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Green Shadows, White Whales
Ray Douglas Bradbury
One of Ray Bradbury’s classic novels, available as an ebook for the first time.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.
Green Shadows, White Whale
A NOVEL OF RAY BRADBURY’S ADVENTURES MAKING MOBY DICK WITH JOHN HUSTON IN IRELAND
Ray Bradbury
Copyright (#ulink_b6486e37-d043-5cde-815c-66b45e2e3629)
HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Copyright © Ray Bradbury 1992, 2002
Cover design by Mike Topping.
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014 Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
Ray Bradbury asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
The following chapters were previously published in different form: 4, under the title “The Great Collision of Monday Last”; 12, “The Terrible Conflagration up at the Place”; 13, “The Beggar on O’Connell Bridge”; 15, “The Haunting of the New”; 18, “One for His Lordship, and One for the Road”; 21, “Getting Through Sunday Somehow”; 22, “The First Night of Lent”; 23, “McGillahee’s Brat”; 27, “Banshee”; 28, “The Cold Wind and the Warm”; 29. “The Anthem Sprinters.”
Chapter 9 appeared in the May 1992 issue of The American Way under the title “The Hunt Wedding.”
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN: 9780007541751
Version: 2014–07–21
Dedication (#ulink_d087e0b5-e871-56ce-87e4-2eadeb29d850)
WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE
TO KATHY HOURIGAN,
WHO HELPED MAP DUBLIN
AND BEYOND
AND TO REGINA FERGUSON,
WHO SHEPHERDED MY FAMILY
THROUGH THAT COLD IRISH WINTER
AND TO THE MEMORY OF
HEEBER FINN, NICK (MIKE) MY TAXI
DRIVER, AND ALL THE BOYOS IN THE PUB,
AND TO THE PROPRIETOR OF THE
ROYAL HIBERNIAN HOTEL, HECTOR FABRON,
AND PADDY THE MAÎTRE D’
AND ALL THE HOTEL STAFF,
THIS BOUQUET
LONG IN COMING
Contents
Cover (#u07626dd3-0fac-543b-b49a-646dc78e0d3c)
Title Page (#ubd0f36fc-3730-52b6-b2ff-5b6a6340c14b)
Copyright (#ulink_408e3dca-30ff-522c-be8d-c54d1393db32)
Dedication (#ulink_e0fab6c1-317d-5797-928c-5313fccbffe2)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_5a65be12-8761-5995-8737-90eff930257c)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_ec63b340-9d44-5a4d-a6b0-ea822cda0fe3)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_fdbd7f5e-da30-5883-97f4-873967dbf4f7)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_77736782-fe9a-5fb8-9fa7-55d182811c29)
Chapter 5 (#ulink_7e465dda-5fec-522c-b2f4-e06f8e47d79d)
Chapter 6 (#ulink_0aee9c17-3fb7-5572-ad89-2ade5a799cf7)
Chapter 7 (#ulink_de148942-5cd5-5b58-86e5-4e9517eab4eb)
Chapter 8 (#ulink_791353bc-aa1c-51da-b0c1-18d4d0cae87e)
Chapter 9 (#ulink_0c17aeae-afa7-5ad3-99b3-9942a3d87d28)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Dublin Revisited (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_d9f79abf-76e7-54cb-b32f-71d4314d7db0)
I looked out from the deck of the Dún Laoghaire ferry and saw Ireland.
The land was green.
Not just one ordinary sort of green, but every shade and variation. Even the shadows were green, and the light that played on the Dún Laoghaire wharf and on the faces of the customs inspectors. Down into the green I stepped, an American young man, just beyond thirty, suffering two sorts of depression, lugging a typewriter and little else.
Noticing the light, the grass, the hills, the shadows, I cried out: “Green! Just like the travel posters. Ireland is green. I’ll be damned! Green!”
Lightning! Thunder! The sun hid. The green vanished. Shadow-rains curtained the vast sky. Bewildered, I felt my smile collapse. A gray and bristly customs official beckoned.
“Here! Customs inspection!”
“Where did it go?” I cried. “The green! It was just here! Now it’s—”
“The green, you say?”
The inspector stared at his watch. “It’ll be along when the sun comes out!” he said.
“When will that be?”
The old man riffled a customs index. “Well, there’s nothing in the damn government pamphlets to show when, where, or if the sun comes out in Ireland!” He pointed with his nose. “There’s a church down there—you might ask!”
“I’ll be here six months. Maybe—”
“—you’ll see the sun and the green again? Chances are. But in ’28, two hundred days of rain. It was the year we raised more mushrooms than children.”
“Is that a fact?”
“No, hearsay. But that’s all you need in Ireland, someone to hear, someone to say, and you’re in business! Is that all your luggage?”
I set my typewriter forth, along with the flimsiest suitcase. “I’m traveling light. This all came up fast. My big luggage comes next week.”
“Is this your first trip here?”
“No. I was here, poor and unpublished, off a freighter in 1939, just eighteen.”
“Your reason for being in Ireland?” The inspector licked his pencil and indelibled his pad.
