Ray Bradbury and Ma Perkins rule my heart

Ray Bradbury is a literary giant. I read one of his short stories recently. This prompted me to go looking for his book of short stories that I'd picked up years ago, which was languishing unread in my home library. The book cover tells me he is the winner of the 2007 Pulitzer prize special citation, winner of the 2004 National medal of arts, and a couple of other literary honours.

This collection of stories is called ' We'll always have Paris'. But this title story is not my favourite. This one is about two men. A married man who leaves his sleeping wife in the room and goes out for a walk, following another man who leads him through the streets of Paris only to kiss him goodbye. They don't understand each other's language. The way the story was told, I took this to mean he was gay and was checking if the married man was, too. But the married man who was charmed with this man decided he wasn't and went back to his sleeping wife, forgetting all about the bread she asked him to buy( symbolising mundane life) and flirted with 'newness'. So he says' we'll always have Paris'. The city of enchantment. The city of love.

I loved this one called 'Ma Perkins comes to stay'. It's actually some kind of horror. Joe Tiller is married to Anna. She keeps listening to the radio. He has been neglecting her for years. Suddenly the lady from the radio comes out of the radio and stays in his house. He beats up the radio and breaks it after he goes a little crazy. He goes to his office and there, too, is Ma Perkins, the lady from the radio. He breaks the radio there too. He calls a psychologist and the psychologist says that it is not Ma Perkins, the lady from the radio but Ma Tiller, his mom, Anna's mom-in-law. Then, the wife tells him that he has never been there and when he is not there she and Ma Perkins and the others sit and talk and have affairs and knit and party. This drives Joe crazy and he comes to kill Ma Perkins, he does so, he is arrested. Then Anna is seen talking to Ma Perkins in the end who is male and taking care of her. I'm still figuring it out.

You can read a lot into Ray Bradbury's short stories. There are layers and layers of meaning in each story. Depending on your level of perception, you read into the story what you can. That's what I love about his stories. I wonder if I read the same stories at age 50, whether I will read more into them.

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