If you picked up today’s Washington Post this morning and turned to the Style section, you’d have seen a familiar name—mine!

Ron Charles, editor of the Post’s Book World, had asked me to review Ray Bradbury Unbound, the second installment in Jonathan R. Eller’s projected three-volume biography. (The first volume, Becoming Ray Bradbury, was reviewed by Michael Dirda.)

The book was not all what I expected, for it was filled with heartbreak and disappointment, and sprinkled with such phrases as “missed opportunities,” “creative dead ends,” “never materialized,” “another deeply disappointing experience,” and “marked an ultimately irreversible decline.” Perhaps a reviewer who’s not also a writer struggling to get stories written in the face of life’s endless distractions would have reacted differently.

You can read my review online at the Washington Post here. And if you do track down Eller’s book—which is certainly worth doing—please let me know how you felt about this second stage in Bradbury’s career.