from Inquiry, Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 1997, 35-39
© Copyright 1997 Virginia Community College System
Abstract
A professional development
grant provided an opportunity to travel to primary research
materials unavailable through conventional means and to develop a
detailed analysis of selected works by Ray Bradbury. Douglas
Carter reports the process he employs for this particular type of
scholarship.
Although we live in the age of instant information and the World Wide Web, not all original documents are available for delivery to our home addresses, which is particularly true for unpublished archival material that cannot be photocopied or sent by interlibrary loan. In the case of unproduced film scripts and unpublished radio or theatrical scripts, this situation poses a problem in the analysis of the materials and the dissemination of the results since it is often impossible to complete the time-consuming task of analysis at the archival site, and the potential academic audience does not have copies of the original material. Consequently, some method must be provided to allow the researcher to assemble enough material from the original documents for later analysis.
This paper reports the method used for one such analysis of original unpublished scripts. The information gathering process resulted from a VCCS research grant which funded travel to the Bowling Green State University Popular Culture Library and the Ray Bradbury Archives housed in that library. One aspect of the research conducted during the visit to the Archives was an evaluation of two unpublished scripts by well known science fiction writer Ray Bradbury. My interest in Mr. Bradbury's work is long standing (my doctoral dissertation was a cross media analysis of The Martian Chronicles), but this was my first opportunity to work with the original unpublished scripts of his other works. The first script I examined was a radio drama version of Leviathan 99, Bradbury's reworking of Moby Dick in science fiction form. The second script was a similar reworking for the stage completed six years after the radio drama. The analysis resulting from this visit to the Bradbury Archives was eventually reported as a paper at the National Convention of the Popular Culture Association in Philadelphia on April 13, 1995.
The first step in working with the archival materials was to construct a useful model which could serve as an object for later analysis. Since the scripts themselves could not be photocopied, it was first necessary to reduce the 46 pages of the radio drama and the 100 pages of the play to a manageable form. This was done by outlining the two scripts (eight pages for the radio drama, 12 for the play). The outlines were formatted as one column film scripts since this allowed for the inclusion of descriptions of narrative sequences and examples of dialogue. Every attempt was made to conform to Bradbury's spacing and line breaks in citing speeches and dialogue. This process was necessary because the nature of the line breaks was such that many of the speeches had the appearance of having been divided to indicate a poetic use of language. Part of a sample page from one outline is included below. The numbers in parentheses indicate page numbers from the original script.
Leviathan 99
A Radio Drama by Ray Bradbury
September, 1966
(Unpublished; broadcast by the BBC in 1966)
Abstract of narrative sequences and dialogue
1-Ishmael begins the play by describing his birth in space; his
parents going to Mars, getting homesick & returning to Earth.
Ishmael:
Call me...Ishmael...
Ishmael? In this year 2099? When
strange new ships sail toward the
stars, instead of under them. (1)
2-He flies to the cape on his rocket pack.
3-He goes to the spaceman's hostel:
Ishmael:
I register by pressing my hand to
a metal identity plate which reads
my sweating prints like some modern
witch of palmistry to plan my future
and choose my room mate by machinery. (3)
4 -He gets on a moving sidewalk which takes him by some robot
museums where other space men are sitting; he hears the voices of
the robots.
The outlines were prepared from pertinent information taken from documents found in the Archives (a tedious process since this was a pen and paper effort) and then transformed into a finished outline. Four principles guided the creation of the outlines: First, a later analysis was contemplated that would include comparisons between the two works. Second, one aspect of the comparisons would be an analysis of the narrative materials included in the scripts. Third, Bradbury's use of language and dialogue would be an important subject for analysis. Fourth, character development would also be important in a later examiniation of the scripts. Outlining the 1972 play script first allowed a notation of the fuller narrative treatment of the play which meant that the outline of the radio drama could be prepared by concentrating on what was different in the shorter script. It also meant that it was easier to decide which dialogue passages to include. Of course, the outline necessitated several revisions so that all necessary descriptive and dialogue information could be written down. The advantages of the approach, however, were such that a good deal of the comparison was completed through the process of compiling the outlines. A later analysis was planned for the future.
My next step was to compare the narrative events of the two scripts. These events were arranged in relatively continuous sequences so that individual events that seemed to belong together could be placed in the same “package.”
A sample of this comparison is given below.
NARRATIVE EVENTS COMPARISON |
|
Radio Script |
Play Script |
Ishmael begins the play by describing his birth in space; his parents going to Mars, getting homesick and returning to Earth. |
A man walks over a rise & describes his birth, etc. |
He flies to the cape on his rocket pack |
|
He goes to the spaceman's hostel & is given a roommate. |
He goes to a space hostel,and is given a roommate |
He gets on a moving sidewalk which takes him by some robot museums where other space men are sitting; he hears the voices of the robots. |
He goes to a robot school and talks and interacts with the robots.
|
The crew greet him and invite him to have a drink. |
|
They show him a comet pulling planets in its wake. |
|
This comparison was particularly useful in analyzing the 48 narrative sequences of the radio drama in comparison to the 81 sequences of the play script. It also made it possible to isolate scenes and shorter passages added to the play and not included in the radio drama.
The resultant paper was arranged into five major sections. The opening section, “Bradbury and Drama,” (pp. 1- 4) was a basic analysis of Bradbury's dramatic style drawn largely from published collections of his plays. The second section, “Leviathan '99: Description,” was a rather lengthy description of the two scripts (pp. 4 - 11), which would not have been as necessary had the two scripts been published but was necessary for an understanding of the two works. The description included a comparison of the overall shape of the two narratives along with their similarities and differences. “Leviathan '99: Scene Analysis” (pp. 11-19) was an analysis of the 12 scenes added to the play script including representative dialogue and a description of the functions of the scene. “Leviathan '99: Passage Analysis” (pp. 19 - 24) did the same for brief passages that did not appear in the radio script but had been added to the play's narrative. These passages were not included in the scenes added to the play. There were 12 such passages. The final section, “Leviathan '99: Thematic Core,” (pp. 24 - 30) contained an examination of the extent to which individual characters represented, in Bradbury's phrase, “ideas grown super out size.” Added to the dialogue passages previously quoted in the scene and passage sections were further illustrations of how the characters' dialogue developed the ideas and themes of the author.
Working with archival materials is both a rewarding and a useful exercise. It is rewarding in the sense that it allows the researcher an opportunity to analyze and evaluate material that is relatively unexamined and to present the results of that analysis to a larger academic community. Such research brings up additional possibilities for analysis. In the case of Leviathan 99, the description and analysis of the narrative invites a comparison of the narrative sequences of the two scripts to both the original novel and Bradbury's 1956 film script for Moby Dick. Such research is useful in that it provides a different avenue for approaching more familiar subjects. In this case, it made possible an enlargement of the study of one of our most popular and influential authors. A wholly unexpected result of this analysis came from the section of the paper on the functions of the play additions when compared to the radio script. It provided a framework for examining the adaptation of materials for radio production which was used as a lecture in a media class and formed the backbone of further research in radio adaptation. However, the most intriguing aspect of using archival materials was expressed by Bradbury himself in the theatrical script of Leviathan 99 when he had First Mate Redleigh exclaim,
Sir! We have found a fountain
of Earth's younger days. Voices
from...years past.
strange radio people, ghosts of
laughter...Oh, Listen!....
Request permission to stand
slow and write this fantastic
filing cabinet of history...(54)
By exploring archival materials, we too have an opportunity to explore the “fantastic filing cabinet of history.”
Douglas Carter is Professor of Film and Speech at Virginia Western Community College.