About this column:
Welcome to a new series for the Oak Park-River Forest Patch. It's called "Influences..." and it'll be a platform for all people, from writers to artists to architects, to talk about the area's artistic iconoclasts and what effect their work had on them.Ray Bradbury, author of The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man and Fahrenheit 451 (among many other books) loves the work of Oak Park's Edgar Rice Burroughs. In an excerpt from Sam Weller's recently published book, Listen To The Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews, Bradbury talks about Burroughs, creator of Tarzan and his own set of Mars adventures featuring John Carter. "I love to say it because it upsets everyone terribly—Burroughs is probably themost influential writer in the entire history of the world," Bradbury said. "By giving romance and adventure to a whole generation of boys, …
