Review: Yestermorrow

Yestermorrow by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Many of the essays in this collection are about urban design, mainly written in the 70s and 80s. Bradbury is lobbying readers to recreate old, Midwestern town centers in new towns and in different districts of large cities. He writes of promenading, and visiting bookstores and tiny movie theaters, and town fairs and farmers markets. He dreams about the people watching opportunities this would enable. He complains about cars and traffic, and determines that his urban centers would ban vehicles to the outskirts. This reads like an advertisement for Disney’s Celebration, Florida development and EPCOT. And as Bradbury worked with Disney, this might actually be the case.

The concepts are interesting, but are told in multiple essays written throughout the years. Bradbury’s of the Henry James school - his writing is flowery and excessively metaphorical. And he even writes about metaphors in this collection. The writing makes this a difficult but illuminating read.

While I enjoyed the multiple essays on urban planning, I understood the concept from books I read in the 70s and 80s. I most appreciated his essay on Bernard Berenson, an early mentor in Bradbury’s writing career. Unlike all the other essays about bringing humanity to a city, I most appreciated the story Bradbury writes about himself, looking for acknowledgement and wisdom, and finding it in a mentor turned friend.


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