Ray Bradbury: exclusive video interview

an exclusive video interview with Ray Bradbury, taken at his home in Los Angeles in 2001.
There are a dozen or so clips, each a couple of minutes long, and the range is fantastic!

He holds the record for the most rejections from the New Yorker magazine!

Any one who likes stories, on the page, the big or little screen, reading, watching, creating ... should find this a fascinating experience; like reading his books or watching his films.

Dandelion Wine Reviews

Having just read a bunch of reviews, I feel the strongest urge to reread the book, but have to search for my copy, which I probably lent to some one! I guess I'll buy another, maybe to make it an annual reading filtered through my own maturity and distance from the first reading.

Ray Bradbury's moving recollection of a vanished golden era remains one of his most enchanting novels. DANDELION WINE stands out in the Bradbury literary canon as the author's most deeply personal work, a semi-autobiographical recollection of a magical small town summer in 1928.

Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather's renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley's bell on a hazy afternoon.

It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power holds time at bay. It can be a best friend moving away, a human time machine who can transport you back to the Civil War, or a sideshow automaton able to glimpse the bittersweet future.

Come and savor Ray Bradbury's priceless distillation of all that is eternal about boyhood and summer.

Here are a few reviews to give you a flavour....

Reviewer:
Ellie Reasoner This book is Bradbury in top form. Although not my absolute favorite title by this author, I have found a lot of joy over the years in re-reading this little book that I first picked up off a school library shelf when I was eight. It's obvious Bradbury was writing a story set in the time and place of his own childhood "as it should have been" and it makes me wonder if given time I'll think back on my own youth in similar terms. When I was little, after I read this book, all anyone had to do was say, "Watch out for Lonely One" referring to the killer who stalked Green Town's ravine at night and I was good and scared. Heck, that probably works today, too. From its unique May-December romance to its protagonist who becomes that one soul in a million to truly understand that precious gift of what it means to be alive, Dandelion Wine is simply wonderful. Read this book and travel back with the national treasure who is Ray Bradbury to the delightful world of the fantasy-powered Midwest of the 1920's (as it should have been).


Reviewer:
Jeanette Thomas "book geek" I first read Ray Bradbury's miracle of a book, Dandelion Wine, when I was 16, and I have read it every year since. Over time I continue to gain a deeper appreciation for these lovely, strange, often magical vignettes (more properly parables, each one with a little implied moral) that explore the nature of happiness, the magic of love and, above all, what it means to be alive. To me, the overarching intent of the book is to remind all us adults that:

• Being alive means maintaining a balance between Discoveries & Revelations and Ceremonies & Rites. Though the latter are important, binding us to our family & our community, our future & our past, it is Discoveries & Revelations that make us think, experience, change, and grow.
• Being alive means living in the present. Even if this means giving away the tokens of a beloved past, as happens in one particularly poignant tale.
• Being alive means being connected with the world - with family, neighbors, your community, the earth. It's no coincidence that the mysterious murderer haunting Douglas Spaulding's Childhood is called The Lonely One.
• Being alive means being able to experience happiness ... not only understanding the nature of happiness, but possessing the wisdom not to let yourself be tricked into pursuing something that can't/won't make you happy.
• Being alive means recognizing the presence of magic in our everyday lives. Because magic is out there ... in the spring of a new pair of tennis shoes, in the mysteries of love, in the essence of Dandelion Wine.

Contrary to popular opinion, I do not believe Bradbury intended this to be a book about childhood. In fact, his 12yr old narrator, Douglas Spaulding, does not appear in many of the parables. I do think that Bradbury intentionally chose a child as his narrator, however, because children are inherently alive -- always discovering, always filled with wonder, connected to their family and the world and the present in ways that we begin gradually to forget as adults.

Dandelion Wine is both nostalgia and a cautionary tale, challenging us to remember what it felt like to be alive and reminding us adults that - unless we take care - we may become so consumed by life that we forget to be alive. As far as I am concerned, this book is a little bit of magic in and of itself: part essence of childhood, part elixir of wisdom. Believe and partake!


Reviewer:
Modest Witness Its protagonist may be a child, but this novel is not really suitable for a thrill-seeking, modern juvenile audience. Dandelion Wine is an exquisitely realised contemplation of life and mortality, but its themes are both too subtle and too layered for a young reader. That's fine, really. This is a novel to be anticipated and appreciated as the reader matures. As I grow older, and with each subsequent reading, I discover a deeper melancholy and richer ironies inthe text - so that rereading this book has become a special summer ritual for me.

and here's someone who less than enchanted!


Reviewer:
J. W. Bennett "waxy_one" I'm a new fan of Bradbury. I love the incomparable Something Wicked This Way Comes and a whole heap of his short stories, The Illustrated Man and Golden Apples of the Sun to name my favourites so far. I came to Dandelion Wine expecting to be mesmerised, but sadly, I just found the book was too easy to put down and rather hard to pick up again. There are some great ideas and interesting imagery, but the whole lacks a narrative thread to entice more thrill-seeking readers, and in the end, after four of five chapters, I just found the whole thing a little...well, dated. In no way should this put people off Ray Bradbury. Those seeking a semi-romance about the state of childhood could do worse than to read Dandelion Wine. For me though, I much prefer his fantastical and dark works, and in the end, Dandelion Wine became too sweet and cloying for my tastes.

Dandelion Wine Ray Bradbury Chapter One

Having read this for the first time, decades ago, I've read it many times since.

Twenty minutes ago, I discovered that it was a semi-autobiographical novel.
Had I not been so 'in to' science fiction, I doubt I would ever have picked it up.
It is an enchanting read, full of whimsey and wonder ... there are some reviews in my other blog.

Extract from chapter one

Chapter One

It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.

Douglas Spaulding, twelve, freshly wakened, let summer idle him on its early-morning stream. Lying in his third-story cupola bedroom, he felt the tall power it gave him, riding high in the June wind, the grandest tower in town. At night, when the trees washed together, he flashed his gaze like a beacon from this lighthouse in all directions over swarming seas of elm and oak and maple. Now . . .

"Boy," whispered Douglas.

A whole summer ahead to cross off the calendar, day by day. Like the goddess Siva in the travel books, he saw his hands jump everywhere, pluck sour apples, peaches, and midnight plums. He would be clothed in trees and bushes and rivers. He would freeze, gladly, in the hoarfrosted icehouse door. He would bake, happily, with ten thousand chickens, in Grandma's kitchen.

But now-a familiar task awaited him.

One night each week he was allowed to leave his father, his mother, and his younger brother Tom asleep in their small house next door and run here, up the dark spiral stairs to his grandparents' cupola, and in this sorcerer's tower sleep with thunders and visions, to wake before the crystal jingle of milk bottles and perform his ritual magic.He stood at the open window in the dark, took a deep breath and exhaled.

The street lights, like candles on a black cake, went out. He exhaled again and again and the stars began to vanish.

Douglas smiled. He pointed a finger.

There, and there. Now over here, and here . . .

Yellow squares were cut in the dim morning earth as house lights winked slowly on. A sprinkle of windows came suddenly alight miles off in dawn country.

"Everyone yawn. Everyone up."

The great house stirred below.

"Grandpa, get your teeth from the water glass!" He waited a decent interval. "Grandma and Great-grandma, fry hot cakes!"

The warm scent of fried batter rose in the drafty halls to stir the boarders, the aunts, the uncles, the visiting cousins, in their rooms.

"Street where all the Old People live, wake up! Miss Helen Loomis, Colonel Freeleigh, Miss Bentley! Cough, get up, take pills, move around! Mr. Jonas, hitch up your horse, get your junk wagon out and around!"

The bleak mansions across the town ravine opened baleful dragon eyes. Soon, in the morning avenues below, two old women would glide their electric Green Machine, waving at all the dogs. "Mr. Tridden, run to the carbarn!" Soon, scattering hot blue sparks above it, the town trolley would sail the rivering brick streets.

"Ready John Huff, Charlie Woodman?" whispered Douglas to the Street of Children. "Ready!" to baseballssponged deep in wet lawns, to rope swings hung empty in trees.

"Mom, Dad, Tom, wake up."

Clock alarms tinkled faintly. The courthouse clock boomed. Birds leaped from trees like a net thrown by his hand, singing. Douglas, conducting an orchestra, pointed to the eastern sky.

The sun began to rise.

He folded his arms and smiled a magician's smile. Yes, sir, he thought, everyone jumps, everyone runs when I yell. It'll be a fine season.

He gave the town a last snap of his fingers.

Doors slammed open; people stepped out.

Summer 1928 began.