Dandelion Wine
The summer of '28 was a vintage season for a growing boy. A summer of green apple trees, mowed lawns, and new sneakers. Of half-burnt firecrackers, of gathering dandelions, of Grandma's belly-busting dinner. It was a summer of sorrows and marvels and gold-fuzzed bees. A magical, timeless summer in the life of a twelve-year-old boy named Douglas Spaulding—remembered forever by the incomparable Ray Bradbury. Dandelion Wine is unique amongst the works of the popular author Ray Bradbury, in that it provides us with perhaps the clearest insight into the thoughts and feelings of the author. The book was published in 1957, perhaps over twenty years after the era which it is about, thus providing an inevitable theme of nostalgia throughout the book. The principal character, Douglas Spalding, and his brother Tom, encounter a series of adventures which are described in a crafted and distinguished manner to provide a philosophical tone throughout the book. The narrative is enriched by the experiences of individuals such as Leo Auffman, who attempts (unsuccessfully) to construct a 'Happiness machine'. Overall, the book provides a nostalgic sense of childhood and an understanding of the beauty of the world and all its features; in this way, it appears to be Bradbury himself reminiscing on his past. Douglas has similar traits to those Bradbury has later in life identified in himself, strengthening this interpretation.
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What Hacker News says
- To each his own, I suppose.
I particularly like Bradbury's style. It reads very prose poetic. One of my favourite is Dandelion Wine, which you will probably hate.
- 1) There's no way to have a set of readings that every Xth grader is going to enjoy. It's just impossible. There is a wide range of interests and predispositions and reading ability among people of the same age. It's obvious just from this sub-thread; everyone pipes up with a different set of books they disliked in school and they therefore think no one should have to read. I loved reading Julius Caeasar in high school and hated The Catcher in the Rye. I loved Dandelion Wine and hated Absalom, Absalom. Them's the breaks.
2) Part of the point of reading literature is to see things from a different perspective. i.e. to read things that are not necessarily "relatable", and thereby possibly expand your mind about the range of human experience. It's an opportunity to learn about history and learn about cultures other than your own.
- Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury slotted in a place like you are in for me when I was a teen, good luck.
- Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury
Murder in the Cathedral - T. S. Eliot
Our Town - Thornton Wilder
- Dandelion Wine is one I bounced off of during my initial Bradbury infatuation around age 11 or 12, but in my 30s have found to be excellent. It is, in part, about experiencing the world as a child, but is probably not something most (to put it mildly) children can appreciate, if that makes sense.
I did have a fair bit of exposure to small midwestern town & country life as a kid, and a lot more second-hand via my parents, and I can't discern how much of my appreciation of the story is due to that. To someone with—for example—only urban, coastal experience, would it hit anywhere near as hard as it does for me? Will the next group of people turning 30, who've never seen a house in the US with actual you-have-to-go-work-a-pump-by-hand-to-get-water well water, with a wood burning stove in the kitchen that sees daily use, et c., be able to relate to it as I do, which relation may itself be far weaker than people who grew up like that full-time? I'm not sure.
His short stories are great. There were two thick hardback volumes published, each collecting 100(!) stories, that'll give you plenty to chew on. Widely available used, pretty cheap. Unless you dove really deep on Bradbury in high school, odds are much of it will be new to you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stories_of_Ray_Bradbury
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradbury_Stories:_100_of_His_M...
No repeats between the two volumes. 200 total stories. Does include most or all of The Martian Chronicles, which I prefer to read on its own, personally, though these might be useful for filling in gaps since IIRC they contain a couple stories that weren't in every printing of The Martian Chronicles.
- This reminds me of a great passage in Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine; I remember reading it 50 years ago! It captured the feelings I had about getting a new pair of shoes, the main character is musing over how to explain to his dad why he needs new shoes:
> Somehow the people who made tennis shoes knew what boys needed and wanted. They put marshmallows and coiled springs in the soles and they wove the rest out of grasses bleached and fired in the wilderness. Somewhere deep in the soft loam of the shoes the thin hard sinews of the buck deer were hidden. The people that made the shoes must have watched a lot of winds blow the trees and a lot of rivers going down to the lakes. Whatever it was, it was in the shoes, and it was summer.
> Douglas tried to get all this in words.
> "Yes," said Father, "but what's wrong with last year's sneakers? Why can't you dig them out of the closet?"
> Well, he felt sorry for boys who lived in California where they wore tennis shoes all year and never knew what it was to get winter off your feet, peel off the iron leather shoes all full of snow and rain and run barefoot for a day and then lace on the first new tennis shoes of the season, which was better than barefoot. The magic was always in the new pair of shoes. The magic might die by the first of September, but now in late June there was still plenty of magic, and shoes like these could jump you over trees and rivers and houses. And if you wanted, they could jump you over fences and sidewalks and dogs.
> "Don't you see?" said Douglas. "I just can't use last year's pair."
> For last year's pair were dead inside. They had been fine when he started them out, last year. But by the end of summer, every year, you always found out, you always knew, you couldn't really jump over rivers and trees and houses in them, and they were dead. But this was a new year, and he felt that this time, with this new pair of shoes, he could do anything, anything at all.
So, yes, I want the new shoes.
