The October Country: Stories

Product Information

I am a dwarf and I am a murderer. The two things cannot be separated. One is the cause of the other. Personally, I'm right there with the author. Everything about this time of year - from the fog that casts everything into an eerie light and amplifies sounds in a weird way, to the crisp fresh air that has a unique smell, as well as the breathtaking colour of the foliage and cool storms, not to mention Halloween, carving pumpkins, decorating the house ... I love everything about it.

Stone, on the brink of his greatest work, turned one day and went off to live in a town we shall call Obscurity by the sea best named The Past.” El enano" es otro cuento narrado alrededor de la misteriosa y (nuevamente debo utilizar ese término) ominosa figura de un enano cuyo costado diabólico inquieta a una mujer en un extraño parque de diversiones.My copy of The October Country has a new introduction by Ray Bradbury, written in 1999, where he claims to remembering being born and the development of his passion for stories and storytelling. He wrote his first story in the seventh grade, and since the age of twelve knew that was the way to ensure proper immortality - being remembered after our limited time on earth runs out. Bradbury saw the process of writing as a match between life and death, each completed story a victory. Days when he didn't write were threatening him extinction, and this is why he wrote every day since he turned twelve, evading death. He died last year, at the age of 91, having published his last novel - Farewell Summer - six years before, along with hundreds of short stories. Death has finally caught with Ray, but not before he had his say - he went out on his own terms, and achieved the exact type of immortality that he hoped for. The October Country contains nineteen very different stories, most of which were previously published in Bradbury's debut colection, Dark Carnival. These are some of Bradbury's earliest stories, published before The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451. There is a special pleasure in reading these stories - allowing Ray Bradbury's gentle storytelling lull us in and expose us to his imagination. I can see young Kings and Mathesons of this world reading his fiction deep into the night, possibly even with a flashlight under the bedcovers, amazed that a grownup could think such things onto paper. Bradbury was a man who could both turn a phrase and had a great, big heart - his warmth emanates from his writing, which is far removed from the vulgarity of contemporary world. Bradbury was often accused of being too sentimental and too emotional, but I don't think this is completely correct - while it's true that his stories offer a bucolic vision of the American heartland and the nostalgia of small-town life, but didn't shy away from showing the nastiness running behind the curtain of these idealistic visions. Night came in over the pier. The ocean lay dark and loud under the planks. Ralph sat cold and waxen in his glass coffin, laying out the cards, his eyes fixed, his mouth stiff. At his elbow, a growing pyramid of burnt cigarette butts grew larger. When Aimee walked along under the hot red and blue bulbs, smiling, waving, he did not stop setting the cards down slow and very slow. Hi, Ralph! she said. Because maybe he’s afraid—maybe he doesn’t know he can do it. That happens. People don’t believe in themselves. But if he only tried, I bet he could sell stories anywhere in the world.

Ralph looked at her, his head to one side. And guess who’s going to do it? Well, well, ain’t we just the Saviour’s right hand? The Jar was a display I witnessed at a seaside carnival when I was fourteen. A whole series of jars, in which mysterious objects floated, haunted me for years until I wrote about them.Nineteen macabre and Octoberesque tales for our delight. They’re all good but for me the most notable are: Bradbury may well have felt the same way about October as I do. In his original preface to the collection, he described “October Country” as