Dandelion Wine is a 1957 novel by American writer Ray Bradbury, set in the summer of 1928 in the fictional town of Green Town, Illinois, based upon Bradbury's childhood home of Waukegan, Illinois. The first novel in his Green Town Trilogy, the book developed from the short story "Dandelion Wine", which appeared in the June 1953 issue of Gourmet magazine.
The title refers to a wine made with dandelion petals and other ingredients, commonly citrus fruit. In the story, dandelion wine, as made daily by the protagonist's grandfather, serves as a metaphor for distilling all of the joys of summer.
The main character of the story is Douglas Spaulding, a 12-year-old boy loosely patterned after Bradbury himself. Most of the book is focused upon the routines of small-town America, and the simple joys of yesterday.
Background and origins Bradbury noted in "Just This Side of Byzantium", a 1974 essay used as an introduction to the book, that Dandelion Wine is a recreation of a boy's childhood, based upon an intertwining of Bradbury's own experiences and imagination.
Farewell Summer, the official sequel to Dandelion Wine, was published in October 2006. While Farewell Summer is a direct continuation of the plot of Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, a novel with a completely different plot and characters, is often paired with the latter because of their stylistic and thematic similarities. Together, the three novels form a Green Town trilogy. A fourth volume, Summer Morning, Summer Night, published in 2008, contains twenty-seven Green Town stories and vignettes, seventeen published for the first time.Subterranean Press, Summer Morning, Summer Night. . .
Dandelion Wine is composed of a series of short stories loosely connected to summer occurrences, with Douglas and his family as recurring characters. Many of the chapters were first published as individual short stories, the earliest being "The Night" (1946), with the remainder appearing between 1950 and 1957.
Motifs
The novel features several objects that act as motifs and metaphors throughout the story, each adding their own meaning and significance. The bottles of dandelion wine kept in Grandfather Spaulding's basement are each labelled with the day it was produced, acting as sort of a "diary for the senses" of summer. The bottles represent capturing things that pass by quickly such as the season of summer. The season seems to go by in a flash but the bottles keep the warmth of summer enclosed within. As winter settles in the town, the Spaulding family goes down to the basement and opens a bottle of wine, releasing the warmth of the month of July with the grass, the sun, the birds, drawing them away momentarily from the dark, grey, bleakness of winter.
2. The Preservation of Youth and Innocence
To Douglas Spaulding, the wine represents a way to pause time.
Bottling childhood: The process of picking the dandelions and pressing them into wine is an attempt to trap the pure, uncomplicated joy of being young before the harsh realities of aging, change, and death catch up. A shield against change: It is a physical manifestation of a child's desire to keep the people and moments they love from disappearing.
3. The Intertwining of Joy and Grief
The dandelions themselves are common weeds that grow aggressively and die quickly, mirroring the cycle of human life.
Bittersweet reality: While the wine represents light and life, it is stored in the dark, quiet basement. Acceptance of time: By drinking it, the characters acknowledge that while the past cannot be altered or physically brought back, its beauty can still sustain them through life's darker, colder chapters.
Main characters Douglas Spaulding: The protagonist of the novel, the entire summer is seen mostly through his eyes as a time of joys and sorrows. Douglas is imaginative, fanciful, and occasionally meditative on the state of the world. Most of the time, he aims to have fun as a 12-year-old kid, but sometimes he lapses into philosophical brooding on topics, including life and death, more mature topics than what would be expected of his age. Bradbury has stated that Douglas is based on the childhood version of him, and in fact, "Douglas" is Bradbury's actual middle name, while "Spaulding" is his father's middle name.
Tom Spaulding: Douglas' younger brother, Tom is the more logical and skeptical one, often questioning his brother's seemingly inexplicable actions. Tom is also somewhat more childish and naïve than Douglas, often failing to understand the seriousness of Douglas' thoughts about his life; nonetheless, he often acts as the voice of reason when Douglas' imagination gets the better of him.
Charlie: A friend of Douglas and Tom, Charlie often hangs around with them. Charlie sometimes comments on a situation or on the behavior of other characters. Other than that, he gets little character development and acts as more of a side character for Douglas and Tom's adventures.
Critical reception Some critics consider Dandelion Wine to be Bradbury's most personal work. According to Electric Literature, "The book is Bradbury’s masterpiece, his fullest, most deeply felt and lyrical expression, touching on his usual themes of youth, old age and small-town life but stripped of their usual layer of sci-fi remove." Georges D. Todds of the SF Site said that the novel's power lies in the "emotional attachment" it stirs in readers, because it is almost completely nostalgia in contrast to Bradbury's usual blend of horror/science fiction and nostalgia. He stated that this trait was what set it apart from his other works:Todds, Georges D (1999). "The SF Site Featured Review: Dandelion Wine". Extracted on January 10, 2007.
Certainly I would tell anyone wanting to know what makes Ray Bradbury the human being he is to read Dandelion Wine, and anyone wanting to know what makes Ray Bradbury the renowned writer he is to read The October Country or The Martian Chronicles.
The novel's heavy reliance on poetical imagery has produced mixed criticism. Many critics say that these are the novel's greatest strengths because the tone matches the spirit of Bradbury's memories and optimistic outlook. John Zuck classified it as "spiritual fiction", paying particular attention to the religious theme of holding on to ephemeral beauty, i.e., the short-lived summer.Zuck, John. "Dandelion Wine ". Added February 13, 2005. Extracted on January 10, 2007. Floyd C. Gale wrote that "Admirers of Bradbury will welcome this tender volume and even his decriers will find passages of pure evocative magic to soften their flinty hearts".
Other critics, however, label this style as overwrought and too "feel-good". Alan David Price stated that while "Bradbury is at his most effective when evoking a New World joy and optimism", there are times when his prose becomes overly sentimental and his "gently fantastic style becomes plain tiring". He nonetheless classifies Dandelion Wine as "an engrossing read".Price, Alan David. "Dandelion Wine - an infinity plus review". Extracted on January 10, 2007.
The critic and author Damon Knight was also downbeat:
Childhood is Bradbury's one subject, but you will not find real childhood here, Bradbury's least of all. What he has had to say about it has always been expressed obliquely, in symbol and allusion, and always with the tension of the outsider—the ex-child, the lonely one. In giving up this tension, in diving with arms spread into the glutinous pool of sentimentality that has always been waiting for him, Bradbury has renounced the one thing that made him worth reading.
Knight remarks further that "The period is as vague as the place; Bradbury calls it 1928, but it has no feeling of genuine recollection; most of the time it is like second-hand 1910."
Author R.L. Stine calls Dandelion Wine one of his favorite books, saying: "It is enchanting[...]. I read it once a year to remember what good writing is all about". He describes it as the "most underrated book of all-time" and "a reminiscence of a time and place that probably never existed. Every page has startling beauty..”
Sequel Farewell Summer, published in 2006, is Bradbury's sequel to Dandelion Wine.
Film, television, theatrical and radio adaptations Dandelion Wine was first performed as a stage adaptation of the novel in the Lincoln Centre in New York City. The plot centers on a 38-year-old man named Doug Spaulding who returns in time to the summer of 1928 in Green Town, Illinois, to confront his childhood loneliness. He arrives in Green Town disguised as Mr. Forrester, a stranger. He befriends his 12-year-old self, Douglas, to relive the pivotal, bittersweet experiences of his youth. By revisiting his grandfather’s cellar filled with dandelion wine, the tennis sneakers that felt like "magic," and the vivid sights of his boyhood, Doug hopes to cure the bottled-up loneliness of his adult life.
A subsequent stage adaptation of Dandelion Wine was produced in 1975 in New York City, arranged and adapted by Peter John Bailey, directed by William Woodman, and starring Matthew Anton and Doug McKeon. It was produced by The New Phoenix Repertory Company, under the artistic direction of Stephen Porter and Harold Prince. The production was reviewed by Mel Gussow of the New York Times on February 8, 1975.
Bradbury co-wrote a musical of Dandelion Wine in 1988 with Jimmy Webb. It was workshopped at the University of Tulsa and directed by Dr. Nancy Vunovich in 1989. Webb and Bradbury were in attendance.The typescript is dated 1989 and located in the New York Public Library, "minus the music:" https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/collection/data/858947297. Earlier stage adaptations of Dandelion Wine were written by other hands. See Larry Alexander, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 27, 2000: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-aug-27-ca-11072-story.html This version of the musical included 2 original songs written by Webb from his theatrical score that were not included in the original 1967 theatre production, "Time Flies" (sung by Grandfather Spaulding, with lyrics basely loosely off of Bradbury's novel) and "Kangaroo Tennis Shoes".
A stage production was performed in 1992 in Manistee, Michigan. Ray Bradbury was present at the Ramsdell theater for the opening night.
Songs from the original 1967 stage adaptation
Wizard of Wizards A Long Time Coming Dandelion Wine Para-Litefoot Tennis Sneakers Walk Through the Night This Special Summer I Got Statistics Happiness Machine Hey, Nonny No Sir Douglas The Drummerboy of Shiloh Tag-Along Tom 1999 Dandelion Wine (Reprise) Tomorrow, All Day Hey Listen, Johnny, Johnny All the Magic Take One Step
List of characters
Bill Forrester Douglas Spaulding Tom Spaulding Colonel Freeleigh Laura Barclay Miss Fern Miss Roberta John Huff Leo Auffmann The Tarot Witch Mr. Tridden Grandfather Spaulding Mr. Sanderson Soda Clerk Policeman Doctor
The novel was also made into a 1997 Russian film adaptation, titled Vino iz oduvanchikov.Vino iz oduvanchikov (Dandelion Wine) . The film was based on an unauthorized Russian translation of the novel; Article V of the Universal Copyright Convention, to which Russia belongs, allows unauthorized translations of foreign language works for which there is no authorized translation. Currently, there is no English film adaptation available for the book.
Dandelion Wine was produced as a full-cast radio play by the Colonial Radio Theatre on the Air, in 2006. Ray Bradbury wrote the script from his stage play, and the production was released by Blackstone Audio. The cast included Jerry Robbins as Bill Forrester, William Humphrey as Douglas Spaulding, Rik Pierce as Grandpa, and James McLean as Tom Spaulding. The production was directed by Nancy Curran Willis, with music by Jeffrey Gage, and was produced by Jerry Robbins.