Cyber-Linked
Unpredictable
Evidence
RESEARCHING
AND WRITING A NOVEL ABOUT WHALES
A Presentation to “The Whale in Science and Culture” Symposium
at Western Oregon University, Monmouth, Oregon, January 21, 2005
Thank you, Henry, for the gracious introduction. I am pleased to be a
part of this interesting and unique symposium. And it is good to be on
the campus of Western Oregon University. I worked down the road in Corvallis
for 24 years, but was only here one time, as I recall, to attend an event
in your performing arts center.
Even though I am following Henry’s fine presentation on Moby Dick,
I want to say at the outset—like that famous quote about our former
vice president Dan Quayle—Dead Whales Tell No Tales is no Moby Dick.
I consider myself in good company to even be on the same program with
a discussion of that magnificent work. My book is a mystery novel, one
of thousands released each year in an increasingly popular publishing
niche. As far as I know, however, mine is the only one with whales and
whaling as a theme.
In addition to Moby Dick, another novel of the past incorporates whales
or at least whale killing into its plot. Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand
Leagues Under the Sea published in 1870 is the story of a another mad
captain, Nemo. His submarine, Nautilus encounters a school of whales while
heading “in the direction of the Antarctic.” These are black
whales who are soon attacked by a school of “cruel and destructive
sperm whales” that the captain decides to kill. “We’ll
give them no quarter,” shouts Nemo, “these ferocious whales
are nothing but mouth and teeth.” He uses a steel spur on the prow
of the submarine to destroy the whales by stabbing them and slicing them
up. The technique is not unlike that used to skill whales today. To my
knowledge, no sperm whale has ever attacked anything but krill.
There are a lot of works of fiction and science fiction about whales.
I have a list up here if anyone is interested in looking at. None seemed
to make much of an impression—at least they were not best sellers.
There are lots of children’s books about whales, most notably the
book that was the basis for the film you saw Wednesday evening, “Whale
Rider.” There are also a number of non-fiction works about whales,
like Farley Mowat’s A Whale for the Killing. That is an account
of the battle to save an 80-ton Fin whales trapped in a lagoon in Newfoundland
in 1967. It is fact, but it reads like fiction.
WHALES WE HAVE KNOWN AND LOVED AND LOVED AND LOVED
Why choose this subject to anchor a book? In the first place, I love whales
and have since I read Herman Melville’s book in college. I also
have to admit to a commercial reason: many other people love whales too
and I thought that interest might cause them to buy my book. The final
reason revolves around the broader subject of whaling and why whales have
been killed for centuries and are still being slaughtered in parts of
the world.
My love of whales is connected with everybody else’s love of whales.
Except for killer whales, these gentle creatures never do harm to anyone
or anything. Since the environmental movement began in the late 1960s,
whales have been used to symbolize what those dedicated women and men
are trying to achieve: an end to indiscriminate killing of animals and
plants and polluting the environment.
We love whales because they are gentle, in spite of their large size.
We think we see a quizzical twinkle in their eyes, and maybe we do. Whale’s
eyes are located directly above the corners of their lips, near the shoulders.
They are small, about the size of a grapefruit in right whales and sperm
whales. The eyelids, though present, are so swollen with fatty matter
that they are practically immobile. There are no eyelashes. So the eye
is there looking back at us curiously—or at least we think so.
It is their gentle nature that makes us love whales, as I’ve said.
Whales are sociable, affectionate, devoted, captivating and high spirited.
They have been known to follow tourist boats and rub up against the sides.
They love to be touched by the tourists on board, no matter what the harm.
They live in what Jacques Cousteau calls a “leisure society”—less
than a tenth of their lives looking for food and feeding. The rest of
the time they spend swimming, frolicking in the waves, conversing with
each other, wooing the opposite sex, and rearing their young. Apart from
the harpoons of man, they have little to fear. No wonder we love them!
Experts disagree on the intelligence of whales. Although they have large
brains, the jury is out. They protect their young, executive group maneuvers
to escape danger, exchange messages on a daily basis. So do dogs, bears,
elephants, and monkeys. The only cetaceans used in intelligence tests
are dolphins, however.
One big factor sets tem apart from us: they are acoustic creatures, where
we are primarily visual ones. Although they have no ears that anyone can
see but they have a keen sense of hearing and that helps them survive
danger and move around the world’s oceans.
As a symbol, whales are hard to beat. Even someone who can’t draw
very well can probably do a rough sketch of a whale—almost always
a sperm whale because of its distinct shape. And that kind of sketch has
become a favorite graphic logo for all kinds of groups. It has, the parlance
of Madison Avenue, become a brand for the environmental movement—something
that is easy to remember and hard to forget. No matter that most whale
species don’t have that shape but instead look like torpedoes. The
point can be made quickly and easily—whales are cool and need to
be protected along with a lot of other things.
SAVE THE WHALES AS A RALLYING CRY—FOCUS OF ENVIRONMENTAL
AND CONSERVATION MOVEMENT OF THE 1970S
The kind of “branding” we see a round us every day—like
names on businesses here in Newport and the Central Coast is nothing new.
Whales have been part of the popular culture before we had a popular culture.
To tie something into a whale suddenly gives it a cache not found in many
creatures.
The first whale carcass was put on public exhibit in Holland in 1827.
This happened anytime a whale carcass washed ashore. Like today’s
hucksters, men were happy to earn extra money by showing a creature from
the deep.
That whale was known as the “Ostend whale” because it washed
ashore in Ostend, Holland. For the next seven years, it made the rounds
of England, France, and Holland.
Next, there was scrimshaw. I loaned some items of scrimshaw for display
here at the library. This unique art form began when bored crew members
on whaling ships started carving pictures on leftover pieces of bone,
baleen, and ivory. These ranged from whole teeth to smaller pieces that
were made into things like knife handles and pieces of jewelry. At first,
they gave them to their families. Eskimos began to do the same thing and
later made items for tourists like salt shakers and snuff boxes. Scrimshaw
has become an important part of the native economy in Alaska. These old
pieces are now priceless and many form whole museum collections. (Among
the things I brought is an interesting explanation of how scrimshaw is
made and you might like to look at it closely.)
Parts of whales became part of fashion in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Baleen, those mesh-like protuberances from the mouths of many whale species,
was used to make everything from hoops for skirts, corset stays to buggy
whips. Indeed the bowhead whale was killed nearly to extinction because
of that baleen, which was harvested and shipped to San Francisco where
photos of the time show “forests” of baleen lining warehouses
and docks. The demand was constant.
With such interest in Europe, it was inevitable that the craze would come
to the United States.
By the 1920s and 1930s, entrepreneurs regular loaded whale carcasses on
railroad flatcars and hauled them around the country so people in the
interior could see them—for a modest fee, no doubt. My mother recalled
seeing one in Colorado in the 1920s. The smell was horrible, of course,
but you were seeing “this great sea leviathan” or some such
come-on phrase. This brings to mind P.T. Barnum’s most audacious
enterprise. He once put up a sign that said “To the Egress”
and charged five cents for the privilege. When people paid their money,
they soon found themselves back out on the street. He also is said to
have first used the phrase “A sucker is born every minute.”
Indeed, Mr. Barnum did try.
Beyond using products made from whale parts—not to mention eating
the meat and using the oil for lamps and perfume—people have longed,
not only to see dead whales, but to be near them. Whole industries exist
in California and Baja California in Mexico to take people near whales.
Even though studies show that harm to the mother whales and their babies
results, the industry is well enough connected in Mexico that the government
keeps allowing the practice.
In more recent years, trapped whales have become an obsession with the
public, especially in the United States.
And then there was Keiko.
[SEE CHAPTER FROM RPL MANUSCRIPT]
WRITING A BOOK WITH A WHALE AS A ‘CHARACTER’
With this as a background, I want to go back to my original question:
why choose a whale to anchor a book? My love of whales and popular interest
were part of it, as I’ve said. But I also thought it would allow
me to use interesting elements in the story. (I have to admit, too, that
I had material left over from a failed non-fiction book project. Writers
[please note: don’t throw anything away.)
WHALES THEMSELVES—Awesome size, mysterious and unknowable behavior,
heroic and noble bearing, tragic history of exploitation. I set my story
during the spring migration of gray whales off of Newport so whales could
be handy if I needed them.
A WHALING CONFERENCE—Brings to Newport people with various whale
agendas —killing them (Japanese and Eskimos), saving them
(environmentalists, the U.S. government at the time—not sure now).
All of these people can be suspects along with providing context for the
story.
INFORMATION ABOUT WHALES AND WHALING—The only slight parallel between
my novel and Moby Dick is the information I include about whales and the
people who still want to kill them—and save them. Melville gives
readers a lot of information on the whaling industry of the time. I tried
to do the same.
Working like the journalist I used to be (and still am), I gathered material
by interviewing sources and doing a lot of library research.
The trick in using this kind of thing is that the story can’t suddenly
grind to a halt while you dump all your old information into your computer.
It has to flow into the story. I do it via lectures or brief dialogue.
I also had some personal experience of observing whale researchers in
the Canadian Arctic for an article on their work. [MENTION TRIP, WHAT
HAPPENED, ALSO LACK OF ANTHROPOMORPHIC FEELINGS TOWARD WHALES—‘WHITE
TAIL NO. 10 VS. SHAMU OR MOBY.]
In my novel, a rather nasty marine scientist is murdered during the conference
and his assistant, my hero’s former lover, is arrested. My protagonist,
Thomas Martindale, decided to try to prove his friend’s innocence.
In doing so, he encounters these various suspects, sometimes with unpleasant
results for him. Intrepid and resourceful fellow that he is, he prevails
in the end. He is aided by a state policewoman because all amateur detectives
need official help at times. He is hindered at every turn by the local
sheriff who hates anyone smarter than he is—not a hard status to
reach. To complicate matters even more, a gray whale has beached herself
and died on the beach below his house in a cove that used to be a cave—not
unlike the Devil’s Punchbowl in Otter Rock, but moved a few miles
south. The use of real places create reader interest but they also provide
me with lots of ways to put my hero and others in danger, once my diabolical
mind gets going.
The idea for using the whale as I do (and I don’t want to tell you
any more because it will spoil the book if you ever read it) came from
my late mother. I was also helped by having a lot of material on whales
and whaling left over from a non-fiction book project that did not work
out. I was helped immeasurably by John Byrne on that. You heard from John
yesterday. Just back from his tour as U.S. Whaling Commissioner in the
mid-1980s to become OSU president, he generously gave his time and connections
to me for a book about the political aspects of whaling. I felt guilty
that I could not get any interest from publishers, but I saved my files.
When you use material like that, you have to be careful that everything
does not grind to a halt while you spout off 5 pages of “stuff.”
It has to flow naturally into the story—and I hope it does. I am
also grateful to another speaker here, Bruce Mate, Oregon’s distinguished
marine mammalogist. He gave me invaluable details on how whales are killed
off Oregon’s shores and how the Oregon Stranding Network functions.
[READ FROM ‘DEAD WHALES’]
This is just one of my series, two of which take place on the Oregon Coast,
one on a campus not unlike OSU. This is the second to be published, but
the one I like the best, probably because of the whale connection. Like
all of you, I am hopelessly hooked on whales.
Thanks for listening.
I’d be happy to answer questions.