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The author Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) wrote many science fiction books. There are 33 titles listed in the introduction to the book I'm writing about first: "Somewhere a Band is Playing," c 2007.
Bradbury is perhaps best known for "Fahrenheit 451," c 1953, and "Dandelion Wine," c 1957.
The two places he writes about in the introduction to "Somewhere a Band is Playing" are Tucson, AZ, and Waukegan, IL. I read all 113 pages in June, took lots of notes, and am writing my review for The Independent on June 30. A long poem he writes in Chapter 2 includes these lines:
Somewhere a band is playing
Oh listen, oh listen, that tune!
If you learn it you'll dance on forever
In June … (p. 13)
The town he gets to on the train going west is Summerton, AZ. I looked on an Arizona map and found that a town Somerton, AZ, is in the southwest corner of the state, very close to California and Mexico.
At the railroad station he gets a taxi ride to a place to stay: the Egyptian View Arms. The taxi is a wagon pulled by a white horse named Claude. The sign on the wagon says KELLY'S BAKERY, FRESH BREAD. In Chapter 4 we learn more names: The driver is Elias Culpepper, and the young man taking a ride is James Cardiff. On this ride he sees sunflowers:
" the tall green stalks ending in vast dark faces and yellow fringes" (p. 19)
As soon as I read this I looked through my photos, and found the one you see of me by the tall sunflower in our garden. The date on it is 2004.
When they get to the boarding house, Cardiff sees men and women sitting on the porch. Soon they all hear "soup's on," and they go into the house. When a beautiful woman walks down the stairs for the meal, Cardiff remembers her and says her name: Nefertiti. She goes by Nef.
The bakery wagon is delivering bread again and Cardiff sees more of the town -- a teeter-totter and a swing set at a school building that's two stories high. Soon Cardiff asks "Where are the children?" (p. 37).
Culpepper and Cardiff are together much of the time in the book.
The horse Claude takes them to the Hope Memorial Library, where Nef is the librarian. Authors Saul Bellow, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville are mentioned. Then Lazarus. In the Holy Bible, Lazarus was resurrected (Read John in the New Testament, Chapter 11).
Now it's the weekend, and I'm reading Bradbury's collection of stories, c 2004, starting with the story that's the title of the book: "The Cat's Pajamas." There's not much traffic on a highway in California, the setting of the book. Two drivers in two cars see a cat in the middle of the road, and they get out to help the cat.
Each person wants the cat, so they argue about that for awhile. He says he wrote an article for a magazine "Cat Fancy." She says she was chair of a cat show in Wisconsin. They decide to go have coffee at a restaurant to discuss this further, and they take the cat inside to set on the table. The waitress notices the cat, of course, but she lets the cat stay there. Next, the couple goes to a hotel, and they are allowed to take the cat in the room with them. Catherine and Tom talk about possible names for the cat.
The cat is on a pillow in bed with them, and the woman says she had a cat that died. She was making the cat some pajamas. Now the sun comes up.
I want to continue reading Ray Bradbury books.
Your Marshall-Lyon County Library has many books by Bradbury, as well as movies based on his books, including "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Martian Chronicles." He was a great supporter of libraries, having written Fahrenheit 451 on a typewriter (rented for 10c per half hour) in the basement of the Powell Library. He also wrote the screenplay for "Moby Dick," starring Gregory Peck. marshalllyonlibrary.org.