A children’s story: The Tygrine Cat by Inbali Iserles

the young writing for the young

Two years ago, I was commissioned to write a review about this children’s book.  At the time, it struck me as amateurish and even rather silly.  My son read it too, and agreed.

However, just the other day, he said, “Remember that book about the cat with all those powers?  I think about it all the time.”

You know what?  So do I.

While the review that follows is negative, it’s only fair to go on record to say if a kid’s book–silly or not–keeps popping into your head after two years, there’s probably something really interesting about it.

My review:

Inbali Iserles was flicking through an encyclopaedia of cat breeds one day, and began to imagine a rivalry between feline dynasties.  Relying heavily on tales of cats in ancient mythologies, The Tygrine Cat is the story of Mati, a catling sent away by his mother in order that their dynasty and the future of all cats may be preserved.  He travels aboard a ship to a foreign land and is taken in by a group of feral cats who live in the marketplace.  Unknown to all, Mati is being pursued by a powerful assassin.  He must learn to trust himself and unleash the forces of good that reside within him.

That The Tygrine Cat is Iserles first novel is evident.  The narrative is clumsy and uneven.  At times the cats seem to reside in the ancient world; at others they inhabit the marketplace of any contemporary town, dodging trainers and stilletos, gulping down bagels with smears of cream cheese.  The feral cats have regular town meetings (rigidly adhering to parliamentary order), lessons in cat etiquette, and even national anthems.  They are as prejudiced and insulated—and as predictable—as any small town congregation.  Is Iserles attempting a fable perhaps?  The cats understand quite a lot about the human world, including motivation, greed, even absent-mindedness; and yet, improbably, they don’t have a concept for tinned cat food or for dogs.

While the narrative is weak over all, Iserles has more success with the plot, which pads along on four paws and luckily seems to have nine lives. The children to whom this story will most appeal are likely too young to read it on their own; unfortunately, it isn’t one that will hold the interest of the adult who must read it aloud.

Touché.

Review first published in The Courier-Mail in January 2008.

Review: Sons of the Rumour by David Foster

David Foster’s novel Sons of the Rumour is billed as a “genre-defying work of genius”.  I’d go further and say that it also defies description, which makes this review difficult to write. The first few hundred pages tell of the complicated relationship between the Shah and his wife, the shapely Shahrazad, who just won’t shut up.  To find some peace, the Shah wanders incognito through the streets of Merv, a city in ancient Persia.  Out there, in touch with his subjects, the Shah hears wonderful stories of journeys along the Silk Road, stories that overlap with the Shah’s domestic dramas.

All in all, this gorgeously written section makes about as much sense as an inscrutable, byzantine dream. Then, on page 285, we meet Al Morrissy, a retired jazz drummer on a long-haul flight from Sydney to Dublin.  Through the stream of Al’s consciousness, we come to understand a little about his equally complicated marriage as well as the mistakes of his past.  As happens on long-haul flights, Al drifts into an unsettled sleep and, sure enough, he dreams of Merv.

Foster explores the nature of the veil between the two worlds.  He also explores the collision between the Muslim male and the Western woman, which becomes the backdrop for all male-female relationships—complex, bewildering, irreconcilable—whether in ancient Persia or modern-day Cronulla.

Foster is a writer of exquisite intellect and linguistic daring, and Sons of the Rumour is a brilliant masterwork. Although this novel is heavy-going most of the time, tedious as well as befuddling, the toil is well worth it.  Foster is a giant of ideas and satire, of wit and wildly beautiful passages.

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Sons of the Rumour, David Foster, Picador, $39.99.

Review first published in The Courier-Mail in November 2009.

Review: Lovesong by Alex Miller

Alex Miller’s beautiful Lovesong is anything but a simple love story.  Ken, a retired novelist returns home from an extended stay in Venice to find his neighborhood changed.  There is a new pastry shop run by Sabiha, a lovely woman with an air of sorrow.  Ken befriends her husband, John, and listens as John tells their story.

In Paris many years earlier, John took a wrong train and then was caught in a sudden rainstorm.  Taking shelter in a nearby café, he met Sabiha, a chance encounter that would change the course of their lives.  They marry, run the café, live happily enough.  However, John always intended to return to Australia and resume his career as a teacher.  Sabiha, feeling that once she moved to Australia she would never leave, refused to go until she was able to take her child to Tunisia to meet her father.  However, the two remain childless—and in limbo.  As time passes, John’s regret over his failed plans is matched in intensity by Sabiha’s terror of aging.  When she learns her father is dying, the idea that she might die childless becomes unbearable.

This personal crisis is set in the larger complex situation of two people from different cultures making a life together in a third.  There is no question that John and Sabiha love each other; nonetheless, they are at an impasse that could destroy their marriage.  There is an elegiac note throughout Lovesong. As usual, Miller’s language is deceptively spare, slowly building in emotional power.  The climax, while not unexpected, is deeply moving.

As Ken listens to John tell their story, he finds himself irresistibly drawn to its narrative possibilities.  Lovesong becomes more than a love story; it becomes a novel about the nature of stories.  For Sabiha, a story is about company.  For John, it’s an act of confession.  But it’s therapeutic qualities benefit the listener as much as the teller, as Ken attests.  A story is also a gift.  Ken considers John’s story to be too much a “gift from the gods” for him to pass it up—even when he learns that John has ambitions to write it himself.  This raises the question that is not precisely answered: just who owns a story?

Lovesong is the kind of novel that will have you thinking—and feeling—long after you finish it.

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Listen to Alex Miller discuss Lovesong with Ramona Koval.

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Alex Miller will be in Brisbane on  Thursday, 19th November (6.15 for a 6.30 start).   The American Bookstore — 3229 4677 – 197 Elizabeth St, Brisbane. Tickets: $15, $12 concession, $10 bulk 6+

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Review first published by The Courier-Mail in November 2009.

In search of sleep in literature

Sleep in Literature

The oblivion of sleep is a parallel of death.  Time stands still.  In sleep, we remain in the cocoon of eternity.  And yet, the idea of sleep holds within it the promise of an awakening, a resurrection.

States of pre-adolescent sexuality, psychological disorder, drug- or alcohol-induced stupor, and even some diseases are all variants of the sleep experience.

But its more than oblivion: sleep connects us to other worlds.  Hamlet says, “To die, to sleep;/
To sleep: perchance to dream”.  In sleep , we swim in the vast ocean of the unconscious, where our deepest drives, fears, regrets, and wishes churn around us.

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Cicero’s Tusculanae Quaestiones, “On the contempt of death” (45 BC)

In his philosophical writings, Cicero touches on the Greek myth of Endymion.  It goes something like this: Selene, the goddess of the moon, is said to have fallen in love with the mortal, Endymion, whom she spied asleep in a cave on Mount Latmos.  So that he might never grow old, she begged Zeus to keep him that way always, and the powerful God agreed.

Keats further immortalizes Endymion in his poem of the same name:

A THING of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

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Gregory of Tours, The Legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus  (Sixth Century)

As legend has it, around 250 AD, Jambilicus, Martinian, Constantine (also known as Exacustodianus), Anthony, John, Dionysius & Maximillian, seven youths fleeing an Imperial slaughter, hide in a cave on Ochlon Hill outside Ephesus.  The Emperor slyly orders the cave’s only entrance to be walled in.  More than 200 years pass.  One day, some shepherds disturb the stones from the entrance.  The youths wake up refreshed and in full health, as if they have slept but a night.  After a week, they re-enter the cave and fall asleep again, this time in the sleep of death.

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William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1623)

Lady Macbeth’s guilt over her role in the murder of the innocent king is deeply rooted in her unconscious—to such a degree, in fact, that it brings about a psychological disorder in her personality and she begins to sleepwalk. But Shakespeare intends not only to reveal the guilty conscience of one character.  He wants to lay bare the entire tragic process in its extremity: how evil repays.

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Charles Perrault, “La Belle au bois dormant” (1697)

Writing at the time of Louis XIV, Perrault’s “La Belle au bois dormant” is the earliest known version of this fairy tale.  In the story, a King and Queen are blessed with a longed for daughter, whom they call Aurora.  Unhappily, the evil fairy Carrabosse curses the infant, declaring that one day Princess Aurora will prick her finger on a spindle and die.  However, one of the seven good fairies called on to bless the infant is able to mitigate the curse.  Princess Aurora will not die after all; she will merely fall into a deep sleep for one hundred years, from which she will then be awakened by the kiss of a dashing Prince.

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Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle (1819)

Early Americans established a literary tradition in which civilization conflicts with freedom.  The male characters are often seen fleeing from the civilizing influence of towns and women. In this story, Rip Van Winkle, a colonial Dutch villager, escapes his nagging wife by wandering into the forest to hunt.  He drinks elves brew and falls into a deep sleep from which he awakens twenty years later to a changed and bewildering world.

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Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (1836)

“The object that presented itself to the eyes of the astonished clerk, was a boy—a wonderfully fat boy—habited as a serving lad, standing upright on the mat, with his eyes closed as if in sleep.”

In the ‘wonderfully fat’ character of Joe, Dickens describes the main symptoms of Obesity Hypoventilation Syndrome (OHS), a condition related to sleep apnea.  The condition was originally referred to as Pickwickian Syndrome after its appearance in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, the first of Dickens’ many novels.

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George Eliot, Silas Marner (1861)

Variants of sleep figure in this gorgeous moral tale:  On New Year’s Eve, the desperate Molly, carrying her sleeping child,  walks through a blizzard to find the husband who has disowned her.   Tired and cold, Molly seeks comfort from a phial of opium, succumbs to a stupor outside of Silas Marner’s cottage, falls asleep in the snow.  In the meantime, Marner stands in a cataleptic fit at the open door of his cottage, grieving the loss of his gold. Molly’s child, a toddler, attracted by the fire in Marner’s house, wanders through the snow and falls asleep in front of the hearth.

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Anton Chekhov, ‘Sleepy’ (1888)

In this short story, Chekhov presents sleeplessness as a kind of madness.  A young nursemaid must tend to a wailing child all through the night and, then, in the morning and through the rest of the day, complete many other chores. At nightfall, she must take up her duties with the baby once more, who wails again hour after hour.  The screams of the infant conspire with the calls of birds and animals in the darkness and the shadows in the room and the poor nursemaid’s own sorrowful memories until she can bear it no longer.  She must sleep—she must—and she does.

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Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)

Schemes, greed, nymphomania, betrayal, drug abuse, lies, double-crossing, more lies, more greed, more betrayal.  All on the way to “sleeping the big sleep”.

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Oliver Sacks, Awakenings (1973)

In this work of non-fiction, Sacks chronicles his efforts in the late 1960s to help patients at a New York hospital who had been victims of the 1920s encephalitis lethargica epidemic (a form of ‘sleeping sickness’). He used an experimental drug called L-DOPA, which had the effect of waking the patients.  This awakening was tragically short-lived, however.  All of the patients eventually returned to their frozen ‘sleep’ state.

Review: The Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

A view from the bottom of the stairs

As an admirer of Lorrie Moore’s short stories, I’ve long looked forward to the publication of The Gate at the Stairs, her first novel in fourteen years.

Tassie Keltjin, a naïve student at a university in the Midwest, takes a job as a babysitter for a couple in the process of adopting a child.  The time she spends with them and with their little girl, Mary-Emma, gives her a view outside her own restricted upbringing.  She gets glimpses of a sophisticated but dark adult world with complicated relationships and deep sorrows.  She also becomes increasingly aware of a new, bewildering America—one born on 9/11, a country now full of suspicion, racial profiling, and preparations for war.

There is much about this book to love:  Moore is verbally dexterous, capable of spinning vivid passages that are comedic and poignant at once, scenes–in Moore’s own words–full of “idle spirals and desperate verbal coils”.  As a whole, however, the work flounders.  Innovations that are fresh and effective in a short story, when stretched to fit the dimensions of a novel, begin to feel gimmicky.  This is off-putting, drawing the reader out of the story to puzzle over technique.

Then, it’s never clear what the story is about.  Even Moore seems confused.  The opening mother-daughter thread quickly frays.  The theme of immanent war flashes, replaced quickly by a succession of others: insolvable race-relations, implacable jihad, the complexities of a rotten marriage.  Tangled asides on food, flowers, music, politics, and religion appear, but none are woven into any pattern.  The Gate at the Stairs is less a novel than several mismatched short stories masquerading as a novel.  Not only is this disappointing from a writer of Moore’s flair and expertise, it’s devastating.

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A version of this review first appeared in The Courier-Mail in October 2009.

Review: Don’t Look Behind You, But . . . by Peter Allison

Peter Allison’s sparkling new book, Don’t Look Behind You, But. . . is a companion to his first foray in travel writing,Whatever You Do, Don’t Run.  Both books recount his adventures as an African safari guide.

These are campfire tales of the best kind: rollicking, often ridiculous, terrifyingly funny yarns.  There’s the one about the amorous rhino smitten with the safari jeep full of startled travelers. And the one where Allison loses sight of two tourists in the Namibian desert.  And the time he feels a tickle only to discover a rhombic night adder (the slowest moving of snakes) crossing his foot. Allison is a terrible driver who regularly gets lost. The batteries of his torch fail in the worst moments.  He’s afraid of heights and forgets important warnings, which, in one situation, puts him in a field of landmines.

The voice of the hapless hero is fun, but beyond the hilarity, Allison touches on issues of great seriousness.   He shows the heartbreaking—but correct—practice of non-interference in the lives of the animals the guides have grown to love.  He gives us glimpses of gorgeous habitats that are diminishing at a stunning rate. The guides are constantly dismantling poachers’ snares.  On every page, Allison’s deep love of the continent and the rare wildlife that populates it shines through.

Don’t Look Behind You, But. . . is an engaging, fast-paced romp.  For anyone who’s ever been on safari, this book will stir your memories.  For anyone who’s ever wanted to go, it may be just the encouragement you need to finally get there.

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Review first published in The Courier-Mail in September 2009.

Performance Anxiety

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First off, I have to mention that I’m not a performer.  I’m a writer.  In my case, that means I’m very uncomfortable getting up, standing in front of real people, being looked at, and speaking.  All my life I’ve found ways to hide in, among and behind words.  I’ve used written words as an escape from all sorts of things: everyday life, housework, a ‘real’ job.  I can’t count how many times I’ve turned to a book or a lovely blank page to avoid boredom, anxiety, embarrassment, facing some general unpleasantness.  As for spoken words, well, I’m tempted to mention my ideas really fast, to talk a lot, to shoot them out, because they are just going to disappear, fade, dissolve, and be forgotten anyway.  On those rare occasions when I do find myself speaking in front of others, every instinct I have screams out to grab paper and books, and to hold them up in front of me as a shield.  Every instinct tells me to clutch the typewritten speech in my sweaty palms and read it out.  To fling about big words so no one notices how really nervous I am.

Years ago, I went to a talk by Oliver Sachs.  He was introduced by Susan Sontag in glowing terms.  As she spoke, his cheeks grew more and more red, and he sunk more and more deeply into his chair.  When at last he stood, he could only stammer a few words of thanks and apologise haltingly for “being more comfortable with the written word than the spoken one”.  I understood just how he felt.  He tried again, and again the words didn’t quite take shape.  They seemed to drop to the floor like lead balls.  By this time, the audience was thick with empathy.  Sachs persevered, however, and his fascination with the workings of the human brain and body—what we were there to hear about—eventually took over.  Soon he was speaking fluently and unselfconsciously, giving amazing accounts of neurological phenomena.  He was splendid.

I’ve never forgotten that talk or the transformation that occurred before my eyes.  I often summon the memory when I’m called on to speak and end up stammering.  Because what we think of as a shield might really be a cage.  If we hide behind written words or by spoken words that are uttered too fast, too formally, we might end up caging off our experience, our personality, the very point we are there to make.  We remain distanced from the content, and the audience that much more so.  Each talk holds in it the potential for that perfect moment when our words fade into the background and the subject matter rises up, when the speaker and the content and medium of language merge with audience; when the moment itself becomes a work of art, existing as an artefact of experience, no less significant than material artefacts, even though it remains transient and ephemeral. For here I am twenty years on recalling that talk by Oliver Sachs.  It never really disappeared.

This idea of the performative nature of words has been given new focus in the last few years.  Initially based on the work of J.L. Austin, who wrote in the middle of the last century, the adjective ‘performative’ has come to be applied to much more than speech acts.  There is performative writing, which is used when describing writing in which the subject and the object are a fluid composition, when the audience responds viscerally as well as cognitively to what is written.   There is performative ethnography in which the investigator of other cultures neither calls the shots nor stands back out of sight but becomes part of the investigation.  Norman Denzin, a social scientist who has published widely on this way of approaching ‘the subject’, speaks of ‘the performative sensibility’ that infuses the present moment and focuses on that indefinable quality of engagement, whether in an interview, a conversation, a text or–might I add?–a presentation.

I recently attended a lecture that addressed this very issue both in content and in demonstration.   The subject wasPerformative Research, and it was given by Dr. Brad Haseman of the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT.  With his first words, I was engaged.    He mentioned his background in drama, and the fact that he situated himself in an academy in order to “wonder about wonder”, and that he came to see in all this wondering how creative practice fits into the bigger picture of research and in which ways it extends knowledge.  The whole time he spoke, I kept thinking how there was an interesting layering going on – a synthesis of experience:  The actor, the dramatist in him, may have been altered by all the wondering and theorizing and hypothesizing, but the performer was there in front of us—bigger than life.  The lecture itself was an engaging, inspiring, entertaining performance, and it embodied Haseman’s many roles and interests, as well as much of his experience and personality.  He poured all of this into the moment and brought the moment to life.  He was demonstrating exactly what he was there to talk about.  Another ephemeral artefact.  But not so ephemeral really because like watching Oliver Sachs overcome his shyness, it’s made an impact and stayed with me.

One of the most striking performative moments I can think is the example of the young Gertrude Stein.  It’s probably the best known anecdote about her.  At Radcliff College in the 1890s, she became a student of William James. On a particularly nice spring day during final exams in James’ course she wrote at the top of her paper:  “Dear Professor James, I am sorry but really I do not feel a bit like an examination paper in philosophy today.”  The next day she received a postcard from James saying, “I understand perfectly how you feel.  I often feel like that myself.”  He gave her the highest mark in his course.

I can hear even now the gasps in the lecture hall when a philosophy professor of mine told that story.  The other students and I were impressed with Stein’s gustiness.  I’m sure a few of us wished we had thought of the idea ourselves.  I know I did.  Though, of course, our professor was quite clear that we wouldn’t be so lucky if we pulled such a stunt.  At the time, we paid more attention to Stein’s rebelliousness, her blithe dismissal of classroom convention, come what may.

What became clearer to me later was the perfection of her act, both in its philosophical nature and in her exquisite performance of it.  Stein was an exceptional student.  She knew her stuff.  She could have written the exam.  And she would have done it brilliantly.  William James knew this.  But there was something stridently philosophical in her refusal to be the good student and in her preference for the loveliness of the spring day.  She had taken all that she had learned about philosophy in the course with James and brought it up to another level.  Her response to the day and to the exam was also a comment on the subject of philosophy.  Her act, part wit, part whim, remains a delightful artefact even 120 years later.

I’m pondering all of this because I have a talk to give.  Even though I take comfort in the bravery of Oliver Sachs, and in the fact that our academies are now embracing the performative in scholarly inquiry, my knees still shake.  I still feel inclined to write out a formal speech and read it word for word.

But I won’t.  Instead, when I stand in front of the crowd, I’ll keep a little of Gertrude Stein’s spirit by me, her witty come-what-may attitude.  I may not succeed.  The audience may not become engaged.  The moment may not transcend the subject matter.  But unless I give it the chance to succeed by putting myself out there, by allowing the subject to speak through me, I’ll never know what might have been.  I’ll only know the stiff formal words on the page in front of me read out in a shy halting voice.  And that’s all the audience will know.  The event won’t have any chance to live, and we’ll all miss out on that layered, ephemeral, shining moment trying to break through.

This article was first published in Arts Hub in 2006.  I’m proud to say that, since that time, I’ve had the opportunity to speak publicly a number of times.  So far no one had turned to stone, and I haven’t embarrassed myself–well, at least, not too much.

Journey through the centre of things

A narrative bridge

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The Middle as a Bridge  Much attention is given to story beginnings.  Writers craft first scenes with great care and deliberation in the attempt to compel the reader to turn the page.  This section of a story may be written over and over, each word weighed, images carefully juxtaposed.

Similarly, writers usually have an idea of the way they want the story to end and give a great deal of thought to where the characters end up in relation to each other.

The beginning of a story is the embarkation point, the start of a journey.  The ending, of course, is the destination.  The journey itself, with its twists and turns, its rugged terrain and changing weather, happens in the middle.  The most demanding part of a story to read, the middle can also be perilous to write: the plot might lead to cul-de-sacs and dead ends; pacing can lag and stall; characters might lose motivation, acting illogically or unbelievably; inspiration could abandon you; the tedium of writing make it difficult to journey on.

It’s useful to think of the middle of a story as a suspension bridge over a high gorge.  The reader can’t travel to the other side without it.  It’s your job as the writer to craft the bridge with enough knotted rope and wooden slats to span the gulf, bear weight, withstand high winds, and look picturesque both from a distance and close up.  If it isn’t strong enough or woven together carefully, it might sag, even collapse, leaving your readers hanging.

The Way Forward  The middle of a story sustains interest by building tension.  Escalating conflict is key.  Throughout the middle section, the main characters undergo a series of complications and difficulties.  There are different ways to approach this.

One of the classic story structures, most often seen in comedies, romances and mysteries, is to set up a situation in which the hero’s first attempts to solve the problem actually make it worse.  Misunderstandings abound.  This failure heightens the drama, offering an added sense of relief when the hero finally resolves the crisis and order is restored.

Another pattern, found more often in tragedies, is that in which each complication leads to a crisis that is temporarily resolved but which leads inexorably towards the ultimate crisis, the final undoing—in other words, the climax.  Throughout, hope alternates with disappointment.  The characters hold on tight, believing they have some influence over events, but as the story unfolds, it becomes clearer and clearer they will be forever altered by what’s happening.

Middles deal with the primary struggles of a story.  The ‘dark moment’ occurs in this section.  This is when the main character reaches a decision point after which there is no going back.  Supporting characters play key roles by underscoring flaws, causing divisions or providing opportunities for confrontations that intensify the conflict.

This section is also the place in the story where you have the best opportunity to elaborate on motivations, offer insights into behaviours, and reveal critical aspects of the emotional journeys of your characters.  Throughout the middle, you have the chance to weave images and forge connections in order to make the story stronger, to point out the interesting features in the narrative landscape, and to move the plot forward step by step.

Travel Tips  After promising beginnings, middles often become muddled.  Most of this is the result of insufficient conflict, unmotivated characters or not enough intensity of action.  To avoid a sagging centre, try these methods:

• Continually raise the stakes on your characters’ emotional struggles.  Create a sense of desperation: characters must feel compelled not only to act but to act now.
• Give your hero conflicts he can’t avoid, temptations she can’t resist, problems that underscore personality flaws.
• Advance both inner and outer conflicts—they work together.  External problems seem solvable but become insurmountable.
• Look for ways to chart the progression towards self-knowledge. Psychological insight that is initially missing from a character is unavoidable by the end of the story.
• Elicit emotional responses from the reader.  Depending on the story you’re telling, look for ways to summon anxiety, excitement, fear, a sense of foreboding, or delight.  Beginnings are designed to elicit the spark of interest in your characters; middles are where the reader learns to care about them.
• Use the element of surprise, unexpected turns, and shifts in storylines, which serve to control the narrative so that all the action presses towards a conclusion that becomes more and more inevitable.

The Journey Itself  The story is not simply about crossing the expanse step by step.  Concentrating too much on the mechanics of storytelling—the muscles required to take the next step, the fuel you’ll need, the weight of your pack—misses something crucial.   Take the time to look around and enjoy the view.  There is delight in the journey itself, in the sense of adventure, of being somewhere new, taking in a view rarely seen.  Seek pleasure in the process as a writer, and you’ll have a greater chance creating something similar for the reader.

Maps, itineraries, reservations are tools to make the experience of travelling happen more smoothly, but they don’t guarantee a successful trip.  Creativity is a mysterious force.  All the tips and techniques in the world won’t necessarily yield a good story.  Trust in the process is paramount.  It’s what allows the magic to happen.    As Leonard Cohen said, “If I knew where the good songs come from, I’d go there more often.”

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This article first appeared in the Perilous Adventures Newsletter in 2008.

In search of whales in literature: postscript

The psyche is an ocean to be fished

I learned too late about Carl Jung’s mysterious Red Book, or I would have featured it in the “in search of whales” list. Over several decades, Jung used the Red Book as the medium within which to explore his deepest unconscious, giving the earliest glimpses of his best known concepts–that all of humanity shares a pool of ancient wisdom he called the collective unconscious.  Jung saw the psyche as “an ocean that could be fished for enlightenment and healing”. The Red Book is both the place where Jung originated this idea and where he situated his own soul for such enlightenment.  There, he sought and battled and tamed many unusual creatures.

(In The New York Times Magazine (26 September 2009), Sara Corbett explores the history surrounding the book and why it took so long to reach the public.)

In search of . . . whales in literature

To scan the treatment of whales in literature is to track the growing confidence of man upon the harsh and unforgiving seas.  Early man’s knowledge of cetacea came first from the observations of sailors.  Naturally, the appearance of a frolicsome creature of ten feet or so that seemed to play and smile was a welcome sight to those aboard lonely vessels; in most early myths dolphins are represented as the merciful side of a dangerous environment.  The appearance of a massive 70-foot creature spouting ‘vapors’ and then quickly submerging elicited other emotions; in the early myths, whales often represent the terrifying and mysterious aspects of the ocean.  Sightings of whales by early sailors were the basis of stories across cultures that described ‘monsters of the deep’, dragons, and other terrifying creatures.

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The Book of Jonah (written after 530 BCE)

In Judeo-Christian stories, the belly of the whale is often used to represent Hell, and the whale’s jaws as Hell’s gates. The image of the mighty whale is connected with the terrifying biblical sea monster, Leviathan.  The ‘big fish’ that swallowed the sinner Jonah is commonly interpreted to be a whale, which also connects the image of the whale with the idea of rebirth.  God’s awesome power and his willingness to forgive are united in the story of Jonah:  God calls up a storm and commands the most frightening creature of the sea: the whale vomits Jonah safely onto the beach, reinvigorating his faith and obedience.  In ancient Islamic folktales, Jonah’s whale is one of only ten animals allowed into Heaven.

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Manilius, Astronomica, 1st century AD, Book 5

Manilius tells of the drama of the sea-monster, Cetus, coming to devour Andromeda:  “Now had a heavy surge begun to rise and long lines of breakers were fleeing before the thrust of the massive monster. As it cleaves the waves, its head emerges and disgorges sea, the waters breaking loudly about its teeth and the swirling sea afloat in its very jaws; behind rise its huge coils like rings of an enormous neck chain, and its back covers the whole sea.  Ocean clamors in every quarter, and the very mountains and crags quake at the creature’s onset.”

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Norse myth,  11^th century AD

Thor went fishing with the giant Hymir. The two did not get on, and when Hymir refused to provide Thor with bait, Thor decided that the head of Hymir’s largest ox would have to suffice.  They rowed to a point where Hymir often sat and caught flat fish.  Then, in a show of might, Thor drew up two whales. After this, Thor demanded to go farther, even though Hymir pleaded with Thor to return. They had traveled into the realm of the fearsome Serpent.  Thor ignored him and, to Hymir’s horror, they rowed out even further.

Thor then prepared a strong line and a large hook, and the monster, Jörmungandr, took the bait. Thor pulled the serpent up; the two faced off, Jörmungand dribbling poison and blood. Hymir went pale with fear, and as Thor grabbed his hammer to kill the serpent, the giant cut the line, leaving the serpent to sink beneath the waves.

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East Asian mythology

In Chinese mythology a whale with the hands and feet of a man is thought to rule the ocean.  The Chinese also connected the single spiral tusk of the Narwhal, an Arctic-dwelling whale, with the horn of the sacred Unicorn.  In Tibet, images of whales frequently appear near statues of the Buddha.

There is a Tz’u poem from the Song Dynasty (10^th to 12^th centuries AD) that describes an encounter between the moon and a whale:  The moon is said to:

…float under the bottom of the sea/ but how could this be?/ Somehow, one sorrows and is disquieted/ To think that the big whale, ten thousand li long,/ Would butt the moon sidewise and shatter to pieces/ Its jade palaces and jasper towers!

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Scrimshaw (from 1817 until the ban on commercial whaling)

Scrimshaw is the term given to the handiwork of bored whalers, who carved pictures on the teeth of whales.  The earliest known piece of scrimshaw dates from 1817 and was inscribed with the following: “This is the tooth of a sperm whale that was caught near the Galapagos Islands by the crew of the ship Adam and made 100 barrels of oil in the year 1817.”

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Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

Moby Dick is both the most famous and the most infamous of literary whales.

Two real life events inspired Melville’s tale.  In 1820, a sperm whale rammed the Essex, a Nantucket whaler, off the coast of South America.  One of the eight survivors, First Mate Owen Chase wrote about the experience in Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex, which was published in 1821.  Nearly 20 years later, tales surfaced about an albino sperm whale of unusual ferocity with the name Mocha Dick.  In May 1839, an article appeared in the New York magazine The Knickerbocker by Jeremiah Reynolds that reported a battle in which “an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength… [that] was white as wool” attacked a ship in premeditated fury.

However, Melville’s brilliance is in connecting these events to the earlier mythologies, when Ahab says, for example:

Look ye, Starbuck, all visible objects are but pastecard masks.  Some inscrutable, yet reasoning things put forth the molding of their features.  The white whale tasks me—he heaps me, yet he is but a mask. ‘Tis the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate; the malignant thing that has plagued and frightened man since time began.  The thing that maws and mutilates our race, not killing us outright but letting us live on with half a heart and half a lung.

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Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio, 1883

The story of the wooden puppet Pinocchio was a unique literary melding of genres for its time. Collodi had not intended the novel as children’s literature when it was first serialized.  At the request of his editor, Collodi added another twenty chapters in which Pinocchio arrives home after many adventures to find his ‘father’ Geppetto missing.  Pinocchio goes in search of him, encounters the hideous whale, Monstro, and ends up, Jonah-like, in the whale’s belly.  It is after feats of bravery and self-sacrifice that Pinocchio is resurrected, a real boy at last.

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William Tyler Olcott, Sun Lore of All Ages, 1914

“There is a curious custom found in many parts of the world, which relates to the sun’s influence on young maidens entering on womanhood.  According to this superstition, these maidens must not touch the ground nor permit the sun to shine upon them.  In Fiji, brides who were being tattooed were hidden from the rays of the sun, and in a modern Greek folk tale, the Fates predict that in her fifteenth year a princess must be careful not to let the sun shine on her lest she be turned into a lizard.  A Tyrolese story tells how it was the doom of a lovely maiden to be transported in the belly of a whale if ever a sunbeam fell on her.”

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Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast, 1981

Between the ages of 12 and 37, Jack Henry Abbott spent all but nine months imprisoned.  Abbott heard from his prison cell that Norman Mailer was writing a book about the executed murderer Gary Gilmore (Executioner’s Song).  This led to a celebrated correspondence between the two men, which was eventually published in 1981 as In the Belly of the Beast.  The publication of the book coincided with Abbott’s early release from prison.  Only six weeks later, on the very day a favourable review of In the Belly of the Beast appeared in The New York Times, he stabbed and killed a waiter in Greenwich Village.

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Witi Ihimaera, The Whale Rider, 1987

By the late twentieth century, whales had become something to defend rather than something to fear or commodify.  In this beautiful novel by the New Zealand writer, Witi Ihimaera, Maori tradition is broken when Kahu, a young girl in a patriarchal society, reveals she has the whale rider’s ancient gift of communicating with whales.  The novel was made into a moving film in 2002.