[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

That's interesting. I wonder if the consistency was there in the stories written over the years, or if she had to tweak them in putting them together. It would be quite a feat to keep that consistency if the stories were written at many different times - as opposed to being written close to each other and then published at different times.

The stories seem to be the same in their original form--many have appeared in anthologies. I expect the bridges between the stories might have been new for the book-length volumes.

Meanwhile, back with Dandelion Wine: I was interested in Bradbury's use of the idea of machines as being sometimes a good thing, and sometimes not. For example, the last ride on the trolley car before the tracks were to be pulled up and a bus brought in to replace it. Then, the children learned that the tracks were still there for the old route to the lake, where the trolley no longer went. I did like that idea of the trip into the past.

Another example was the lawnmower which the boarder was using, but was planning on making obsolete with the newly invented grass that never needed cutting. (These days people have that of course, but it's plastic.) It would mean the loss of the dandelions and thus the dandelion wine, which couldn't be allowed to happen.

Machinery going wrong was represented by the Happiness Machine and the Tarot Witch fortune-telling machine. There was also the Green Machine, which meant that Fern and Roberta could move around more easily, but had caused an accident, fortunately not serious.

But saying machines are sometimes good and sometimes bad is saying ... what? I saw the trolley and the lawn mower stories as simply meaning that progress may require sacrificing tradition--a trade-off that isn't always a good idea. I don't know what to make of the Tarot Witch machine, but the Happiness Machine was shown to be a stupid idea, and the Green Machine accident was a result of human error.

Originally Posted by gmw

Dandelion Wine was obviously "fixed-up" to try and turn it into novel form - and for my tastes that was a mistake. I'd rather have read it as a collection of separate but related stories rather than being tantalised with links that don't hold up for a novel. That is: trying to pretend there is a novel where there isn't just gives the reader the wrong idea and sets them up for disappointment. Keep it as obviously distinct stories and the reader doesn't go looking for links that are not there.

Yes. We agree again.

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

I was struck by the overall sense of foreboding in all the stories. At any moment, any one of these pieces could have could have gone completely Hitchcock and it would not have felt out of place. I feel like that connected the stories more clearly and cleanly than anything else. Most of the foreboding seemed to be the inevitable end of summer (childhood?), or for the loss of things one can't hold on to (happiness, young love, youth).

I got a sense of foreboding in the Lonely One pieces--the looking-for-Doug story (and just what WAS Doug doing in the ravine that night?) and the Lavinia story. The beginning, when they went to pick grapes, was creepy, with all the animal symbolism, but it didn't lead anywhere, and I still don't get it.

I was grated by the happiness machine, like many of you, and I also note that I felt it was casually antisemitic in its choice of making the "grasping Jew" the object of the morality tale. I was also grated by the old woman grappling with the little girls. I found the little girls' meanness and cruelty offputting, especially as the boys had been shown with a reverential purity of spirit hithertofore.

The little girls were mean, the old women were marginalized--was the message of the Green Machine story that women should stay home where they belonged?--the 30ish women were spinsters--they too apparently weren't supposed to leave their homes lest the Lonely One got them. And when Lavinia killed the Lonely One, was she hailed as a heroine? No, the boys were outraged and Lavinia faded from the story. And then of course Clara and Elmira dabbled in witchcraft. Grandma was allowed to flourish in the kitchen--she knew her place.