One of the first books I ever read, and one of the reasons I still read. I found some of the other reviews dismaying (poor dialogue?, silly concepts?, antique writing style? - has the world and the people in it really changed that much? Have people lost their hearts? Perhaps, they've just never read "The Smile" by Bradbury, not included in this collection).Granted, Bradbury's style does take some getting used to - the man is emotionally honest and as people everywhere become more emotionally guarded, such honesty appears to be naivete. It isn't, but that's an argument for another day. And Bradbury occasionally enjoys being poetic or lyrical, so people marking time until they can rush through volume #17 of "Lilith McHotpants, Ace Ghoul Slayer"; "Part the Twelveteenth of the Saga of Kaaarfgaaasr", and "P is for Perfunctory" or whatever they spend the majority of their time "reading", may find such a style annoying. Because, you know, it's about evoking feelings and such, not pushing buttons.But for those with the eye for a well-told tale, and senses neither dulled by crap or so highly attuned by High Lit that they can't enjoy solid pulp, this should go down a treat."The Dwarf" - still as sad and dark and painful as I remember it. You have to love the breezy way Bradbury can just roll a story along with a deft turn of phrase or description ("the sea was a burning sheet of tinsel and glass"). So sad, but honest, that the cruel person doesn't even see what's wrong, and suffers nothing, while the girl's attempt to be human and humane puts the chain of events into motion. And Mr. Bigelow wrote detective stories! Heh! I like the fact that there's no overt supernatural elements in this collection at first, the first few stories turn on human psyches and neurosis, until "The Skeleton"."The Next In Line" - notorious to me because it was so long I never finished it as a kid. Here, again, no overt supernatural elements, just a woman suddenly overwhelmed by the inescapable awareness of her own mortality, exacerbated by the horrors of unburied mummies of Mexican peasants (they can't afford the rent to remain buried anymore, in the ultimate capitalist scam ever - something to keep in mind for our futures) and strangeness of culture shock and the unloving husband to whom she's already dead. This might be a tad overwrought/overwritten but the feverish pitch of her nervous breakdown really does drag you along and the scenes in the catacombs (counting to avoid the screaming dead but you can't because here they are, and here, and here...and HERE!), the descriptions of the little Mexican town at night (the streetlight blowing in the wind), the desperate race to escape the town (but you can't escape death), the little details ("whirled and cavorted before the coffin-shaped mirror") and omens (a sugar skull with your name on it), are aces! I especially liked the bit where she seeks escape and safety in the writing from "her world", news + pop magazines, but even those are consumed far too quickly. Also appreciated seeing the gestation for the idea of "Skeleton" in her comments on skeletons not bothering her. Just great, solid writing."The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse" - Nice for a number of reasons, foremost in that its a a horror story and funny at the same time, the horror arising, again, from the psyche and how it responds to the attentions of groups (beginnings of "The Crowd", possibly) and popular culture. Couldn't help thinking of that George Carlin Book Club routine throwaway book title - "Self Mutilation As An Attention Getter" as the story wrapped up, and that aspect is really where the dry, bitter horror lies (and why the story is oddly relevant today, as well). Loved seeing VIC & SADE get a name-check (the best OTR comedy show EVER!) but I guess that also makes me a hipster doofus like the rest of the Cellar Septet (great band name waiting to be snagged!). I know Bradbury's tone towards the avant garde-ians, like the tone of most people towards the artistic fringe, is disdainful, but personally I love characters like this, ironic posing or no. So Garvey's eventual transformation into a surrealist object is both sad and cool for me (the Surrealists knew that desire and death were intricately linked)."Skeleton" - this rocked my world as a little kid and only impresses me more as an adult. The concept is just wonderfully simple (man at war with his skeleton), then toss in the resonant symbolism (the organic, painful messiness of life, his outsides, pitted against the clean, orderly, solid, reliable support structure of his insides, all of which symbolize death. "Only the dead are eternally cool." as Hakim Bey said), the little details (he's great at ceramics!), and even some unexpected argument from the other side (the fat man's fat as a buffer against the battering of life, and a way to trap the skeleton in organic tar), topped off with a bizarre character that makes it a bona fide "weird tale" (salty breadsticks) and a memorable last line and you've got yourself a killer story."The Jar" has been adapted a few times (I seem to remember a version on the "New Alfred Hitchcock Presents" TV show from the 80s in which the country bumpkin setting is switched with a modern art one) and it's a pretty solid, creepy story, although Bradbury's tendency to overwrite becomes a bit cartoonish when (at least, I feel) he's writing characters of a "type" that he's not directly familiar with. Still, the inchoate mass in the jar is strangely evocative (a blank screen onto which everyone projects their ideas) and it's a nice reversal of "The Watchful Poker Chip", in that one man desires to make himself the center of attention from people who don't really care about him."The Lake" is very touching. I have a reading of this by Bradbury himself and it really is an effective, emotional piece about lost childhood love and the uncaring blankness of death."The Emissary" still gives me chills. This was a favorite of mine as a child, and reading it as an adult, I wondered if perhaps it seemed darker or more threatening to me back then, but, no, the ending is ominously "not good". Bradbury really stretches his evocative language shtick here, conjuring autumn in a million ways while bolting the whole thing to a life-lived memory of being an invalid and then wrapping it in a strange variation of "The Monkey's Paw"...except this time...the door gets to open...."Touched With Fire" was also adapted on "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", (albeit the original b&w version). It very well-done and I like the fact that the terrible events partially arise from the main characters' desire to help people (as in "The Dwarf" and, inverted strangely, the presumption of "The Crowd", which is proven wrong). The writing makes the harridan woman a bit cartoonish, but that's part of the point, to draw you into feeling what Foxe (or the other one, I forget) feels and this building of tone and mood (hot, irritable, loud, abrasive) is well-conjured. Cute."The Small Assassin" is a genuine classic, postpartum depression twisted into a horror tale before there was even a term for it. The last line is a killer and the modern resonances it brings, of abortion and sociopatholgy, are especially powerful. What a great story!"The Crowd" is another one of those unabashed classics - a simple idea marvelously realized. It's amazing how effective it is. I don't even know if there's much more to say - I love the idea that the people encompass all character types and are immortal. I also love that there's never a specific explanation or explication from "the Crowd", so while the ending confirms the narrator's theory, we only ever really have his suppositions to go on. I wish more modern horror writers wrote stories this sharp."Jack-In-The Box" is...okay. It almost seems like an idea more pregnant with possibilities than can be addressed in the short story form, although I do like idea that kid thinks he's dead at the end, and that this year's special room was an elevator. For some reason, this story strikes me as a partial riff on Lovecraft's "The Outsider"."The Scythe" is another great one - solid, well-told, well-imagined, painful. Another great idea that doesn't need world-building or explication - just accept it, because Bradbury is such a good storyteller, why would your ruin the story with more questions? It's like reading a creative person's first realization that death isn't fair and logical."Uncle Einar" is, of course, not really a horror story, more of a weird tale in that fine old tradition. It's also one of his stories about "The Family" that eventually influenced Charles Addams. It's probably the slightest of those Family stories (Cecy's story, "The Traveler" is really dark!) and I've never read Bradbury's late-in-life reworking of this material into a novel-form, because I feel so close to "Homecoming" and The Family, et. al (having discovered them at exactly the right moment of my childhood). But this one is a wonderful bit of dark fantasy, touching and sweet."The Wind" - a simple idea simply told, as long as it needs to be and no longer. I love how it locates the main narrative away from the important action, and then comments upon that very thing ("as we sit here, people are dying"), using the set-up for an effective punchline. Nice."The Man Upstairs" really made an impact on me as a kid. With the imaginings of multicolored worlds seen through glass, the focus on innards of all types, the reinvention of the "vampire", and the implied gruesome ending dissection, this is a great creepy horror story. Again, even better for the lack of explanation."There Was An Old Woman" is another charming weird tale, with an unexpected ending (usually, stories like this would be about acceptance of the inevitable). The cantankerous old biddy is strongly sketched and the humor is well-delivered."The Cistern", slight but poetic, more about evoking Ophelia-like images of drowned bodies and flowers deep underground."The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone" is also, I fear, a bit slight for my tastes. It's a cute idea and, as expected, well-told, but the central idea - eh, too romantic an envisioning of a "writer as character" for my tastes.I left "Homecoming" for last because its one of my favorite Bradbury stories ever, ur-text for Charles Addams, The Munsters, etc. and thus a component of the whole 1950's-on "Monster Kid" culture. It also still brings tears to my eyes. I hope he continued to walk the fine line the originals tread so assuredly (the "monsters" are monsters, as Cecy's interaction with the old woman and the mud-pits illustrates) in his later re-use of this material. I wonder if all the Tim Burton fans even know a story like this exists?Great stories from a great writer. What more could you want?
... that country were it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilight linger, and midnights stay. The country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain ... The introduction suggests this one's a good choice for a Halloween read, and indeed the stories selected for the present collection may not all happen in October, but they do share a melancholic mood that often morphs into full blown fright. I am thinking of adding as a subtitle High Anxiety for the whole set and then play a game of 'Name That Fear' for each episode: The Dwarf is a great opening gambit, probably one of the earliest shorts written by the author, illustrating his fascination with carnivals and with the grotesque. A short man visits every night the hall of mirrors in the amusement park, always heading straight for the one distorting silverbacked glass that makes him appear as tall as regular people. The ticket vendor makes fun of him with the callous indifference of bullies everywhere. The anxiety here would be the loneliness of the person rejected from society for being different in appearance. I liked how the dwarf is presented as a succesful pulp writer, how inside his head he's just as good, if not better, than his tormentors: This little guy's got a soul as big as all outdoors; he's got everything in his head! The Next In Line highlights the fear of the cemeteries, of the dark, damp and smelly place undergound where the dead are buried. A young couple on a tourist visit to Mexcio comes across a town where the air is so dry that bodies do not rot in the ground and are instead mummified. Because a lot of the local people are too poor to pay for the burial place, these mummies are exhumated and stored in a long underground chamber and then shown to the tourists for a small fee. I have saved a quote from this story, where the young man chides his wife for being superstitious, but I have a hunch that the author sides with her on the issue, as sometimes the fear is too strong for the rational brain: The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas. The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse doesn't seem too scary at first glance - it is the story of a man so dull and uninteresting that he becomes an attraction for a crowd of fashionable artists. Enjoying their attention, the man now tries to remain in the spotlight by artificial means, like wearing an unusual eye-piece painted by the famous French Impressionist. My vote would be again for fear of loneliness, of rejection by social conformists. Skeleton is fear of illness, of your own body. It is the tale of a hypochondriac who goes to a dubious doctor and becomes aware that he has been walking around all his life carrying a skeleton inside him. Delightfully macabre. The Jar is a second story that starts with a carnival and its gallery of freaks. It is a variant of the fear of the unknown, and a story about the way our imagination can create monsters out of unexplained physical or biological objects. Here, a farmer becomes fascinated with one of those pale and wobbly things floating in chloroform in big transparent bottles. Ignorance and superstition also play a role, as the man's neighbors from a poor swamp village gather around the jar to speculate on the thing's origins. The Lake is about fear of death by drowning, but more than this it is about the passing of childhood, about lost friends and the power of love to keep the memories alive. One of the most lyrical and sad shorts in the whole collection. The Emissary is another variant of the fear of death. In this short story, a boy is immobilized in bed by illness, and his trusty dog is his only contact with the outside world, by bringing in the twigs and burrs and the smells of the places it visits. But what happens when this dog starts visiting a cemetery too often? Touched With Fire is more difficult to pin down. Two mysterious strangers try to prevent a woman from getting murdered. Are they prescient or simply better observers of human nature than usual? I would class the story as fear of predestination, of the loss of free will, but a more accurate message may be that we cannot force people to act against their nature. The Small Assassin is a creepy example of a woman with post-natal depression, who believes her child tried to kill her during a difficult birth, and is continuing to attack her after they return home from hospital. It's a clever piece, but not one of my favorites: it fels contrived, even if I accept the supernatural elements. The Crowd is an illustration of a fear I was spared from until recently. I got my driver's license only a couple of years ago, and my first car only months ago. Since then, I have started to consider more seriously what would happen if I got into a road accident. Bradbury doesn't help me much as he tries to prove that there is a reason you always see a crowd of thrill seekers around the sites of such crashes, and that these people are not there to help you. Jack-In-The-Box is about a boy who is afraid the whole world outside his house is gone. He is locked in with his mother and a mysterious teacher inside a huge house with many locked doors and secret passages. He would like to escape, yet is afraid of what would happen if he breaks out of his safe daily routine. The Scythe is a good candidate for a 'Best of ...' anthology of Bradbury short stories. It's major anxiety is the fear of a father that he cannot provide sustenance and safety for his family during the Great Depression, most of all that he cannot protect them from the death that must come to us all, sooner or later. Great writing! Uncle Einar is one of the few happy interludes in an otherwise sad and scary collection. It is a sketch from a bigger story the author was developing about a family of monsters ( The Elliots are similar in many aspects to the more famous Adams Family). Einar is a sort of human bat, six feet tall with big leathery green wings. He flies mostly at night to avoid being spotted by regular people, but after a drunken party, he crashes into a power line and loses his sonar-like abilities. But, like somebody sung about in the Alps, whenever a door closes, a window opens, and by losing his fly-in-the-dark talents, Einar gains the love of a woman and settles down for married life and for playing with his children. My favorite quote here is about how we may be homely in our outside appearance, but there is a world of wonder and imagination inside each of us: We're in our cocoons, all of us. See how ugly I am? But one day I'll break out, spread wings as fine and handsome as you. The Wind is another candidate for 'best of' anthologies, very short but also very effective in the idea that destructive winds somehow achieve intelligence by absorbing the minds of their victims. The fear category in my game could be the anxiety over the unleashed forces of nature. The Man Upstairs is a variant of the fear of the stranger, about supernatural predators living amonst us, disguised as ordinary people. What makes the story special is the young age of the narrator, a young boy whose curiosity and inventivity solves the mystery. Word of the day from his grandfather: Fear nothing, ever in your life. There Was an Old Woman is another of the rare stories with a touch of humour, with a colourful elderly lady as a heroine who refuses to accept the inevitability of Death, and is ready to fight to the last breath and beyond for the right to stay in this world as much as it pleases her. The Cistern is a sort of twisted romance spiced by the fear of drowning. A woman gazes out a window at a rainy city landscape and imagines the water draining into subterranean tunnels, filing them up a carrying along the bodies of strangers. Homecoming is almost worth the price of admission all on its own. It marks a return to the follies of the Elliott family, as they gather from all over the world to celebrate Halloween together. Uncle Einar also returns to lift up the spirits of a boy without supernatural talents, adopted into the family and slightly envious of his 'monster' relatives. The story has a lot of potential, and I understand Bradbury added more material until it became a novel. Anxiety in this case is the result of feeling estranged from your peers. The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone ends the book not with another scare but with an affirmation of life, an invitation to get our noses out of books and run around in the sun. Dudley Moore was a very promising young writer who decided decades ago to renounce his literary career and fade into oblivion. In the present time, he invites a reporter to tell him all about that past decision and the reason for his seclusion: I had been writing about living. Now I wanted to live. Do things instead of tell about things. [...] We've lived every way there is to live, with our eyes and noses and mouths, with our ears and hands. Taken as a whole I found the collection uneven in quality. Some stories feel unpolished, some just simple sketches, but then quite a few are truly memorable, and even the lesser ones display the magical way Bradbury has of creating a mood, an emotion, an intriguing new way to look at the ordinary things around us and see either their beauty or their mystery. Beside the theme of autumn and anxiety, the stories collected here share an interest in childhood, in the ties of family and in the need for friendship and sharing. I am glad I still have so many of his stories and novels still to read. I am sure they will be as enjoyable and well written as this one.
What do You think about The October Country (1999)?
"October Country... that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay". Ray Bradbury is legendary. And this collection of his early dark tales proves why. Ranging from quirky introspection to full out existential rumination, the power of his writing represented here is immediately felt through the seamless merger of his brilliant poetic language into very readable stories. This an absolute masterpiece that should be read by all fans of fantastical fiction. Exquisitely illustrated in b/w by Joe Mugnaini. Highly recommended.
—Scott
The October Country is, I believe, the earliest Bradbury story collection. Well, it's a bit long for what it is, and not all of the tales are terrific, but it has led me enjoyably down the shadowy path, once again, of Ray Bradbury's precious imagination, which is, for me, the best aspect of picking up one of his books. It's not the ideas but the moods that get me, not the plots of the stories, but rather the details, the similes, certain familiar social situations suddenly set in eldritch precincts, as familiar and unfamiliar as the landscape of a dream, the things you know he's showing you which are so much better than the moral that the plot is laying out for you with its impeccable Gothic logic. It seems that the best of Bradbury revolves around his ability to keep his prose somehow innocent, raw, unthinking, even as the tales are the usual manipulations of the pulp author--not that he isn't original. In the introduction he inadvertently brags about how his editors at Weird Tales wanted more tradition ghastly narratives. Still, there's a level at which Bradbury's stories work which rumbles and shifts well below what they are saying as narratives, and that's what always keeps me interested--even in the silliest of them (here "The Homecoming" I think). The October Country was the perfect read through this oddly balmy Italian autumn, leading me right up to and through another Halloween celebration. "The most wonderful time of the year"--for us lovers of the dark side of art and literature.
—Lee Foust
Bradbury gets to me like no other author. I honestly couldn't tell you if it was the stories themselves or my frame of mind when I first read them, but somehow Bradbury is able to slip right through most of my critical faculties and hit me right in the heart.This first collection is fabulous, showcasing Bradbury's sentimental side as well as facility with darker emotions, especially loneliness. It doesn't seem to matter how many times I read about that sea monster calling back to the foghorn or the dwarf in the house of mirrors--I am incapable of getting through them without tears. By the same token, M. Munnigant or the titular small assassin never fail to creep me right out.Bradbury is childhood for me. Idealized, certainly, and sentimental as well as scary; it may not be how childhood is, but it's how childhood ought to be.
—Peggy
