I've a Whale of a Tale to Tell Ye, Lads

I may have written (at least parenthetically) about my brother Mike’s obsession with marine biology, no doubt sparked by the impact of the movie Jaws. He came to have an interesting knowledge of the varieties of sharks, their habits and habitats. This extended peripherally to other denizens of the sea, and it seemed for a while that he might pursue the career of a marine biologist. But his growing vocation as a writer kind of pushed that out of the way.

But there was, briefly, in high school, a strange overlap, an idea that he toyed with for a while. This was to be a combination of whales and Watership Down, with a dash of Rudyard Kipling’s The White Seal: a story about a pod of cetaceans (mostly right whales, I think) fleeing the depredations of mankind and seeking a safer sea to swim in. They would encounter dangers and other sea life, from giant squid to orcas. I seem to remember they were joined by a grampus, or something, who envied their ability to dive deep and dreamed of being able to do that himself. A bit of a sub-plot of tragedy and self-sacrifice brewing there.

Anyway, I don’t think he ever wrote anything on it, though he thought and planned and discussed it with us, to the extent of maybe making up sort of whale words to sprinkle in their conversations, like Lapine in Watership Down. He soon abandoned the idea as too fanciful, however, and buckled down to more realistic writing. It would possibly embarrass him now to have it revealed as a step of his writing development, but I rather treasure the anecdote as part of his more juvenile stage, when the fantasy of Beast Fable still held a toehold in his mind.