Customer Reviews

Driving Blind

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As with most short story collections the quality varies here a little bit but the great thing is that it doesn't vary all that much. Most of the stories here are prime Bradbury, part nostalgia, part fantastic but possessing a charm that nobody else can really quite emulate. Science fiction fans won't find much here to please them if that's all they're looking for but everyone else should be able to find something to satisify them. The stories ran the gamut from funny to senimental to slightly creepy to serious to just downright weird, all of them told in his by now fairly unique style. Most of the stories read very quickly and some come off as slight because of that, like they're sketches for an idea that might have been expanded into a short story later but even the slimmest tales have something to recommend them. For a man who should be years past his peak, this isn't bad at all and borders on excellent, many of these stories are tales you'll remember long after you've closed the book and set it aside. A fine addition to his canon and the best example that the truly great writers never stop producing fine stuff.

If you are accustomed to Bradbury's Science Fiction writing and are expecting more of the same, you will be apt to be disappointed by Driving Blind. With the exception of the short story "Mr. Pale" this book deals with pure earth-bound fiction with bits of American trivia thrown in the mash. Incidentally, Mr. Pale may be one of the stronger stories of the book, but most stories are thinkers. Some may leave you wondering "what was that all about?" (Only to discover what it was about a few hours later when it registers.) The book when read complete and finished with Bradbury's "Brief Afterward" will make a lot more sense after completion, perhaps. I have a hard time ranking it either a 3 or 4, being generous I give it a four but I'd prefer a 3.5 for this effort. The writing is strong and often critiques, albeit vaguely, modern life. This is no Fahrenheit 451 but it's worth reading and it's light and easy to pick up on the commuter train without stressing your brain cells too much. Somewhat serious, somewhat funny, it covers a broad range of topics.

Bradbury, eighty this year, continues to produce imaginative, entertaining fiction. The stories in DRIVING BLIND resound earlier themes and concerns - youth encountering experience, the destructiveness of technology, and the mysteries and wonders of a small time circus - but Bradbury renders it all with the same loving detail and love of language that have made him one of the most distinguished American storytellers of the last half century. Recommended for a hot summer evening.

Ray Bradbury is like your favorite uncle. He is full of wonderous stories that as a kid, you never get tired of hearing. Once again he puts together a wonderfull set of stories. I have rated this book 4 stars although it is actually 4 1/2 stars. Not a miss among the entire group. My only gripe with the book is that he has only one science fiction story and calling that one is a stretch. He writes about a small circus who the ticket taker is also the star and chief cook and bottle washer and how the picked on kid in school grows up to be important. My two favorite stories are "Driving Blind" about a mysterious man wearing a sack over his head and "Night Train to Babylon" about men on a train intent on losing their money on a rigged game of three card montey. It is amazing that he can turn out the quality of work he has after more than fifty years. This set of stories is less somber than some of his other short story collections and can actually be compared to "Dandelion Wine" in its feeling. Bradbury is still celebrating life and I hope he does for another fifty years. This book is fun and well worth the reading.

I love the works of Ray Bradbury, ever since High school when we had to read Fahrenheit 451. I have enjoyed many of his stories, when I settled in with this one however, I found myself disapointed. Most of these stories were so unlike his well written classics.

I found them lacking his usual talented works and became bored reading them. There were a few stories in here that I found all right, but I probably will never pick this book up again, only maybe to dust it off once in awhile and place with rest of my well read Bradbury collection.

I picked up this book because I am a science fiction fan, and Bradbury is one of the acknowledged masters of the genre. Instead of sci-fi, I got short fiction in the style of the magical realists. Rather than being disappointed though, I am grateful that to have been exposed to the other side of this great author.

The stories in this volume are short, succinct, and often inexplicably sad. One features a traveling salesman who never takes a bag off his head. Another has the protagonist discover, while browsing yearbooks, that the same people are being born over and over again. Even those few stories with no fantastic element feel somehow otherworldly, as if the event described could only take place with the active intervention of an author, and yet are too plausible to deny out of hand. I realize that this is neither helpful nor descriptive, but the writing in this book brings on exactly that feeling of confusion and unfocus.

And yet after reading (or re-reading) each story I always found myself sitting there and thinking about it for minutes afterwards. I would think about what I had just read and then find myself contemplating some fine point of philosophy that had never occurred to me before. Sometimes these would be happy thoughts, more often sad, but wherever "Driving Blind" led me I was willing to go, at least for a little while. This is a haunting and though provoking volume that shows that a good author knows no genre.

Ray Bradbury is the master of the short story, and these 21 miniatures -- "short shorts" -- are among his best. Most are no more than a page or two in length. They get in, deliver, and finish with the implications and the thinking about it afterwards left up to the reader. It is a partnership, with the reader filling in the missing bits which are implied but never expressed by the author. So while the stories themselves are easy enough to skim through in short order, you'll spend days afterward realizing the implications of what you've read. I like it when an author involves the reader like that.

Every time I start a Bradbury short story collection, I find myself greatly disappointed, but then, about halfway through I start to like more and more of the stories. I'm not sure if he deliberately puts his stronger stuff at the end, or if it's merely something like me readjusting to his victorian euphoric style. Overall, I did enjoy it. And the last story "That Bird that Comes Out of the Clock" was absolutely wonderful, and at the very least I will recommend that one story to many.

In this volume, Bradbury delivers his best short fiction since his remarkable collection, The Toynbee Convector. Some stories in Driving Blind are a bit bolder than much of Bradbury's previous work in the 1990s. Driving Blind has proven that Bradbury is still able to dish out some of the best short fiction of all time. He is truly a living legend.

I picked this up in a bookstore having read only one other Bradbury work - The Martian Chronicles. There were several stories that could have been made into a Twilight Zone or Dark Side episode. Nothing Changes is a twisted view of the gene pool. Fee Fie Foe Fum could almost pass as a Stephen King plot. Madame et Monsieur Shill is weirdly disturbing. Perhaps my favorite was The Highest Branch on the Tree. I loved all of them. I highly recommend Driving Blind and can't wait to read other Bradbury works.