The way I write my novels can best be described as imagining that I'm going into the kitchen to fry a couple of eggs and then find myself cooking up a banquet. Starting with very simple things, they then word-associate themselves with further things until I'm up and running and eager to find out the next surprise, the next hour, the next day or the next week.
Farewell Summer began roughly fifty-five years ago when I was very young and had no knowledge of novels and no hope of creating a novel that was sensible. I had to wait for years for material to accumulate and take me, unaware, so that as I sat at my typewriter quite suddenly there would be bursts of surprise, resulting in short stories or longer narratives that I then connected together.
The main action of the novel takes place in a ravine that cut across my life. I lived on a short street in Waukegan, Illinois, and the ravine was immediately east of my home and ran on for several miles in two directions and then circled around to the north and to the south, and finally to the west. So, in effect, I lived on an island where I could, at any time, plunge into the ravine and have adventures.
There I imagined myself in Africa or on the planet Mars. That being so, and my going through the ravine every day on my way to school, and skating and sledding there in winter, this ravine remained central to my life and so it was natural that it would become the center of this novel, with all of my friends on both sides of the ravine and the old people who were curious time-pieces in my life.
I've always been fascinated by elderly people. They came and went in my life and I followed them and questioned them and learned from them, and that is children and old people who are peculiar Time Machines.
Many of the greatest friendships in my lifetime have been with men or women who were in their eighties or nineties and I welcomed the chance to ask them questions and then to sit, very quietly, saying nothing and learning from their responses.
In a way, Farewell Summer is a novel about learning by encountering old people and daring to ask them certain questions and then sitting back and listening to their answers. The questions posed by Doug, and the answers given by Mr. Quartermain, provide the organization of the action of the chapters and the final resolution of the book.
The bottom line here is that / am not the one in control. I do not try to steer my characters; I let them live their lives and speak their truths as quickly as possible. I listen, and write them down.
Farewell Summer is actually an extension of my book Dandelion Wine, which I completed fifty-five years ago. When I delivered it to my publishers they said, "My God, this is much too long. Why don't we publish the first 90,000 words as a novel and keep the second part for some future year when you feel it is ready to be published." At the time, I called the full, primitive version The Blue Remembered Hills. The original title for what would become Dandelion Wine was Summer Morning, Summer Night. Even all those years ago, I had a title ready for this unborn book: Farewell Summer.
So, it has taken all these years for the second part of Dandelion Wine to evolve to a point where I felt it was correct to send it out into the world. During the ensuing years, I waited for those parts of the novel to attract further ideas and further metaphors to add
Surprise is everything with me. When I go to bed at night I give myself instructions to startle myself when I wake in the morning. That was one of the great adventures in letting this novel evolve: my instructions at night and my being startled in the morning by revelations.
The influence of my grandparents and my aunt, Neva Bradbury, is in evidence all through the narrative. My grandfather was a very wise and patient man, who knew the importance of showing, not simply telling. My grandmother was a wonderful woman who had an innate understanding of what made boys tick. And my aunt Neva was the guardian and gardener of the metaphors that became me. She saw to it that I was fed all the best fairy tales, poetry, cinema, and theater, so that I was continually in a fever about life and eager to write it all down. Today, all these years later, I still feel in the writing process that she is looking over my shoulder and beaming with pride.
Beyond that there is very little to add except that I'm glad that the long haul of writing this novel is finished and I hope that there is pleasure in it for everyone. It has been a great pleasure for me, to revisit my beloved Green Town-to gaze up at the haunted house, to hear the deep gongs of the courthouse clock, to run through the ravine, to be kissed by a girl for the first time, and to listen to and learn from the wisdom of those who have gone before.