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| 249| 5 41 Joe Mugnaini and The Golden Apples of the Sun Excitement did return to Bradbury’s creative explorations, and the circumstances were purely serendipitous. It all began with his discovery of California artist Joseph Mugnaini, a product of Otis Art Institute who would have a long career teaching at Otis-Parsons and serving for a time as chair of the Drawing Department. He was also a prolific book illustrator, and by the early 1950s he had worked on a wide range of classics for Heritage Press, including Bullfinch’s Mythology and Ben Hur. Otis emphasized fine arts over commercial art, and Mugnaini developed talent in a wide range of media, including pen-and-ink drawing, oil and watercolor painting, and lithography. He had served in the army through most of World War II, and many of his students at Otis were also former GIs. One of these veterans, Bill Crawford, recommended The Martian Chronicles to hisinstructor.Mugnainireadfewbooks,unlesshewasassignedtoillustratethem, and he didn’t follow up on Crawford’s suggestion. As it turned out, Mugnaini’s art,andnotBradbury’sstories,wouldforgetheconnectionbetweenthetwomen. For all of his growing success as a book illustrator, Mugnaini was essentially a Fine Arts talent and his most creative pieces were often featured in gallery shows. In April of 1952 Ray and Maggie came upon a showing of Mugnaini’s art in a Beverly Hills gallery, and Bradbury was instantly drawn to a pair of Mugnaini’s fantasy compositions.1 A lithograph based on a Mugnaini painting first caught his eye—it was “Modern Gothic,” an eerie print of a large Victorian house in an urban setting. The original painting was in the next room of the gallery, and Bradbury soon realized that it was a study of the house on the southwest corner of Temple and Figueroa, diagonally across the intersection from Mrs. Beach’s properties. He had spent many days and evenings during the war years in the shadow of this house, and now Mugnaini had given it a darkly fantastic life of its own. But “Modern Gothic” proved to be preamble to an even greater discovery within the exhibition—“The Caravan,” depicting a carnival train full of faceless figures speeding over an abyss on a Romanesque stone arch bridge. A second glance revealed that the arch had long since collapsed behind and in front of the train, creating an impossible image of dark laughter. Bradbury immediately saw it as a grand metaphor for the long-deferred novel concept that had emerged from his story “The Black Ferris” under the working title of The Dark Carnival. i-xvi_1-328_Elle.indd 249 6/27/11 2:52 PM 250 | the last night of the world He had held this germinating concept out of his 1947 Dark Carnival story collection, and now this story-into-novel resurfaced as an active project in his mind as he studied Mugnaini’s “Caravan.” On his earnings, Bradbury could only put down money on the “Modern Gothic” lithograph and ask the gallery for Mugnaini’s phone number. The next morning, a Sunday, he called Mugnaini and asked to meet him. Since Bradbury didn’t drive, Mugnaini arranged for Bill Crawford to bring Bradbury to his home studio. Bradbury had come with the hope that Mugnaini might sell him the two paintings at half-price if they failed to sell at the gallery’s commission-inflated figure. Mugnaini agreed and Bradbury, to his great astonishment, found himself with the paintings after the exhibition closed. It would be some time before he realized that Mugnaini had quietly pulled them out of the exhibition for him. Bradbury was as reluctant to assign genres to Mugnaini’s compositions as he was in discussing his own genre history. He knew that “Modern Gothic” might provide ausefulwaytoenterMugnaini’sworld, and that moods often dominated his work in all mediums. All he was sure about was that Mugnaini’s paintings and line art had much in common with literary method, and his earliest surviving reflections carefully trace the parallels: “In some ways you might speak of him as a ‘message’ painter and as a symbolist, for there are innumerable symbols, carefully selected and utilized in his work. There is nothing haphazard or unintentional or unfathomable in his selection of those props or items which go to make the composition of each single production. His paintings are as logical as Poe’s ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ or Henry James’ ‘Turn of the Screw.’”2 “Caravan” sparked their first collaboration, which they...

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