My favorite author died
today. I had sort of forgotten that he held that distinction in my
life. I had convinced myself for a while that it was now Michael
Chabon, that I had grown beyond the days when Ray Bradbury was #1,
but his death brought it all back. There is no author I have read
more of. There is no author who has had a deeper impact on my
emotions and on my development as a person. And while I've enjoyed
everything I've read of his, no book has ever changed me as much as
Dandelion Wine. So this
will not be an obituary for Ray; this will be a celebration of what I
believe to be his greatest work.
Dandelion Wine
is the story of a summer, told through the eyes of Douglas Spaulding.
Douglas is a boy about to hit adolescence and excited for the season
ahead. It starts out as a celebration of the joys of boyhood and
life, but as the summer goes on certain things start to fall apart.
The trolley that the boys love closes down. Their favorite machine
at the arcade breaks. Douglas' best friend moves away. Each
individual moment is small, but as they pile on they build up to a
breakdown, as Douglas comes to the realization that everything in
life ends. And as Douglas works through that he begins the
transition from boy to man.
I always thought my love of Dandelion
Wine was a little obscure.
When you think of Bradbury you think of Fahrenheit 451,
The Martian Chronicles,
and Something Wicked This Way Comes,
in that order. But it turns out there is a strong following of
passionate lovers of this book. It makes sense; I read it and it
touched me deeply. Inspired by its tale of youth and life I've
traveled to Chicago to see a children's theater adaptation of the
story, road-tripped to Waukegan, Illinois to hunt down locations from
the book, searched far and wide for the eponymous wine, and I even
wrote a mediocre piece for piano and double bass based on an excerpt
of the book in a 20th
century music class. Turns out I'm not the only one. I found a
tumblr today where people simply post their favorite quotes from the
book. Reading through and seeing how many of these favorite quotes
were my favorites as well, I was deeply moved by the way a story can
affect so many different people. I'm not ashamed to admit that as I
scrolled through I cried for about 20 minutes straight.
In my lifetime I've owned probably
seven or eight copies of Dandelion Wine.
At one point I envisioned myself forming a collection, one copy of
every edition ever released. So I hunted through used book stores,
always going immediately to the science fiction section (an incorrect
classification that greatly frustrated both myself and Mr. Bradbury)
with my fingers crossed that I'd have the chance to drop another 2.50
on some yellowed paperback. But they never stayed in my possession
long. Whenever I found someone struggling in life, someone caught in
the limbo between the joy and the despair, I gave them a copy and
told them to read it. And when they tried to give it back, I told
them to pass it on to someone else. Almost everyone who has made it
through high school owns a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird
and Catcher in the Rye;
everyone should
own a copy of Dandelion Wine.
Because I honestly
believe this book is - to steal a title from one of Bradbury's short
story collections – a medicine for melancholy.
I have never found a better description
of depression than Douglas' experience near the end of Dandelion
Wine. He is running a very
high fever, is deathly ill and – in the world before air
conditioning – his family is forced to put his bed out on the front
lawn to try and cool him and keep him alive. But it is not the fever
that is killing him. It is his realization, moving out of childhood
and into adolescence, of what life really is. Your friends move
away. The toys you love break and the places you love close down.
Your grandparents die. Your parents die. You die. Summer does not
last, no matter how tight you hold on. Life is hard, and life is
sad, and there is nothing you can do about it.
But
every part of life is essential. You embrace the good with the bad.
The sadness, the pain, it is just like the bitterness of the
dandelion wine. But you drink it anyway, because it reminds you of
summer, it reminds you of the joy and the power of life:
I want to feel all there is to feel, he thought. Let me feel tired, now, let me feel tired. I mustn't forget, I'm alive, I know I'm alive, I mustn't forget it tonight or tomorrow or the day after that.
Douglas
is saved by the junkman, Mr. Jonas. who carries around a cart of
oddities to trade and sell. He gives Douglas vials of air from
exotic locations all over the world, to restore his life. But it is
not the magical air that saves Douglas, it is Mr. Jonas' magical
words. The wisdom that Douglas is not alone in feeling the crushing
weight of the world. He tells him, in my absolute favorite quote
from the book:
Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one of them.
It
is this knowledge that heals our protagonist. And it is this
knowledge that has healed me, again and again and again. Thank you,
Mr. Bradbury. Thank you for telling an adolescent, and for now
reminding a man that, yes, it is okay to feel this way. It is okay
to be this way. We can't have summer without fall. We can't have
life without sadness. Everyone dies. But it still sucks that you
had to. I'll be thinking of you this summer as I run and swim and
jump and love and laugh and try my damnedest to stay a kid until I'm
91.
