A Graveyard For Lunatics: Another Tale Of Two Cities (2001) - Plot & Excerpts
Hm. Well this is weird because Bradbury is a genius and I loved all of the books and short stories by him I've read to date, so it feels weird to say this, but... the book just wasn't very good. Ray Bradbury wrote a book that was not very good. Weird.The positive things I can say about it are that, as always, Ray Bradbury is great with creating memorable characters, and he's very very good with dialogue. This book is no exception. I was especially a huge fan of J.C. (an eccentric Jesus look-alike actor who has been pretending to be Jesus for so long that he has *become* Jesus), and Fritz Wong (an eccentric, nocturnal, monocled director from Nazi Germany whose favorite way to greet/thank someone is to brazenly insult them).But how does a Ray Bradbury story go wrong? Well, for starters, Bradbury is excellent with metaphor and imagery, but even a master like Bradbury lays it on a little too thick at times. There are various points in the story where Ray waxes poetic about some aspect of the movie business he's enamored with, and rather than it being great, you get this awkward feeling that he's getting carried away with this metaphor that just seems to go on and on, and you wonder when he's going to snap out of it and get back to the story.But the thing that really damns the story is that it's just not that well put together. It's essentially a mystery story, but in a mystery story you want your mystery to be compelling as soon as it's introduced, and the mystery that kicks off this story is pretty impotent. The protagonist receives a mysterious note asking him to come to the graveyard at midnight. So he goes there, and he finds a body that looks exactly like the former studio head who died years ago. Turns out the body is fake, though. It's a stuffed dummy that someone made look like the former studio head, and then they put it here in the graveyard. Huh. That's a pretty weird thing for someone to do. Wonder why they made this dummy and put it here.And that's literally the mystery that kicks off the story. Someone left a stuffed dummy lying around. Not very compelling to say the least. The characters are super intrigued by it and are certain that someone is up to no good with that dummy (???), but you just don't share their intrigue, because the mystery is hard to be intrigued by.Of course the mystery DOES get more complex once Bradbury introduces "The Beast"---a hideously disfigured man, seemingly of mind-boggling wealth, and shrouded in mystery. Almost nobody knows he exists, and the ones who do know he exists refuse to talk about him, and the ones who do talk about him end up dead. That's a little more interesting. Too bad it's blatantly obvious who he is and what is going on before you reach even the middle of the book. A lot of times with mystery stories, the writer is clever enough to leave a lot of different possibilities open, letting you draw many different conclusions, most of them wrong. Bradbury muddies the waters about certain details of the mystery, but the biggest mystery of the entire story is as obvious as the nose on your face.So the end result is that you end up reading this story where the narrative gesticulates like mysterious and thrilling things are happening and the characters are all intrigued and unnerved by the goings on, but their behavior comes off as affected and farcical, because as the reader you already know what's going on (it's pretty obvious) and you just wish they'd drop the pretenses and get on with it already.Bradbury is amazing, but this one's proof that even a genius can strike out on occasion.
I will make a new tradition to read a Bradbury book on his birthday, which at my age means I'll reread books I've already read, but that's a good tradition for a content old age. Watched a video of Bradbury talking about writing. It was perfectly timed to bump into it on his birthday and, a break from Annie Dillard's Writing Life. Dillard is brilliant, but damn! she goes on and on about how arduous writing is. Molding, crafting, snipping, killing your darlings, insisting the writer have no distractions which include windows and other people. And Bradbury said if you don't love writing, do something else. It is not hard. It is joy. So is this book. It's a crazy quilt of real stuff in Bradbury's writing life, with the names only slightly changed so you still know who the sendups are. He said in his talk how he came to write this book - a chance encounter traveling to England on the Elizabeth II. Hollywood in the 1950s: movie moguls, eccentric directors with monocles, a retired movie star who swims naked in the Venice surf, a film cutter who spends the wee hours in a room with writhing snippets of film on the floor, Lenin's make-up man, fanatic fans, an actor who has played Jesus Christ for so long he enjoys evenings on the cross on the Calvary set, watching the city lights. The studio commissary with the studio head's table elevated above the level of commoners. Roman legions running through the set for Green Town, Illinois on their way to ancient Rome down the block. The man who would be Ray Harryhausen and Studio 13 full of monsters, beasties and little tiny dinosaur lands. Our narrator, a quaking screenwriter with gifts who has a close encounter with the graveyard next door at midnight one thundering Halloween night.
What do You think about A Graveyard For Lunatics: Another Tale Of Two Cities (2001)?
I'm not sure why I wanted to read a Ray Bradbury book lately, but I did. I read Farenheit 451 10 or so years ago and really liked it, but hadn't really heard of any of his other work. This is the book that jumped out from me on the bookshelf at the library, so I picked it up. Unfortunately, I didn't love this book. It is an interesting mystery that takes place in a Hollywood studio in the 1950's. Bradbury worked as a screen writer in Hollywood and seems to have a love/hate relationship with it. The studio in the novel seems like a magical place where the amazing can happen, but it also hides hideous secrets. The characters in this book were well conceived. A few were maybe a little hackneyed, but the main ones, including the unnamed narrator were very believable. The dialogue was also good. What I didn't like was the story. At its base, it is a basic mystery. However, it becomes very fantastical and hard to follow in parts. The story skips and jumps. Some parts of this book are quite good. Overall however, it was only okay.
—Patrick
Голливуд должен быть разрушен. Но только после того, как этот роман будет экранизирован.Пригласить постановщиком лучше всего Фрица Ланга, а в помощники ему взять Билли Уайлдера. Рэй Харрихаузен будет делать спецэффекты и застенчиво играть Холдстрома. Борис Карлофф и Эрих фон Штрогейм появятся в эпизодических ролях, Джин Келли станцует на крыше Оперы Гарнье, Чаплин сыграет Иисуса, Сильвия Сидни — Констанцию, а Лон Чейни — все главные роли, кроме, конечно, САМОЙ главной. САМУЮ главную сделает сам Брэдбери. Он же будет читать закадровый текст, дурашливо хохотать в самых страшных местах и плакать каждый раз, когда на экране будет закат.Это будет гениальное кино, после создания которого Голливуд, место действия этого романа, место жизни и смерти, Цирк и Голгофа, должен быть разрушен навсегда, чтобы жить вечно.Детство не возвращается, потому что не кончается никогда. Кинг-Конг не погибает, потому что пленку можно снова поставить в проектор. Рукописи и фильмы не горят. А если даже горят, если даже сгорают, то через несколько десятилетий Богу все равно приходит прихоть пересмотреть «Страсти Жанны д'Арк» и он подкидывает полную копию на чердак сумасшедшего дома — куда ж ещё?!Не читайте «Кладбище для безумцев» как роман. Это, безусловно, эпическая поэма. Все поклонники «Вина из одуванчиков» помнят ритм и образность такой поэзии. Её можно пить до головокружения, до щемящего восторга, до полного погружения в литературную нирвану, из глубины которой одним только взглядом можно сделать мир совершенным. Я, кстати, всегда был уверен, что Фриц Ланг сидел на премьере «Звёздных войн» в Граумановском кинотеатре 25 мая 1977 года. Джордж Лукас, по наитию оборачиваясь, видел отблеск световых мечей в монокле, но так никому об этом и не рассказал. И Брэдбери в романе о своём 1954 годе не упомянул об этой истории ни словом, но каждая буква книги, каждый её восклицательный знак свидетельствуют, что так и было.
—Сергей Бережной
I still love Bradbury. This series was wonderful, because it was the same fairy-tale style, the same gentlemanly PG-13 storytelling as his books for younger audiences, but instead of science fiction, it talked about my other love – LA. I'm glad that I found this series again. I walked around with scenes from these books in my head for years before I figured out what they were and how to find them again. I know that his style can be schmaltzy at times, and that a lot of people don't like it. I know that, as an adult, it takes a few pages before I can accept the idea of a person so free of cynicism, but once I do, I'm always glad to visit his world. He reminds me of the magic I loved so much growing up.*re-read... original experience probably c. 1995
—Danger Kallisti
