while I was hoping for more about the actual writing of Moby Dick's screenplay, i was enchanted by Ray the storyteller falling in love with the Irish people. Once we got past the non-stop drinking and pubing and into some actual adventures, I was hooked. where else does a country estate door get opened by a naked Duchess who asks the author to help her into her panties? Or a writer forgo a warm, dry hotel room to follow his fascination with the roving apparantly professional community of beggars and street musicians, some of whom are happiest being appreciated in silence? who knows how much of this malarchy actually happened, but Ray is such a charming storyteller, who cares? i hear the Irish brogues while reading and wondering if Ireland is still like this...should I pack my bags?

Las debilidades están muy bien pero lo que tiene, a veces, es que te obligan a poner a prueba tu amor incondicional por ellas y tienes que recurrir a ese amor para no abandonar la lectura.

En 1953 Bradbury desembarcó en Irlanda (resulta que el creador de los más increíbles viajes espaciales tenía miedo a volar) para pasar allí una temporada escribiendo, con John Huston, el guión que adaptaba Moby Dick, de Henry Melville. Inciso.- Yo no he leído Moby Dick porque me da muchísima pereza, pero mi relación con la película es estrecha debido a que durante tres veranos (1988,1989 y 1990) pasé largas temporadas en Youghal, un pequeño pueblo de la costa este de Irlanda en el que ¡sorpresa! se rodó la famosa película. Que Youghal fuera, además de eso, el lugar donde conseguí mis primeros éxitos en el mundo del ligue, convierte a ese pequeño pueblo en un sitio importante en el mundo o, al menos, en mi vida. .- Fin del inciso.

Bradbury se instala en un hotel en el centro de Dublín donde pasa las horas escribiendo y adaptando para, por las noches, ir a cenar a la casa que Huston ha alquilado junto con su mujer a las afueras de la ciudad. Bradbury trabajó muchísimo, sufrió con el guión y Huston era un tirano con él y con quien se le pusiera delante, especialmente con su mujer. Hay algunos pasajes del libro que retratan las cosas que le decía su mujer y dan ganas de pegarle. Los días que no cenaba con los Huston pasaba las horas en un pub con los parroquianos del lugar, bebiendo y escuchando historias interminables, anécdotas y chascarrillos. Todo esto, sobre el papel, parece estupendo para un libro de no ficción, una crónica de esos siete meses de purgatorio, pero a mí me ha parecido bastante aburrido y repetitivo. La parte que más me ha interesado ha sido la relación con Huston y los problemas con la película. La historia del pub y las peculiaridades de los irlandeses me ha aburrido bastante. Puede que haya sido porque las historias de borrachos, sean irlandeses, de Benidorm o de Avilés, son todas iguales: todos se creen especiales en sus bares y en sus relaciones y son todas iguales: soporíferas. También puede ser que el asombro que a Bradbury le causó Irlanda por sus diferencias con California, de donde él venía, no existen en el lector contemporáneo. A lo mejor simplemente tenía demasiadas expectativas.

«Me quedé mirando las calles de piedra gris y las nubes gris piedra, mirando a la gente helada que pasaba de largo y exhalaba grises penachos fúnebres por sus glaciales bocas. En días como estos, pensé, todas las cosas que no hiciste se ponen al corriente contigo, desatan tus cordones, te irritan la barba. Que Dios ayude al hombre que no haya pagado las deudas ese día».

De Bradbury, repito por enésima vez, leed Crónicas marcianas.

Neither one thing nor the other - not a portrait of John Houston, not a book about Ireland, not even really much about Ray Bradbury and certainly not about Moby Dick. Too broad to be anything but passably entertaining.

Read this book in 2011 and it made me laugh out loud. Clearly it was written years ago, and yet it had the feel of the Ireland I visited in 2012 and fell in love with. Bradbury is a talented writer and conveys a sense of place and character as well in non-fiction as in his fiction. Just lovely and I definitely recommend it.

Simplemente precioso

Not his best work. He should have written a straight up memoir rather than candy-coat his experiences into a novel. There are flashes of Bradbury brilliance here, but mostly he seems to be writing self-parody. He perfectly captures the Irish brogue, and his imitation of Huston is spot on. However, too often he veers into offensive stereotypes. And the chapters regarding Snell-Orkney and his friends (a rewrite of a short story) are a long set up for a bad pun which would certainly draw the ire of today’s “cancel culture”.

This guy! Some of the chapters I have already encountered in Bradbury's writing as short stories. Still thoroughly enjoyed them, with a couple of new details. Overall a great read, in the beloved style of the writer with him as a central character.

A change of pace if you’re looking for Bradbury’s usual fare. Instead this is an autobiographical novel based on his experiences living in Ireland while working under John Huston writing the script for Moby Dick. An American’s view of the Irish that mixes pathos and humour. Huston looms large over proceedings - an emotionally abusive trickster. Think Adam Driver’s character in Girls. Interesting!

„Зелени сенки, бял кит“ е много хубава и трогателна книга, написана със страхотно чувство за хумор! В нея се разказва за приключенията на млад американски писател в Ирландия, който се премества да живее там няколко месеца, за да напише сценарий за филмова екранизация на „Моби Дик“. Опитвайки се да опознае ирландците и техния начин на живот, той се сприятелява с обикновени, но и интересни хора, както и се потапя в мистичната ирландска атмосфера... Историята със сигурност ще допадне на почитателите на докосващия поетичен изказ на Бредбъри!




„Същият ден по пладне започна серия от съвпадения, която след редица обрати действително доведе до мистериозна развръзка, като при това аз се оказах в центъра на събитията.
Трябва да знаете, че хотел „Роял Хайбърниан“ се намира на половината път между Тринити Колидж и парка „Сейнт Стивънс“, а зад него минава Графтън Стрийт, откъдето можете да си купите прибори, сервизи, покривки или алени ловни сака, кожени боти и каскети, с които да препускате подир проклетите хрътки, или пък, още по-добре, да се шмугнете в бар „Четирите провинции“, за подходяща смесица от пиене и приказки — препоръчваната пропорция е час пиене на два часа приказки.“

Ray Bradbury’s Green Shadows and White Whale is classic Ray Bradbury. It has been a lot of years since I read The Illustrated Man . In fact that particular edition. In fact, so long that it took me a few chapters to get back to a Bradbury frame of mind. Green Shadows is worth the effort. Semi-autobiographical this is the much older Bradbury telling stories about his time as a young man visiting Ireland for the purpose of writing the screen play for John Houston’s movie, Moby Dick. The book careens from the humorous to the spooky with traditional Irish Blarney and lots of rain. It is all in good fun.

Ray Bradbury novels are not so much novels as a set of connected short stories built around a central conceit. White Whale has the narrator, visiting an Ireland that is not so much a place on the map as a state of mind. There is lots of drinking, but very little drunkenness. Beggars are philosophers and everyone is a poet. I suppose many will be insulted by the heavy handed over use of what would have been stereotypes before this book’s 1992 publication. I leave that for others. This book is affectionate rather that judgmental or patronizing. Shenagans are aplenty with lovely unexpected turns. The Banshee story makes for a great classic story and the wedding cake/hunt wedding scene had me reading aloud to my laughing wife.

Some may also wonder about the degree to which John Houston, one of the few real names in the book is played as the heavy, if not the villain. This version of Houston is larger than life and painfully over bearing, but perhaps it was Bradbury’s intent to make the director over into the role of a living personification of The Whale. Mostly it works, but it can be tricky move from the early image of Houston brow beating his wife into humiliation into later versions of him as an over active almost child-man of enthusiasms and energy.

The parental warning is that there is a great deal of drinking and loose talk if little in the way of bad language. There are references to casual sex but nothing in the text is obscene. Over all this is a book that younger teens can enjoy with a minimum of corrupting effects. Some of the more protective parents may want to consider more deeply.

Another just okay read from Bradbury. I struggled a little bit to get through this one.

http://nhw.livejournal.com/86784.html[return][return]It's the story of young sf writer Ray Bradbury, brought to Ireland by film director John Huston, to write a screenplay for Moby Dick. Huston comes across as a real monster, incessantly bullying his wife, Bradbury and other colleagues, with almost no redeeming features. I found Bradbury's portrayal of Ireland and the Irish irritating at first and then I realised that he was doing nothing more than writing in his usual style; it might as well have been Mars.[return][return]The short stories dropped into the narrative - including two with fantasy elements, which I list on my web page - are the best bits of a very uneven book. The only other "novel" I've read by Bradbury, To the Dust Returned, was equally uneven. Perhaps he is someone who needs the discipline of the short story form to write quality stuff. For