Ray Bradbury on Something Wicked
Born in Waukegan, Illinois in 1920, Ray Bradbury is one of America’s greatest and most popular writers. Author of hundreds of short stories, scripts, poems and essays, many of his books have been successfully adapted for film, television and the stage, including Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine and The Martian Chronicles.
Something Wicked This Way Comes is one of Bradbury’s best loved works and follows the adventures of two boys, Will and Jim, who come across a mysterious carnival which appears in their town one dark autumn evening. . .
How much of Ray Bradbury is there in the characters of Will and Jim in Something Wicked This Way Comes?
I’m completely in those two characters; they’re half of me. Half of me is Will, and half of me is Jim. I grew up with these two characters inside my skin.
This piece is as popular now as it ever was – what makes it such an appealing and enduring story for young people?
I think the merry-go-round is the centre of people’s interest. I think young people who want to grow up fast are fascinated with the merry-go-round and when they read my story they fall in love with the carousel.
Is writing fiction for young people very different from writing for adults?
No, there’s no difference because my books are about old people talking to young people, and young people talking to old. I have two other books where that happens. There’s no difference. I write my books for old people and for young, both.
What are the ingredients for a really good, really scary story?
Well, that’s hard to answer. Of course, we’re surrounded by death and when I was three years old I saw people on occasion dying. My grandfather died when I was five and my sister died when I was seven, so those become part of your life and you can’t help put them in your stories too. You have to work around death, somehow, and find ways of surviving.
Autumn, the month of October in particular, seems to have a special place in your work. What is it about this time of year that fascinates you, and that audiences are attracted to in your writing?
It’s because I’m in love with Halloween. I fell in love with Halloween when I was very young, and I celebrate it in my books. And I also fell in love with [the silent era horror movie actor] Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and in The Phantom of the Opera. And people see that I’m in love with that great actor of all times since 1920, and they see that in my stories that Lon Chaney has guided my personality and my hand as well, and they see Halloween itself.
The power of the imagination is an important theme in your work – do you think we’re in danger of losing touch with it somehow?
I don’t think about any of these things. All of my writing is automatic and passionate and of course when I explode at the typewriter I don’t think about my imagination, I just let it go ahead. There are two of me: the me that watches and the me that writes, so I let the writing half of myself explode all the time and I have a good time writing. But I never think about it, I just do it.
What continues to drive and inspire you as writer?
Certain problems in our time. Here in Los Angeles, for instance, our freeways are dying so I’m trying to do something about building a monorail here. I first testified at a monorail hearing forty years ago and I’m still trying to get the damn thing built in LA because our freeways don’t work. So that inspires me to write about monorails as well as other things.
Have you got a favourite ride at the funfair?
Of course, my favourite ride is the merry-go-round because I fell in love with merry-go-rounds when I was six years old. When I was twelve, I met Mr Electrico at the carnival and he told me to live forever. He also told me I had lived before, in 1918. And when I left my visit with Mr Electrico, I went and saw the merry-go-round and the horses were going around and around to the music of Beautiful Ohio. So that merry-go-round has been taking me into the future since I was twelve years old and it continues to go around and around, carrying me on to be eighty-eight years old now, and maybe even one hundred. God knows. There’s the carousel turning and I’m on it right now, talking to you and going ahead into the future, around and around to the music of Beautiful Ohio . . .
Something Wicked This Way Comes arrives at the Lowry Thurs 23- Sat 25 October.
To view a trailer for the play, click here.