Green Shadows, White Whale
Dust-jacket from the first edition
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| Author | Ray Bradbury |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy, Soft science fiction |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
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Publication date
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1992 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 271 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 25095626 |
| 813/.54 20 | |
| LC Class | PS3503.R167 G75 1992 |
Green Shadows, White Whale is a 1992 novel by Ray Bradbury. It gives a fictionalized account of his journey to Ireland in 1953-1954 to write a screen adaptation of the novel Moby-Dick with director John Huston. Bradbury has said he wrote it after reading actress Katharine Hepburn's account of filming The African Queen with Huston in Africa. The title itself is a play on Peter Viertel's novel White Hunter, Black Heart, which is also about Huston.
Bradbury considers Green Shadows to be the culmination of thirty-five years of short stories, poems, and plays that were inspired by his stay in Ireland. As with most of his previous short-story collections, including The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles, many of the short stories were originally published elsewhere and modified slightly for publication in the novel.
The narrator, an unnamed writer, is sent to Dublin, Ireland to coproduce a film adaptation of Moby Dick with a director whose first name is given as "John". While there, he hears of the many strange and surreal stories of the boyos in Finn's pub that make up the bulk of the novel, along with other adventures in the land of Ireland, including a "hunt wedding" and a house that has a mind of its own. The last chapter of the novel is devoted to the successful completion of the screenplay and the narrator's resulting ascent to fame.
The narrator arrives in Ireland by ferry. In his conversation with the customs inspector, his identity as a screenplay writer working on Moby Dick is introduced. They also discuss the peculiarities of the Irish. The narrator checks in at the Royal Hibernian Hotel in Dublin before leaving in a taxi for Kilcock. The taxi breaks down, and, after some resistance on his part, the narrator rides off on a bicycle given to him by the taxi driver. The narrator meets another bicyclist who tells him more of Ireland and its people. They proceed to Heeber Finn's pub, where the bicyclist is greeted as Mike, and the rest of the pub patrons are introduced.
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