Thanks to the generous provision of Hove Public Library ( Pvblic in the fine Roman lettering oveer the front door ) I was an avid reader from the time when I was first allowed to walk there with my friends unaccompanied. It was a short journey along Portland Road away from the hallowed and loved Granada Cinema with its red neon promise, past the imposing Basilica and tower of the Catholic Church, then a sharp right turn down Sackville Road avoiding the siren lure of Woolworths on Blatchington and straight down to New Church Road and the library.
We vied with one another to read whole series in sequence. I devoured all of the Hugh Lofting Dr Dolittle books over and over again. I certainly could not have afforded to buy them, but because I could borrow them whenever I wanted to I felt that they were mine, in any case the stories were locked in my head, safe.
Later I graduated to buying books. Always cheap second hand paperbacks from the trestle tables outside the many junk shops in the area. Science fiction appealed especially to my younger teenage self. I bought everything and anything indiscriminately, Earth Abides by George R Stewart was an early stand out, as was The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A E Van Vogt. There were numerous very cheap paperback books sold in my local paper shop, often science fiction which were printed I discovered on close and obsessive reading in Coleridge Street not far from where I lived. Best of all though I found the great Ray Bradbury. Starting with his various short stories, science fiction and horror and then the real revelation his book Dandelion Wine. This book sent shivers up my young spine, shivers that Vladimir Nabokov would have identified as ‘the authentic shiver of art’, later of course Nabokov too would also send many such shivers my way, but then it was all about Mr Bradbury.
Dandelion Wine is part autobigraphical part fantasy, a loving subjective recreation of the summer of 1928 in the life of twelve year old Douglas Spaulding in Green Town Illinois. The many delights of summer are adumbrated, buying new sneakers, the travelling fair, making Dandelion Wine, the scary ravine that divides the town. I loved it, this book really spoke to me deeply. It involved me like few books before or since. I wore my battered Corgi paperback out (bought for sixpence at Bric a Brac in Portland Road), later I was to be published by that same publisher something which I would never have believed then.
I took my copy along to Art School and bullied others to read it. I read it aloud to girls, I read chunks of it to anyone who would listen. My copylater disappeared, only to resurface more than forty years later when my friend and old art school companion Peter Bailey found it in his house after a clear out. He was amused to see it because I had drawn a couple of poor figures on the outer cover in my ‘what have we come to now’, style, stiff wooden looking characters staring into the middle distance, usually sans arms or anything tricky and in their turn heavily influnced by Terence Greer and Heinz Edelman. He posted it back to me and it was wonderful to have a little piece of my missing teen treasure returned.
Ray Bradbury turned 90 recently, I salute him and akll his works, and if I could I would raise a glass of Dandelion Wine bottled in 1928 and drink his good health, thank you Ray.
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Ian Beck 