeuvre has been celebrated for decades--from The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 to Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes.
The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury --a collection of tales that breathe and move, animated by sharp, intaken breath and flexing muscle. Here are eighteen startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin--visions as keen as the tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body.
The images, ideas, sounds and scents that abound in this phantasmagoric sideshow are provocative and powerful: the mournful cries of celestial travelers cast out cruelly into a vast, empty space …
He was a riot of rockets and fountains and people, in such intricate detail and color that you could bear the voiced murmuring, small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body.
The Illustrated ManRay Bradbury brings wonders alive. A peerless American storyteller, his oeuvre has been celebrated for decades--from The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 to Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes.
The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury --a collection of tales that breathe and move, animated by sharp, intaken breath and flexing muscle. Here are eighteen startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin--visions as keen as the tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body.
The images, ideas, sounds and scents that abound in this phantasmagoric sideshow are provocative and powerful: the mournful cries of celestial travelers cast out cruelly into a vast, empty space of stars and blackness ... the sight of gray dust settling over a forgotten outpost on a road that leads nowhere ... the pungent odor of Jupiter on a returning father's clothing. Here living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets.
Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth, widely believed to be one of the Grandmaster's premier accomplishments: as exhilarating as interplanetary travel, as maddening as a walk in a million-year rain, and as comforting as simple, familiar rituals on the last night of the world.
"Los exhiliados" (o "Los desterrados") habla del miedo a la fantansía.
La represión de la fantasía es también una estrategia de poder: quien no sabe dejar que su imaginación vuele, difícilmente pueda imaginar que el mundo puede ser mejor.
El tema de la prohibición de los libros lo retomó Bradbury en "Fahrenheit 451", una de las distopías más clásicas que en parte se ha realizado, aunque no por prohibición sino por desprestigio.
Hoy leer no está bien visto entre los chicos jóvenes, hay personas crecidas y con hijos que han leído solo una o dos novelas. Y no me preocupo por la calidad de la lectura, quien lee y tiene inteligencia, antes o después busca mejores lecturas...
Leímos "Los exiliados" en las edición número 51 de nuestro Club de #LecturaMastodontica
"La carretera" me deja la idea de que nuestros miedos y nuestras seguridades están inherentemente ligadas a nuestro conocimiento del mundo.
Alguien que no conoce el mundo que existe fuera de su entorno inmediato, no puede temer por su fin.
Me pregunto cuánto de la destrucción sistemática que las derechas del mundo practican sobre los sistemas educativos, tiene que ver con esa visión: si no sabés lo que te están robando, no podés preocuparte de que te lo roben.
También está en el cuento la idea de que quien se ha caído de la narrativa de la realidad, quien ha sido excluido del hilo de los hechos, no puede temer su final.
Leímos "La carretera" en las edición número 51 de nuestro Club de #LecturaMastodontica
Some of these speculative short fictions are a bit dated, but others could have been written yesterday. And there isn't a bad one among them. I only regret that I didn't read this collection sooner.
Review of 'The Illustrated Man (Voyager Classics)' on Goodreads
4 stars
Short stories of space and planets, war and violence and religion and isolation. Many of these are excellent: The Veldt, The Man, The Fox and the Forest, Marionettes Inc, Zero Hour.