New Leaf July 2018 Discussion • Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

[Bookworm_Girl]

The Happiness Machine was published in the Saturday Evening Post. I love looking at old illustrations in magazines like these.
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/w...achine-SEP.pdf

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by bfisher

I had the opposite reaction at some points. Tom, with his mother in the Ravine, seems to have a too-adult inner dialogue.

OK, I can see that. I was thinking mostly of the boys' words and actions, especially in the sneaker episode and the Tarot Witch episode.

Originally Posted by BenG

Actually, this part (or perhaps the original short story) was reprinted in the Alfred Hitchcock anthology Stories for Late at Night. It ended where Lavinia hears someone clearing their throat.

Aha! I knew I could spot a Hitchcockian story! Lavinia's story reminded me of an episode with Constance Ford as a housewife scared of a neighborhood strangler--it was quite different but it had a similar feeling, and ended with her realizing the strangler was already in her apartment.

Having to continue it with that silliness of Lavinia somehow stabbing him off-screen--how could she manage to overpower a strangler behind her?--detracted from the power of that episode.

Bradbury wrote one of the creepiest Hitchcock TV episodes, called "The Jar." It gave me nighmares when I first saw it.

Originally Posted by BenG

I wonder if Bradbury was deliberately undercutting the nostalgia.

Maybe, but I would have preferred less sentiment in the first place, and more of an even-handed approach to the good and the bad. It felt like there was a disconnect between the wallow in nostalgia and the quite depressing events described. I think the book would have been better with a first-person adult narrator looking back on the summer and offering perspective and context from a distance of years.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Maybe, but I would have preferred less sentiment in the first place, and more of an even-handed approach to the good and the bad. It felt like there was a disconnect between the wallow in nostalgia and the quite depressing events described. I think the book would have been better with a first-person adult narrator looking back on the summer and offering perspective and context from a distance of years.

But that would have been a completely different book. Not at all what Bradbury was trying to do, IMO. That's like thinking Catcher in the Rye should be told from the perspective of someone other that Holden Caufield.

While I'd say that the Happiness Machine is probably my least favourite part of the book, I don't dislike it, and it's not at all sentimental, but an important commentary on the modern attitude that everything can be fixed with technology, something that Bradbury was fairly passionate about. He comes back around to that theme again with the demise of the trolleys because they're too slow compared to buses.

Overall, while I enjoyed this book in my re-read (and remembered virtually none of it from my teenage read 55 years ago ), I have to say that it's no better than 3 1/2 - 4 stars for me. Not that it doesn't have marvelous writing (it does), with delicious phrasing. But I think I've lost that ability to escape into the mind of youth to some extent, at least the magical part. I suspect others who want more structure are reacting to that same thing.

I'm reminded of another book I read recently and which I've talked about in the Welcome thread -- A Long Summer Day. That had the same quality of beautiful writing (though of a different style), but with the structure and perspective of adults. It was a solid 5 stars for me. And I think that was because that perspective was easier for me immerse myself in, even though it was set earlier and in a completely different society.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Catlady

[...] Maybe, but I would have preferred less sentiment in the first place, and more of an even-handed approach to the good and the bad. It felt like there was a disconnect between the wallow in nostalgia and the quite depressing events described. I think the book would have been better with a first-person adult narrator looking back on the summer and offering perspective and context from a distance of years.

Yes, very much this. An overt reminiscing adult narrator would also have offered more excuse for the slightly morbid turn that the book takes. (Although it would have made the Happiness Machine seem even further out of place ... maybe it could have convinced Bradbury to drop it.)

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by CRussel

But that would have been a completely different book. Not at all what Bradbury was trying to do, IMO. That's like thinking Catcher in the Rye should be told from the perspective of someone other that Holden Caufield.

Seems to me what he was trying to do was cobble together a bunch of short stories that differed widely in tone. I think the book would have been more cohesive with an older version of Douglas telling the stories, as a framing device. I could imagine a father, say, telling these stories to his sons around a campfire, with both the father and the sons commenting on them.

I don't think Catcher in the Rye is at all analogous. I was thinking of books like Mama's Bank Account and Cheaper by the Dozen, which are episodic but still hang together.

While I'd say that the Happiness Machine is probably my least favourite part of the book, I don't dislike it, and it's not at all sentimental, but an important commentary on the modern attitude that everything can be fixed with technology, something that Bradbury was fairly passionate about. He comes back around to that theme again with the demise of the trolleys because they're too slow compared to buses.

It didn't feel like it belonged--it's fantasy, and it's jarring here. The story is rather obvious and not too original or remarkable, but fine in an anthology or a magazine. Here, though, it (and the ladies' witchcraft story) didn't fit.

[BenG]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Bradbury wrote one of the creepiest Hitchcock TV episodes, called "The Jar." It gave me nighmares when I first saw it.

One of my favorites!
http://www.unz.com/print/WeirdTales-1944nov-00049

[gmw]

I grew up on a farm. The two boys in this story I would have called "town kids", as opposed to "city kids", or myself as a "farm kid". At the age of the boys in this story, I knew some town kids, but almost no city kids. I remember wondering how the city kids spent their summer. How did they even know it was summer? The opening of this book brought the same questions to my mind. Do any writers write the same sort of childhood nostalgia pieces for true city life?

So there were parts of the reminiscing I could relate to, but some other parts did not match up so well:

[...] the mystery of man seizing from the land and the land seizing back, year after year, that drew Douglas, knowing the towns never really won

My father was of the same generation as Bradbury, but Australian. Here the lesson, as remembered by my father and passed down to me, was that the towns (man) had won - the land was forever changed. We'd go out onto the plains and Dad would tell us of the trees and wildlife that once flourished but were now lost. He'd tell us of the farms that had tried but failed, and the result now clearly stated by the vast emptiness of the land.

And another difference:

Douglas walked backward, watching the tennis shoes in the midnight window left behind.

I only remember being attached to clothes that were well worn in (Mum would have said worn out). This fascination for new shoes felt quite alien. And actually spending my own money on clothing? Never happened. Is this perhaps a peek into a city life that I never saw, and how kids spent their time?

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by BenG

One of my favorites!
http://www.unz.com/print/WeirdTales-1944nov-00049

Thanks for the link; I'll save it to read in daylight ... just in case.

[Bookpossum]

Thanks for the links to the articles, Bookworm_Girl.

Just to go against the tide, I really liked the "snapshot" quality of the different events in Doug's life in that summer. Life does tend to be a series of episodes rather than a single smooth-flowing event. I also liked the fact that sad and scarey things happened in the midst of the idyllic summer, which again is a reflection of the way life is.

I do agree about the Happiness Machine story, which really doesn't seem to fit.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Just to go against the tide, I really liked the "snapshot" quality of the different events in Doug's life in that summer. Life does tend to be a series of episodes rather than a single smooth-flowing event. I also liked the fact that sad and scarey things happened in the midst of the idyllic summer, which again is a reflection of the way life is.

I agree with both of these comments.

I think part of the charm of summer is that is just is; it's time experienced rather than time passing - or at least that that's a valid way to look at it. I also think the sad and scary things were a necessary counterpoint; can an idyll be appreciated in a void? Without a counterpoint? I think Bradbury demonstrates that push/pull throughout; one explicit example is when the boys needed to revivify the Lonely One.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Just to go against the tide, I really liked the "snapshot" quality of the different events in Doug's life in that summer. Life does tend to be a series of episodes rather than a single smooth-flowing event. I also liked the fact that sad and scarey things happened in the midst of the idyllic summer, which again is a reflection of the way life is.

I do agree about the Happiness Machine story, which really doesn't seem to fit.

Originally Posted by issybird

I agree with both of these comments.

I think part of the charm of summer is that is just is; it's time experienced rather than time passing - or at least that that's a valid way to look at it. I also think the sad and scary things were a necessary counterpoint; can an idyll be appreciated in a void? Without a counterpoint? I think Bradbury demonstrates that push/pull throughout; one explicit example is when the boys needed to revivify the Lonely One.

But too many of the sad and scary things happened outside Doug's direct experience, and we don't get his POV. What does Lavinia's scary walk home have to do with Doug? What does the Elmira-Clara witchcraft story have to do with Doug? What do the details of the deaths of the old people and the Helen-Bill "romance" have to do with Doug? What does the Happiness Machine have to do with Doug? Sometimes he's not even an observer, let alone a participant.

I don't think it's enough to string together a bunch of short stories and call it a novel; the episodes needed to be unified/reconciled in some way or else should simply have been published as an anthology.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by bfisher

I found it interesting that the date is set as the summer of 1928. Was that the 8 years old Ray Douglas Bradbury, the son of Leonard Spaulding Bradbury, or was it last idyllic summer before the changes of the Great Depression, WW2 and the Atomic Age? Possibly both?

I wondered about the date relative to the boys' ages, after looking up when Bradbury was born.

I thought perhaps he made Doug twelve because that might be considered the last year of childhood and a carefree existence.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Catlady

But too many of the sad and scary things happened outside Doug's direct experience, and we don't get his POV. What does Lavinia's scary walk home have to do with Doug? What does the Elmira-Clara witchcraft story have to do with Doug? What do the details of the deaths of the old people and the Helen-Bill "romance" have to do with Doug? What does the Happiness Machine have to do with Doug? Sometimes he's not even an observer, let alone a participant.

I don't think it's enough to string together a bunch of short stories and call it a novel; the episodes needed to be unified/reconciled in some way or else should simply have been published as an anthology.

From the beginning of the novel, we are introduced to Doug's overseeing eye, as he stands in his cupola and starts the town going on the morning of the first day of summer, just as he'll close it down at the end. I thought this an effective framing device which gave the vignettes sufficient structure.

I also thought the third person voice was sufficient to account for the events outside of Doug's or Tom's direct knowledge and at least one of them was always tangential. Some of those gave context to Doug's individual experiences and emotions and gave direct evidence of the darker side that Doug didn't see or understand yet, the reason such an unromantic town as Waukegan lives in his memory as Green Town.

[gmw]

Yes, the third person voice and other items you note made it work on a sort of technical level, but still did not make it satisfying (for me) as a novel. I really liked the opening with Doug watching his town wake up, and if the novel had been constructed around that sort of all-seeing-eye thing then that might have worked, but Bradbury dropped that again until the end. Then I thought the notes on the tablet might string things together, but that seemed to get lost too. For some parts even the fact of summer was no more than incidental. ... Ultimately the only thing that linked the parts was the fact that it all took place in Green Town, and (for me) that was not enough.

[Bookpossum]

I thought of the events happening which didn’t directly involve Doug as still being part of his story because they happened in his town. There is always a ripple effect after any major event, that would reach the children either directly or through the adults in the family. A good example of this was the fear of Doug and Tom’s mother when she took Tom with her to look for Doug.

I think Doug’s age was to mark the age Bradbury was in his last summer in the town before he moved with his family.

For me, there was an overarching “story” of Doug’s learning about life and death, about joy and loss, about actions and their consequences.