anna karenina. #translationproblems

before i start, i would like to clear up any confusion about the title. surprisingly, i was never that person who corrected people that mispronounced the title but now i will be that person and . . . with a great vladmir nabokov quote,

"her name was anna karenin.  she was not a ballerina."

cute. clever. and very tongue in cheek. so why is there an a on the end? the a signifies that she is a female. ie my russia-fied name would krisha mendozaa. (though maybe that a is excessive. a better example: keira knightlya)

keira knightly and the new movie were only a small factor in my decision to read "anna karenina". another factor was that on twitter i found an article (but could not find again to link here) which listed that the two greatest novels of all time were "anna karenina" and "lolita" (yes but russkies!). but the biggest factor was that my social life in LA was going on a break so i had time for the 1,000 pages. therefore on my next visit to the library, i checked it out.

as i sat reading it, i was surprised that it was a fairly easy read which got me wondering if my translation was watered down. i then looked at the other copy of it at the library; it was also constance garnett's translation so couldn't do a comparison. i then decided to go home and do some research (aka google) and sort out which translation to read.

i googled "best anna karenina translation" "scholar endorsed translation of anna karenina" "nabokov recommended translation of anna karenina" and came across a lot of info.  though there was no solid answer.  i really wanted to read the version that nabokov liked best cos he did share greatest novel title with tolstoy. there was so much debate about which verison is best that i wish a) i knew russian so that i could read it in the original russian and b) that maybe i would read at least two versions to decide for myself.  (i would have done this but seriously, the book is 1,000 pages.  that is back to back readings of 2,000 pages in total. i read alot but even this seemed too much for me.)

i learned that there are 3 major translations: constance garnett, lousie and aylmer maude, and richard pevear and larissa volokhonsky. majority of people avoid garnett's translation because she was too victorian and interjected a word or two of her own. plus nabokov absolutely hated her. so i instantly ruled that one out.

the next was deciding between maude and pevear/volokhonsky. so here's the deal. i hate oprah and according to my google searches, P/V's translation became very popular due to her book club. i mean no where did i see an article about oprah's great translation woe but only about how P/V got a lot of money cos their translation which was published by penguin which was picked by oprah.  and we all know about oprah's midas touch when it comes to books.  though in my opinion, it was prolly some intern that chose it cos the cover was the prettiest (i actually think the cover is boring, which is sad cos i normally like penguin covers.) i mean seriously does oprah even read? i am going to say no because if she did she would have deeper insight to the human experience and would not have asked her tv guests such insensitive questions. so i initially ruled out P/V's translation on oprah alone.

but it was not that easy to disregard the P/V's version cos everyone recommends it (like gushing recommends). my friend emily endorsed it and told me that their translation was award winning, which made me reconsider.  i mean awards count for a lot in my eyes. i had two other friends recommend it after seeing my fb photo about trying to decide which one to read (the above photo). and lastly james wood of the new yorker was all about it! (not that i seriously read the new yorker but strive to one day do so.) should i let my hatred of oprah stop me from reading the best translation?!?!?

well it wasn't oprah that stopped me but actually an article by gary saul morson (i have no idea who he is, i just came across his article thanks to google, i did google him and he seemed pretty legit.) but he wrote an article called the pevearsion of russian literature which explained why the pevear/volokhonsky translation is not all that its cracked up to be.  as he explained in the article:

[P and V] who are married, work in an unusual fashion.  She, a native Russian speacker, renders each book into entirely literal English.  He, who knows insufficient Russian, then works on the rendering with intention of keeping the language as close to the original as possible.  What results from this atttempt at unprecedented fidelity is a word-for-word and syntax-for-syntax version that scarifices tone and miscontrues overall sense.

he then gives examples from other works in which their translations appear simple and unrefined as compared to others.  there is a tone that is lost because they tend to use very mundane words.  (click on the article to see for yourself.) 

this dealt the blow to p/v as a contender, but to make my final decision, i decided to check out both versions and read the first chapters myself to see which one i would read.  i will admit that the blog entry tolstoy vs. tolstoy did make me slightly biased, i wanted to feel a nostalagic connection to the maude translation like the blogger.

after reading the first couple of chapters, i decided to go with maude. just because i found some of p/v word choice uninteresting.

maude:
"All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

p/v: 
"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

(i like the use of resemble versus are alike.  i think the novel as a whole dealt with the appearance of happiness versus actually being happy, which would make maude's line a better introduction.)

i randomly flipped to chapter 12 of the part 1 perferred maude's:

"Levin's arrival at the beginning of winter, his frequent visits and evident love for Kitty gave rise to her parents' first serious deliberation as to her future, and to disputes between them."

over p/v's

"Levin's appearance at the beginning of the winter, his frequent visits and obvious love for Kitty, gave rise to the first serious conversations between Kitty's parents about her future and to disputes between the prince and the princess."

and lastly, when reading tolstoy's beautiful description of levin's first encounter with kitty, maude read best again:

"He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking."

p/v:
"He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun even without looking."

i will admit that maude isn't perfect but p/v just seemed too simplistic at times.  there were times when the syntax of maude was confusing and when i looked up the sentence in p/v found it more readable.  also p/v had footnotes which helped contextualize the story.  (i used the footnotes when anna and the count visited the russian painter when aboard.) but in the end, i am glad that i chose maude.  they are sometimes sited as having their translation of "war and peace" approved by tolstoy, but as the great translation blog entry explained that is not true.  also check out the great translation chart. it was hilarious and helpful and i suggest you check it out for giggles and to help you chose your next russian lit read. (i used it to help me choose the the anna dunnigan's translation of "war and peace".)

and to be perfectly honest in a year or so, i will pick up the p/v version of "anne karenina" and see for myself which one is better. 

pride and prejudice. BBC mini-series and 1995 film.

since this is a blog about my library use, i decided i can blog about DVDs I check out from the delano branch. i am sure if francie nolan could check out movies, she would have.

so after reading "pride and prejudice", my colin firth obsession caused me to request the DVD. and i will say, oh so glad that i did. simply for the bath scene. (sorry if this post reads like a "the scarlet letter" book report from "easy a". lol)

but seriously BBC did an excellent job with their adaption. every character looked just as i had imagined. though at the risk of sounding shallow, they could have cast a prettier jane. but i read her mom played jane in the 67 bbc production so that is sweet. also found it funny that anna chancellor missed out on firth twice (she was his fiancée in "what a girl wants". lol)

mrs. bennet was perfect. her voice was so annoying which matched her annoying character. i really felt bad for mr. bennet for having to be married to her. and she was seriously too much for me, playing proud mother to lydia after being bed-ridden by her scandal. also it was horrible how she was okay with her brother footing the bill for lydia's marriage. such poor manners! alison steadman did well because i disliked mrs. bennet equally in both the book and on the small screen.

the only thing that i disliked was the double wedding at the end. that was way too cheesy for my taste.

i also checked out the 2005 movie with keira knightly. which i did not like at all. i will say that i thought keira knightly did well as elizabeth. i actually liked her more than jennifer ehle (ps doesn't ehle remind you of meryl steep?). there was a boldness and fierceness that knightly embodied that ehle didn't. but that is where the praise stops. also i could have done without knightly smiling in this movie, it was not cute.

their darcy was attractive but he was no colin firth. and he butchered the proposal scene. his delivery was too fast paced. and the whole rain did not add dramatic flair, it's was only excessive. another bad scene was the dancing scene when it cuts to jane and darcy alone in the room then it cut backs. there could have been a better way of displaying their attraction. and shame on the writer/adapter for not including a line about elizabeth's "fine dark eyes"! i also missed miss bingley's teasing of his admiration for those eyes. they could have cut that scene of elizabeth spinning after finding out charlotte was engaged to make room for those lines. also they could have left that last scene on the cutting room floor. way too cheesy, i actually preferred the double wedding ending!

last but not least, i missed crispin bohman-carter's voice!

a tree grows in delano. an introduction.

i have always been a bookworm.  i blame grandma bea.  blame is a harsh word but really, she is the reason why i love books.  grandma bea was a preschool teacher and later a preschool director which meant i had my very own in-home educational entertainment growing up.  grandma bea was like pbs, sprout, and nick jr rolled into one. we sang songs, watched puppets shows, did arts and crafts and most importantly read books.

i wasn't a young super reader, like matilda or scout in "to kill a mockingbird", kids who learned how to read before entering school.  i learned at school.  while subbing for a first grade class i was reunited with the first book i ever read.  (don't judge, i didn't learn how to read until first grade) the book was "sally wore a red dress and henry wore green sneakers."  looking back, i didn't technically read but memorized the sequence of the story, using the pictures as a hint for what character and clothing was next.  in further analysis (using my SCORE! educational centers background), i learned how to read based on sight not phonetics (to this day, i still suck at sounding out words).  i believe this was the school of thought back in the late 80s for reading education.  but back to me the bookworm.

once i started reading, there was no stopping me.  like ray bradbury once wrote, "i ate them like salad, books were my sandwich for lunch, my tiffin and dinner and my midnight munch."  my family always made sure that i never went hungry.  my auntie tracey always supplied me with blank checks for the elementary school book fair, so that i could buy whatever my heart desired and our mall visits always included a crawling through the kid tunnel at waldenbooks.  grandma bea took me to the library to check out books and of course, signed me up every summer for the reading club.  the photo above was taken one of those summers.  i don't recall the theme  but i'm going to assume that it was something ghoulish.  and yes i know.  that outfit is killer, i wish i still had it though my muffin top would not look sexy in those biker shorts.

as a kid, the library was one of my favorite places to go.  so much that i used to force my sister jill to play library with me.  i made her a card and laid out my books in a square in front of the couch and had her check out books from me.  thinking back i hope this only occupied like 15 minutes of our playtime, if not poor jill.  as i grew up, the library stopped being a place i went to, i have no memories of going there while a tween or a teen.  at ucla, i would find myself in powell for the occasional nap or last minute reading before class; the only time actual studying went on was during midterms or finals.  (side random trivia note:  ray bradbury wrote "fahrenheit 451" in the basement of powell.)  the santa monica library became a destination after i discovered their friends of library bookstore, but book checking out was never an activity i engaged in.  also as clarification, i didn't stop reading books, i just stopped checking them out.

then in september 2011,  i decided to visit my old stomping ground aka the delano library.  i had a personal mission to read all the classics and felt it was better to check them out from the library at no cost and then invest in the ones that i really loved.  i would read all the books i should have in high school and determine whether or not they were really worth it.  as a side bonus, i would also save money, i realized what limited my reading was whether or not i wanted to spend a certain amount on a book, my reading was based on what bargain books i could find.  (sorry but i'm cheap, i'm a good jewish wife in the making.) and the wonderful thing i discovered is even though delano is a small town, i have access to all the books in the san joaquin valley and can request them without a fee!  (people in delano reading this, please take advantage of this.)  since than i have checked out and read about 58 books, classics and also some contemporary reads (based on recommendations from flavorpill).  (58 sounds impressive but grandma bea has read like 3 times that, i also check out books for her.)  i toyed with the idea of starting a blog about it.  and am now doing it.  58 books later.  better late than never.  so please know that while i get caught up it will be a mixed of things i just finished reading and have read before.  i will make sure that my first post is the first book i read but be prepared for chaos after that.  i do not consider myself a good reviewer but think i think good thoughts, well interesting thoughts so that is what this blog will be.  just my musings on what i have read.

and yes, the blog is a betty smith reference.  i, like little francie nolan love reading and love the library.  though she vowed to read every book in her library, i vow only to read as many as i can.

you don't love me yet. jonathan lethem. (60)

this was one of the books flavorpill recommended to fill the girls' void. flavorpill admitted that it isn't totally "girls" cos it takes place in LA instead of nyc, but the LA was its selling point for me!

i love movies, shows, and books with an LA setting cos i love pointing out landmarks that i have been too. (btw: i give some legit "entourage" and "(500) days of summer" tours around LA). and joanthan lethem did not disappoint.

LA landmarks mentioned:

right of the back, i knew i would enjoy this book because the book opens in a museum and in my head it was the lacma. jeff koons' three ball 50/50 tank is alluded to which can be found in the bcam at lacma. though this is not a direct reference because the book was published in 2007 and the bcam did not open until 2008 but talk about a good prediction!

the happy/sad foot clinic sign on sunset is mentioned as well. it its an oracle for lucinda, she consulted it for directions with life's pressing questions (apparently beck believes in it's power to according to the sign's facebook. yes the sign has a facebook! when i told my friend danny about the mention in the book he told me about the facebook. check it out: www.facebook.com/happyfoot.sadfoot)

restaurants were also mentioned. hugo's restaurant in weho was a destination for its oatmeal fritters. i have been to hugo's for it's pasta mama (as recommended by susan feinger on the best thing i ever ate) but did not know about it's oatmeal fritters and googled and yea the book gave the exact description of that dish. neptune's net in malibu is where the book ends. and a great fish tacos place is mentioned and since this is pre-ricky's fish tacos, i am assuming it is "the best fish tacos in ensenada" on sunset. lastly lucinda has a cuban sandwich at cafe tropical and i've gotten a quick bite from there cos my friend karen lived down the street, they put abuelita in their mochas!  so being a true angelano at heart, i will say lethem did LA well.

the novel is the story of a girl, lucinda, her band and an odd affair she has with this older guy, in the late 90s. i assumed it took place today but one character is using this "new" thing called email and at one party (which i will detail later) people use walkman's instead of ipods.  but i mean life hasn't changed too much in LA so this book was pretty contemporary.

as odd as this may sound, i liked the "art" in the book more than anything else about it. lucinda works at a gallery for her ex, falmouth and he made some great art. he did an installation involving a complaint line. he put up flyers around LA with a hotline number and set up a gallery space where people took calls and accepted complaints.  i was hoping that the number would be real, the back cover had a flyer with a number, which i called but sadly nothing. but still a cool concept, i imagined an exhibit of the complaints.  complaints written up on cards and placed side by side on a museum wall.   the compliant that stood out to me was "nobody told me about aging/moisturizer/death". the complaint line is how lucinda meets carl but we will get to that later.

falmouth's second installation was a silent party called Aparty. so there are parties known as silent discos where attendees wear wireless headphones that are linked to the deejay so everyone is dancing to the same music but an outsider can not hear anything. cool, huh? falmouth's silent party was similar. but since it was back in the 90's, everyone brought walkmans and danced to their own music. i liked this idea more because then you get all kinds of dancing to all kinds of music. and considering this was pre-ipod days in which we can make playlists with a couple of drags and clicks, so that meant people had to make mixed tapes or CDs specifically for the party or could have cheated and used the radio. i like the idea of people moving to their own groove at a party.

the description of the party also captured the essence of hipster/silverlake/echo park parties. how you hear about some thing from a friend of a friend (or an email list) about a gallery opening or a free show and everyone shows up for the free booze. and then it turns into this huge thing with a long line and just chaos.  (i will say i have a pretty good track record in which i somehow magically get into places sans being on a list or standing in line for hours.) so that was a good description of LA-hipster life (not that i'm a hipster.)

the story in a nutshell is that lucinda meets a this older guy (who is really good and giving orgasms) via the compliant line and their conversations and his words become the songs for the band.  there are a bunch of other little side stories like lucinda's most recent ex kidnaps a kangaroo from a zoo, and the band is on the verge of "making it" after playing the silent party.  i think carl the complainer had some interesting theories on love which will be quoted below.  but did it fill my void?  not really, i didn't identify with lucinda like i did with the girls from girls.  but if you love LA and a music geek, i think you would dig this book.  so check it out.  

ps another LA-esque aspect was a radio deejay, Autumnbreast, who is an LA legend who plays all the "it" bands and used to hang with all the great bands of the 70s.  i think he is based upon kroq's rodney on the roq (the studio in the book was in culver city which is where kroq is).

quotations:

i will say that i was gross out by the older guy cos he seemed sloppy and fat versus hot old like dermont mulroney in new girl.  but he did have some great thoughts on love:

"I have this condition called monster eyes.  I find something not to like and it becomes enormous, it becomes the whole world." (how he finds fault with the ones he loves)

"Nostalgia, except it's not just regular nostalgia.  More like nostalgia vu. Longing for longing, instead of for the thing in question."

"'I don't think it counted for that much one way or the other.  We were only one another's astronaunt food.'
'What's astronaut food?'
' You know, stuff in little packets that you keep lying on the shelf.  Everyone has some lying around.  The people you imagine you might be with but you know you never will be.  The people who if you're in a couple but you're a little bored or restless you meet them for  a coffee alot and the other half of your couple isn't thrilled about it.  Or if you're single, they're the people you're keeping on a mental list just so you don't feel like there aren't possibilities.  Friends who are almost more than friends but really, they're just friends.  Astronaut food, bomb shelter provisions.  If you were ever going to have anything with them it would have happened already. Sometimes you even fall in bed with them but it doesn't count for much.  It's always a mistake to try to get any nourishment out of that stuff.  But not a big mistakes.  That's the beautiful part, the stakes are low.'"

"Only as a friend of mine use to say, you can't be deep without a surface."

"All thinking is wishful."

"Pour love on the broken places."

"'I'm not drunk.'
'Your eyes are X's.'"

the emperor's children. claire messud. (59)

have you seen girls?

if yes, omg! don't you love it?!?!

if no, it's a show on hbo. kinda like the urban outfitters generation version of sex and the city, but twentysomethings with a lot less money.

i'm new to girls and haven't seen the complete first season. my cousin apollo told me about it a while back but who has premium cable nowadays? well actually my cousin erin does, so i watched three girls episodes when i stayed with her. i will say that the first episode was kinda ehhh but by the third i was hooked, i even tweeted "all adventurous woman do. #girls". (though the best quote from that episode is one my friend markley always quotes: "what happens to the stuff around the condom?!?")

anyway since the series ended, flavorpill listed books to help fans fill the girls' void in their life. and yes i decided to add those to my reading list.

http://www.flavorwire.com/302791/10-books-to-fill-the-girls-shaped-hole-in-your-life

it was kinda kismet that i found claire messud's "the emperor's children". i was browsing the classic section trying to sort out what to read and was like why is this contemporary book in this section? fastfoward like a day or two and its on the list for girls so picked it up. (spoiler alert: if you have not read this, i do kinda spoil it for you. so stop here. well you can read this next paragraph but stop after that.)

"the emperor's children" follows the lives of three friends (danielle, marina, and julius) "on the cusp of their thirties" (the back of the book says this) who are trying to sort out life in nyc. it was comforting to see my fellow age group-ers with their shit not entirely together. marina was back at home with her parents (granted she did have a book deal) and julian wasn't settled career-wise and worked for a temp agency. though they still managed to live glamourous nyc lives on someone else's dime (marina on her parents and julian had a sugar daddy or a rice queen, julius was asian-who i pictured as my friend keith.)

the book has about six different story lines that intertwine and overlap. and they all involve marina's famous journalist/activist father, murray thwaite except julius, he was in this odd relationship in which he was domesticated like a chinese wife minus the bound feet. he also experienced this crazy gruesome fight in a gay club (which i visualizes as bablyon from "queer as folk.")

so marina's storyline involved her odd relationship with her father, the book she needed to write and her way too quick marriage to a horrible aussie that wanted to destroy her father via his new magazine. danielle has an affair with said father. which i found kinda hot but only cos i want an affair with an old man (though single and not my friend's dad.) then there is bootie ("like shake your?" as julius would say), marina's fat cousin who at first i cared for like one would a lost puppy. he had given up on traditional education and was going to educate himself by reading books from the library and writing essays. anyway in the end he ends up just going slightly crazy screwing over his uncle.

it was a good read, not great. the issue i had, was the use of 9/11 to resolve all of the issues in the book. i was left with too many questions. we never find out if the aussie was evil or was going to publish bootie's article. it also got murray off the hook with his affair. and i get that life paused for new yorkers but for me it felt like a cop out. maybe if i read it in 2006, i would be of a different opinion. also at the risk of sounding unamerican, it could also be because i was not deeply affected by 9/11. in my defense i was on the west coast. the distance can account for something. while reading bradbury's "the martian chronicles" i came across a passage that paralleled my indiffference to 9/11. father peregrine explains:

we heard about the wars in asia. but we never believed them. it was too far away. and there were too many people dying. it was impossible. even when we saw the motion pictures we didn't believe it.

i was unable to relate due to the distance. here all this was going on in nyc but life in delano, ca went on pretty much the same. furthermore, i was also young and at a very exciting period in my life. two weeks after 9/11, i was to start my first year of college so my life was full of hope not bleakness.

so did this fill my girls void? not really, it's kinda like hannah and the gang in 5 years. i could see hannah as danielle for some odd reason. it was a good read but i didn't fall in love with any of the characters except for julius (apparently i am a literary fag hag too). also julius
inspired me to read "war and peace" because he was always trying to sort out if he was a natasha or a pierre.

quotations:

"but he was already thirty, and the question was how?"

the martian chronicles. ray bradbury (58)

The Martian Chronicles

Ray Bradbury

as soon as i finished “dandelion wine” i put in a request for “the martian chronicles”.  i absolutely loved “dandelion wine”  but was worried about this work because i do not consider myself a fan of sci-fi.  i have never seen (or had a desire to see) an episode of star trek or battlestar galactica or any of the star wars movies.  (i will give star wars a chance in the near future.)  but like h.g. wells, bradbury’s sci-fi doesn’t fit my preconceive notions of sci-fi (which would be pretty much things found on the syfy network.  lol)  bradbury himself didn’t really consider it sci-fi, as he explained in the introduction,

All that being true, how come The Martian Chronicles is often described as Science Fiction?  It misfits that description.  There is only one story in the entire book that obeys the laws of technological physics:  “There Will come Soft Rains.”

i think the best description of what “the martian chronicles” truly is was given by aldous huxley, as bradbury explained in the intro upon meeting huxley:

huxley ‘leaned forward and said, “Do you know what you are?”

            Don’t tell me what I’m doing, I thought. I don’t want to know.

            “You,”said Huxley, “are a poet.”

            “I’ll be damned,” I said.

            “No, blessed”, said Huxley.

(before i go on, such a cute story, right?  reading the introduction made me regret the fact that i never attended a talk given by bradbury and sadly being in los angeles there were plenty of opportunity for me to do so.)

i have only read three of bradbury’s works (i really want to read, “something wicked this way comes” but am saving it for halloween) but i have to agree with huxley for bradbury’s works really are poetry.  

"the martian chronicles" is a collection of short stories that chronicles earthlings missions to mars which leads to the  colonization of mars by earthlings and lastly the destruction of both mars and earth.  but mars isn’t just the red planet we learn about in science books, its more like mythical greece, and like mythical greece, readers get caught up in stories while ultimately gaining a better understanding of themselves and society.     

here are some examples of his stories being more than just aliens and astronauts:

-“Ylla”, the first story, and the name of a martian housewife who is no different from any other american suburban housewife (think "desperate housewives", yates' "revolutionary road") bored by her standstill life and full of dreams of a more exciting one.  then sadly having those dreams crushed by her husband.

-“The Earth Man” is a story that reminded me of “girl, interrupted” (the memoir not the movie) or “one flew over the cuckoo’s nest” (which i never read but kinda get the gist of it).  it’s the story of “real" astronauts that are institutionalized because they are thought to be the figment of an “insane” martian’s imagination.

“-And the Moon Be Still As Bright”  is the story of expedition to mars in which one member Spender worries about the consequences of the colonization of mars on martians and their culture.  Spender fights his fellow humans in attempt to preserve mars. it's an interesting foil to the european colonization of the americas and southeast asian counties. esp considering how one negative effect of humans on mars is that the human virus “chicken pox” results in the death of thousands of martian. 

-“The Green Morning”- tells the tale of Benjamin Driscoll, the martian johnny appleseed who solves the problem of low oxygen levels by planting trees on mars. which can be seen as an endorsement for being green.; 

-“the fire balloons” demonstrates that one should be tolerant of all religions. a group of priests travel to mars to save the souls of those that migrated before but come across martians and their religion.  the priests learned that god can be found in all shapes and sizes (there is a great discussion of what the chinese christian god must look like) and that there is not only just one right way of worship.   

my favorite of all the stories was “usher II.”

in this story, a gentleman mr. william stendahl builds a replica of edgar allen poe's "house of usher" which he uses to get his revenge on the bureaucrats that stifle creativity and free thought by burning books and stopping literature from being written. stendahl is a little creepy and does kill people but you have to admire his dedication to books.

if you get the chance take the time to read "the martian chronicles." and if you don't like sci-fi, you'll be fine. it reads like episodes of the twilight zone so they go by quickly. i suggest picking up a copy and putting it on your bed table and reading a story a night.

quotations:

"and they made Alice drink something form a bottle which reduced her to a size where she could no longer cry 'Curiouser and curiouser'" -description of what the government did to books in "Usher II"

"but already the words hung between planets and if, by some cosmic radiation, they could have been illuminated, caught fire in vaporous wonder there, her love would have lit a dozen worlds and startled the night side of Earth into a premature dawn, she thought." -description of janice's phone call from earth to her lover on mars in "the wilderness".

food for thought:

missions to mars in "the martian chronicles" started in 2030, which is 18 years from now. and on the plus side, legislature to censor books began in 1999 with "the great fire" being in 2006, so we are safe from that being our fate.

last but not least, i recently went to the hammer museum for their "made in LA" exhibit and found myself on what felt like bradbury's mars. (Pearl Hsiung. From Above It Is Not Bright; From Below It Is Not Dark, 2012)