Ray Bradbury Forums
Dandelion Wine - your takeaway

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24 August 2019, 02:45 AM
Booger
Dandelion Wine - your takeaway
Hi there, new here. I'm looking for meaning at a time in my life where I'm a little aimless. Revisiting books and music, and I'm reading Dandelion Wine... aloud, even; my gf has never read it so I'm poorly performing the entire thing. But it's fun. Wish I coulda met the guy.

I haven't read it in a few years, maybe 4 or 5, but I've always loved it. Now seeing it with fresh eyes, it's so interesting to see the different philosophies within different characters and vignettes...

So I ask you, Bradbury readers, what do you take from this book? And perhaps even further, do you hold onto nostalgia or let it go?
24 August 2019, 04:37 AM
douglasSP
Absolutely, I hold on to nostalgia.

What else is there? The present is fleeting, and the future doesn't even exist yet.

What is the good of anything we do or anything we experience or anything we love if it's to be cast away and forgotten? I want everything of value to last forever, in whatever way it is possible.

Absolutely, I hold on to nostalgia.
24 August 2019, 09:25 AM
Richard
douglassp, I couldn't agree with you more.

As to what I personally take away from DANDELION WINE, it is this: while we all inevitably grow older, we should try to never lose that sense of wonder we felt as children. Ray Bradbury certainly didn't.
24 August 2019, 04:07 PM
dandelion
Welcome.

HOLD ONTO NOSTALGIA. DO NOT LET ANYONE CONVINCE YOU TO BURN YOUR BUCK ROGERS COMICS NO MATTER WHO SAYS WHAT!!!!!!!!!!

That being said...Bradbury had a great capacity for self-contradiction in his speaking and writing. "Season of Disbelief" is a great story but I have never reconciled with the ending, never will. If you reach a point in life where you don't need certain things or are more comfortable without them, give them to someone who will appreciate them! Yard sale, thrift store, community theater! Obviously nowadays there are internet sales and giveaway pages. Maybe most or even all of these things didn't exist in that time and place but it's good they have been invented. Once things are destroyed they are gone and no good to anyone. I will protest this with my dying breath.