Mugnaini illustrated the "October Country" versions of the same stories brilliantly. Again, different interpretations, equally good.

I'm baaaack, so stand back! Okay, I just finished reading the "Dark Carnival" and "October Country" versions of "Homecoming." Couldn't get the "Stories of Ray Bradbury" version as the library's copy, due in June, seems to have been lost...maybe someone liked it so much they decided to keep it? I'm coping nicely with its altered incarnation in "From the Dust Returned." This is, by the way, the most rearranged story in the book, so anyone cringing in horrid anticipation of my going into this much depth on each of them can relax now. Since there are changes on literally every page, I'll address just vital, major ones. I'm not going to nitpick over every word. Really, I'm not. Ray Bradbury has compared processing death to experiencing the loss of a tooth--you keep probing the hole where the tooth is missing. If that's so, reading this version of "Homecoming" was like having several teeth extracted and most, but not all, restored, some in slightly different places. I could make a lot of analogies here (some of which I did, above) but suffice to say it was like walking into what you expect to be a freshly cleaned, well-ordered house, and finding its contents utterly rearranged by a vast wind. You run through (much as I tore through this part of the book on first reading) wincing at the damage--this is missing--that will take a lot of work to fix--some important items are in different places but seem fine, while others are blown away beyond all recovery! You sit down and catch your breath to take stock. Eventually (as I did on second reading) you find most of the vital elements remain, although the wind has whittled them down in places, or sculpted them into different shapes, some improved, some diminished, some just as good either way. What's more, this tremendous wind has blown in a lot of good things you didn't have in the first place! Do you feel grateful for the gift of lovely new things, and the preservation of relatively unchanged originals? Regretful at the loss of old, cherished ones? Is this glass half empty, or half full? (Full of *what*, I will get to later.) MIXED FEELINGS, AAACK! Racked up some real mileage to the old system on this one. This is the disadvantage of a story being so familiar you anticipate each word. When it's missing, it's like finding a cellar step gone in pitch dark. When it's changed, it's like finding the step replaced with one of an unfamiliar height. When it's added to, it's like finding additional steps, which are at least climbable. Those which just trip you are one thing, but a missing one, which sends you crashing down, is just plain painful! After my initial taking stock, I read the "Dark Carnival" version. What can I say? In a number of ways, this is MUCH more like what I expected/hoped the novel would be than was the actual novel itself! More an expanded version of the "October Country" story than a complete rewrite. The descriptions of the house, the characters, the weather, the mood, and the atmosphere, are superior in many places to the supposedly "improved" version. Basically, the "October Country" version is a shorter, more streamlined, genuinely improved in places, variation of the story as it appeared in "Dark Carnival," while "From the Dust Returned" contains a new and different version. *Sigh*, there, I'm feeling better already.

[This message has been edited by dandelion (edited 01-26-2002).]

PLUS, MINUS, OR EQUAL:

Starting a new thread here addressing a *few* of the *major* changes, which will undergo a lot of revision as I go over everything. This is in hopes Mr. Bradbury sees fit to send me his next book in manuscript form so I can edit it before it sees print. JUST KIDDING!!! Even Donn Albright doesn't do that!! I just need to do this to soothe my ravaged feelings is all. I DON'T claim the story as it appears in the novel was boned or gutted, but it was bled just about white. (Pun intended.) It isn't as if Mr. Bradbury rewrote the story from scratch without looking at the original, either: in fact, some things are added in from the "Dark Carnival" version which never appear in the "October Country"!

Timothy's age:
+ Ten is a lot more believable; he seemed awfully small and babyish for fourteen.

- Fourteen emphasizes his awkwardness and desperation to fit in better.

= "Homecoming" does not suffer, and the Angelina Marguerite incident works much better with a clueless little ten-year-old than with a curious and confused fourteen-year-old. PLUS.

The spider's name:
+ Well, obviously "Arach" is a much better name than "Spid." No (-) here, definite PLUS.

The Family name:
? What was the point of writing a book of Elliott Family stories and then removing the reference to the name where it appears in the original stories? I don't believe the name turns up in the novel once. Doesn't hurt the stories not to know their last name, but I prefer them as "Elliott Family Stories," so mark this change MINUS and file it under WHY???

Whence Timothy?:
Timothy's being revealed as a foundling rather than a natural-born "squib" (in Harry Potter terminology) gives him a bit of an out as far as being "different," but doesn't really make his predicament less painful, and, as far as finding acceptance, more so. Not really an improvement, but no damage here. EQUAL.

Timothy's immediate family:
- Of his siblings, Bion, Sam, and Laura are reduced to walk-ons, and Ellen and Leonard have utterly disappeared! Only the roles of Cecy, Mother, and A Thousand Times Great Grandmere are at all improved. Perhaps my bitterest disappointment, the "October Country" version of the story introduced some potentially fascinating characters (even more so in the "Dark Carnival" version) who I keenly hoped to see developed, to find these hopes in many respects dashed.
- Laura: Timothy's biting her at the party makes a lot more sense in the context of the original depictions of her personality and treatment of Timothy. Her attitude helps establish Timothy's feelings of isolation and his overall interactions with and relationship to the Family. Is it possible that in reworking the story, both author and editor lost track of certain things? Not to imply that Bradbury or his editor(s) are less familiar with his work than are his readers, but quite the opposite. Perhaps they were SO familiar they assumed things were in which ended up left out of the published version, and, like misplaced luggage, much was unintentionally lost.
- Leonard: In the "Dark Carnival" version, it seems more as if Timothy overhears, intentionally or not, Leonard talking bad to someone else about Timothy behind his back, while in the "October Country" version it seems his accusatory remark, "Timothy is afraid of the dark," is deliberately directed at Timothy. As with Laura, this scene helps develop character, both Timothy's and that of the Family, and atmosphere; it's a wonderful mood-setter with no substitute existing in "From the Dust Returned." If Leonard still ended up being dropped as having absolutely nothing else to do, the scene should go to Bion or Samuel--it DOES belong in the story.
- Ellen: can't you just picture her as a "teen goth"? A hell of a LOT more could have been done with this character! I was looking forward to learning, even if secondhand, through Timothy's (or Cecy's unlimited) eavesdropping, of hers and Laura's jobs and interactions with townspeople. Major cop-out dumping Ellen! I especially anticipated her, Laura, and Leonard's, and perhaps Sam's and Bion's, interactions with Timothy. Do some siblings merely tolerate the foundling, while others are outright jealous of him? Do some resent their mother's solicitations to Timothy, almost to the point of babying him? Ellen and Laura could perhaps be combined into one especially nasty sister, but leaving out or reducing these characters throws the whole story out of whack, the balance off-kilter, and it's not as with a movie, where, with limited time and space, one can forgive such abbreviations. MINUS, MINUS, MINUS!
- Mother, Father, and Children:
Perhaps some siblings were dropped because it was felt that a mother of six would be less likely to pick up Timothy as a foundling, but that's really no excuse. This woman was kindhearted, evidently had no regular job, and NEVER SLEPT because she didn't need to and maybe didn't even know how. In this position, she surely needed something to occupy her time, so her accepting Timothy makes perfect sense. Dropping two of the five children also removes Timothy's important symbolic place as the seventh child. The futility of Mother's efforts to coax niceness from her evil brood, her love of them in spite of themselves, and her gestures to make their unkindnesses up to Timothy, as well as Father's attitude, no doubt favoritism to his natural-born children and a tolerant sort of contempt of Timothy, could still be interesting. It would make the parting at the end even more heartrending; Father might realize, too late, that Timothy responded well to the times he was nice, that he could have been nicer more often, and has now missed the chance. A more-defined picture of the Family would have made for more vivid images at the end. In fleeing, did Leonard try to take his little black medical case, and Samuel attempt to rescue his dusty, ebon-bound book? Did they succeed, or were their efforts dashed? MINUS for good opportunities missed here! The damage is grievous, but not fatal; this could all be covered in short stories to go into a revised version of the novel later...since Ray IS going to live forever and continue to entertain us...right?
= Father:
He neither expands nor diminishes much from earlier versions; EQUAL.
+ A Thousand Times Great Grandmere:
Her role, here greatly expanded from small mentions in the original stories, reveals her as a unique and well-defined character. Bradbury's use of Egyptian imagery here ranks with the best of his writing in "I Sing the Body Electric!" and "The Halloween Tree." The ending alone almost makes up for the indignations suffered by "Homecoming." I wouldn't change anything about this part of the book, I just wish portrayals of the other characters could have sustained the whole book at this level. PLUS!

- The brothers' professions:
This change makes sense in light of the removal of all direct references to blood, vampirism, and implied Satanic practices--in "From the Dust Returned," you are supposed to wonder whether the Family may, or may not be, vampires, which the earlier versions pretty well spell out. In this regard, the later version actually reads better. It also makes sense in light of the fact that undertakers could almost certainly "cull" enough relatively undamaged bodies to house the cousins, and there would go the excellent ending to "West of October." Still, a delightful touch of whimsy is lost with the elimination of Ellen and Laura's explanations to Aunt Morgiana, and it wouldn't really hurt the story, just take it in a different direction. Submitted for your approval: the hilarity of hustling a newly-incarnated cousin out of town under cover of darkness so a "dead body" would not be seen walking around. Picture if you will: the most obnoxiously macho of the cousins incarnated in a female body, begging Grandpa to take him back when he finds he can't stand taking his own medicine! Imagine: two cousins fighting over who was, or was NOT, to have a certain body! Maybe they didn't like the looks of it, or, as in "There Was An Old Woman," the original owner wanted it back. The story could still end with most, or all, of the cousins staying with Grandpa. I'd like to see some description of the Elliott Brothers' Mortuary, if only in a shuddering recollection by Timothy as he reflects on his brothers' respectable professions. I maintain this change a MINUS!

- Timothy's extended family:
Another troubling aspect is how the comparatively solid feel of the first three tellings, although they were short stories, contrasts with the novel's relatively insubstantial weight. With this transition we lose a lot of solid, although strange, flesh and blood, and gain a lot of ethereal smokes, mists, and vapors. I'm not saying the novel's descriptions are any less well-written or that any of them should be cut, just that, again, they shift the balance in a negative way. You know the colorized versions of classic black-and-white movies, where the color is supposed to restore, highlight, and enhance enjoyment of the picture, but serves only to cast a murky haze over all until you just have to flee back to the original? That's how this is. I'm not saying remove the less-substantial members of the Family. They don't detract from the story, but with the others rearranged and reduced they don't add as much as they could. With the right blend they could peacefully coexist with those in the original stories rather than supplanting them. In yanking out old threads to reweave this fabric, too much valuable substance was lost. Again and again, reading this version of "Homecoming" reminded me of Clarence Day Jr.'s essay on reading a French translation of the Bible. Appalled at their rendition of one beloved passage, he would rush to another, only to find "they had ruined that, too." The King James version is still there, though...right? And we are not dealing with something as serious as a language translation problem here, just overzealous editing. It's still good enough for a reader unfamiliar with the originals to consider it a really great read.

[This message has been edited by dandelion (edited 01-26-2002).]

Since the posts dealing with "Homecoming" are particularly extensive, this part will be divided into "Night 1" and "Night 2" of the Homecoming.

CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR, PART 1:

When you finish dismantling and reassembling a machine, some of the little shiny bits left over can't be used because they wouldn't fit anywhere. Others help it run better, but even with many which don't, simply saying it runs okay without them is like stripping all the chrome and ornaments off a classic car and saying it runs fine without them. As with many others before it, "From the Dust Returned" can be viewed as a work in progress. Far from having given up on it, the more I read it the more I feel that with just a few changes the novel could in many ways improve on the short stories, ALTHOUGH a whole is, of course, equal to the sum of its parts. That's all I'm saying here, not trying to be mean or critical. (Which ought to be obvious--would I spend this amount of time and effort on a story I didn't really care for?--but in case anyone wants to know.) Movies trimmed for theatrical release are redone in "director's cuts," and "revised editions" of books come out all the time. Such changes as suggested below could easily be done before a second printing. Although numerous, many changes in the text were small and the reasons for them mostly apparent, so I'm commenting only on the most noticable. This thread is for such left-out bits, and my comments on which belong on the cutting-room floor and which should be rescued.

Timothy's remark, "Spid, I'm no good," memorable in its directness, has more impact than the "I'm nothing" within a long sentence in the new version. The story would benefit from leaving both in.

The sentence "Bion walking from outside..., lugging vast two gallon jugs of liquid that gurgled as he moved," is abbreviated in the "October Country" version and entirely eliminated in "From the Dust Returned." It's just such vivid details that the story needs.

This passage:
"Timothy hesitated only long enough to hear the million other sounds in the house. Brothers came and went like trains in a station, talking and arguing. If you stood in one spot long enough the entire household passed with their pale hands full of things. Leonard with his little black medical case, Samuel with his large, dusty ebon-bound book under his arm, bearing more black crape, and Bion excursioning to the car outside and bringing in many more gallons of liquid." The one sentence replacing this paragraph in "From the Dust Returned" is a poor substitute for these colorful details.

Interesting to note that in both "Homecoming" and "The Wandering Witch," horse-drawn wagons are replaced by cars. The church clock is changed to a town-hall clock in "The October Country," and "The Stories of Ray Bradbury," then back to a church clock in "From the Dust Returned"; all improvements.

This passage, from "The October Country" version, is a vast improvement over that in "Dark Carnival":
"At midnight a storm hammered the house. Lightning struck outside in amazing, snow-white bolts. There was a sound of an approaching, probing, sucking tornado, funneling and nuzzling the moist night earth. Then the front door, blasted half off its hinges, hung stiff and discarded, and in trooped Grandmama and Grandpapa, all the way from the old country!"
It's fascinating to note that in the "Dark Carnival" version there is no tornado, but in Charles Addams's illustration for the story's magazine appearance, used on the book's cover, there is! Could this revision be Addams's influence on Bradbury? The above passage would go fine, either as a whole, or distributed between pages 53 and 54 of "From the Dust Returned," somewhere before "the sky was cleared, the roads empty." It's a beautiful description undeserving of deletion.

"Uncle Jason peered back over his caped shoulder at Timothy, and winked." This detail doesn't belong in the new and improved scene with Uncle Jason, but could have been given to Uncle Fry to enliven the descriptions of the Family.

Next comes Ellen's and Laura's conversation with Aunt Morgianna, mentioned above. In the "Dark Carnival" version, Laura asks her aunt if she is familiar with how a mortician works, and, when Aunt Morgianna is uncertain of the details, proceeds to give a graphic description. This is mercifully abbreviated in "The October Country," and rightly so. It will not be missed, and according to a Discovery Channel documentary I just saw, is not strictly accurate anyway, but we won't "go there." The next part of the exchange, though, with the sisters telling on Timothy, and Mother defending him to Uncle Jason, is sadly missing in "From the Dust Returned" with the rest of the above. Some way could be found to preserve this without directly mentioning blood, such as Timothy being afraid of his brothers' profession, then the sisters proceeding to relate a string of Timothy's fears. Uncle Jason's "raised on the stuff" could perhaps refer to something else, such as darkness, thereby conserving lovely images, including "The wind played the trees outside like harps," Timothy with the candle, and Leonard's taunting Timothy's fear of the dark, which could go right after Mother's "Now light more candles." This would actually improve the scene, because here is his brother (Leonard, Bion, or Sam, it doesn't matter which) giving Timothy grief for carrying a candle, which Mother has just told him to do! Naturally Timothy's reply would be reproachful. Seeing his discomfort as he pretends to straighten the crepe, Mother could try to distract him with, "Now pass the wine," leading directly into the next scene, on page 56 of "From the Dust Returned."

The sentence "Moist fog swept through the front door like powder from exploded cannons" is, again, abbreviated in "The October Country," and missing in "From the Dust Returned." It seems to me a lot of good imagery was lost in these cuts.

The next scene, with Uncle Einar, was the most delightful surprise of all the improvements. Having him actually fly with Timothy (presumably during a lull in the storm) rather than just tossing him, is not only more exciting, but excellent character development for Einar. Here is the scene as it appears in "The October Country":

"Timothy propelled himself on his thin legs, straight through the fog, under the green webbing shadows. He threw himself across Einar's arms. Einar lifted him.
'You've wings, Timothy!' He tossed the boy light as thistles. 'Wings, Timothy, fly!' Faces wheeled under. Darkness rotated. The house blew away. Timothy felt breezelike. He flapped his arms. Einar's fingers caught and threw him once more to the ceiling. The ceiling rushed down like a charred wall. 'Fly, Timothy!' shouted Einar, loud and deep. 'Fly with wings! Wings!'
He felt an exquisite ecstasy in his shoulder blades, as if roots grew, burst to explode and blossom into new, moist membrane. He babbled wild stuff; again Einar hurled him high.
The autumn wind broke in a tide on the house, rain crashed down, shaking the beams, causing chandeliers to tilt their enraged candle lights. And the one hundred relatives peered out from every black, enchanted room, circling inward, all shapes and sizes, to where Einar balanced the child like a baton in the roaring spaces."

Look at the lovely imagery lost, even from an improved scene! That last paragraph would not be entirely out of place if properly introduced at the bottom of page 57 or the top of page 58 of "From the Dust Returned."

"Einar, his wings like sea green tarpaulins tented behind him, moved with a curious whistling down the passageway; where his wings touched they made a sound of drum heads gently beaten."
One of my favorite passages in all of Bradbury, (40+ books, 300+ stories, many read repeatedly,) its omission from page 58 (or any other page) in "From the Dust Returned" was really one of those unforgivable lost tooth/missing step moments for me. I seriously nearly cried. There are several other good descriptive passages with Einar, but none make up for this one, which should definitely be restored!

"Upstairs, Timothy lay wearily thinking, trying to like the darkness. There was so much you could do in darkness that people couldn't criticize you for, because they never saw you. He _did_ like the night, but it was a qualified liking; sometimes there was so much night he cried out in rebellion."
Here, the same story: slightly abridged from "Dark Carnival" to "The October Country" (the version quoted above,) and missing in "From the Dust Returned." If I'm not mistaken (which I usually am; I'd be one of the lousy, misquoting "book people,") the same passage in "The Stories of Ray Bradbury" reads "his soul cried out in rebellion," which is even better. Not as vital as some of the cuts, but I'd still like to see it restored. It reveals Timothy's mixed feelings: he's just had a great time with Uncle Einar and wants to be like him, but must be true to his own character, mindset, and temperament.

"In corners, certain relatives circled three times to lie, heads on paws, eyelids shut."
Another not vital, but nice, little touch, cut from the novel version. Many whimsical little moments were lost in the transition. Perhaps the idea was to give the story a more serious tone. It is certainly made more dreary, but not necessarily improved, by their removal.

[This message has been edited by dandelion (edited 01-26-2002).]

CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR, PART 2:

"Sunset. The revel exploded like a bat nest struck full, shrieking out, fluttering, spreading. Box doors banged wide. Steps rushed up from cellar damp. More late guests, kicking on front and back portals, were admitted."

Certainly the same scene in "From the Dust Returned," with the relatives materializing in mid-rush, is a great improvement, but I really miss "The revel exploded like a bat nest struck full," which is, by the way, a simile, not a metaphor (the word most commonly invoked in relation to Bradbury's writing) and would not be out of place in the new version.

"It rained, and sodden visitors flung their capes, their water-pelleted hats, their sprinkled veils over Timothy who bore them to a closet, where they hung like mummified bats to dry."
Same story again, condensed in "The October Country" and right out of "From the Dust Returned." It should never have been cut in the first place; it reveals too much for one sentence: atmosphere, mood (Timothy, from wanting to be the life of the party, has been reduced to a coatrack), visual and tactile details--you can almost smell that closet!

"The rooms were crowd-packed. The laughter of one cousin shot from the hall, angled off the parlor wall, ricocheted, banked and returned to Timothy's ears from a fourth room, accurate and cynical."
Why this was ever cut, except possibly to take the edge off the Family and present them as more endearing, I don't understand. A good picture of the house, the personalities of certain Family members, and their effect on Timothy's mood. Their unpleasantness works the way it sometimes does on kids, to make him even more anxious to impress them.

The next part, with Timothy looking out the kitchen window and feeling himself outside, is mostly improved, except that "the taper-dotted darkness inside was inviting" is better than "and all the candle darkness inside lost." If "tall thin figures pirouetted and glided to outlandish music. Stars of light flickered off lifted bottles; small earth clods crumbled from the handled casques" doesn't smoothly fit the rewritten scene, these images could perhaps be moved earlier in the story rather than lost entirely.

The scene following, of Timothy's conversation with Cecy, is mostly unchanged except for improvements. Some lovely imagery, especially of the prehistoric machines, was cut from "The October Country," obviously because it was felt that they dated the story too much as taking place only a year after the war. Bradbury has restored these in a skillful, undated fashion, although the original "frozen in metal pantomime, gazing at those aluminum reptiles flying high" outshines "stares at those loud reptiles flying high."

"Little gray heads of steam push up the mud like bald men rising in the thick syrup" is a passage I kind of miss, and I rather preferred the passage following as it was, but not enough to insist on their restoration as with certain others.

"The dinosaur has been abroiling here ten million years" is so preferable to "The dinosaur has been cooking here two billion years" it should definitely be changed back.

The "October Country" passages "I'm walking off the porch and along the wooden boards" on which "my feet knock on the planks, tiredly, slowly," (in the "Dark Carnival" version it's "hollow knocks") and "Now the sulphur fumes are all around me. I stare at the bubbles as they break and smooth. A bird darts by my temple, shrieking. Suddenly I am in the bird and fly away! And as I fly, inside my new small glass-bead eyes I see a woman below me, on a boardwalk, take one two three steps forward into the mud pots. I hear a sound as of a boulder plunged into molten depths. I keep flying, circle back. I see a white hand, like a spider, wriggle and disappear into the gray lava pool. The lava seals over." This scene is superior to that in "From the Dust Returned" and really should be restored.

[This message has been edited by dandelion (edited 01-29-2002).]