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Dandelion Wine
by Ray Bradbury
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
By his early thirties, Ray Bradbury had established
himself as one of the luminaries of science fiction, but
his ambitions and interests were already leading him to
abandon the formulas of genre storytelling. Around
this time, he began crafting a series of
stories inspired by his childhood in
Waukegan, Illinois, where Bradbury
had spent most of the first fourteen years
of his life. This careful mining of the
modest and uneventful happenings of
his own youth would eventually result in
several books, and numerous short stories.
Just as surprising were the periodicals where
Ray Bradbury was now publishing these Illinois
stories. "The Season of Sitting" appeared in
Charm—which positioned itself as "the magazine
for the business girl"—in August 1951; "The
Lawns of Summer" was published in Nation’s
Business in May 1952; "Dandelion Wine" found
a home in the June 1953 issue of Gourmet; "The Swan" was
featured in Cosmopolitan in September 1954; and the
illustrious Saturday Evening Post accepted "Summer in the
Air" and ran it in its February 1956 issue. The author who had
cut his teeth on Weird Tales had clearly moved into a better
literary neighborhood.
These efforts reached their culmination in Bradbury’s
ambitions for a big "Waukegan novel," which he sent to his
publisher at the end of 1956. Years later, the writer’s wife
Maggie would mention that Dandelion Wine was Bradbury’s
favorite among his books—although the author himself was
more coy. "They are all my children. You can’t pick favorites
when it comes to children." But if you have any doubts about
how closely Bradbury identifies with this work you need
merely look at is protagonist Douglas Spaulding, whose very
name makes clear that he is the author’s alter ego: Bradbury’s
middle name is Douglas, and his great-grandmother’s maiden
name was Spaulding. Here in Green Town, Illinois—the stand-
in for Waukegan—we follow in this boy’s path during the
summer of 1928.
Our novelist, at first glance, seems to be ignoring the science
fiction and fantasy concepts that brought him to fame. But at
closer examination, the familiar genre themes are employed
repeatedly—albeit in altered or parodied form. In a chapter
also published separately as a short story called "The Time
Machine," Douglas’s friend Charlie Woodman promises to
show his friends exactly that. "Travels in the past and the
future?" inquires another youngster. "Only in the past, but you
can’t have everything," Charlie responds. But the time
machine here is nothing more than their neighbor Colonel
Freeleigh, a Civil War veteran, whose stories of time past have
such Proustian immediacy, that the children sit around him in
rapt fascination as he recounts anecdote after anecdote.
No, this is not the same kind of time machine that H.G. Wells
made famous, but Bradbury is willing to poke gentle fun at the
very genre formulas that most readers would associate with his
own work. And if he didn't make the point clearly enough in
this interlude, he returns to it again in a separate chapter, one
of the deepest stories Bradbury ever penned, about a 95-year-
old woman in her final days and a young reporter for the local
newspaper. This story, a delicate reworking of the timeless
theme of the old trying to find something of value and
remembrance to hand down to the young, seems almost too
poised and mature, a vintage of something more substantial
than dandelions, for an author in the full flush of youthful
ambition to construct.
We see this same oblique reference to the fanciful and
conceptual in other sections of Dandelion Wine. Two separate
interludes in the book incorporate the subject of witchcraft,
but in ways that parody the traditional MacBethian "fire burn
and cauldron bubble" trappings of such accounts. Another
chapter presents a Lovecraftian horror story about a killer
known as the "Lonely One"; the account creates genuine
suspense and is capped by an unsettling surprise ending—but
then Bradbury undoes it all with an epilogue that turns the
horror into comedy. In another chapter, Douglas’s neighbor
Leo Auffmann decides to build a "happiness machine," and the
contraption he constructs bears an uncanny resemblance to
the modern day virtual reality generator known as the World
Wide Web. Only in this instance, the residents of this small
town reject the innovation, finding that it merely leaves them
depressed and teary-eyed. The message here—the assertion
that the modest reality of the here-and-now is superior to the
grand promises of the future—is emblematic of Dandelion
Wine as a whole. Who would have guessed, based on his earlier
work, that Ray Bradbury would be the stick-in-the-mud to cop
such a reactionary attitude?
Bradbury, by his nature, is a short story writer, and even when
he tries his hand at longer forms, they still show their origins in
more compact narrative forms. Fahrenheit 451 actually started
life as a short story ("FireMan" published in 1947) then became
a novella ("The Fireman" published in 1951) and only finally
grew into a novel that barely stretches out to the 200 page
mark. The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man try to
create the impression of bulk via larger framing narratives, but
without losing their identity as short story collections.
Bradbury was more successful in stitching together his little
stories into novelistic form in his accounts of small town life,
notably here in Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This
Way Comes, but even in these instances the finished works
come across as collections of vignettes that only gradually give
way to a larger vision.
Even so, this book transcends the miniaturist sensibility of so
much of Bradbury’s work. He has worked hard to draw
together his diverse subplots through the use of unifying
themes and characters, as well as various anticipations and
flashbacks. As a result, Dandelion Wine has more coherence
than, say, The Illustrated Man or The Martian Chronicles.
Above all, a certain wistful nostalgia permeates the book, and
gives it a unifying flavor from the opening page to the
concluding sentence. But it is nostalgia mixed with an ineffable
sense of immanence. That latter quality ultimately makes this
book about the past—nowadays 1928 seems like the distant
past—into an admonition for the reader to take watchful
delight in the present.
by Ray Bradbury
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
By his early thirties, Ray Bradbury had established
himself as one of the luminaries of science fiction, but
his ambitions and interests were already leading him to
abandon the formulas of genre storytelling. Around
this time, he began crafting a series of
stories inspired by his childhood in
Waukegan, Illinois, where Bradbury
had spent most of the first fourteen years
of his life. This careful mining of the
modest and uneventful happenings of
his own youth would eventually result in
several books, and numerous short stories.
Just as surprising were the periodicals where
Ray Bradbury was now publishing these Illinois
stories. "The Season of Sitting" appeared in
Charm—which positioned itself as "the magazine
for the business girl"—in August 1951; "The
Lawns of Summer" was published in Nation’s
Business in May 1952; "Dandelion Wine" found
a home in the June 1953 issue of Gourmet; "The Swan" was
featured in Cosmopolitan in September 1954; and the
illustrious Saturday Evening Post accepted "Summer in the
Air" and ran it in its February 1956 issue. The author who had
cut his teeth on Weird Tales had clearly moved into a better
literary neighborhood.
These efforts reached their culmination in Bradbury’s
ambitions for a big "Waukegan novel," which he sent to his
publisher at the end of 1956. Years later, the writer’s wife
Maggie would mention that Dandelion Wine was Bradbury’s
favorite among his books—although the author himself was
more coy. "They are all my children. You can’t pick favorites
when it comes to children." But if you have any doubts about
how closely Bradbury identifies with this work you need
merely look at is protagonist Douglas Spaulding, whose very
name makes clear that he is the author’s alter ego: Bradbury’s
middle name is Douglas, and his great-grandmother’s maiden
name was Spaulding. Here in Green Town, Illinois—the stand-
in for Waukegan—we follow in this boy’s path during the
summer of 1928.
Our novelist, at first glance, seems to be ignoring the science
fiction and fantasy concepts that brought him to fame. But at
closer examination, the familiar genre themes are employed
repeatedly—albeit in altered or parodied form. In a chapter
also published separately as a short story called "The Time
Machine," Douglas’s friend Charlie Woodman promises to
show his friends exactly that. "Travels in the past and the
future?" inquires another youngster. "Only in the past, but you
can’t have everything," Charlie responds. But the time
machine here is nothing more than their neighbor Colonel
Freeleigh, a Civil War veteran, whose stories of time past have
such Proustian immediacy, that the children sit around him in
rapt fascination as he recounts anecdote after anecdote.
No, this is not the same kind of time machine that H.G. Wells
made famous, but Bradbury is willing to poke gentle fun at the
very genre formulas that most readers would associate with his
own work. And if he didn't make the point clearly enough in
this interlude, he returns to it again in a separate chapter, one
of the deepest stories Bradbury ever penned, about a 95-year-
old woman in her final days and a young reporter for the local
newspaper. This story, a delicate reworking of the timeless
theme of the old trying to find something of value and
remembrance to hand down to the young, seems almost too
poised and mature, a vintage of something more substantial
than dandelions, for an author in the full flush of youthful
ambition to construct.
We see this same oblique reference to the fanciful and
conceptual in other sections of Dandelion Wine. Two separate
interludes in the book incorporate the subject of witchcraft,
but in ways that parody the traditional MacBethian "fire burn
and cauldron bubble" trappings of such accounts. Another
chapter presents a Lovecraftian horror story about a killer
known as the "Lonely One"; the account creates genuine
suspense and is capped by an unsettling surprise ending—but
then Bradbury undoes it all with an epilogue that turns the
horror into comedy. In another chapter, Douglas’s neighbor
Leo Auffmann decides to build a "happiness machine," and the
contraption he constructs bears an uncanny resemblance to
the modern day virtual reality generator known as the World
Wide Web. Only in this instance, the residents of this small
town reject the innovation, finding that it merely leaves them
depressed and teary-eyed. The message here—the assertion
that the modest reality of the here-and-now is superior to the
grand promises of the future—is emblematic of Dandelion
Wine as a whole. Who would have guessed, based on his earlier
work, that Ray Bradbury would be the stick-in-the-mud to cop
such a reactionary attitude?
Bradbury, by his nature, is a short story writer, and even when
he tries his hand at longer forms, they still show their origins in
more compact narrative forms. Fahrenheit 451 actually started
life as a short story ("FireMan" published in 1947) then became
a novella ("The Fireman" published in 1951) and only finally
grew into a novel that barely stretches out to the 200 page
mark. The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man try to
create the impression of bulk via larger framing narratives, but
without losing their identity as short story collections.
Bradbury was more successful in stitching together his little
stories into novelistic form in his accounts of small town life,
notably here in Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This
Way Comes, but even in these instances the finished works
come across as collections of vignettes that only gradually give
way to a larger vision.
Even so, this book transcends the miniaturist sensibility of so
much of Bradbury’s work. He has worked hard to draw
together his diverse subplots through the use of unifying
themes and characters, as well as various anticipations and
flashbacks. As a result, Dandelion Wine has more coherence
than, say, The Illustrated Man or The Martian Chronicles.
Above all, a certain wistful nostalgia permeates the book, and
gives it a unifying flavor from the opening page to the
concluding sentence. But it is nostalgia mixed with an ineffable
sense of immanence. That latter quality ultimately makes this
book about the past—nowadays 1928 seems like the distant
past—into an admonition for the reader to take watchful
delight in the present.
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