Something Wicked This Way Comes: A Novel

Ray Bradbury, like the picturesque old libraries or city halls found in many a marginalized American small town, was so ubiquitous that I often felt he was taken for granted. He was such a fixture of the literary landscape for so long, lauded as one of our great prose stylists and narrative dreamers so often, that it was easy to forget he was there. Comfy old chair-like ubiquity aside, Mr. Bradbury's work remained moving, vital, and fresh right until the very end.

Something Wicked This Way Comes has been a favorite novel of mine since my early twenties, when I finally got around to reading it. On the surface, Bradbury's nostalgiac Middle American nightmare is simply a dark and evocative fable of childhood; a precursor to every evil-threatens-a-small-town novel written by Stephen King or Dean Koontz or anyone who followed in their footsteps. It is the story of two boys--Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade--twelve years old, on the cusp of adulthood, suddenly faced with temptation and damnation when a devilish autumn carnival invades their picturesque little Midwest town. Little by little, Will and Jim discover that the delights promised by the carnival (led by the sinister Mr. Dark, covered in moving tattoos representing the many souls he's dragged to perdition) are thorny roses to say the least, wishes granted with terrible fine print folded into their infernal contracts.

In deft, evocative, poetic prose, Bradbury paints a vivid and memorable portrait of a serene if static world invaded by a malign and alien influence, insidious precisely because it uses the all-too-human frailties of the townsfolk against them. Perhaps most impressive is the master's ability to entice the reader with nostalgia, then use those very objects of nostalgia to instill pity and terror equal to any Greek tragedy. For a man renowned for his love of autumn, carnivals, and Halloween with all its funhouse trappings, Bradbury succeeds magnificently in turning the objects of his affection (and ours) into vessels of fear. This is, perhaps, a central aspect of Something Wicked's success: by turning the objects of nostalgia and affection into devil's snares for our fragile, aging souls, Bradbury reminds us that what we love can damn us as well as redeem us. The difference between one and the other often balances on a knife's edge between ecstatic self-destruction and ascetic, self-punishing virtuousness.

Folded into Bradbury's meditation on childhood fears and adult regrets, one also finds a simple, elegant consideration of how goodness and happiness rarely walk hand in hand. Telling his father that he considers him a good man, and learning that Charles sees himself that way as well, Will is forced to ask, "Then, Dad, why aren't you happy?"

Charles's response: "Since when did you think being good meant being happy?"

Seeing that his son doesn't understand, Charles tries to elaborate on just what trying to be good has cost him. "I was so busy wrestling myself two falls out of three," Charles says, "I figured I couldn't marry until I had licked myself good and forever... Too late, I found you can't wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else... [but] you take a man half-bad and a woman half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between. That's you, Will..."

If anyone's ever written a better paen to marriage and child-rearing, I don't know what it is. Will's conversation with his father, and the revelations both share, strike me as beautiful and true.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Ray Bradbury was a national treasure. Although he created a vast and beautiful body of work, in this simple, lovely, spooky little novel, made up of barely 80,000 words, he not only encapsulated the terrible moments that portend adulthood--the realization that grown-ups are fragile and flawed; the reality of one's own, eventual death--but also their obverse: the moment in our adulthood when we finally realize just how far behind us childhood, safety, and dreams without regrets lie. Two boys realize that a world of compromise and moral hazard awaits them, followed by death; an old man realizes that death is nearer than ever before, and that the compromises and moral hazards left in his wake make its approach all the more tragic.

And yet, in the midst of all this darkness, hope endures. That it never comes across as a cloying, false, or flashy hope is further evidence of the late master's genius. The silver lining to Bradbury's thunderclouds is simple laughter; a willful outpouring of joy and delight, to light the darkness and defy the doldrums of inexorable time and lurking mortality. "Everything that happens before Death is what counts" Bradbury tells us, and we can only believe him. From the realization that we're all in the same boat--that we all suffer the same doubts, the same regrets, the same self-deceptions--we draw some small measure of strength, and find some small measure of hope, even in the face of oblivion. As the book's Moby Dick-derived epigraph proclaims: "I know not what lies ahead, but whatever it is, I'll go to it laughing."

Ray Bradbury is a bit polarizing in my opinion. People either love his work or hate it. As a writer myself I am a fan of his work. I watched the movie many many years before I cracked open the book and I have to say the movie doesn't follow the book very closely. I would go out on a limb and say a fan of the book may be disappointed in the movie and a fan of the movie may be left scratching their head over the book.

Bradbury has a tendency to be very poetic in his complex descriptions in this book leaving a leisure reader to likely be put off by his wording. I don't consider this to be light reading or a children's book. It is my opinion the movie was much scarier than the book--something I find to be unusual. One particular feature of this novel is the short chapters and large print. I don't care to read chapters that drone on for twenty five or thirty pages because I fell as though I'm getting nowhere. Bradbury does a great job of moving the story and the book along with the chapter layout.

You will get lost in this story. It's bizarre, it's fantastical, and very much what one would expect from RB if you have read any of his other work. The dialogue is a bit hard to follow because it phases in and out of spoken and internal. Will seems to be the main character as he is in the movie with the reader being exposed primarily to his thoughts and actions without excluding too much of the other characters. In many ways I feel the movie does a much better job of revealing Mr. Dark's character than the book, but this may be due to RB's goal of concealing that personality.

I would highly recommend this book to someone looking to be challenged by a work that fluctuates frequently between prose and a near poetic style. Believe me it will challenge you! It is a unique work that demonstrates Bradbury's willingness to break the normal practice of fiction writing. If you are a writer I would suggest you pick this one up to perhaps inspire you to break out of some of your own rigid and routine habits.

Magic This is the umpteenth time that I have read ‘Something Wicked this way Comes’. I love almost all of Bradbury’s books but this by far is my favorite. This was the first time that I have read it on one of my devices which did not take away from the story one spit. The first time I read this book I was 13 years old and it bowled me over. I have probably read again about every five years since then and each time it is a new and awesome experience. I had never ever read anything like it before when I was 13 years old. The only other book that I have read about youth that is near its equal is McCammon’s ‘Boy’s Life” and his prose doesn’t even come close to Bradbury though his story is a fun and deliciously well written story. But it is Bradbury’s prose that sets his book higher than any other. I know this is not every body’s cup of tea , his style of prose but for me it was a like a ride on a roller coaster the first time I read it. His prose was new, exciting and so startlingly different it took my breath away. He made me giddy with the power of words. I titled this review ‘Magic’. Because in my mind this is a book of Magic. In ancient times Words was associated with Magic. Words had power to create and to destroy. In some ways I believe that this is still true because Bradbury understood the power of words like no other Author I have ever read. He brought Magic to life in Something Wicked that literally vibrated with essence and depth. He made Magic Real. I am a professional oral storyteller and I have been telling stories to audiences for over 15 years. As an oral storyteller I paint on a different kind of canvas than the writer does and I am forced to use a distinctive flavor of descriptive language to draw my audience into my world. There is magic in what I do as well but nothing can compare to the Magic of Bradbury. Gary Whitaker Www.storymantales.com