Maciek's Reviews > The October Country: Stories

October Country...that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain...

Fall is probably my favorite of all seasons, and every year I walk on the streets, through avenues and parks. There is a smell of burning leaves hanging around lazily, and the skies are still bright, sharp and clear, but the sun is less warm. You can feel the wind getting colder and taste the air, now sharper and fresher. Nights are chilling, with big yellow moons. Leaves change their colors and are now a mixture of yellow, green, red and orange. They start dropping from the trees one by one at first, but steadily gusts of wind grasp them by the handfuls and leave bare branches behind. Although the process is inherently sad in nature as it forecasts the upcoming winter, with its ice and snow, there is an element of beauty in fall leaves on the ground, especially in the afternoon sunlight. It casts a special shine which is not there in other seasons, and yellowing leaves make the streets look as if they were paved with gold.

My copy of The October Country has a new introduction by Ray Bradbury, written in 1999, where he claims to remembering being born and the development of his passion for stories and storytelling. He wrote his first story in the seventh grade, and since the age of twelve knew that was the way to ensure proper immortality - being remembered after our limited time on earth runs out. Bradbury saw the process of writing as a match between life and death, each completed story a victory. Days when he didn't write were threatening him extinction, and this is why he wrote every day since he turned twelve, evading death. He died last year, at the age of 91, having published his last novel - Farewell Summer - six years before, along with hundreds of short stories. Death has finally caught with Ray, but not before he had his say - he went out on his own terms, and achieved the exact type of immortality that he hoped for.

The October Country contains nineteen very different stories, most of which were previously published in Bradbury's debut colection, Dark Carnival. These are some of Bradbury's earliest stories, published before The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451. There is a special pleasure in reading these stories - allowing Ray Bradbury's gentle storytelling lull us in and expose us to his imagination. I can see young Kings and Mathesons of this world reading his fiction deep into the night, possibly even with a flashlight under the bedcovers, amazed that a grownup could think such things onto paper. Bradbury was a man who could both turn a phrase and had a great, big heart - his warmth emanates from his writing, which is far removed from the vulgarity of contemporary world. Bradbury was often accused of being too sentimental and too emotional, but I don't think this is completely correct - while it's true that his stories offer a bucolic vision of the American heartland and the nostalgia of small-town life, but didn't shy away from showing the nastiness running behind the curtain of these idealistic visions.

This is perhaps best illustrated in the opening story, The Dwarf, which is an achingly sad story of loneliness and cruelty. What makes it sad is that not only the cruelty is pointless - as it always is - but that it's inflicted on someone who is in no capability to defend himself, and by someone who makes an extra effort to make sure that it hits where it hurts the most. There's no need for supernatural elements here - ordinary life is enough, as events like these happen every day, everywhere.

The Lake is another touching and sad story, but in another way - it's about a man who revisits his childhood home and is flooded with memories of a lost friend. It's almost a ghost story, but not quite - the ghosts are the memories which flood the main character to the point where he almost re-enters the past, and feels disconnected from - and disappointed with - the present reality.

There are great stories with a touch of horror here, too. The Skeleton and The Small Assassin both have great, imaginative premises and work very well. The first one features a man convinced that his skeleton is out to kill him - and tries to fight it; it concludes with a great, memorable last line, true to style of classic short fiction. The Small Assassin is Bradbury's experiment with psychological horror - a woman becomes convinced that her newborn baby is conspiring to kill her. While this might seem to be just an example of postnatal stress and depression, the arguments she uses sound at least a bit true: is there anything in the world more selfish than a baby, with its unending demand for constant care and attention? Do some mothers (and fathers) do not have the feeling that sometimes their baby is acting the way it does just to spite and annoy them? This is a great horror story without vampires or boogeymen, but with cribs, nappies and milk bottles. The last line, again, is a killer - literally!

There are more horrific stories here: The Next in Line features a couple exploring a cemetery in a small Mexican town which holds a truly capitalistic policy towards the buried and their families; The Crowd is another great story which truly emphasizes Bradbury's great strength: exploring simple ideas and writing classic tales based on them. Its narrator finds it odd that crowds of spectators always gather around the scene of an accident, and finds people who would stare at someone's tragedy reprehensible: the truth is stranger than any of us could suspect. Same goes for The wind, where a man is obsessed with wind - he's an adventurer who thinks that wind has always been out there to get him, and even though he always managed to escape he's convinced that this time his luck has finally ran out. There was an Old Woman is different, in the way that it takes a scary situation and makes it amusing: it's concerned with an old, cantankerous woman who just refuses to die. It's good and full of fun humor.

There's a great mixture of Bradbury's recollection of his youth mixed with his interest in weirdness in Uncle Einar and Homecoming, both of which share characters. Uncle Einar was inspired by Bradbury's favorite uncle, and you can see his love in this weird tale of a man with wings who longs to return to the skies but has to live among people who don't have them. The resolution is heartwarming and memorable. Homecoming is the exact reverse of Uncle Einar - Timothy, its young narrator, is a mortal child living among supernatural beings. Left on their doorstep as an infant, he longs to be like them but at the same time understands that this will never be possible. Unlike Uncle Einar, Homecoming is a sad story of a boy who wishes to belong but will always be an outsider, even with the complete support of his adoptive family.

My favorite story from the entire collection is probably The Scythe, which is a great, imaginative story, in the nature of the folk tales that I read as a young boy. Set in what looks like the Depression, a poor family notices an empty house at the end of a road, and upon entering discovers the body of a previous inhabitant and his will - bequeathing both the house and farm behind it to the person reading it. The family is overjoyed at first, and after a few days of rest the father cannot sit still anymore and goes to cut wheat in the field - only to discover strange things about it, and the way it grows. It's a great story in the classic tradition of moral tales - that there will always be a price to pay for what seems to be too good to be true, and that we should be wary of things which seem to be just incredible luck.

The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone is a great coda - Dudley Stone is an extraordinarily successful writer who has quit the profession at the age of 30, without explanation, leaving people without any certainty if he was even alive or dead. 25 years later a group of his most devoted fans cannot bear not knowing, and one of them decides to go to Stone's hometown and find information about him. It's a great story to end the collection, a meditation on the choices we make in life and the things we set as priorities, with a beautiful last line.

I could very well discuss all the stories, but I believe that the reader deserves the pleasure to discover the October Country on their own, especially with illustrations by Joe Mugnaini. So come along and open the book to visit that country, the country dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay, whose people are autumn people thinking autumn thoughts, and who on the empty walks at night sound like rain...