Here we have a novel - could it be the first of its kind? - purporting to be the reprint of a blog. Gus Openshaw is an absurdist Ahab, a middle-aged cat-food cannery employee who has lost his wife, child, and right arm to a blubbery sea beast - "he'd be pushing the max if they had Big & Tall stores for sperm whales" - and who sets sail seeking vengeance. His blog entries describe silly encounters with pirates, a preppy dungeon master, a psychotic cook, the whale-huggers of "Bluepeace," and a nonagenarian navigator, among others. The love interest is his arms dealer's raven-haired intern, who's sold him a remote-controlled robotic giant squid. This is all fairly amusing and entirely inconsequential - an anti-Moby Dick. Grade: B
Because everyone in the Seven Seas is listening to podcasts, my publisher put a recording of the first entry of my Whale-Killing Journal on iTunes (for those of you who can't figure out iTunes (I myself can barely send e-mail), it's below too). It's read by an actor named Jefferson Tholen who is real talented and, as important, doesn't read slow like I do.
P.S. If you've got one of those RSS reader gadgets, here's the address of my podcast in .mp3 format:
