August 29, 2004 in Features

‘Cat’s Pajamas’ delights with stories of horror, science fiction, nostalgia

• Print
• Email
• Share

Thank goodness for Ray Bradbury. One of America’s finest storytellers is back with “The Cat’s Pajamas,” a book of 21 never-before-published short stories and one poem written between 1946 and this year.

Many of us first met the now 83-year-old author when we read “Fahrenheit 451,” or perhaps “The Illustrated Man.” Combined as a body of work, they and his 31 other books earned Bradbury the National Book Foundation’s 2000 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

In “The Cat’s Pajamas,” we get to marvel again at the breadth of his subjects and talent. The collection includes science fiction, bittersweet nostalgia and horror. Each is a marvel of simplicity. Each is wondrous in its emotion. Each is successful in exposing quirky human behavior.

In the nine pages of “We’ll Just Act Natural,” written in 1948, Bradbury breaks our hearts by sharing the poignancy of a woman waiting for an elusive visitor. (The story is so tightly structured that to tell more might lessen the joy of reading it.)

“Hail to the Chief,” written this year, will elicit laughter as U.S. senators gamble away the nation in an American Indian-run casino. And in the title story, written in 2003, Bradbury takes a cliche and expands it into an unlikely love story.

Throughout, he masterfully engages the reader. Bradbury is especially good at knowing how much information to leave out — we are essentially invited to employ our imaginations to fill in the blanks. As one of his characters explains: “I didn’t want the real to interfere with the crazy mystery. I wanted to give you answers so you could imagine all the lunatic questions.”

Yet Bradbury also can conjure glorious scenes with just a few descriptive sentences, as in “The House,” written in 1947:

“It was an incredible, insane old house looking wildly out over the city with staring eyes. Birds had built nests in its high cupolas so that the place resembled nothing more than a thin, night-haunted old woman, hair untidily kept.”

This collection is a true gift from a powerful writing talent who has entertained Americans for almost 60 years.

No comments on this story so far. Add yours!