Green Shadows, White Whale : A Novel of Ray Bradbury's Adventures Making Moby Dick with John Huston in Ireland

In 1953, the brilliant but terrifying titan of cinema John Huston summons the young writer Ray Bradbury to Ireland. The apprehensive scribe's quest is to capture on paper the fiercest of all literary beasts — Moby Dick — in the form of a workable screenplay so the great director can begin filming. But from the moment he sets foot on Irish soil, the author embarks on an unexpected odyssey. Meet congenial IRA terrorists, tippling men of the cloth impish playwrights, and the boyos at Heeber Finn's pub. In a land where myth is reality, poetry is plentiful, and life's misfortunes are always cause for celebration, Green Shadows, White Whale is the grandest tour of Ireland you'll ever experience — with the irrepressible Ray Bradbury as your enthusiastic guide. Publishers Weekly The title of this lighthearted, beguiling autobiographical novel is a play on Peter Viertel's White Hunter, Black Heart , which, like this book, dealt with the legendary director John Huston. This is Bradbury's comic account of his trip to Ireland to write the screenplay for Huston's adaptation of Moby-Dick . The movie itself is merely a background constant that anchors this series of vivid, ear-tingling vignettes and anecdotes. Bradbury describes his awed dealings with the erratic, eccentric and impulsive director, and his delight upon being accepted among the regulars at an atmospheric pub called Heeber Finn's. It's a great place to hoist a wee drop and listen to stories told in the best Irish brogue. Finn himself imaginatively tells of the time when George Bernard Shaw supposedly dropped into his establishment. Then there's the community's encounter with a ``willowy'' (read: gay) stranger and his crew of ballet dancers, a man who--to everyone's surprise-- proves to be no mean raconteur. Bradbury's prose is as vibrant and distinctive as the landscape in which these delightful tales are set. Illustrations not seen by PW. (May) In 1953 Ray Bradbury joined film director John Huston in Ireland to write the screenplay for Moby Dick. Bradbury's seven-month sojourn and his complicated relationship with Huston form the basis of this wonderful novel of a green screenwriter coming to Ireland to confront a great director and a mythical beast and, in the bargain, discovering the secrets of the Irish This story tells about the Irish lives of the local people, about the formidable American genius who commandeered their island as his own, and about the young journeyman writer who discovered there the range of his own imagination. A prestigious writer, a film director and an infamous white whale converge on the Emerald Isle