Product Description

Moby-Dick for the blog generation.

Cat food cannery worker Gus Openshaw has one goal in life: to kill a whale. Not just any whale, but a big, blubbery whale that ate his wife, child, and arm during a vicious and unprovoked attack.

With a rickety boat and a heavily restrictive whale-hunting license, Gus sets out to exact his revenge. Along the way, Gus keeps an online journal–a blog–to keep the world informed about his misfit crew, his clashes with pirates, his near-fatal incarceration, and his infatuation with a certain island princess.

Complete with author-drawn scrimshaw illustrations, Gus Openshaw’s Whale-Killing Journal is the hilarious documentation of one man’s obsessive pursuit of a giant whale that would make Captain Ahab proud.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #163150 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-24
• Released on: 2006-04-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 275 pages

From Publishers Weekly
As screenwriter Thompson's fiction debut opens, cat-food cannery worker Gus Openshaw has just set off in hot pursuit of the white whale who ate his wife, kid and arm—a beast he insists on calling "Dickhead," in one of the book's many broad winks in Melville's direction. Gus, in addition to sharpening his harpoon and gathering a crew, also somehow finds the time to keep updating his blog, whose entries constitute the book. That's no mean feat since, along with crew members who include semireformed pirate Nelson and cleaver-happy chef Duq, Gus must contend with attacks by pirates, shipwreck after shipwreck, imprisonment in a remote island jail and the violent opposition of a whale-protection organization named Bluepeace. Ludicrous scenarios loom behind every wave: as Gus and his crew prepare to do battle with the whale, a war with the Tortolan Navy forces a desperate search for munitions during which Gus falls in love with an arms dealer's intern who turns out to have a secret royal pedigree. Despite the author's pen-and-ink scrimshaws that end each chapter, the characters remain indistinct. They, and their adventures, are ill-served by the bloggy style, which sinks this strained farce long before Dickhead even nears harpooning range. (Apr.)
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Review
"[A] raucous comedy of errors…punchy and entertaining…Thomson's no Melville, but there’s no question who’s the better gag-writer." -- Kirkus Reviews

Review
“[A] raucous comedy of errors…punchy and entertaining…Thomson is no Melville, but there’s no question who’s the better gag-writer. Dumb fun, smartly imagined.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“Openshaw is an absurdist Ahab…amusing and entirely inconsequential — an anti-Moby Dick.”
— Entertainment Weekly

Customer Reviews

Who knew that blogs, renegade militaries, robotic armies, pirates, drug dealers, and lost colonies were involved in whale hunts?
Gus Openshaw was a cat food cannery worker working "the worst stinking job you can get" when a super sized sperm whale with a B-shaped scar on his head ate Gus's wife, kid, and right arm. The whale got away, but only for the time being. With his life insurance settlement, Gus sets out on a voyage of revenge. He posts his captain's log and ruminations on life in a web log, the entries of which make up the book Gus Openshaw's Whale-Killing Journal.

Gus's two-month ocean odyssey is a whirlwind of zany adventures told in smart prose and accompanied by scrimshaw illustrations. At one point, Gus gives a detailed physical description of the criminal whale, and the harpooner/scrimshawist on staff whips up a police scrimshaw sketch of the alleged murderer. The reader is also treated to rum-fueled scrimshaws of female vixens along with portraits of the many madcap characters encountered during the journey.

Thomson's sophomore is a 5-star work of fiction, hands down, but it does follow a pattern of crisis / almost dying / alive / good news / super-bad news / laugh-out-loud funny scene / surely-they-will-die!! / hope / possible escape / alive / bad news, all of which are executed repeatedly in a random order. Who knew that Internet exchanges, renegade military forces, F-15 fighter jets, robotic armies, pirates, drug dealers, lost European colonies, and icebergs would be involved in a modern-day whale hunt? Wireless internet is a key plot device, one that works both for and against our renegade whale-hunting crew.

Laughs Ahoy!
Okay, sorry about the cheesy review title, but as my friend, Herm Melville said, this is the best "guy-tries-to-get-revenge-against-a-whale book" published in 155 years. So I got carried away.

Our Story: Gus Openshaw is a cannery worker/blogger who has never read MOBY DICK. He is seeking revenge against the darned whale that ate his right arm and his family, and Gus relates his tale in the form of a blog recounting his battles with the elements, mutineers, and litigators.

The plot's not just an excuse to trot out absurd action and boisterous humor, although it does that too. It's actually a pretty ingenious maritime story, and it ends up doing comic takes on a multitude of genres. Plus, it has pictures!

Extra Credit for the remote controlled giant squid robot. This book was funny enough for me to search out Thomson's previous novel. If it's only 5/6ths as funny as this one, it will be worth the effort.