In Green Town, Illinois, it is the week before Halloween, where Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway meet a travelling salesman, selling arcane lighting rods and making wild claims of a terrible coming storm. Will's Father, the introspective Charles Halloway, catches a glimpse of a man posting flyers in town advertising for 'Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show' while through the streets familiar scents drift on the wind evoking memories of a better time.
The boys, aged 14, born minutes apart with only midnight dividing them, are nonetheless as far apart as two boys can be. Despite this, they are inseperable and a haunting melody will draw them both from their beds to witness the arrival of a dark carnival. The unnatural events that they will behold there, with glimpses of terrible power and the promise of an answer to childhood wishes, will set the boys off on a dangerous and desperate adventure that will test their friendship to its limit.
Because the October people have come again, and with the carnival comes terror and darkness and a tempting ride on the carousel.
Title and origins
The title derives its origins from Shakespeare's Macbeth. The three witches at the start of the play are brewing whatever witches brew in their cottages on lonely nights and lonely heaths when one of them states;
"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes."
It points to that whatever comes next is of its innermost nature wicked. Of course then Macbeth shows up and as the 3 witches then prophecy that he'll be king of Scotland, they in fact then serve as the primary impetus for the developing plot and the downward spiral of Macbeth himself. They really are one of the prime examples of why time-travelling stuff or prophecying doesn't work with foreknowledge that has an actual hand in the narrative itself as nothing might have happened had they kept their mouths shut, self-fullfilling prophecies and... eh, was I going anywhere with this? Anyway...
In Macbeth it points to the coming of the darkest and bloodiest of Shakespeare's tragedies but also to the character of Macbeth itself, who over the course of the narrative loses his nobility, doing generally wicked deeds of murder and bloodshed to eventually dwell in paranoia and madness.
In Something Wicked this Way Comes it points as well to the coming of a dark tale (for its time), in themes if not in execution. It also points to the coming of the October people to the small-american town of Illinois and how their natures are irredeemably and irreversably wicked.
Inspired, in part, by the magnificent The Circus of Doctor Lao and Bradbury's own meeting with a coterie of travelling circus performers as a child, which honestly is a tale interesting enough of itself, Something Wicked is a blend of fantasy, horror and the loss of childhood innocence story;
a story that usually depicts, or tries to depict boyhood's self-righteous claim to hope and the promise for the future and the magic that goes along with it, along with the joys of untested and thus seemingly unbreakable friendship.
I suppose the 'loss of innocence' story is so popular and revered because it is an easily identifiable parable of growing up, but with every traumatic mishap and formative event on the way to adulthood condensed into a single cohesive narrative, usually even compressed into a single calamitous act in the story's climax or at the start as the tale's driving force. It's so popular because everyone can find that child somewhere inside of them, to have that moment of transcendence, from child to adult, reappear provides an opportunity for melancholy reminiscing.
Of course the novel has an extra interesting aspect where it asks certain characters that if given the choice, if they would go back to that time.
But certain things can not be undone, and the wisdom gathered over a lifetime still has a certain weight, and we can never truly go back to the time of our youth, not in our mind and not to our place in that bygone world. Innocence once lost is gone forever and life will have moved irrevocably on.
There were some problems for me with this book. I'll talk about them first so can talk about the good stuff later.
The main problem for me is the incredibly corny ending. Originally written as a screenplay for a movie, in a time when movies were not as they have become since, it's very obvious that it was conceived as such. The magic that would be present in seeing it depicted on screen isn't present here and only serves as a harsh contrast with the seriousness of the novel present up until that point.
I won't give spoilers and only say that it really annoyed me and that I've already given some of my thoughts on it here; Something Wicked This Way Comes, thoughts on the ending.
Looking back at when I did that post I'm amazed it took me this long to actually write the novel's review. Also, that interpretation manages to give back some of the good feeling that the novel originally gave me, though I sincerely doubt that the meta-explanation was Bradbury's original intention, but damn me if that wouldn't be smart.
There's another problem, and it's one you'll find in most every other review on this novel. either as a centerpiece or as a begrudgingly given afterthought.
Ray Bradbury's writing style.
His style is a prime example of why the english language is so beloved. A language where a bunch of words can just be thrown together to create layers of meaning, or simply to convey and inspire the summoning up of moods and images by pasting words unto one another.
But on the other hand; this is flowery prose that even Tolkien would think was too much.
It is overly prosaic, overly crafted and moulded with desperate meaning. It's good in short bursts but as someone who is not a native english speaker Bradbury's prose can be at times, simply put, aggravating. I'm assuming that a native reader would be easily swept up in the flow of his writing patterns but this really doesn't and presumably can't happen with me. Time and again I had to stop, go back, and re-read whole paragraphs because of how of the mark his style sometimes was.
There seems to be an inability to choose and select what is best and getting rid of the less than perfect phrases. The continuous use of more, if less would be better.
I've said it before in different contexts and different writers but, it's like he's throwing everything at the wall, seeing what sticks and what plops on the ground and then he ends up using it all anyway. The effort, good in small doses, because it's used in its entirety, turns on itself and diminishes the whole by its sheer extravagance.
That's mostly my response when it's bad.
But, you know, at times it does manage to hit the good spot. when the prose, progressing steadily into poetry, glides along naturally and manages to draw me in. When the intention, restrained in words, is looking at its sentences with poetry as the end goal, and then in turn, it will find in me a welcoming resting place.
But, overall, for me the bad mostly outweighs the good, because there are a hundred novels that do this better, and very few that can be as of the mark as this book.
As of this time I've read Fahrenheit 451 and now, Something Wicked This Way Comes. Both have, because of their style, not hit me in any meaningful way. Though the themes connected very well, particularily in these times for myself in the case of Something Wicked This Way Comes and for the world in general for Fahrenheit, It's just the style that will keep me from going back for a possible re-read.
I've also read in a Penguin Horror collection; The Fog Horn. Which I thought was excellent but at the time was dissappointed with because it was not even close to being horror. So then, for various reasons dissappointed in his full length work, But very satisfied with the one short story that've read of his.
Themes and Characters
But despite the few problems there's also alot of good stuff to be found.
This is a novel with themes of fear. On the one hand the mundane and worldy fear of change and growing up and growing old and every regret that goes hand in hand with that, on the other; the fear that arises from the dark and of the things that might dwell in it.
There's longing and there's regret. Of an old man's fearful heart and the cost and weight of living. Of children's uncertainty in the face of growing up and the things they can't control, the ways of dealing with that and how that is represented in the differing viewpoints of Will and Jim.
Of death and loneliness and an ever present sense of melancholy in the face of those things.
But there are also themes of friendship, love, humanity, the power of laughter and joy for life's simple things.
As you can guess at this point I found myself very much in synch with the character of Charles Halloway; his musings (though not his ramblings), his fears, his worries, (though not his regrets, but the possibility of their eventual coming is there,) his desire to do good and recognition of his own fallibility and his mounting despair at the seeming insurmountibility of it all; all these things I imagine can be found in most of us. Specifically in the people given to thought and introspection.
All in all, a character that provoked a specific introspective response from someone who is already very introspective.
I recognized alot of myself in him and it somehow feels like a warning.
And also maybe an admonishment; go and live a little.
And the concept of the October People is an interesting one, though not as well developed as I would like there are nonetheless enough moments in the novel that invite speculation and interpretation involving origins, nature and a place for these beings in the grand scheme.
Their nature reminded me very much of Dan Simmons psychic vampire novel Carrion Comfort, which is way more bad-ass than that sounds, I assure you.
It also reminded me of another true vampire novel; Fevre Dream by George Martin. But the background of the bad beasties was way more developed in there and managed to have an actual tangible weight to them.
Stray Thoughts: White hat, Black hat
Charles Halloway asks the boys early on in the book what type of book they prefer.
P 14
'You need a white hat or a black hat book?'
'A long time ago I had to decide myself, which color I'd wear'
'Which did you pick?'
It's an important question and it doesn't just point to your tastes in literature. It also tells you of your nature, your leanings and your world-view. It's a question that is interesting to ask of oneself. But really shouldn't be so difficult if you know what the implications are.
Annoying Michael Dirda and a Lead-in to the Terror 8 edition after the jump.
Incidentally, here's the Terror 8 version, of which I can't help but wonder if it was inspired by the White hat, Black hat conundrum. With it's questions and suggestions of nihilism and fear I figure it wouldn't be amiss as a Black Hat book.
Incidentally, I read this edition.
Mostly just because it didn't come with an introduction and I wanted to go into the book without too much information, unspoiled by bias, ideas and opinions, which I would've gotten from the Fantasy Masterworks edition as it has an introduction by Michael Dirda whose lead-in's to various novels I've found to be too spoilery at times. Though I do admit it's interesting to read after the novel as they're mostly pretty informative.
However, When I got around to reading this introduction I did end up being rather annoyed with a specific part;
"... Perhaps he subconsciously recognizes a threat to the easy, homosocial camaraderie that he and his best friend..."
Really? Homosocial Camaraderie?
You dickhead.
It just goes to show that everybody talks out of their ass sometimes. I see what he's trying to say, but this day and age some words have devolved into triggers that can drag up a whole set of connotations that have nothing to do with the subject matter at hand. In part this is dependant on the reader. So... well shit, this is on me?
Anyway,
tie-ing into the Terror 8 topic, I wanted to do a post on each of those books for both Fantasy Masterworks and Terror 8 while I go through reading them, but because there's some overlap with the Fantasy Masterworks, (in Fevre Dream, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Song of Kali and Darker Than You Think,) I'm not quite sure how to do them yet. For now I've left off commenting on the horror aspects of Something Wicked This way Comes as I'm thinking of doing that there. But these two posts, this one and the next, maybe should be viewed as one.
I've given more than enough of a deconstruction and views and opinions on the novel that I shouldn't go through that again. and instead, for the 4 overlapping ones will probably just take a look, brief or not at the horror aspects of the novel in question and why that it belongs in the Terror 8 set.
I'm actually very positive about Something Wicked This Way Comes in this.
As of this time I've read Fevre Dream quite some time ago so I'm not sure if I'll ever review that one on the blog. Maybe if I manage to track down the Terror 8 version I'll give it a re-read. At any rate, it would be nice to meet Abner Marsh again.
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