nouveau

the timeless and eternal Ray Bradbury, with over half a million ratings on Goodreads for [b:Fahrenheit 451|4381|Fahrenheit 451|Ray Bradbury|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1351643740s/4381.jpg|1272463] alone, is America's bard, troubadour of the eternally green-treed Midwest, architect of midnight carnivals and fog-bound Venice, scribe of Los Angeles Hollywood and spokesperson for the written word. an innocent and a chronicler of innocence; a 27-book novelist and short story master; THE Ray Bradbury; the ambassador between 50s gee-whiz amazing stories and golden science fiction and the post-modern world, a frequent assignment for high school classes nationwide and a savant, an artist, and capital-W Writer. translated into 36, 3-6 languages.

to capture, eternally, a summer day in forever green Illinois is the achievement of Dandelion Wine. to find, within its characters, emblems of every preceding decade and that miracle moment between the old American and the new, that is Dandelion Wine. it is a triumph of lyricism. BUT...

Bradbury works, and he doesn't. either you buy in, either America is always apple pie and ice cream and innocence or it is, so to speak, just one face of the American Experience to 'Believe' in Bradbury. to see him as the poet laureate of the heartland. and he himself points out in Zen and the Art of Writing, Thomas Wolfe works... and then one day he doesn't. Jack Kerouac is like liquid fire when you're seventeen; by twenty-seven you're starting to lose the magic. and in the same way, no critic or examiner of the written word can ignore Bradbury, but he can never be everything or always.