Year Of Living Dangerously

By Stefan Kanfer

TITLE: GREEN SHADOWS, WHITE WHALE

AUTHOR: RAY BRADBURY

PUBLISHER: KNOPF; 271 PAGES; $21

THE BOTTOM LINE: A sojourn in Ireland recalled, quarts and all.

IN THE ORIGINAL MOBY-DICK A white Leviathan played the title role. In the 1956 film the part was taken by a large piece of plastic. In Ray Bradbury's 27th book, John Huston plays the elusive quarry.

Bradbury, 71, an established master of fantasy and sci-fi, calls Green Shaddows, White Whale a novel. In fact it is a disguised memoir of the period he spent in Ireland adapting Herman Melville's work for the roistering film director. The narrator is Bradbury himself, an intimidated writer as green as Eire, summoned to meet the Great Man at his country estate.

Huston's ego is commensurate with the whale's body: "You ever figure, kid, how much the Beast is like me? The hero plowing the seas, plowing women left and right, off round the world and no stops?" No brakes is more like it. Although Huston poses as a 19th century squire, he is actually a very modern con man, incessantly flagellating or flattering Bradbury into an inhuman schedule. When the script is accepted, the director will unceremoniously grab 50% of the screen credit.

As with many another Huston project, the minor characters soon become more diverting than the principals. An eloquent beggar child turns out to be a 40- year-old dwarf, his growth stunted "with stories, with truth, with warnings and predictions." Everyone else in Green Shadows has a similar penchant for the exaggerated anecdote ("Getting to the point," observes one, "could spoil the drink and ruin the day"). Bradbury has a musician's ear, and he makes their boozy exchanges as bright and merry as coins clinking on the bar of a pub. Even the teetotaling George Bernard Shaw has a memorable walk-on, defining the people around him: "The Irish. From so little they glean so much: squeeze the last ounce of joy from a flower with no petals . . . The Irish? You step off a cliff . . . and fall up!"

In the middle of all this, Huston decides to stage a hilarious wedding for a visiting pal from Hollywood. But to state that the plot concerns a bride and groom is like saying that Moby-Dick is about fishing. Bradbury's latest effort is really a fond look back at his year of living dangerously. That was the time when hangovers, lies and fatigue were balanced by workmen's compensation: good talk, new friends and material for the most entertaining book in a distinguished 50-year career.