Praeterita

Patty and I went to a book reading on Wednesday night by our Columbia colleague and good friend Sam Weller (that's me on the left, Sam on the right, and no, I hadn't even started drinking yet): The event was to promote Sam's new book called 'Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews' ( available from Amazon in the USA here ). The reading was at a great independent bookstore in Lincoln Square, Chicago, called The Book Cellar , so if you live anywhere near there, forget Amazon and buy the book there. Sam wrote the official biography of Bradbury, published a few years ago, but he estimated that he only used about 10% of the interview material that he had gathered from hundreds of hours talking to the great man. This new book was born from that material. At the Book Cellar reading, Sam entertained the audience of about 50 people with readings from the interviews and personal anecdotes about Ray Bradbury, in the setting of the Book Cellar, which also has a ...

What do these three people have in common, starting with stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen above? Then me: And finally Hugh Hefner, seen below posing with some attention-seeking blonde woman: Answer: our names are listed consecutively in the 'Acknowledgements' section of Sam Weller's Ray Bradbury biography . I happen to know Sam, and this in no way influences my opinion that he wrote an exceptionally good book about Bradbury's life, and his influence on American culture. I'm a bit mystified as to why I am in that list (for it is indeed I to whom he is referring to). But by coincidence, Sam linked together two very important people in my early teenage life. I was a huge fan of the stop-motion animations of Ray Harryhausen, particularly the Sinbad films . This might have been at the back of my mind when I made my own stop-motion animations as part of an installation a few years ago. And I, let us say, 'put to good use' my stolen copies of Playboy...