A Moment’s Behest…
…on growing, stormy wind…
Newsletter #80
October Country is upon us, and so - too - my annual rereadings of Bradbury’s From the Dust Returned and Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October. I wish I lived somewhere I could sit on a porch and smoke a pipe filled with a sweet-smelling tobacco while I do my reading, but October in Mississippi is a lot like September in Mississippi, which is to say that it’s still essentially summer; it’s difficult to enjoy reading when it’s 90 degrees, there’s a tiny campfire in your face, and mosquitoes the size of dachshunds leer at you from the shadows while they hungrily rub their little mosquito hands together.
If we’re lucky, Autumn might make it proper by the end of the month but - most likely - we’ll be tossing trash candy and damp, cheap costumes that smell like gym socks into the bin come November 1st.
I’ve often wondered why From the Dust and Lonesome October have stuck with me for so long. Bradbury’s text is essentially a leitmotif novel of interconnected short stories organized around the theme of a strange, Addams-esque family coming together for a reunion. My primary training is in short fiction, and I’ll fight a dude or two over it being amongst the hardest creative genres in which to work; so much of my love for From the Dust Returned lies in my love for Bradbury’s economy of language that it's easy to miss the little misfit guy - the part of me that’ll always be a lonely kid with an eye patch and pile of library books - falling in love, year after year, with the aunts, uncles, cousins, and familiars of the Illinois Elliots. It’s hard to overstate Bradbury’s importance to American letters and to literature as a whole, but the most underrated aspect of the master’s cantrip will always be his ability to reach across the page and time itself to make his readers feel less alone, like they had their own odd, found family ready to reunite - like the Elliots - at a moment’s behest, on a growing, stormy wind.
A Night in Lonesome October is a bit more the whimsy, like Pixar did a Tim Burton two years before Pixar and months before A Nightmare Before Christmas. It seems at first glance to be the opposite side of the coin, and - thus - a good text to read in juxtaposition with Bradbury’s work, but those initial differences fall away, leaving the reader with the same core of loneliness, found family, and the purpose at the heart of such calico gatherings; there’s the mission, of course, the initial why of those unions and reunions, but - ultimately - they all boil down to the same emotionally gravitational principle that - no matter how strange or ill-fit for whatever constitutes normal life - no one deserves to live life alone.
I suppose the pedantic might argue that, broadly, the goal of all art is to make its receiver feel a part of something larger, that this is the goal of all discourse and the communities that form around specific discourse, and that’s true. Discourse communities are defined by the language they speak within that community - only a student of baseball knows what the hell a proverbial can of corn is, for instance - and both Bradbury and Zelazny speak the same language. Their respective texts’ surface differences are then merely a matter of accent, of inflection, and offer different points of entry to a singular community. Both texts and the constructed families within beckon to anyone who ever felt alone, who ever felt Bradbury’s words ring in their heart when he reveals that the secret to all loneliness is in the human survival instinct to which it is antithetic, that “No one ever died that had a family.”
At heart, even the saddest amongst us wants to live forever. Bradbury understood that better than most.
Y’all have a good week. Thank you again for coming here again and again to be a part of my family, and a part of all the wonderful things that couldn’t have happened without you. I’m still in shock about the Indiginerds Anthology and the splash it’s making. Please do consider backing the project if you can, but - more importantly - if you see someone this week who seems lonely, let them know they aren’t alone. I’ll see y’all Wednesday!
Wado!
Thanks for this. I first read From the Dust Returned when I was in a very lonely place, shortly after I'd left the part of the country I'd always called home and moved to the Midwest. I think I'll give it a reread soon.