Magic

I finished Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. Another first re-reading for me.

I was worried about the book holding up to my memory of it but I shouldn’t have. It doesn’t really matter that it’s been more than 40 years since I read it or that the book is even older than that. The setting is really a character in itself and the book can be read as an historical novel so it doesn’t feel outdated.

My memory of the details was incomplete, which also didn’t matter. More important was that my memory of the sense of wonder was accurate and rewarded by the re-read. I can get as much out of it as I did as a 10 year old because there is still a message in the story for me. And it is such amazing, unabashed and barely restrained fantastic literature that the magic just can’t be contained.

And really, I shouldn’t have worried anyway because the book is all about memory.

The characters and the setting are archetypes of reality revealed in a memory of one essential time and place. It’s set in one year, represents all of time and is anchored in the present – that memory of the all important now is what is essential. The present is composed of the past and our memories of it, we can’t escape it nor should we try.

Of course the story is also about desire and fear and the corruption and predation of life. But in that it is a history of humanity that holds an admonition not only to recall the lessons of the past so that we will not succumb to its deceits but also to remember our own nature.

Read the last line of the book. We may live in cities now but we came from the wild and that is still in our blood. It must be recognized and controlled. We forget who we are and our past at our own peril because the memory of our own dark past flows in our veins.

And no one can write this sort of thing like Ray Bradbury.