Speaking of required reading, I recall that this was on the summer reading list for incoming freshman at my alma mater. After reading Dandelion Wine, I loved Ray Bradbury, and I was super excited to read Fahrenheit 451 in my Freshman English B class. I must say that I am disappointed with the way they do things there, now. Instead of having to pick from a list, students are told to read 2 books (any two books, abut anything) during the summer. 3 books, if they're in honors. Ugh. I can just imagine all of the graphic novels being consumed. Ugh.
Anyways, when I started down the dandelion path, I fell in love with Bradbury's writing style. I devoured everything he wrote that I could get my hands on, and in college, I commenced purchasing anything I could find (novels and collected short stories) that he wrote. Before I had to gut my book collection for the first time, I had over 25 books on my shelves with his name on them. When I had to purge my books before coming a missionary, I kept 5 "essential" favorites:
The copy of Dandelion Wine that I have is the original copy that I purchased before freshman year, and it smelllllllls delicious.
My love of Bradbury's writing led to an impromptu visit to Green Town 4 years ago on a beautiful July day, where I spent half of it poring over library archives, viewing his childhood home and the neighboring house belonging to his grandparents, flying up the steps of his old library, walking through the haunted ravine of the Lonely One, and reading his poem, Byzantium, I Come Not From aloud from the 113th step atop the ravine.
So good. There were buttercups everywhere and the ravine was eerily silent, barely a bird made nary a noise. Ah. So good.
My father-in-law also made strawberry wine for the wedding reception, and I got to see the process first hand. It reminded me of the scenes in the book where Grampa is making Dandelion wine. I've always wondered what it would taste like. I wonder if dad would be willing to try it.
Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury
239 Pages. Reading Time: A few days
Back cover reads: 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.
1st page of the introduction: I took a long look at the green apple trees and the old house I was born in and the house next door where lived my grandparents, and all the lawns of the summers I grew up in, and I began to try words for all that. What you have here in this book then is a gathering of dandelions from all those years. The wine metaphor which appears again and again in these pages is wonderfully apt. I was gathering images all of my life, storing the away, and forgetting them. Somehow I had to send myself back, with words as catalysts, to open the memories out and see what they had to offer.
Much like my favorite childhood book of all time, this pretty much sums up how I feel about Dandelion Wine:
I have a feeling that I'm going to quote the entire book. Heh.
Initial Reaction: It has most of the warm fuzzies I remember as a kid, but it's much more.... scattered and .... stream of consciousness than I remember. The description and imagery are what get me every time. Bradbury is great at it. He just sucks you in like a vortex and doesn't let go. It's just about a boy who discovers he's alive at the beginning of the summer, and the townspeople he encounters.
Promote Virtue? Yes. John 10:10
Transcendentals? They aren't prevalent, but the writing is stunning. The quest for truth and goodness aren't very apparent, but they're there. this is definitely a work of "the light." If anything, it makes you want to live, to be alive, to celebrate life.
Overcome human condition? Yes. The characters know their faults and try to overcome them. But that's not really the aim of the work.
Attitude toward Catholicism? N/A
Paganry? No
Swearing? No
Violence? No. But there is a murdering prowler and it mentions his murders.
Appropriate age? For a read aloud- I'd probably say 9-10ish. Independent reading? 12+
Writing Style: Bradburian. Just like I like it. Read it. Appreciate it. If you've only read Fahrenheit 451 and were turned off, read this. It's entirely different.
Notable Quoteables:
"The people there were gods and midgets and knew themselves mortal and so the midgets walked tall so as not to embarrass the gods and the gods crouched so as to make the small ones feel at home. And, after all, isn't that what life is all about, the ability to go around back and come up inside other people's heads to look out at the damned fool miracle and say: oh, so that's how you see it!? Well, now, I must remember that" (xii). Oh, I love him.
"Douglas, conducting an orchestra, pointed to the eastern sky. The sun began to rise" (3).
"In that silence you could hear the wildflower pollen sifting down the bee-fried air, by God, the bee-fried air!" (6) Dude. Bee-fried air. Think about that.
"...and Tom letting the words rise like quick soda bubbles in his mouth..." (7).
"...the yellow Ticonderoga pencil, whose name he dearly loved" (28).
Isn't it beautiful?
"In the garage they found, dusted, and carried forth the howdah, as it were, for the quiet summer-night festivals, the swing chair which Grandpa chained to the porch-ceiling eyelets" (29). I love this paragraph because me and my brother helped our grandparents do the same thing during the two summers they babysat us. They didn't have a swing that hung from the porch, though. They had a huge glider that was the size of a sofa. It was painted canary yellow and had a huge futon-like mattress on it. It was great because they didn't have air conditioning in their house during the Illinois summer, and there was always a breeze on the porch in the shade.
"And dandelions and devil grass are better! Why? Because they bend you over and turn you away from all the people and the town for a little while and sweat you and get you down where you remember you got a nose again. And when you're all to yourself that way, you're really yourself for a little while; you get to thinking things through, alone" (50). This is exactly how I felt about pruning the trees and felled branches on Bosco point for a week.
"The children, who had been screaming horribly at each other, fell silent, as if the Red Death had entered at the chiming of the clock" (55). Favorite Poe story!
"But Leo Auffmann was too busy noticing that the room was falling swiftly up. How interesting, he thought, lying on the floor" (55). Always loved this scene.
"Be what you are, bury what you are not" (76).
"Inside redness, inside blindness, Douglas lay listening to the dim piston of his heart and the muddy ebb and flow of the blood in his arms and legs" (213). Wow. outstanding.
"The kitchen, without doubt was the center of creation, all things revolved about it; it was the pediment that sustained the temple" (223).
Great words: Portentously, languorous, implacable, stealthily, effluvium, toothsome, sere. So many great metaphors and similes, too.
Final Summation: This is a great work of fiction about boys being boys without electronics in the days that boys and men celebrated their masculinity in authentic ways, and I can't wait to share it with mine.
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