Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Dandelion Wine Wedding

I've read Dandelion Wine. I've read its disappointing sequel Farewell Summer. I've read Summer Morning, Summer Night, the collection of Dandelion Wine leftovers.

I've read Dandelion Wine, the play; and heard the radio drama version.

I've seen (but didn't understand) the Russian TV miniseries based on Dandelion Wine.

But I've never heard of a Dandelion Wine wedding.

Until now.



And if that wasn't weird enough, here's a video for a song called "Bradbury", performed by an Argentinian band. Look out for Bradbury's face!




2 comments:

John J. Walsh IV said...

Really? You found Farewell Summer to be a disappointing sequel? That book had some of the most profound impacts on me of all of Ray's works! I read Dandelion Wine as a boy, and Farewell Summer as a man, and, with that, Ray slammed me between the eyes with what has become (for me) the most implanted of all his metaphors: the passage of time and experience through generations. Looking back now, I probably owe that book for my first collected stories, without even knowing it.

Defense of a favorite book aside, the wedding is such a wonderful idea! If I wasn't so madly in love with autumn, I'd probably adopt this for my own future wedding.

Thank you for sharing all these wonderful finds. I absolutely love this site!

Phil said...

Hi John,

Dandelion Wine and Farewell Summer were conceived as a single book (and not as "part one" and "part two", but more intertwining). I just think that the stronger material ended up in DW, and the lesser material in FS. Certainly DW is more unified, whereas FS seems more stitched together out of fragments.

I don't think FS is a bad book, just not as sparkling as DW. I was much more enchanted by Somewhere A Band Is Playing, which is another Bradbury piece written in the 1950s but held back from publication until the 2000s.

Thanks for the praise for the site. I quite like it myself!