Philip Hoare

The Whale

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A travelogue through the history, literature, and lore of the remarkable mammals that we long have been fascinated with, from Moby-Dick to Free Willy.
From his childhood fascination with the gigantic Natural History Museum model of a blue whale, to his abiding love of Moby-Dick, to his adult encounters with the living animals in the Atlantic Ocean, the acclaimed writer Philip Hoare has been obsessed with whales. The Whale is his unforgettable and moving attempt to explain why these strange and beautiful animals exert such a powerful hold on our imagination.
Praise for The Whale
Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction
“This tour de force is a sensuous biography of the great mammals that range on and under Earth’s oceans.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
The Whale is part cultural study, part travelogue, as Hoare traces the footsteps of Herman Melville from New York to New Bedford and Nantucket . . . [and] digresses on our abuses of the whale and the devastations of the whaling industry.” —Boston Globe
“One of the most sublime reading experiences you’ll have this year.” —NPR’S All Things Considered
This book is currently unavailable
585 printed pages
Original publication
2010
Publication year
2010
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Quotes

  • AM / ABhas quoted4 years ago
    why I too felt haunted by the whale,
  • AM / ABhas quoted4 years ago
    represented money, food, livelihood, trade. But it also meant something darker, more metaphysical, by virtue of the fact that men risked their lives to hunt it. The whale was the future, the present and the past, all in one; the destiny of man as much as the destiny of another species. It offered dominion, wealth and power,
  • AM / ABhas quoted4 years ago
    Melville’s White Whale is far from the comforting anthropomorphism of the smiling dolphin and the performing orca, from Flipper to Free Willy, or the singing humpback and the ‘Save the Whale’ campaign–all carriers, in their own way, of our own guilt. Rather, Moby Dick’s ominous shape and uncanny pallor, as seen through Ahab’s eyes, represents the Leviathan of the Apocalypse, an avenging angel with a crooked jaw, hung with harpoons from the futile attempts of other hunters. This whale might as well be a dragon as a real animal, with Ahab as his would-be slayer.

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