Whisper, Whisk, Flit and Tick

Book Review:
Something Wicked This Way Comes

Ray Bradbury / Bantam / 1962

The back cover of my soft-cover Bantam edition of Something Wicked This Way Comes has a better introduction than anything I could come up with, I’m sure: “What if someone discovers your secret dream, that one great wish you would give anything for? And what if that person suddenly makes your dream come true – before you learn the price you have to pay?”

If you’ve never read Ray Bradbury’s classic piece of good old-fashioned horror and nightmares, you might want to stop reading this review even now and go find a copy at your bookstore. Letting the dark fantasy unfold with each page is the way it was meant to be experienced. If, however, you’re fine with hearing something about it first, read on.

It is the story of Will Holloway and his friend Jim Nightshade, two youngsters growing up in that classic era of Americana, the Midwest of the early 1900's. Both have dreams, but fatherless Jim in particular yearns to be older, a grown-up. And there is Will’s father, already in his middle-age years when he married, now considering himself old, too old to be a good father to Will.

Into the heartaches of these three and their fellow townspeople comes a carnival. Ordinary enough to look at, the carnival soon begins to make a frightening impression on people like Miss Foley, who so wishes to be young and beautiful again; or on Tom Fury, the lightning-rod salesman, forever racing ahead of storms to sell metal pieces of fire insurance. Carnival staples like the mirror maze and “The Woman Frozen in Ice!” first seduce then terrify those in town who have lives buried in regrets. The carnival and its owners, Mr. Dark and Mr. Cooger, seem to thrive on the anguish of others. As Will and Jim learn more about the carnival’s dark secrets, they find themselves running for their lives from a menagerie of side-show freaks who want to quiet the boys up.

Ray Bradbury is hit-and-miss for me, but Something Wicked This Way Comes is definitely one of my favorite books. The author creates an unforgettable tale, along the lines of something Stephen King might produce; but in my opinion more subtle, and certainly much less reliant on language, gore, and sexuality than King. As with other of his works like Dandelion Wine that play off his childhood memories, Bradbury takes us back to a small town where everyone knows the barber and the cigar store owner, where there is only one employee at the library because two wouldn’t have enough to do. Though the year is never stated, the atmosphere created is enough to let us know we are not reading about our contemporaries, at least not as far as the literal setting is concerned.

Bradbury has an interesting way with words. His choice of vocabulary is not one any other writer would think of, and yet his choices become so vivid and lend so much atmosphere. He talks of the library being “bricked with books”, or of arcs of electricity as “electric blue eels.” He runs sentences together not out of ignorance for the rules of English, but because when those sentences are then read, the pulse and tempo of the character’s very thoughts are amplified. Many of the characters do not speak as real people would, but they speak as real people might think in tense, pressurized times of life. As with much of Bradbury, especially his short stories, the point is the beauty, flow, and atmosphere of the words, not their denotative functions.

Bradbury’s theme is an interesting one, exploring those things in life that cause us internal pain, whether sharp or dull. The device of an infernal carnival allows him to look at how man spends his days wishing, regretting, envying – and then looks at what might happen if those wishes could be answered, if regrets could somehow be corrected. Even if Mr. Dark did not exact a hideous fee for making young boys’ dreams come true, the natural consequences of craving an alternate reality would, in Bradbury’s reasoning, be enough to drive a person mad.

I’m not going to delve any deeper, because this is one of those books that is best when it is simply absorbed page by page. A review of it could never really do it justice, neither before nor after reading it. Let it suffice to say that I highly recommend it. At 215 pages, it is not a laborious trek through an epic adventure, but good for finishing over the course of a handful of bedtimes. And at night in bed is definitely the best time to read it and experience its chills.

Worth The Read?: Absolutely