When you “review” the book of a friend, the review is never a review. This is - if we admit it - like all reviews because we can only bring our own biases, histories and sensibilities to all the work we read and view. A reader completes a book. A viewer completes a painting. An audience completes a performance. If it is ever complete.
In another life time - or maybe another chapter of life - to be a reviewer like the polish poet Wisława Szymborska. Her reviews have several lifetimes of insights on life and the world and - readily admitted - her biases - some collected in her “Non-Required Reading”.
I have three thoughts amongst many to share on Rebbeca Gigg’s new book, Fathoms: The World in Whale. The power of three has been with us for centuries so I shall stick with the threes.
The work is beautiful
The book tells you about whales but in doing so tells you what it means to be human
To me, this is a tale of hope and a tale of catastrophe - which is part of the story of humans and of whales and of our earth and our time on it.
On Beauty
What is poetry? If poetry is dancing, to standard prose’s pedestrian walking then this is poetry.
Take this opening passage:
“.. I helped push a beached humpback whale back out into the sea, only to witness it return and expire under its own weight on the shoreline. For the three days that it died, the whale was a public attraction. Locals brought their children down to see it. Then out-of-towners came, too. People would stand in the surf and wave babies in pastel rompers over the whale, as if to catch the drift of an evaporating myth. The whale was black like piano wood, and, because it was still young, it was pink in the joints under its fins. Waves burst behind it, sending spray over its back. Every few minutes, the whale slammed its flukes against the wet sand and exhaled loudly — a tantrum or leverage. Its soft chest turned slack, concertinaed by the pull of the swell. At first, the mood was festive. People cheered each time the whale wrestled in the breakers. Efforts made to free it from a sandbar in the morning had been aided by the tide. That the whale had re-stranded, this time higher up the beach, did not portend well for its survival, but so astonished were the people in the crowd, and such a marvel was the animal, that hope proved difficult to quash. What the whale inspired was wonderment, a dilation of the ordinary. Everyone was talking about it, on buses and in kiosks. Dogs on the beach, held back by their owners, swept flat quarter-circles in the sand with their tails. A few had their hackles up. How the dogs imagined the whale — predator, prey, or distant relation — was anyone’s guess, but they seemed keen to get a closer look. At sunset, armfuls of grease-blotted butchers paper — chips and battered hake — were passed around. The local surf lifesavers distributed zip-up hoodies. Wildlife officers, who had been stand-offish with the gathering crowd, relaxed and delivered some lessons on whale physiology. ..”
Now imagine a juxtaposition and breaking like this:
I helped push a beached
humpback whale back
out into the sea
only to witness it return and expire
under its own weight on the shoreline
For the three days that it died
the whale was a public attraction
People would stand in the surf
wave babies in pastel rompers over the whale
as if to catch the drift of
an evaporating myth
The whale was black
piano wood
still young
pink in the joints
under its fins
Waves burst
behind it sending spray over its back
Every few minutes the whale slammed its flukes
against the wet sand
At first the mood was festive
People cheered
What the whale inspired was
wonderment
a dilation of the ordinary
Everyone was talking about it on buses and in kiosks.
By sunrise, a part of the whale that ought not
to be outside of it was outside of it
A digestive organ
frilled and bluish
The whale’s billiard-ball eyes tumbled in its head.
I palmed an unremarkable
shell that sat for months afterwards
furred with dust on a ledge in my room
until it was lost.
And from the follow on passage:
“...Though we were shivering, the whale, only metres away, was boiling alive in the kettle of itself. That night a group of us slept lightly in the dunes, arrayed like question marks and commas on the white sand. Our minds cast to the cetacean huffing beyond the swale, then swooped back into cloudier visions. Surfers arrived in the early hours. Bouncing down to the water’s edge, they stood watching. I woke and brushed a second skin of pearly sand off my cheek, my shoulder, one thigh. Were those sharks, raiding a lux channel tipped up by the moon? Hard to tell. We resolved that the whale had been washed too high on the beach for any shark to reach it. Rinsed by pewter light, every detail was particular and peculiar. Ridges in the sand. Plants like handfuls of knives. It felt cold. It felt cold, to us. By sunrise, a part of the whale that ought not to be outside of it, was outside of it. A digestive organ, frilled and bluish in the foam. The whale’s billiard-ball eyes tumbled in its head, and its breathing sounded laboured. The sharks slid into vapour, a squinting rumour. No blood on the tideline. People stayed back from the water’s edge nonetheless. Swept slantwise, shallow waves smoothed, over-smoothed, smoothed. I palmed an unremarkable shell that sat for months afterwards, furred with dust on a ledge in my room, until it was lost. …”
Is that not poetry disguised as prose ?
The work has a beauty with words and sentence which matches the beauty of whales and sea. Perhaps some might find it overwrought. I find it matches the subject. From the technical science of benzenes to the whale wonderment.
What it means to be human
I’m aware of books that through a single entity tell a tale of humanity.
Humans and Art. (Ways of Seeing by John Berger)
The History of salt. (Mark Kurlansky’s Salt: History)
The life of a building on the Southbank of the London river Thames (Gillian Tindalls’ The House by the Thames: and the People Who Lived There)
This book is the same for whales. Humans have lived with them. Hunted them. Saved them. Polluted them. Rescued them. Captured them. Eaten, burnt and exploded their blubber. Sought to understand them. Continue to be eternally confused.
And so this history and retelling is a lens on humans.
“... From a detailed article on the development of PCBs and other benzenes, I discovered that these widely used, artificial compounds — eventually extracted, at scale, from coal tar — were first engineered by chemists as isolates from gases rendered out of whale oil. This was during the era when whales were a global commodity and a proto-energy industry — their fat sheared off by whalers and distilled to light lamps, grease machines, process textiles, and fuel the late stages of the industrial revolution. What a cruel and intimate historical loop: whale bodies provided the base chemistry from which the precursors to PCBs were extracted, and now, so many decades later, the legacy elements of these substances came to rest and accumulate in the living animals. …”
This is a tale of hope and a tale of catastrophe - which is part of the story of humans and of whales and of our earth and our time on it.
While this is a telling of the eco crises and extinctions and pollution and how symbol of the green movement in whales has become polluted, it’s also a telling of the power of change of the capacity of humans to change - how we have changed - how we will change - for better or for worse.
If you’d like to know more about the history of whales and humanity, check out Rebecca Gigg’s Fathoms. (Amazon Link)
Links:
Humans and Art. (Ways of Seeing by John Berger) (Amazon Link)
The History of salt. (Mark Kurlansky’s Salt: History) (Amazon Link)
The life of a building on the Southbank of the London river Thames (Gillian Tindalls’ The House by the Thames: and the People Who Lived There) (Amazon Link)
