“The Whale”: 500 days of blubber The romantic appeal—and kinky sex life—of whales

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme,” wrote Herman Melville in Moby-Dick. So to choose as one’s theme both whales and the greatest book ever written about whales — as British writer Philip Hoare has done in The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea — would seem to ensure some mighty reading material.

The Whale does not disappoint. First, there are the simple, shocking facts about whales. A fin whale off the coast of Nantucket can be heard by its counterpart off the coast of England, more than 6,000 miles away. Inuit harpoons dating back 235 years have been found in the belly of hunted bowhead whales — one of the world’s longest-living mammals. The right whale is the owner of the largest testes in the animal kingdom (around 1,100 pounds each), and, after foreplay sessions involving sensuous flipper stroking, the female may let more than one partner enter her at the same time.

Hoare, drawing on his experience as a biographer of Noël Coward and Stephen Tennant, the outrageous British aristocrat, interweaves these facts with revelatory glimpses into Melville’s life as he contemplated and composed Moby-Dick. More importantly, he delves into his own psyche in an attempt to understand our species’ long-standing fascination with these leviathans of the deep. In a hilarious and moving climax — or, as Hoare’s friend John Waters puts it, “orgasm” — the author, a recovering aquaphobic, finally dives into the ocean to swim with a giant sperm whale.

Salon spoke with Philip Hoare in the lobby of the SoHo Grand Hotel in Manhattan, where he touched on the gayness of Moby-Dick, John Waters’ fear of the sea, and why it might be time to stop fighting Japanese whalers.  Read Article

By Jed Lipinski