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News Tue Nov 04 2008
A Season for Bradbury
It may seem that I stumbled upon this a few days too late: the Guardian published an article last Thursday on literary ways to celebrate Halloween, namely through the stories of Ray Bradbury. "[The] real Hallowen feeling - ," they say, "the onset of an extended period of darkness heralded by the death and decay of the natural word and a seemingly thinner veil between what we know and what we fear - can only be delivered by Ray Bradbury." And while it is true that Bradbury has a knack for delivering up the unknown and the feared and the shaded truths of life, I'd say that no time is not a good time to delve into some Bradbury. The plot in "The Murderer" is frightening simple for its resemblance to modern reality: in a world where electronic noise - phones, televisions, radios - is constant, a man is imprisoned for wanting some silence. (To think that this was written in 1953...) Are the words and motions that we associate with love the same as love itself? This is the question Bradbury poses in "I Sing the Body Electric!" Yes, there is the perennially spooky Something Wicked This Way Comes, with the appropriately named Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade and Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show, but you can never really go wrong with any of his story collections or novels (might I recommend our September 2005 selection, Dandelion Wine, one of my all time, top 5 with a bullet, desert island, favorite books?). Just don't wait until next Halloween to find that out.
