Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0996744797 ISBN 13: 9780996744799

Publisher: Hat & Beard Press, 2017

Synopsis

Hardcover, 224 pages
7½ × 10¾ in.
19.05 x 27.305 cm.

Acclaimed biographer and Bradbury scholar Sam Weller spent more than a decade interviewing Ray Bradbury, who admitted, “Sam Weller knows more about my life than I do.” Revealed in Weller and Bradbury’s conversations, collected in Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews, is a vivid portrait of the author. A creative genius, an opinionated and occasionally contrarian thinker, “and a nostalgic futurist,” Bradbury longed for yesterday even as he looked toward tomorrow.

During the process of conducting research for the book, noted Los Angeles photographer Zen Sekizawa photographed Bradbury’s home and decades of his accumulated possessions. Her photographs present an alternate portrait of Bradbury―one that is more poignant now that his personal possessions have been sold at auction and his home of more than half a century razed.

Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews is the definitive collection  of interviews with this American icon, illustrated with Sekizawa’s stunning color photographs (including previously unpublished images). Originally issued as a paperback in 2010 by Stop Smiling Books and Melville House Publishing, Listen to the Echoes is now available as a full-color, larger-format hardcover edition with a new final chapter by Weller about Bradbury’s legacy since his death in 2012, and dozens of new photographs from the Bradbury archive. Also new to this edition are essays by Margaret Atwood and Frank Darabont.

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012), the poetic and visionary author of such classics as Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and The Illustrated Man, was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Bradbury’s sway over contemporary culture is towering―Mikhail Gorbachev, Alfred Hitchcock, and David Bowie all counted themselves as fans, to name only a very few.

Limited Edition
The limited version comes in an edition of 300, is printed on silver foil, and wrapped in a clear poly book jacket. It includes a “library card” signed by contributors Margaret Atwood, Frank Darabont, Black Francis, and Sam Weller.

Edited by J.C. Gabel
Foreword by Black Francis
Afterword essays by Margaret Atwood and Frank Darabont
Designed by Benjamin Woodlock
Original photography by Zen Sekizawa
Hat & Beard Press #10

About this title

About the Author:

Sam Weller is the author of The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury, the first ever biography of Ray Bradbury, which received the prestigious Society of Midland Authors award for best biography in 2005, and was short-listed for the Bram Stoker award in the best nonfiction category. The book was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and was named a best book of the year by the Chicago Tribune, the Denver Rocky Mountain News, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Review:

"A book that's feisty and that charges full-speed ahead, a book that practically levitates out of your hands as you turn the pages — there is that much energy in it, that much love for life and for books and for the people who make and read them."
—Julia Keller, The Chicago Tribune

"Sam Weller knows more about my life than I do."
—Ray Bradbury

“Weller...organized the interviews into sections such as ‘Childhood,’ ‘Hollywood,’ ‘Faith,’ ‘Politics,’ and ‘Sexuality.’ He offers an insightful introduction to each. (Another diehard fan, Black Francis of the Pixies, penned the forward). Overall, this is a book that brims over with inspiration and imagination found in the words of a 90-year-old man who’s never lost his passion.”
—Chicago Sun-Times

“The book is impressively packed with illuminating details about the rise of such an iconic writer’s career. Casual admirer or super-fan, in Listen to the Echoes Ray Bradbury’s remarkable spirit will break your heart at least once.”
—Nylon

“Weller is the quintessential interviewer who asks probing questions, then gets out of the way so that readers will have the feeling that Bradbury is talking to them. Bradbury comes across as honest, opinionated, passionate, and childlike. This book will please ardent Bradbury fans and those just looking into his work. Recommended.”
—Library Journal

Praise for The Bradbury Chronicles
"For Bradbury fans, The Bradbury Chronicles is essential... [A]n engaging, often fascinating tale."
—The New York Times Book Review

"If The Bradbury Chronicles is exhaustive, it is never exhausting, and each anecdote adds light and color to the portrait [Weller] has painted of a writer of real accomplishment."
—The Los Angeles Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Hat & Beard Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0996744797
• ISBN 13: 9780996744799
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 266
• Editor: Weller