Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury (novel #231)

You did not hear them coming. You hardly heard them go. The grass bent down, sprang up again. They passed like cloud shadows downhill…the boys of summer running.

 

Dandelion Wine is the story of summer 1928, Green Town, Illinois as seen through the eyes of 12 year old Douglas Spaulding and his younger brother Tom. Douglas and Tom could be any boys from middle America, though Douglas is a bit more philosophical and imaginative than most. Summer is the grand adventure. Not a moment is to be wasted.

 

The beginning of summer is marked when their grandfather begins distilling dandelion wine, aided by the boys harvest of the ubiquitous weed.

 

The golden tide, the essence of this fine fair month ran, then gushed from the spout below, to be crocked, skimmed of ferment, and bottled in clean ketchup shakers, then ranked in sparkling rows in cellar gloom.

 

Dandelion wine.

 

Some have suggested the wine-making process is a metaphor for capturing all the joy and warmth of summer. Perhaps. To me it was just a quaint remembrance.

 

Deep in winter they had looked for bits and pieces of summer and found it in the furnace cellars or in bonfires on the edge of frozen skating ponds at night. Now, in summer, they went searching for some little bit, some piece of the forgotten winter.

 

There isn’t a true plot; it is character driven. As such it wasn’t my favorite by Bradbury, not as terrifying as Something Wicked This Way Comes, nor as poignant as Fahrenheit 451. But as always, Bradbury writes so beautifully his prose is nearly poetry.

 

Halfway there, Charlie Woodman and John Huff and some other boys rushed by like a swarm of meteors, their gravity so huge they pulled Douglas away from Grandfather and Tom and swept him off toward the ravine.

 

Dandelion Wine is inspired by Bradbury’s childhood: Douglas is Bradbury, fictional Green Town, is the author’s hometown Waukegan, Illinois, and other characters are presumably mapped to his family and friends. It is the first in the somewhat vaguely connected Green Town Trilogy: Dandelion Wine, Farewell Summer, and Something Wicked this Way Comes.

 

Still a very enjoyable read. I’m glad I read it in Summer.

 

My rating: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

 

It was surprising to me that this was set in 1928. It could just as easily have been 1973, my own 12 year old summer in middle America. I think those days are gone now. Pity!

The first thing you learn in life is you're a fool. The last thing you learn in life is you're the same fool.

 

It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it’s an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn’t life a play? Don’t I play it well?

 

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A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories by Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is probably best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (the
one work cited on his tombstone). He was also a versatile short-story author, writing across numerous genres: horror, sci-fi, macabre, and realistic fiction. A Medicine for Melancholy is a collection of some of his short stories. 

 

I liked the fact that it had a sampling from all of the different genres, but I chose this collection primarily because it contained one story that has haunted me for half century. 

 

Sometime in my childhood, I read "All Summer in a Day", about adolescent Earth girl, Margot, whose family moved to Venus when she was very young, but not so young that she could not remember the warmth and sunshine of Earth. Margot’s Venus-born classmates dislike her and are incredulous of her Earth stories, because you see, on Venus it rains 24-7. On the day of the story however, there is a weather phenomenon that will result in a 2-hour period of clear skies and sunshine. Even as they prepare for the glorious summer in a day, the children continue to tease Margot, until their teasing escalates to a cruel prank. The rain stops, and they revel in the glorious summer. The rain returns, and...they remember Margot!

 

Oh, it is so beautifully heart breaking! The children could not, would not understand Margot because her experience was different than their own. And then, when they could know what Margot knew, their empathy came too late. 

 

Sigh! If only we could…

 

Medicine for melancholy indeed. The collection is worthwhile for this story alone, but it is filled with numerous gems. The cover depicts “The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit”, “A Medicine for Melancholy” is an individual short story, as well as the name of the collection. There is a macabre homage to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado called, “Pillar of Fire”. Bradbury is a grand story teller. His elegant prose, at times, feels more like poetry.

 

I highly recommend him for his novels and short stories.

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Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury (novel #158)

“Three A.M. That’s our reward. Three in the morn. The Soul’s midnight. The tide goes out, the soul ebbs. And a train arrives at an hour of despair…Why?”

You might guess from the title, Something Wicked This Way Comes is a horror story. Some have called it dark fantasy, but nah…I think it’s horror. I read this once before, when I was 13, the age of the two protagonists, growing up in mid-America as they were, in the 60s, and 70s as they did. Very likely, all this empathy caused me to share their terror. I didn’t remember much of this story, but I remembered that it terrified me.

In a wonderful way.

 

The story opens on a lazy autumn afternoon, a week before Halloween, a week before inseparable friends Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade turn 14.

And that was the October week when they grew up overnight, and were never so young anymore.

 

Will was born a minute before midnight, October 31, Jim a minute after.

 

But it is at 3 A.M – the soul’s midnight – on October 23^rd, nearly 14 years later when Jim and Will are beckoned by a train whistle. We’ve all heard that romantic, far off train in the night…

 

Yet this train’s whistle! The wails of a lifetime where gathered in it from the other nights in other slumbering years; the howl of moon-dreamed dogs, the seep of river-cold winds through January porch screens which stopped the blood, a thousand fire sirens weeping, or worse! the outgone shreds of breath, the protests of a billion people dead or dying, not wanting to be dead, their groans, their sighs, burst over the earth!

 

Unable to resist the call, Will and Jim climb out their windows to investigate the arrival of Coogar and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show.

 

It is subtly terrifying. I’m not frightened by grotesque monsters. It is those things supposed to be harmless: a clown – but just a little off, an old woman, appearing kindly and gentle – but perhaps a witch, or in this case, a carnival that should be wondrous – but which comes at an odd time, in the wrong season, that terrify me in a quiet unspeakable way, with their secret malevolence.

 

Even the title is subtle. It is taken from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a line uttered by the Weird Sisters (never expressly called witches in the play)

By the pricking of my thumbs, 

Something wicked this way comes. 

 

Besides his wonderful, subtle, terrifying words, I love Bradbury’s writing. It is romantic, poetically descriptive, mysteriously vague, brief and poignant. Such as Will’s dad, Charles Halloway, observing the boys chasing the wind in the innocence of youth…

He knew what the wind was doing to them, where it was taking them, to all the secret places that were never so secret again in life.

 

I particularly love the allusion in this next line when Charles, who works in the library, marks his son, perusing its wonders…

So, looking back down the corridor, was Dad shocked to see he owned a son who visited this separate 20,000-fathoms-deep world?

 

Or this…Chapter 31 quoted in its entirety: 

Nothing much else happened, all the rest of that night.

 

Or one last excerpt, that I cannot put in context without a spoiler, but the context is not necessary to enjoy the beauty of the words describing father and son in a moment of playfulness:

He got half over Dad when they fell, rolled in the grass, all hoot-owl and donkey, all brass and cymbal as it must have been the first year of Creation, and Joy not yet thrown from the Garden.

 

And besides all this, I think there are powerful truths tucked away in the pages of this fantasy. “Be careful what you wish for” is one, but more importantly, the sometimes-fine line between evil and good. Every evil that has been invented is a perversion of some good gift of the creator; every desire in the heart of man has a righteous venue, and an indulgent aberration. I think Bradbury was warning us that evil ones will tempt us with subtle lies, just as when Joy was thrown from the garden.

 

I give it 4 of 5 stars

 

 

I read this for the R.I.P. XV challenge – scary reads for September and October.

 

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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (novel #147)

"Those who don’t build, must burn."

On the surface, Fahrenheit 451 is a about book burning.

But a bit deeper, it is…"a love letter for books." ~ Neil Gaiman in the foreword 

Bravo! Mr. Gaiman.

But I should probably include a few details. It is a dystopian world where books are banned, for If people read, they tend to think – and thinking never leads to happiness. The protagonist is fireman Guy Montag, but in this setting firemen do not put out fires, they burn books. As Fire Chief Beatty put it…

It’s fine work. Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ‘em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That’s our official slogan. 

Beatty also comments on the worthlessness of books.

…books say nothing! Nothing you can teach or believe. They’re about nonexistent people, figments of imagination, if they’re fiction. And if they’re nonfiction, it’s worse, one professor calling another an idiot, one philosopher screaming down another’s gullet. All of them running about, putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. You come away lost.

But in spite of the Beatty’s doctrine, fireman Montag is waking up.

I don’t know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren’t happy. Something’s missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I’d burned in ten or twelve years. So, I thought the books might help.

And like all dystopian novels, someone – in this case Guy Montag – must fight against the madness. Of the dystopian novels I’ve read: Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, I liked Fahrenheit 451 best, probably because it ends with hope.

But that’s the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing.

And Montag remembering a portion of the Revelation

And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Yes, thought Montag, that’s the one I’ll save for noon. For noon…When we reach the city.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 

This book satisfied square G-4, A Banned Book, in the 2020 Classic BINGO Challenge. I don’t believe this was widely or commonly banned, but nonetheless ironic, that a book of a world in which books are banned, should have been a banned book.

Oh and, 451 degrees Fahrenheit?

The combustion temperature of paper.

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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

If someone tells you what a story is about, they are probably right. If they tell you that is ALL the story is about, they are very definitely wrong. ~ introduction to Fahrenheit 451 by Neil Gaiman

This book was powerful and touching.

“Touching” might seem like an odd descriptor for a dystopian tale and I probably won’t convince you. There are a ton of opinions about this book, and before I share mine, let me quote Neil Gaiman once more, but this time specifically in reference to Fahrenheit 451:

He [Ray Bradbury] cared, completely and utterly, about things. He cared about toys and childhood and films. He cared about books. He cared about stories. This is a book about caring for things. It’s a love letter for books.

A love letter for books – Bravo Mr. Gaiman!

It’s really hard to beat that.

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian tale of a time when possession of books is a crime against happiness. If people read, they tend to think – and thinking never leads to happiness. The hero of the tale is fireman Guy Montag, but in this setting firemen do not put out fires, they burn homes, and sometimes the residents, where books are discovered. It’s a bleak world where taking an evening walk is considered suspicious, where front porches and conversations between neighbors have vanished, and humanity is kept stupefied by inane television programing broadcast 24/7.

I called Guy the hero, so you might guess that somewhere along the way he has a moral dilemma that causes him to question his worldview.

I've read perhaps the three great dystopian novels: Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, and A Clockwork Orange. Fahrenheit 451 might be considered a distant fourth, but for me it was the best.

This was the first time I’ve read Fahrenheit 451. I used to read a lot of Bradbury, when I was 10-12 years old. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed his writing. It is difficult to say precisely why. It may be, that for a Sci-Fi, fantasy, horror, and dystopian writer, he maintains a refreshing hopefulness. I don’t feel he has quite despaired of humanity. Fahrenheit 451, though grim and heartbreaking, leaves room for hope.

A few words that Ray Bradbury had to say about his art of writing and/or about Fahrenheit 451:

I once strongly suspected that fun was the handmaiden, if not the progenitor, of the arts; now I know this for certain.

I’m a preventer of futures.

I have written a book about a man falling in love with books.

Ray Bradbury wrote this book almost in entirety in the typing room in the basement of the UCLA library, and noted:  What a place, don’t you agree, to write a novel about burning books in the future!

Regarding the name of his hero, and lesser hero:

I realized that Montag is named after a paper manufacturing company. And Faber, of course is a maker of pencils! What a sly thing my subconscious was to name them thus. And not tell me.

Bradbury was often asked which was the greater inspiration for Fahrenheit 451, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four or Huxley’s Brave New World. Bradbury however stated quite clearly that Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon was…true father, mother, and lunatic brother to my F. 451.

The title – is reportedly the combustion point of book paper.

Only once, and briefly, was a translation, a Danish translation, entitled Celsius 233.

I’m changing my format a bit. I’m trying to avoid synopsizing or reviewing. My comments are simply the journal of my thoughts and feelings. This book was intellectually powerful and emotionally poignant. And again – a love story – gotta love a good love story. Bravo Mr. Bradbury!

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book satisfies 2017 Back to the Classics Challenge category #8 – A classic with a number in the title. With it, I’ve completed the challenge, so ya know – BOOM!

Excerpts:

We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out ~ a character quoting Hugh Latimer who was burned at the stake in England for heresy in 1555

…books say nothing! Nothing you can teach or believe. They’re about nonexistent people, figments of imagination, if they’re fiction. And if they’re nonfiction, it’s worse, one professor calling another an idiot, one philosopher screaming down another’s gullet. All of them running about, putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. You come away lost.

It was not burning, it was warming. ~ Montag’s thoughts on approaching the campfire of outcasts and outlaws

I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver’s Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. ~ the leader of a band of outcasts, introducing other outcasts who had committed whole books to memory

I hate a Roman named Status Quo! He said to me. Stuff your eyes with wonder… ~ an outlaw quoting his grandfather

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