Sam Weller at the LARB:
SEVENTY YEARS AGO, Ray Bradbury, then 33 years old—the author of The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and Fahrenheit 451 (1953)—stood in front of a mirror in a London hotel room and declared, “I … am Herman Melville!” It was a last-ditch effort to channel the great American writer of Moby-Dick (1851). For Bradbury, it was either that or accept complete failure.
Today, few people are aware that Bradbury, renowned science fiction writer, beloved fantasist, and mainstay on banned-book lists, wrote the screenplay for the 1956 John Huston adaptation of the Melville classic, which starred Gregory Peck as the iconic and obsessive Captain Ahab. Writing the screenplay was a dream come true for Bradbury, until it morphed into a waking nightmare. As the old adage goes: Never meet your heroes. So how did a writer known for conjuring carnival sideshow freaks, Art Deco rocket ships blasting off for Mars, and a dystopian future where books are illegal come to adapt what is often deemed the great American novel? If you asked Ray Bradbury, who died in 2012, he would tell you the answer to this question was a four-letter word: L-O-V-E.
more here.
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