Portraits of homeless people using libraries

[Octafish]

3. Ray Bradbury credited the LAPL for his education.

An Appreciation: Ray Bradbury: A voice shaped by L.A.

The writer who re-imagined science fiction came into his own in Los Angeles. And although Ray Bradbury rarely wrote about it, whispers of the city can be heard in his works.

June 07, 2012|By David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times Book Critic

EXCERPT...

But you can argue that one of the most important influences on him started when he entered into a lifelong relationship with the Los Angeles Public Library — and libraries in general, which he regarded, in a very real sense, as society's soul.

"Libraries raised me," he said in a 2009 interview while trying to raise money for a library in Ventura County. "I don't believe in colleges and universities.… When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years."

Bradbury wasn't kidding; libraries were his education … and his muse. He wrote his breakthrough novel, 1953's "Fahrenheit 451," on a rental typewriter in the basement of UCLA's Powell Library, pumping in a dime for every half hour of typing. (The book cost him nine bucks and change to write.)

SOURCE: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/07/entertainment/la-et-ray-bradbury-critic-20120607