Green Shadows, White Whale
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 1998 paperback edition |
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| Author | Ray Bradbury |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Soft science fiction |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf (First edition) Harper Perennial (1998 paperback) |
| Released | 1992 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 240 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-380-78966-3 |
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.
[edit] Plot summary
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 Flinn'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.
[edit] Literary significance & criticism
Green Shadows, White Whale received mixed reviews at its debut. Some critics gave the work high praise: Publishers Weekly said it was a "lighthearted, beguiling autobiographical novel", concluding, "Bradbury's prose is as vibrant and distinctive as the landscape in which these delightful tales are set." Kirkus Reviews called it "Bradbury's triumph. He has never written better."
Others found it to fall short because of its stilted diction and stereotypical characters and plots. The New York Times found it "Somewhere between homage and hokum … a cartoon that might be offensive if it weren't so affectionate."[1] The Los Angeles Times said it was "a charming, delicate story" of Bradbury's memories, and what they mean to him, "and if at times the words seem hushed, muted in their reverence for history, the cast of characters … keeps the story from sliding headlong into wistfulness."[2] David Soyka of the SF Site labeled the novel as a "disappointment" because of its clichéd plots and lack of coherency of the stories' themes.[3] The Chicago Tribune criticized Bradbury's "tin ear" for dialogue, complaining that "All of his Irish characters talk like Barry Fitzgerald reciting Sean O'Casey to a busload of tourists from Tulsa."[4]
[edit] References
- ^ Review by Peter Finn, 26 July 1992, Section 7.
- ^ Book Section, 7 June 1992.
- ^ Soyka, David (1999). "The SF Site Featured Review: Green Shadows, White Whale."
- ^ Review by Thomas Flanagan, 31 May 1992, Books Section.
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