A bird flew
into a tree.
Ray Bradbury’s
prose
Ray Zen-in-the-Art-of-Writing
Bradbury knows how to write (I say this for admirers of his art, puzzledly).
The knack or, if you prefer, the secret is the puzzling rhythms he propounds,
which are really jazzy things, or a pendulum swinging—
“He came into Green
River, Iowa, on a really fine late spring morning, driving
swiftly. His convertible Cadillac was hot in the direct
sun outside the town, but then the green
overhanging forests, the abundances of soft shade and whispering
coolness slowed his car as he moved toward the town.
Thirty miles an hour, he thought, is fast enough.
Leaving Los Angeles, he had rocketed
his car across burning country, between stone canyons
and meteor rocks, places where you had to go fast
because everything seemed fast and hard and clean.
But here, the very
greenness of the air made a river through which
no car could rush.”
“One Night in Your Life”