Moby Dick takes Ray Bradbury to the brink

Even after seven months of work, [writer Ray] Bradbury still needed to write the last act of the script. And that’s when it happened. On the morning of April 14, 1954, he woke up, alone in his London hotel room, homesick for Los Angeles, lonely for his wife and children, longing for his old life as an author—autonomous, not answering to anyone, creating his own schedule, writing his own stories. He climbed out of bed, stood before the mirror, looked at himself and declared: “I … am Herman Melville!” He then calmly proceeded to his typewriter.

As with the creation of Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury worked best when he wrote quickly, in an onslaught of creativity. “Your subconscious is smarter than you are,” he once told me, “so get out of its way.” He wrote nonstop for eight hours. He produced the final 37 pages of the script in that one sitting. And he knew that, of the 1,500 pages of drafts and outlines he had written in the seven months he had been working with [film director John] Huston, these were his best.

Huston concurred. Bradbury had finished the screenplay. There would be revisions to follow, but the day-to-day work was done. He was free to leave London and travel south to Italy to meet up with his family. He parted on good enough terms with Huston, the two men hugging, Bradbury thanking him for the singular experience. He left London on April 16, 1954, done with the ordeal of working every day with the unpredictable director.

While he was still in Europe, new screenwriting offers poured in. He was offered assignments to adapt the novels Anatomy of a Murder (1958) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), among several other projects. The lifelong cinema aficionado was now completely embraced by Hollywood. And Bradbury turned every offer down. He had, after all, harpooned the white whale. And it almost killed him.

- Sam Weller, 'I ... Am Herman Melville!', Los Angeles Review of Books, 6 September 2024