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This past weekend the library kicked off the latest installment of the "Big Read: One Book One Community" with a celebration party for the latest reading selection Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I received an e-mail Friday morning announcing that the festivities would include a live telephone interview with Bradbury via his home in California. Well, that was enough to convince me to stay home Saturday afternoon and curl up with a good book. I had been down this road before and my heart was forever broken.

I met Bradbury several years ago when I was a budding college reporter. I was so excited the literary legend was coming to speak at LSU. I couldn't believe my luck. Not only would I get to attend his lecture, I was going to interview him. Me! My tattered and torn copy of Fahrenheit 451 from high school continued to be a mainstay on my bookshelf well after graduation. It was one of the few books on the required reading list the seniors could really wrap their brains around, unlike, say, Red Badge of Courage (don't even get me started on that train wreck). We could really relate to the censorship and control issues. One of my high school friends became famous for relating the book to, well, practically everything. "This reminds me of a little book I like to call Fahrenheit 451," she would begin in her half serious, half sarcastic tone. Those on the other end of this exchange had better be prepared for what followed. It was an inside joke and got a lot of laughs.

Unfortunately my initial conversation with Bradbury dashed these precious memories and ended with me in tears. For the better part of our 30-minute phone conversation he balked at my questions and told me that college would not make me a better writer, I was simply wasting my time and my parents' money. Being young and relatively inexperienced in interviewing someone with such clout I did not know how to respond to his pointed responses. I hung up the phone in utter disbelief at what had transpired and began sobbing. I was never going to be a writer, I thought.

I attended his lecture anyway with my copy of Fahrenheit clutched in my lap. Maybe he was just having a bad day, I thought, thinking back to our initial interview. Perhaps, he was testing me. I sat through his brilliant harangue dumbfounded. The audience hung on his every word as he regaled us with anecdotes and shared his passions openly. Was this the same man who only two days prior had driven me to a tearful fit calling into question my abilities as a young writer? It couldn't be. This man was funny and charming -- nothing at all like the one I had spoken with.

Backstage afterward I gathered with the rest of the press hoping to introduce myself in person and praying he would sign my book. I watched with uncomfortable horror and quiet delight as he ripped into a television reporter, telling him that the evening news was just using him and advising him to get out of that racket as quickly as possible. It was then that I decided he wasn't just having a bad day on the phone. In the spotlight he was magical, witty and insightful, but offstage and out of the limelight he was cold and dissuading. A real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I tucked my book back into my purse and exited the stage. I wasn't going to let this grumpy old man ruin my treasured experience with this book and so from now on the two remain separate in my mind. I hope Beth Courtney, president and CEO of Louisiana Public Broadcasting, had more luck with her interview.