Between August 2023 and April 2024 I worked my way through a wonderful anthology of short stories called That Glimpse of Truth, selected by David Miller. I had never really paid much attention to short stories prior to that but I found that I really enjoyed the experience and greatly appreciated the skill of some of the writers who were able to pack so much into such short works. As a follow up, and inspired partly by a childhood memory of watching a television adaptation of The Martian Chronicles, I decided to return to the genre with a big fat volume of The Stories of Ray Bradbury.
I had a bit of a false start with Bradbury’s work, reading just a two or three of his earlier stories and not quite getting the measure of them, but I returned to the task and started afresh towards the end of last November (2024). Whenever my schedule allowed, I read one story as part of my morning reading each day, and so it took me until April complete all 100 of the stories that were included in the compendium.
Reading Bradbury’s short stories turned out to be a really wonderful experience. They fall under several themes – stories centred on an outwardly normal family of vampires, stories that chronicle Bradbury’s imagined colonization of Mars, and probably my favourites, the stories set in small towns in the backwaters of America. All were written in the period 1940-1970ish and often focus on the impact that new or imagined technologies have on fairly ordinary people. Often the stories are very much of their time, reflecting moral positions and biases that we have (mostly) replaced since the words were sent down onto the page. It was notable how often Bradbury’s stories revolved around a somewhat unhappy married couple and, alarmingly, how many times such stories ended with the death of one or other partner, often in quite shocking circumstances. The story in which a husband removes his wife from his life by getting her to turn herself inside out is really quite something…
Unfortunately, I didn’t keep a list of my favourite stories, but I did keep track of some of the passages that particularly caught my attention or resonated with me for some reason and so, in no particular order, I will include these below. I am quite sure that I will re-read this compendium again at some point and I am also quite sure that when I do I will add many more examples to my list!
‘It was a day to be out of bed, to pull curtains and fling open windows. It was a day to make your heart bigger with warm mountain air.‘
(Opening lines of The Great Wide World Over There, 1952)
‘“How do you rest?”
She stopped. It sounded very bad. It sounded so much like an accusation, but it was not, really.
…
“Why didn’t I ever catch it from you?” she said at last.
He laughed a little bit softly. “Catch what?”
“I caught everything else. You shook me up and down in other ways. I didn’t know anything but what you taught me.”‘
(from Powerhouse, 1948)
‘And she decided, as sleep assumed the dreaming for her, that yes, yes indeed, very much so, irrevocably, this was as it had always been and would forever continue to be.‘
(from The Wilderness, 1952)
‘There was a long pause, full of stars and time, a waiting pause not unlike the last three years for all of them. And now the moment had arrived, it was Janice’s turn…‘
(from The Wilderness, 1952)
‘“So be careful. Stay on the Path. Never step off!”‘
(from A Sound of Thunder, 1952)
‘“Do we deserve this?” she said.
“It’s not a matter of deserving; it’s just that things didn’t work out.”‘
(from The Last Night of the World, 1951)
‘“Let me finish; not to make money, no. Not to see the sights, no. Those are the lies men tell, the fancy reasons they give themselves. Get rich, get famous, they say. Have fun, jump around, they say. But all the while, inside, something else is ticking along the way it ticks in salmon and whales, the way it ticks, by God, in the smallest microbe you want to name. And that little clock that ticks in everything living, you know what it says? It says get away, spread out, move along, keep swimming.”‘
(from The Strawberry Window, 1954)
‘Nor did they ponder the fact that if man dares dip into that stream he grabs a wonder in each hand…‘
(from The Picasso Summer , 1957)
Ah, those last two. What lines… such vast nuggets of wisdom hidden away in such unassuming stories; little gems, that reward the reader with their sparkling form and serve as beacons to light a path through life. Magic words…
…get away, spread out, move along, keep swimming…
…nor did they ponder the fact that if man dares dip into that stream he grabs a wonder in each hand…
Tim O'Hare 