Six decades of invention

Ever since he wrote the 1943 short story “The Lake,” Ray Bradbury has let his subconscious guide him, establishing a style that blurs the boundary between mainstream and genre fiction. Bradbury is sometimes carelessly classified as a “science fiction writer” because of his best-known works, including “The Martian Chronicles.” But as critics have pointed out, his themes are soundly in the middle of American life and tradition despite the trappings of science fiction. If he needs time travel, then there’s a time machine. If he needs space travel, there’s a rocket ship -- but it’s always in service to the story.

This holds true for “The Cat’s Pajamas,” a collection that gathers previously unpublished stories written over the course of Bradbury’s long career. In the 1952 story “A Matter of Taste,” for instance, there’s a spaceship and, yes, there are also 7-foot-tall spiders. But the story is hardly a space opera. It’s a story about, well, race relations, about tolerance, about accepting others who are different from you. Taken as a whole, the stories of “The Cat’s Pajamas” are a tribute to Bradbury’s continuing inventiveness and defy easy categorization.

A favorite Bradbury theme, tolerance of differences, is what one finds in “The Chrysalis” (1947), which takes place on the beach at Santa Monica. Walter, a black boy on the cusp of adulthood, is buying skin bleaches to become lighter. He befriends Bill, a white boy who is lying on the beach to get darker (so successfully that he becomes darker than Walter). At first, the bigoted hot dog stand owner -- who has refused to serve Walter -- won’t serve Bill either, until he recognizes him under his tan. “I don’t get it,” Bill says to the hot dog man. “I’m darker than him. Why are you kissing my butt?”

The book’s title story, dating from last year, is a sweet tale of a man and woman who lay hands on a stray kitten at the same instant. Both have recently lost much-loved cats. What are they to do? They talk it out at a nearby diner. When the diner closes, they decide to take a room at a pet-friendly motel. The cat goes in the middle of the bed. Whomever it goes to will get to keep it. But Electra, as they’ve named it, just curls up and dozes off. They talk late into the night and fall asleep. In the morning, she asks, “Did the cat move either way during the night to indicate which of us it was going to belong to?” “No,” he says smiling, “The cat didn’t move. But you did.”

As the reader jumps from the early stories to more recent ones, two things become clear in “The Cat’s Pajamas.” Bradbury is as skillful and as passionate as ever. Of writing, Rudyard Kipling said: “When your daemon is in charge, do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait, and obey.” Bradbury has been in touch with his “daemon” for close to 65 years. As he says in this book’s introduction, “My demon speaks. I hope that you will listen.” *