The Cat's Pajamas

Published in 2004 by William Morrow.

Introduction: Alive and Kicking and Writing

Bradbury explains the origins of some of the stories collected here. Most of them are older, previously unpublished stories--like old hairballs he's coughed up for us.

The cover claims there are 22 stories here. There are actually 20 stories and a poem. But one story, "Triangle," isn't listed in the contents. The cover also says only two were previously published, and the copyright page indicates that these are "A Careful Man Dies" and "Sixty-Six," but "A Matter of Taste" was also previously published in It Came From Outer Space. The story called "Chrysalis" (see next entry) is not the same as the story of the same name in S is for Space.

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: On a California beach, Walter, a young black man who wishes he was white, makes friends with Bill, a young white man who is trying to get a good dark tan.

Comments: This one isn't quite as corny as I'd expected. There is a different story called "Chrysalis" in S is for Space.

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: A family of gun-toting shut-ins is terrified by a bump in the night.

Comments: Pretty much a mess. Incomprehensible.

"Jack-in-the-Box" is a better story of weird shut-ins.

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: August 2002. A library janitor is puzzled by the young couple who just took the next room in his boarding house. The woman cries every night, and the room is full of clocks and calendars from the year 2035.

Comments: Similar to "The Fox and the Forest," only this one is more open-ended, not quite explaining everything, leaving you to wonder. The narrator is a janitor of a library like Mr. Halloway in Something Wicked This Way Comes. Why did RB set this in 2002? The entire boarding house situation is very old-fashioned.

"That Woman on the Lawn" is also about a woman's mysterious crying in the night.

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: Drunken senators visit a Native American casino and lose the entire United States to the Indians.

Comments: Not as funny as it sounds.

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: An aging black nanny anxiously awaits a visit from a boy she helped raise, now a famous writer.

Comments:

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: An art dealer is forced to acknowledge the genius of recently deceased graffiti artist Sebastian Rodriguez.

Comments: Another case of RB getting an idea and running away with it before he actually had a story. All we get is two colorless characters who come along and observe everything after the fact. This makes the entire story rather uninvolved.

"The Picasso Summer" is another tale of a temporary mural in an unexpected place.

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: When newlyweds Bill and Maggie, a writer and a rich girl, buy an old run down house their love is put to the test by their differing points of view about it.

Comments: Sort of a non-SF version of "The Strawberry Window." This was written about the same time that RB married Maggie.

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: Some kind of nightmare Bradbury has about a funeral train hauling away all of his heroes from Abe Lincoln to Louis B. Mayer.

Comments: Why? I don't know. Bradbury's criticizing something here, but it's not clear what. He's lamenting the loss of trolleys, good presidents, and movie moguls, but damned if the thing makes any sense. He sounds like he's trying to blame the modern world and technology for all of it. Not the only incomprehensible mess in The Cat's Pajamas. See "The Island."

Originally published in New Detective Magazine, November 1946.
Appears in A Memory of Murder; The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: Robert Douglas is writing a roman ŕ clef about his junkie ex-girlfriend Anne and her new partner Mike. They would do anything to stop him, and almost anything will do because Rob is a hemophiliac.

Comments: The opening paragraph mentions Rob getting a special permit to walk the streets at night. This must have been inspired by the same experience that prompted Bradbury to write "The Pedestrian."

This story and "The Night" are rare examples of second-person point-of-view narratives. In both stories "you" are the main character.

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: A man and woman form a bond while disputing the ownership of a kitten found on the highway.

Comments: Awww. Ain't you just the cutest little story ever? Oh, yes you are. Yessss.

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas (Look closely. It's not listed in the table of contents of the Harper Perennial trade paperback.)

Summary: Middle-aged sisters Lydia and Helen are much surprised when John Larsen comes courting after sixteen years of tipping his hat to them in front of the cigar store.

Comments: At least he doesn't have a hole in his head. "The Headpiece" is another failed courtship on a front porch swing.

If you're looking for the story about the pyramid-shaped baby, that's called "Tomorrow's Child."

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: Literary layabout Burnham Wood has invented a time machine from a cement mixer so that he can go back and help F. Scott Fitzgerald finish his last book.

Comments: Why are these time travelers always in such a hurry? Haven't they got all the time in the world? I feel a story idea of my own coming on: "Procrastination Device."

See almost any other RB book for similar stories. I'm tired of listing them. My time is limited.

"The Concrete Mixer" is a completely different story.

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: Three young girls are fascinated by pale figures who cavort on the grassy slope below their house on summer nights. They don't understand why Father hates the ghosts so much that he tries to exorcise them by covering the slope in poison ivy.

Comments: In the introduction to The Cat's Pajamas Bradbury describes some of the stories as "obvious." This one should be included among them. This story shifts from first-person plural to first-person singular. No big deal. Just something we noticed. We see very few stories told entirely in first-person plural.

Page 83 of William Nolan's Ray Bradbury Companion includes a facsimile typescript called "The Ghosts" which has nothing to do with this tale. That tale was most likely an unused bridge-passage for The Martian Chronicles explaining how an Earth germ killed off the Martians.

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: A man leaves his wife because in twenty years of visiting Paris they never once made love there.

Comments: And this is a story? Watch Ninotchka instead.

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: Steve Nolan, a white southerner, thinks the color of his skin will protect him from a recent scandal involving a black girl.

Comments: There are several race-relations stories in The Cat's Pajamas.

Originally published in The Strand, December 2003.
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: After finding five bodies dressed like Depression Era Okies, a modern day motorcycle cop has a strange encounter in a dust storm.

Comments: The introduction to The Cat's Pajamas explains this story. RB wrote it after being angered by a photo spread in The New Yorker that showed modern models made up to look like dirt farmers. This makes it somewhat similar to "Sun and Shadow."

Originally published in It Came From Outer Space.
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: A rocket crew of humans can't quite stomach the race of giant spiders they've discovered, despite the obvious intelligence and good will of the creatures.

Comments: Somehow this led to RB's writing the script for It Came From Outer Space. The plots are nothing alike, unless you consider them both examples of the Cold War Era "us and them" mentality. This is really a story of race-relations, like many tales in The Cat's Pajamas.

This is probably the space-spider story mentioned in the essay "Beyond Giverny." The novella Leviathan '99 also features a telepathic alien who looks like a giant spider.

The radio show "Martian Death March" is somewhat similar, but I believe someone else wrote it.

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: A writer reminisces about a special night of singing and drinking with his writer friends--a night so special it could never happen again.

Comments: Even if RB wrote about it. Is this based on real life? Who are the other writers supposed to be? Do I care?

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: When his last enemy dies Walter Gripp decides his life has no meaning, and he lies down to die himself, his fire gone out. His best friend (the narrator) rekindles the fire by becoming a newfound enemy.

Comments: A couple of interesting cross-references here. Walter Gripp is the name of a character in "The Silent Towns." This story also mentions the kinky bedroom game "Gotcha!"

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: On a trans-Atlantic voyage a couple are intrigued by the Completist--a globe-trotting lawyer who has collected some of the rarest books and built some of the most complete libraries in the world. They are even further intrigued when the man suddenly reveals how incomplete his life really is.

Comments: Weird, difficult story which RB says is true.

Originally published in The Cat's Pajamas
Appears in The Cat's Pajamas

Summary: RB travels in a train with his favorite dead authors, all alive and well, etc.

Comments: Long and tedious.