I told someone once that Ray Bradbury's short stories can stand on their own two feet. I still don't really know what I mean by that, but his stories are possibly some of the most beautiful I've read in my life. I read Fahrenheit 451 in ninth grade, and wasn't really impressed. I was in the UK over the summer, and I spent 20 pounds on The Stories of Ray Bradbury in Waterstones. God knows why, really. It's the big Everyman's Library edition that comes with a built-in bookmark, so I was charmed by that or his cute little grandfatherly face on the cover. Either way, it was the best purchase I've made in a long time. I find it kind of funny that I only ever really learned to appreciate this classic American author when I was in England. I read every Bradbury book I could get my hands on after I read that anthology. Something Wicked This Way Comes, Dandelion Wine, The Martian Chronicles, The Toynbee Convector, October Country. I made one of the long-suffering librarians at my local library get a copy of From the Dust Returned out of storage for me. I found another 100-story collection of his in B&N, and I spent $25 on it because I have no self control.
I'm rambling a bit, but I really made this post to talk about two short stories from the original collection that I read. I could talk about the inventive creepiness of The Small Assassin, or the way The Lake made me cry, or the way The Scythe chilled me to the core. But I deeply loved two stories in that collection that I don't see getting a lot of attention online, so I wanted to word-vomit about them. Just slightly hehe.
The Great Wide World Over There has no fantastical elements, and at face-value, it seemed like the kind of mundane little story I could've easily overlooked. A woman's nephew comes to visit her rural town for a month, and he writes letters for her. That's the premise. But with his usual talent, Bradbury turned that premise into something deeply nuanced, and it's stayed with me for a long time after I read it. I don't think a short story has ever lingered like this in my mind.
Cora Gibbs, the protag, is illiterate, and her nephew's presence allows her to interact with the 'great wide world' referenced in the title. She watches him write to random people in the phonebook, to dime novel companies and correspondence courses and history flyers. Her world has opened up, and she isn't isolated anymore. Her mailbox is full, and she pities the proud neighbor next door who has recycled the same letter for years to pretend that she, too, gets mail. There was also an interesting moment when Cora's nephew painted her name on the new mailbox and had to reassure her similarly illiterate husband that it was, in fact, 'Mr. Gibbs' painted there.
Cora dictates letters to her nephew, striking up friendships with people who post random newspaper ads, and getting mail from all around the country. And then her nephew leaves, and she can no longer read the letters that come in the mailbox, and then the letters stop coming. I can truly say that this was the first story I've ever read that made me grateful to be literate. The thought of this woman who had experienced a taste of the world opening up only to have it ripped away because she cannot read? In a very short story, Bradbury managed to convey a deeply human tragedy that made me shudder, and then made me thankful for the ability to even read his words.
Have I Got a Chocolate Bar For You! is another story with a deceptively simple concept. A young man who is addicted to chocolate goes to confession to ask the grouchy old priest for advice. Some moments were comic (the man's final confession to the priest is that he is, in fact, a Jew-but an Irish Jew), but most of this story was bittersweet, just like the best chocolate. Honestly, I wracked my mind trying to find out what the 'message' of this story was, and I think it's woven in there somewhere. Maybe I'll find it in a year or two or ten. Maybe I'll never find it. The young man eventually sends the priest a chocolate bar he had blessed by the Pope. Maybe I'll do what the priest did with that chocolate bar, and take out this story when despair is smothering me, and take the tiniest nibble out of it. I hope that I'll find it as incredibly sweet as I do now.
Now, all this is really just to say that I somehow have to convince my family to take a vacation to Waukegan, Illinois...
And thanks for reading my ramblings. Are there any underrated Ray Bradbury books/stories you particularly love?
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