New Leaf July 2018 Discussion • Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

[issybird]

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury is the July selection for the New Leaf Book Club.

Dandelion Wine is a 1957 novel by Ray Bradbury, taking place in the summer of 1928 in the fictional town of Green Town, Illinois, based upon Bradbury's childhood home of Waukegan, Illinois. The novel developed from the short story "Dandelion Wine" which appeared in the June 1953 issue of Gourmet magazine.

The title refers to a wine made with dandelion petals and other ingredients, commonly citrus fruit. In the story, dandelion wine, as made by the protagonist's grandfather, serves as a metaphor for packing all of the joys of summer into a single bottle.

The main character of the story is Douglas Spaulding, a 12-year-old boy loosely patterned after Bradbury. Most of the book is focused upon the routines of small-town America, and the simple joys of yesterday.

Amazon UK £3.99 | Kobo US $12.99 | Kobo Aus $5.99 | Overdrive | Hoopla audio

[issybird]

Ah, summer, encapsulated in bottle or book or both. What did we think of Dandelion Wine?

Whether you've read it for the club, read it in the past or would like to read it, please join in.

[Bookpossum]

I loved it - no other word for it. Bradbury's descriptions were beautiful and evocative. I found the feeling of that innocent, simple past was very poignant, when you think that those boys would be young men in their twenties when the US joined the Second World War.

I think my favourite section was towards the end, when the interfering visiting relative tidied up and organised Grandma and her kitchen to the extent that she lost the ability to cook. Fortunately Doug was able to restore the kitchen to its former muddle and the day was saved.

Very different from anything else I have read by Bradbury and a lovely experience.

[issybird]

I first encountered this in audiobook three years ago and loved it then. I decided to change it up this time around and read it; I think I liked it better still (and bumped my GR rating to five stars from four as a result). Reading let me control the pace; savor the beautiful prose; linger and reread particularly striking instances of imagery. And yet listening to it as a tale retold by a raconteur had its strong appeal also as it enhanced that sense of a man looking back on his childhood, so I'm not saying it's a worse experience; equally marvelous, just different.

[gmw]

Overall, my reaction is: Some beautiful moments spoiled by overload.

Also, I prefer my novels to have something more substantial in the way of story or structure. Obviously there was a overt purpose to the book: to mark a significant stage in the growing up of a pair of young boys. But such a purpose is more usually background to some other narrative (the narrative often designed to reinforce the purpose), and I think it works better that way.

Without overarching events to hold it together, this book begins to feel like eating sugar straight out the bowl, one deeply descriptive and emotional scene after another. And, because of this intensity, many of the life lessons come across as too bluntly told, and so feel trite and over-stated. I couldn't help but compare this to Stephen King's novella "The Body", or novel "It", that portray quite similar feelings and lessons regarding childhood (albeit 50s rather than 20s), but without that cloying sense (in this book by Bradbury) of being preached at by a well meaning but embarrassing Great Aunt.

There are some wonderful parts in this book. The opening scenes in particular, but also many of the interactions between Douglas and Tom were, I thought, very well done - much better (more real to me) than the interactions with Douglas and his friends. And the scene with Tom and his mother waiting for Douglas was touching, all the more so for coming before any explanation of the Lonely One.

But I felt some parts were clumsy, overdone or strained to breaking point. The Happiness Machine was one such, a cute idea that was warped into a bludgeon for the reader. Old Mrs Bently and the nasty little girls Alice and Jane (all watched over by Tom) was another, although I did get a chuckle when the girls said they'd never be old like Mrs Bently, because I had to agree: I figured someone was going to murder the little ingrates long before they got to that age. But these parts never felt real to me.

And then there were parts told outside the boys' perspectives (such as with Lavinia), that might have been very well told but seemed out of place.

There is a lot to this relatively short book, and much of it was beautifully written and quite moving. But overall I have to say the overload and mismatching parts spoiled it for me.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by gmw

But I felt some parts were clumsy, overdone or strained to breaking point. The Happiness Machine was one such, a cute idea that was warped into a bludgeon for the reader.

I'm going to comment briefly that the Happiness Machine was the one truly sour note in the book for me, for the reason you state. Bludgeon is the perfect word, and why do that? Bradbury was managing to convey his meaning at least slightly more subtly in the other vignettes.

It was even more sour for me in that it's the single element that strayed too far into the flatly impossible, as opposed to the implausible or "perhaps-who knows?". The book would have been better without that particular Machine.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by issybird

Reading let me control the pace; savor the beautiful prose; linger and reread particularly striking instances of imagery. And yet listening to it as a tale retold by a raconteur had its strong appeal also as it enhanced that sense of a man looking back on his childhood, so I'm not saying it's a worse experience; equally marvelous, just different.

I find it interesting that this summer is the third in a row that the book clubs have read Bradbury. The Lit Club read Martian Chronicles in 2016, the MR Book Club read Fahrenheit 451 in 2017, and now the NLBC has read Dandelion Wine. I would have challenged myself to read Fahrenheit 451 eventually because it is a classic. However I likely never would have read the other books without the clubs due to my perception of Bradbury as a science fiction writer, which is a genre I read infrequently. I have surprisingly enjoyed all of them and am glad to have discovered his writing!

Well said, issybird! My experience was similar. I'm glad that I read the book after I listened to it. I loved this book too.

Much of the novel content originally was published as short stories in various magazines. I liked the structure and how it was loosely woven together into episodes/moments like a scrapbook of summer. I also read my nomination, The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, which was about a little girl going through a similar childhood awakening and her interactions with her elderly grandmother. It was similarly organized into loose episodes like Dandelion Wine. However emotionally it was more raw (and less nostalgic) to mirror the island living, natural habitat and weather. These were great novels to pair together!

[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?

Bradbury was born and lived his early years in Waukegan, which seems to have been quite a bit grittier than Green Town. Was Bradbury constructing an idealized past?

I enjoyed the image of the grandfather standing on the porch like the captain of a ship, "like Ahab surveying the mild mild day" and acknowledging "the salutes of other captains on yet other flowered porches, out themselves to discern the gentle ground swell of weather".

Was Bradbury thinking of the opening of Chapter 36 in Moby Dick, where "Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the cabin-gangway to the deck. There most sea-captains usually walk at that hour, as country gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few turns in the garden". If so, it is a neat inversion of Melville's simile. Yet, unlike Douglas' grandfather, the narrator in Moby Dick refers to Ahab's "overbearing grimness" upon first sight.

[bfisher]

The Knickerbocker Quartet records would have been out-of-date even for 1928 - something like someone listening to 1960s bubblegum recordings in 2018, but then, this book is heavy on nostalgia. Two Black Crows is a reference to Moran and Mack, a blackface act that had a radio show in 1928, and also appeared in feature films.

Does anyone know what "snapping like fuzzball hand dogs hidden behind black porch screens" means? I didn't get anything meaningful on a Google search. It sounds so vivid.

[Catlady]

Well, Dandelion Wine was easier to get through than The Three Musketeers; I'll say that for it. But, like gmw, I prefer more structure and a plotted story, not a series of loosely connected episodes, especially when a lot of those episodes seemed repetitious and/or out-of-place.

I didn't like the Happiness Machine story--that felt like a heavy-handed episode of The Twilight Zone. I didn't like the Tarot Witch--again, cue the woo-woo music, except the story didn't actually go anywhere with all that buildup. The Elmira-Clara witchcraft story was okay, but it was one of the many stories that seemed shoehorned into the account of the boys' summer--I would have preferred the focus to stay on the boys, to see everything from their POV.

I didn't believe that those boys were twelve and ten; they seemed younger. The ten-year-old seemed to have more sense than his brother.

What kind of weird summer was it in that town, with old people dropping like flies and a serial killer wandering around without anybody taking significant precautions? The serial killer was, however, my favorite part of the book; the mounting suspense as foolishly headstrong Lavinia walks home was well done. This section reminded me of an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode (do I watch too much TV?), but the outcome was just WRONG. Lavinia's the one who should've been killed, not the Lonely One--and, for goodness' sakes, shouldn't the Lonely One at least have been someone we'd already met rather than a cipher? (Leo the Happiness Machine guy? Bill the newspaperman?)

Frankly, that summer of 1928 did not seem like the kind of summer a kid would remember fondly--too much sadness and loss. Yet Bradbury went on and on and ON about the wonderfulness of it all, seeing it through some nostalgic haze that he undercut with so many questionable episodes.

[Dazrin]

:Blinders on:

I was out of town with no internet (or even cell phone, it was great) access when my hold came in and I missed it. So I am now on the wait list again.

I will read it as quick as I can when it comes in and then chime in, I am really looking forward to it.

:Blinders off:

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I didn't believe that those boys were twelve and ten; they seemed younger. The ten-year-old seemed to have more sense than his brother.

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

[BenG]

Originally Posted by Catlady

The serial killer was, however, my favorite part of the book; the mounting suspense as foolishly headstrong Lavinia walks home was well done. This section reminded me of an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode (do I watch too much TV?), but the outcome was just WRONG.

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.

[BenG]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Frankly, that summer of 1928 did not seem like the kind of summer a kid would remember fondly--too much sadness and loss. Yet Bradbury went on and on and ON about the wonderfulness of it all, seeing it through some nostalgic haze that he undercut with so many questionable episodes.

I wonder if Bradbury was deliberately undercutting the nostalgia.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Here is an article on Waukegan published after Bradbury's death. It was also Jack Benny's hometown.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2...ler-green-town

Sam Weller, a Columbia College professor who wrote a biography of Bradbury and became a close friend, said Bradbury's Waukegan childhood shaped his entire career. His work was so redolent of the Midwest that it's impossible to think of him growing up somewhere else.

"Ray Bradbury still would have happened, but he would have been a different Ray Bradbury," Weller said. "He would have written different things. The sort of sensitive, nostalgic, heartwarming stories that he wrote, and which everyone loves — those stories wouldn't have been written."

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1...n-ray-bradbury

Among Waukegan's other claims to fame:

- It is one of the oldest cities in Illinois, tracing its roots to 1673, when French explorers Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette landed there on their way south to the site of another future city-Chicago.

- It played a role in the pioneering days of motion pictures in the late 19th Century.

- It is the hometown of comedian Jack Benny, pro quarterback Otto Graham and science fiction writer Ray Bradbury.

- It claims to be the "freshwater salmon fishing capital of the world."

- It is the site of "McBubble," the Chicago Bears' indoor practice facility, located at the Amhurst Lake Business Park.