Ray Bradbury (1920–2012)

Genetic Enchanter

That's what Bradbury called himself in his Introduction, a "genetic enchanter," and Dandelion Wine is "the boy-hid-in-the-man playing in the fields of the Lord."

From the first story, I was under his spell. Bradbury is an exemplar story-teller (think Dickens and Twain, not Joyce and Faulkner). He poured it on as thickly as he liked in this cycle of stories about being a 12 year old boy the summer 1928 in his Illinois hometown. Page after page I whispered, "Oh, yes. Yes! I show more remember that," although my girlhood in New Mexico summers was 40 years after his.

The details are different of course but he captured the universal sensations. Moments of unbearable joy, epiphanies of sadness, a kid's magical thinking, the terror of some boogie man or another, and the wonderment and mystery that seemed to underly everything—as seen by the child-in-the-adult looking back when all childhood summers have condensed into a stream of one continuous long summer, a summer of being alive.

Maybe you should wait until you are at least 40 to read this. (I'm 64.) Let those memories distill into a vintage piquancy to sip along as you read. You know, that intoxicating flavor of nostalgia that gets sweeter as time goes by. In the meantime, read Fahrenheit 451 or The Martian Chronicles or Something Wicked This Way Comes because Bradbury is quite simply a damn good story-teller and no need to deny yourself that pleasure until you are old.

Now I'm on the hunt for a Bradbury I haven't yet read. The Illustrated Man next I think. show less

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. For writing allows just the proper recipes of truth, life, reality as you are able to eat, drink, and digest without hyperventilating and flopping like a dead fish in your bed.”
--Ray Bradbury

That quote from the preface of Ray Bradbury’s [Zen and the Art of Writing] would suit for a review for the entire work. Few books on writing and the writing life communicate the sheer joy, the wonder and elation, that writing provides, show more if given reign. But Bradbury was on to it all early in life. Only the rare writers, like Jack London or Stephen King, are hear the call in their formative years. The result, for them and Bradbury, is that they manage to retain the youthful magic we all lose in maturity and translate it for us so that we can touch it again, even if for a brief moment.

In the opening essay, Run Fast, Stand Still, Bradbury lets us in on one of his secrets – his noun or title lists. Early in life, he began making long lists of simple nouns, not knowing what they would become, or even what they might mean, as he wrote them. But when he needed inspiration, he ran to these lists, and from single words, great monsters and wonders grew. The lesson is to always be open to what life offers, even if it is communicating opaquely at first. Among the nouns in those lists, “The Carnival. The Carousel. The Night Train.” They don’t mean much on their own, but he would select one and just begin writing, vomiting words onto a page in a “long prose-poem-essay.” Somewhere along the middle of the first or second page, he’d come across an idea he liked – a character or a story.

Such a list isn’t much help without an open mind, and a willingness to follow where the mind, subconscious or other, leads. And that’s a tenet that Bradbury constantly repeats:

“What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.”

Natalie Goldberg, in her [Writing Down the Bones] – another Zen treatise on writing – echoes Bradbury’s direction. Just put the words down and let the mind work without that directed thinking. The truth will emerge on its own – the one true thing that Hemingway sought in every sentence. In the essay The Secret Mind, Bradbury comes back to this regimen, that “[t]today’s ideas are blueprinted, mocked-up, engineered, electrified, wound-tight and set loose to rev men up or run men down.” For him, the ideas had to entertain, provoke, and terrify, and they had to flow from the truth that exists underneath. That truth, the one that is truer than real life, is what writers seek, what they rely on to communicate reality so that it’s more real than the everyday.

Another facet of the writing life on which Bradbury and Goldberg agree is on work. There is no failure in writing, only writing. If the work is good, you learn – if it’s bad, you learn more. But the journey is more important than the success; it uncovers more of yourself and the world around you. He says, “the writer who wants to tap into the larger truth in himself must reject the temptations of Joyce or Camus or Tennessee Williams, as exhibited in the literary reviews. He must forget the money waiting for him in mass-circulation. He must ask himself, ‘What do I really think of the world, what do I love, fear, hate?’ and begin to pour this on the paper.”

More than any other book I’ve read on writing, save maybe [The Joy of Writing] by Kenn Amdahl, Bradbury communicates the marvel in the work, the kid-like joy in telling stories for the only good reason people tell stories – to observe and understand the world. It’s unfortunate that more writing programs and literary publications suck that dry from writing. They could learn a thing or two from [Zen and the Art of Writing].

Bottom Line: Ecstasy in the writing life.

5 bones!!!!!
A favorite for the year. show less

Yes, everybody, my last name is Bradbury. Does that mean I’m related to Ray Bradbury? No.
Does that mean every English teacher I’ve ever had has asked me if I’m related to Ray Bradbury? Yes.
Does that mean I’m slightly biased when giving book reviews? Maybe…
All jokes aside, I thought this collection of stories was fantastic. Because my days this week have been so busy, I often ended up listening to the audiobook as I was winding down for bed, in some cases resulting in me setting show more a sleep timer (then resetting it because I’m too engrossed in the story and can’t fall asleep, then resetting it again, then resetting it again).
It was the perfect way to end my day and even resulted in me having odd dreams about my family escaping the doomed planet Earth in a tiny rocket.
(My dream self ran back to get my Bible -awww- and barely made it out in time. Then, as we are flying away, the terrible realization hits — I forgot my highlighters. Crying emoji for days.) I’d also like to note that for some reason my brother wasn’t there escaping the desolate hellscape with us, but I’m just gonna go ahead and presume he was already on Mars.
This is the power of books, people! show less

I have never tasted dandelion wine, but I feel like I can conjure it to my lips. The aroma from the old, cloudy bottle is redolent of nostalgia; a cloying scent of freshly cut grass and your nan's culinary magic undercut by a sweaty, fetid, almost smegmacious, stench that coats the sinuses. The first sip effervescing on the tongue; an explosion of ecstacy, as if standing in Wonka's factory as the bombs fall. Every sweet and sour taste is there, so perfectly overwhelming in their apotheosis. show more Now the nose is running, mouth watering, tastebuds fizzing. The palette, now roused by this wondrous sensation, yawns and stretches, before rolling over and awaiting the flavours to bathe it. Boiling treacle reaches out with tentacles of nostalgia, strangling the palette, coating it in choking oil, even as the bittersweet bit in its mouth keeps it distracted. Your mouth is held open, a foie gras funnel forced down your gullet as the sickly, gritty substance is pushed inside. You choke and splutter, while faceless family members and your imaginary friends comfort you, whispering the exact exquisite words you always needed to hear to be complete. You feel calm for a moment, enjoying the embrace and savouring the sugary alcoholic bite, and what it's doing to you. The spigot is turns all the way, filling you with gloop, until you explode and lay among the tatters of everything else that wasn't in the recipe. show less