In honor of the 75th anniversary of the publication of Dark Carnival (Arkham House, 1947), Dispatches from the Macabre Republic is taking a look back at Ray Bradbury’s debut fiction collection. Adding a new post to this recurring feature every few days, I will work my way through the book’s table of contents, considering the significance of each story and also its present relevance. (Disclaimer: the stories “Reunion” and “The Night Sets” will not be included in this retrospective, as they only appear in super-pricey collectible volumes [the Arkham House original or the 2001 Gauntlet Press special edition] of Dark Carnival, a copy of which I do not own. For the remaining stories, the text is drawn from other Bradbury books in which they have been published subsequently, such as The October Country.)

“Homecoming” (1946)

Batting leadoff is a tale full of dark bats and resplendent with Gothic atmosphere. “Homecoming” treats the gathering of monsters (e.g., vampires, werewolves, mummies) from across the world at a Victorian mansion in the American Midwest; they have come to celebrate a family reunion on Allhallows Eve. The narrative is steeped in nostalgia, as Bradbury (who admits to basing many of the supernatural figures on his own relatives) recalls the cherished Halloween festivities of his own childhood home in Waukegan, Illinois. This inaugural literary foray into the October Country testifies to the seminal influence of the autumn holiday on Bradbury, a writer whose name has since become synonymous with the Halloween season.

There’s nothing saccharine about “Homecoming,” though, as a strong sense of alienation also runs through the story (which, according to Bradbury biographer Sam Weller, “sprang from Ray’s own experience as a sensitive, imaginative, oft-misunderstood boy”). The condition of fourteen-year-old protagonist Timothy–reflection-casting, darkness-fearing, coffin-eschewing–is deemed an “illness” by his more traditionally vampiric family members. His siblings and cousins tease him about his obvious difference and constantly remind him of his outcast status. Timothy keenly senses that he is out of place at the monster bash (“The party happened around him but not to him”) and longs to show that he belongs at the celebration. While the carnivalesque inversion of normalcy would later be mined for plentiful gags on The Munsters (i.e. the relative “ugliness” of the humanly beautiful Marilyn), Bradbury strikes a more poignant note. The homecoming–and “Homecoming”–concludes with Timothy “crying to himself,” sadly aware of his own eventual extinction and his lone fate in a family of the undead and undying. Mortality arguably is the grand concern of Bradbury’s fiction; it’s a theme that never ages, because we all inevitably do. The treatment of such theme here, more than the colorful, outré cast and festive Halloween setting, is what makes the tale a timeless classic.

Bradbury’s personal regard for the piece is evident in its selection for the opening slot in Dark Carnival, but the placement is also somewhat ironic. The Arkham House collection intended to showcase the author’s weird-fiction efforts (indeed, many of the stories were first published in Weird Tales). But “Homecoming” was actually rejected by Weird Tales as too far afield of the magazine’s eldritch sensibilities; the story instead saw initial print in a special October issue of the mainstream publication Mademoiselle. So from the very outset, Dark Carnival forecasts Bradbury’s destiny to transcend the pulp fiction ghetto and ultimately form a genre unto himself: imaginer extraordinaire, a storyteller of human truths, who uses the trappings of fantasy to capture 20th Century reality for his legions of readers.