A publishing house wanted to reprint Bradbury’s “The Fog Horn” as part of a high school reader. The story describes a lighthouse with an illumination like a “God-Light,” making people feel as though they were in “the Presence.” Editors deleted both “God-Light” and “the Presence” and other authors suffered similar mutilations.
“Every story, slenderized, starved, bluepencilled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story,” Bradbury wrote. “Twain read like Poe read like Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like—in the finale—Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been razored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant’s attention—shot dead.”
Bradbury responded by firing the whole lot, sending rejection slips to each one and “by ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell.” For Bradbury, the point was obvious.
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