I went home that night and said to my wife, “Pray for me.”
“Why?” she said.
I responded, “Because tonight I’ve got to read a book and tomorrow do a book report.”
I read as much as I could and discovered that as in the case of most nineteenth-century writers, Melville was a writer of metaphors, fantastic ones, and by the scores and multiples. I read as much as I could and went back the next day and took the job and quite suddenly we were on our way to an island that I never considered worth visiting.
We arrived in Dublin in October and stayed until April, and I spent all those months trying to understand Melville and the White Whale.
While there, friends in America wrote to me and said, “Are you gathering material?” and “Will you ever write about Ireland?”
I replied, “No, I’m too busy with Huston, Melville, and the Whale. I’m not seeing anything.”
That was quite wrong. I was walking in Dublin every night in the rain and mist and fog. I’ve always loved the rain and when I saw it outside the window I went out and strolled through Dublin, night after night, seeing the homeless, watching the beggars in front of the hotels, going to the theater, and all-in-all soaking in as much of Ireland as I could possibly take in.
When I got home a year later I didn’t think I’d seen much, but one night a voice called in my head, “Ray, darlin’.”
I sat up in bed and said, “Who’s that?”
The voice said, “Why, it’s Nick, your cab driver. Do you remember all those nights of my driving you from Heeber Finn’s, back past Meynooth, and into Dublin? I must have driven you a hundred times from John Huston’s house back into the city.”
I said, “Yes, I remember.”
The voice in my head said, “Well, Ray, darlin’, would you mind putting it down?”
I got out of bed the next morning and began to write a poem about Dublin, and a week later an essay, and a month later a short story, and a year later a play.
After many years it all began to come together in my head.
But during that time, I was also reluctant to speak of my experience in Ireland because I don’t believe in gossip, and being around Huston I had gathered a lot of intimate detail that I didn’t want to talk about to anyone; I didn’t feel it was anyone’s business.
So the years passed and I never wrote anything or allowed myself to be interviewed about Huston and Ireland.
But finally, along came Katharine Hepburn, who did a book about Africa and The African Queen and Huston, without really revealing anything.
When I read the book I called my publisher, who was also her publisher, and said, “Why didn’t you get Hepburn to write more about her experience? This is a very skinny book.”
They said that they had asked Hepburn to provide more material, but she had refused. Faced with this, after many years I said to myself, “Well, I think I know Huston as well as anyone and I will try and do a book which is fair, which presents the Huston that I loved along with the one that I began to fear on occasion.”
So I put all the material together: the poems, the essays, the stories, and it turned into a novel, which you now hold in your hands. I think it’s a pretty fair examination of the trials and tribulations I went through trying to understand Melville and trying even harder to understand John Huston.
Years have passed and rereading the material, I have no reason to revise my opinion. The bottom sum is John Huston changed my life forever. By offering me Moby Dick, my first screenplay, he gave me a chance to move out into the world and be recognized for the first time.
—Ray Bradbury
1992
