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Farewell Summer LP

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A measure of how much I was drawn into this book is the fact that I picked it up at 2:00 in the afternoon- and by 9:00 that same evening I had finished it. I hope that Mr. Bradbury will not be upset that I felt compelled to finish in one afternoon what it took him 55 years to complete. It must be nearly 35 years ago now that I first read Dandelion Wine. I have lost track of the number of summers that I have reread it since. This book is a continuation of that unusually prolonged summer of 1928.

While this book's predecessor is the penultimate anthem of eternal youth (second only to Huckleberry Finn) this second part is...different. Here, Douglas Spaulding runs up against adulthood in more ways than one (perhaps it was that fever that he suffered late in the first book.) He starts out by waging war against time and its avatars in Green Town. He ends up by accepting that time and life must flow or be frozen into an unnatural caricature of life. Both 13 year-old Douglas and his 81 year-old nemesis Calvin Quartermain come to realize this. Puer aeternus and "hold-fast the dragon" come to see themselves through each other's eyes- and time and life begin their natural flow once again.

There are many references here to the characters and events of the first book- if you loved it you will find much in this second book to please you. However, the spirits of the two books are really quite different. I do not find this objectionable since it saves Douglas Spaulding from becoming a sort of eternal Peter Pan. Childhood can be magical, it should be remembered fondly and not sealed in or out, but you can't stay in that state forever.

A word about the conclusion- if you can keep a straight face as the two main characters each say goodbye and hello to their "little friend" respectively then you are one up on me...

What a great time to release a gentle gem like this --- a nostalgic tale set in October that shares its longing with the real-time October going on all around us.

I can honestly say that my emotive brain "composed" its thoughts on FAREWELL SUMMER in the midst of summer's waning breath, as we worked this week to clean up the nearly leafless orchard for another season. As I raked and carried mound after mound of leaves and twigs, I felt myself wholly embraced by the scene of bright, low-angled sunshine, cool northwest breezes, and a long slate line of snow-bearing clouds looming just beyond the old abandoned rail line to Princeton, Ontario.

In this charming sequel to his equally memorable DANDELION WINE of half a century ago, Bradbury has returned to the lives of his teenage boy characters, still on the verge of puberty in small-town America. His fictitious Green Town, Illinois could be Berea, Ohio, or Gimli, Manitoba, or my familiar Princeton, Ontario --- any one of thousands of places that were once (or still are) imbued with a culture that understands change yet tenaciously protects old-fashioned values like character and loyalty. And no matter who you are or how long your family has lived in one place, those small town values don't simply come along with rural genes; they have to be experienced, absorbed and learned by each new generation.

That's the delicate and essential space Bradbury has so charmingly re-visited in FAREWELL SUMMER, as Doug and his little "gang" wage a mini-war of wits against several local elders who wield power on the school board and at city hall. A series of boyish pranks culminates in the most daring escapade of all --- an elaborately planned night-time assault on the town hall clock. Stop time, and you stop the inevitable decline of life that looms with approaching adulthood --- or so Doug and his pals have figured it! But of course, the curmudgeonly old folks still remember the lovely wild dreams of their own youth, and a combination of coincidences and consequences catch up with the boys and show them another side of their onetime "enemies."

This is how Bradbury has caught the essence of that complex yet evocative transition between childhood and a new level of awareness that comes with responsibility and self-worth. One day Doug and his cohorts, much older and wiser, would tough it out with a new generation and in turn take on the role of wise and eccentric elders who figure so prophetically in the young boys' lives.

Bradbury easily could have exploited the archetypal generation-gap conflict that is a mainstay of so much literature and created a story with predictable proportions of humor, nostalgia, tension, conflict, winners and losers. But as his numerous fans in so many genres already know, that's just so much superficial "stuff" on his palette.

The same Ray Bradbury who strides across undiscovered universes to find the footprints of God is just as adept with the comparative microcosm of a little town basking in golden autumn light and fallen leaves, a place where lives aren't as simple and tranquil as in a Norman Rockwell or Peter Etril Snyder (for we Canadians!) painting.

Here, practical jokes and profound wisdom make peace with one another, and all of Bradbury's characters, young and elderly, finally stand together amid the sweet expiration of memory and delight that was summer --- and will be again.

--- Reviewed by Pauline Finch (paulinefinch@rogers.com)

I first read Dandelion Wine when I was 16 in 1967. Now, almost 40 years later, this sequel is profound and bittersweet. I wish the story went on further (it only takes about 90 miutes to read), but any trip back to Green Town is always worth it! October is the perfect month to read this book too.Bradbury's reflections on youth and mortality surely mirrors his own current thoughts, as he just turned 86 on August 22.If this is his literary finale (and I pray it is not!), it is indeed fitting --- lyrical, deeply resonant, and filled with wisdom collected from a lifetime of joy and struggle. Ray reminds us that "life is an ice cream cone", so savor its preciousness and its fleeting quality and its rich goodness, and love and share the forever summer that resides in all of our souls...

What a perfect way to cap his vocation! Hasn't Ray's entire magnificent journey led up to this final magnificent metaphor: the eyes of youth looking through the eyes of age, and the eyes of age looking back through the eyes of youth? And, in the words of Ray's greatest poem, the recognition of each by each: "I remember you". I REMEMBER YOU!!! For his entire life Ray has been writing about youth and age, life and death, and now he puts in the crowning piece of this dream between two sleeps that we call a lifetime. May you continue on to write more stories, poems, books, Ray, but remember this: come what may, so long as people read, here, on Mars, wherever, we'll remember you. And, we may not know all that may be coming, but be it as it may, we'll go to it laughing.

"Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave."

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "A Psalm of Life"

In "Farewell Summer," the eagerly anticipated sequel to "Dandelion Wine" (1957), Ray Bradbury takes us back to Green Town, the fictional version of his boyhood hometown, Waukegan, Illinois.

It's Indian Summer in Green Town, but the trees have changed their colors and the night wind tells us it's autumn, with winter not far behind. The passing of the seasons signal the transit from childhood and youth to middle age, old age, and death.

The central character in "Farewell Summer," Douglas Hinkston Spaulding, 14, is two years older than he was in "Dandelion Wine," as is, of course, his brother Tom, now 12. Like Peter Pan, the boys take a dim view of old age and seek to remain eternally young.

Doug and Tom, and their sidekicks--Charlie, Will, Bo, Henry, Sam, Ralph, and Pete--make a solemn pact to resist the elders who run their town. The boys envision themselves as pawns being pushed around on the old men's chessboards, and perceive the ominous tolling of the giant courthouse clock as measuring the hours of their lives.

Although stout and brave, the boys' hearts, like muffled drums, are beating funeral marches to the grave. Perhaps, if they could silence that courthouse clock, they could arrest time in its flight.

Dividing his novella into three sections--"Almost Antietam," "Shiloh and Beyond," and "Appomattox"--Bradbury shapes the narrative of "Farewell Summer" into a story of a civil war between the old geezers and the young upstarts.

At the head of the enemy forces is Calvin C. Quartermain, 81, chairman of the school board, which passes draconian legislation restricting the freedom of the young. The boys shudder at the sight of Quartermain and the other old men who run the town.

In their puerile and futile quest for immortality, the avoidance of old age and death, "The Great Army of the Republic," led by Doug as their general, maps out the strategies and tactics of various military campaigns, such as purloining the old men's chess pieces from the tables in Green Town Park and sabotaging with firecrackers the giant clock in the courthouse square.

The turning point of the tale occurs (gasp!) when Doug fraternizes with the enemy, offering a piece of birthday cake to Calvin C. Quartermain. And then a strange thing happens: the town Grinch has an epiphany, He begins to see Doug and the other youngsters through the eyes of his own youth.

In the final section of the book, "Appomattox," a truce of sorts is called by the combatants, with old and young grudgingly realizing, and admitting, the perspective of their foes. Chastened and somewhat dazed, neither side can decide who won or lost. Perhaps both sides won. Perhaps both sides lost.

As I read "Farewell Summer," I kept thinking of Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," and the escapades of young boys growing up in a world characterized by complicated power struggles, ruthless oppression of the weak by the strong, and strange ideas of what it means to be moral.

A slight book in length, "Farewell Summer" is, at least on the surface, a charming and heartwarming tale, a coming-of-age story and a nostalgic trip into a vanished Midwestern world.

Beneath the surface antics of the protagonists and antagonists, however, there lurks an undercurrent of existential angst--of the brevity and uncertainty of life and the inevitability of death. Bradbury's points are: "Memento mori" ("Remember that you are mortal") and "Sic transit gloria mundi" ("Thus passes the glory of the world").

One of Quartermain's friends, a Mr. Bleak, preaches to him on the folly of stubbornly holding on to the past: "Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You've got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it. It's like boats. You keep your motor on so you can steer with the current. And when you hear the sound of the waterfall roaring nearer and nearer, tidy up the boat, put on your best tie and hat, and smoke a cigar right up till the moment you go away. That's a triumph. Don't argue with the cataract."

Ray Bradbury, 86, one of the most prolific and celebrated fiction writers of our time, has published more than thirty books, close to 600 short stories, and numerous poems, essays, and plays.

Bradbury was born August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, and now lives in Los Angeles. Among his best known works are Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Judging from his latest book, Bradbury retains, even in old age, a youthful spirit. Rather than rage against the dying of the light, he celebrates his great fortune to have been an actor in the great drama of life, however the tragic last act may be.

In an interview with Bradbury, Allen Pierleoni (a staff writer for The Sacramento Bee) asked, "Have you given any thought to a fitting epitaph?" Bradbury replied, "Oh, God ... it should read, 'Here lies a man who loved life from beginning to end, and he's sorry that the goddamn thing is over.'"

(3.5 stars) Though this may be a sequel to Dandelion Wine in terms of philosophy and message, it is far different in tone and style from that wonderfully nostalgic look at rural life in the late 1920s. Dandelion Wine straddles the magical line between reality and imagination, conjuring up images with which every reader can identify and allowing readers to draw important conclusions about life from the gentle depictions of life we see in the novel. Farewell Summer, however, is an allegory, heavily symbolic from the outset--and much darker--missing the warmth, love, and light touch which make Dandelion Wine so charming.

That contrast can be felt especially in the first few pages, in which Doug and his friends (now aged twelve) decide not to grow old, to stay the age they are. Doug believes that the old are "another race...Aliens. Evil. And we're the slaves they keep for nefarious odd jobs and punishments," a much harsher judgment than anything one finds in Dandelion Wine. The boys and the elderly residents of town (most of whom are involved on the school board) go to war with each other, and one of the elderly is killed during the first skirmish (in the book's first twenty pages), a bleak outcome. And if that war is not symbolic enough, the boys also decide to kill the town clock with firecrackers.

Familiar elements from Dandelion Wine continue here--the ravine, which bisects the town, plays an important role, as does the haunted house. The boys are a bit older, however, and when one of the old men gives a birthday party at the lakefront for his grand-niece, and Douglas gets kissed for the first time, the effects of adolescence on the boys become obvious. In a strange interlude, the sexual awakening of the boys is contrasted with the sexual decline of the old men. Some communication between young and old does take place late in the book, but the lessons learned feel very much like lessons taught.

Bradbury says in the Afterword that for fifty-five years, he worked on this sequel to Dandelion Wine, until "I felt it was correct to send it out into the world." He does bring his philosophy full circle here, and he does bring Doug into the adult world, but the charm and the subtlety of the first book get lost in the allegory and obvious symbolism of its sequel. n Mary Whipple

Now in his mid 80s, at the close of a long, and most productive, career in American letters, Ray Bradbury has finally offered a tantalizing, moving sequel to his great novel on youth, "Dandelion Wine", which is once more a return visit to the fictitious town of Green Town, Illinois (Actually Bradbury's boyhood home of Waukegan, Illinois), meeting up once more with Douglas Spaulding, his brother Tom, and their friends, two years after the events chronicled in Bradbury's earlier literary triumph. Much to my surprise, Bradbury doesn't disappoint, offering a most fitting sequel to "Dandelion Wine", with the same graceful, lyrical prose that defined that earlier novel - and I might add, so much of his great work from the 1950s - but with a somewhat more somber, darker atmosphere, as the boys finally confront both the passage of time and their own impending adulthood. Moreover, Bradbury still demonstrates that he is still both a most persuasive spinner of tales and an elegant observer of the human condition, capturing well the nuanced, elaborate personal relationships between the young and old, and between boys and girls.

Spaulding is now the leader of a "Grand Army of the Republic", in which he and his friends undertake several dastardly mischevious raids against the town's senior citizens, most notably the dictator of the local school board, Calvin C. Quatermain. Time and again, young Doug Spaulding leads his friends in brilliantly conceived raids in the vain hope of trying to stop the passage of time, thinking that they could live forever as twelve year old boys. And then suddenly, unexpectedly, Doug has a moment of epiphany which leads to an unexpected truce, and then, a brief friendship with Quatermain, an 81 year-old bachelor, who sees in young Doug, a brief reflection of his own youthful self many, many years ago. And Doug is also unexpectedly soon caught up in the mystique and magic of girls, getting his own first kiss from one in a rather unique, most surprising, manner.

Does "Farewell Summer" rank alongside Bradbury's best works of fiction, like, for example, "Something Wicked This Way Comes", "The Illustrated Man", or "The Martian Chronicles"? I suppose a thoughtful, extremely erudite, critic of Bradbury's work might be inclined to say "No", but I would hope that such a critic would agree that Bradbury hasn't lost his superb skills in both storytelling and in writing elegant, lyrical prose. Regardless, Bradbury's latest, short novel, remains a most fitting sequel to "Dandelion Wine", and perhaps, a most fitting conclusion to a splendid literary career which has crossed genres from pulp science fiction to mainstream literature, earning Bradbury ample recognition and praise as one of our finest contemporary writers of fiction.

While I personally could not call anything that Bradbury has written "bad," this book doesn't meet the expectations of a sequel/continuation of the literary masterpiece that "Dandelion Wine" is. There are glimpses of the beauty of its predeccesor here--some moments where Bradbury touches your inner child, takes you back to your youth and fills you with the stuff of life. However, such moments are the exception and not the rule in this book. The plot is rather simple for Bradbury and the books moves rather slowly. This book is worth reading if you are a Bradbury fan, but you can tell that his writing simply isn't as strong as it was when he was in his prime (some 30-40 years ago now). For those who are ambivalent about Bradbury, you can safely pass on reading this one.

I read this book in one sitting, just over a month ago, and I'm still finding it hard to put it in words just how powerful it was for me. I had just read Dandelion Wine and moved straight on into Farewell Summer. The cumulative effect was nothing less than awe-inspireing, and I really think it's how you should go about reading the two works, almost as one. Dandelion Wine is without a doubt a masterpiece, and is told as a novel made up of short stories. Farewell Summer is a more concise story, and more of a straight forward novel. While they both deal with the topics of youth and mortality, they each come from a slightly different perspective. Dandelion Wine was written fifty years ago in Bradbury's youth, while Farewell Summer comes to us in his later years. In the end they act as bookends on a topic that is dear, and dreadful to all of us, and perfectly told in Bradbury's magical, poetic style. Read them, back to back, at the end of August, as summer slowly begins to fade. Think about your childhood, and ponder your old age. If you aren't moved, then check your pulse. If it's still there, pay very close attention to it. It's what it's all about.

Although not as good as Dandelion Wine, Farewell Summer is still a magical novel, though much darker. Some of the chapters here feel like filler (and I will admit, there was some filler in Dandelion Wine) and the book feels too short. However, it is a worthy extension to a great book, and some of the themes in this book are pulled off quite well. Bradbury's superb writing skills excel this book to a 4-star rating.