The Sunday Story: A Life Worthy of Whalefall
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I'm a shara KO, and this is a sunday story. So I love or fiction. It's my favorite, anything with masters of zombie.

They are people coming back to alive. I'm into IT. I also love a good, thrilling. So dane cross, i'd been on my way are for a while. He's in new york times the best selling author who has written some pretty scary books.

When I heard you had a book coming out the summer call, wilf, I was intrigued, know i'm like, what is you talking about? This book is it's not necessarily who, although the situation is horrific, but it's definitely A A thriller. If I wanted to sum IT up, I would say it's about a schoolbag diver who is swallowed by a whale, and he has to figure out how to escape before his oxygen runs out.

That over the top promise was more than enough to draw me in. But but when you actually read the book is really about so much more. It's it's about a father and a son and the legacies fathers leave behind.

It's about what we Carry with us and what we let go. When I talked to day new crowds back in August, just as the book was coming out, I got a sense of how significant this book was to him. A whale all in nature is a death of an incredible creature.

A whale within that death provides for many other life forms. And IT is a huge of IT in the ocean danel was rustling with what IT means to have a meaningful life and a meaningful death a whale fall. His sister was dying um and he spoke openly about that.

Since our interview, SHE has passed away and I offer my my deepest condolences to him in his family. This conversation has stayed with me. What does IT mean to live a life that is worthy of a whale fall? What does IT mean to live a life that is worthy of the people we leave behind?

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Daniel crowd is the author of whales all and joins us now welcomes to the program.

Hey, thanks for help me.

So a whale fall isn't just when a whale dies. And the karl is, is when the car cus sinks deep. What makes the depth of the fall so special or special enough to be the title of this book?

Yeah, well, I mean, the book is really about death in a lot ways. I mean, the the story begins with the diverse father already dead um and the idea of a welfare which as you said is a giant whale who sings to the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean and the corpse lands and IT dies yet it's in a way it's simple IT dies. But what IT really does is IT creates life and IT creates centuries worth of life because of its decomposition. And I thought I was kind of a beautiful metaphor for what the book is about in in that there are good deaths and as bad deaths and the best death of all, I think, is when you can die and your death mean something others, whether that you pass along something biological, you got a family, you're leaving behind art. You know, in my case, maybe its books, or you just touched people in some way, know the best death for all of us is for us to become .

whale falls. And I mean, this this book definitely I mean, when you you think about IT, you know IT is it's about a person being swallowed by a well, but is about IT so much more than that? I'd have to ask you about th Epace b ecause w hat I f ound w as s ome o f I T l ike s ome o f t he c hapters a re s uper s hort.

They're just like a sentence and like they they flash back and fourth in time IT. To me, it's almost like there's like a ferney pace to IT IT IT is definitely a thrilling ler. Like how did you go about planning the riding for this and the structure of this?

My idea was that I wanted the chapter breaks to feel like gasps for air, and I wanted the reader to constantly be aware of how much air he's losing. You know, the chapter headings, ings are all my son telling you how my jokes and he has left. So with the short chapters, you're constantly gasping and constantly having to to sink them back down to the drama.

And IT alternates between what's going on inside the whale and in these flashbacks. And really, that came not from me having some brilliant idea about how the structure became from the reality of what the diver was going through, and how, when wearing these kind of situations as a diver, will not not many divers convinced this particular situation, but any kind of stressful situation, yeah, a couple. Uh, but a stressful situation as a diver means more importantly than even ever before, as you need to breathe sleepy, as the character says in the book, you need to module your breathing. And so the book emulates trying to control panic with the size of its chapters and that's .

what IT feels like. I mean IT IT feels like you are um like like you are having these half thoughts or trains of thoughts. So you're jumping here and there like you know like it's a brain that is like firing all sorts of things at itself because it's in this very dire situation um so including having flashbacks of of the life that you lived.

One thing that the main character in the story, jay, that he has is that he he has this wealth of knowledge about diving and about sea creatures that he got from his father, who is a very difficult relationship with. But like, this book is full of information. Like, are you a diver yourself? How did you? How did you learn all of this?

Well, I grew up in iwa.

so you there's .

not a lot of there's not a lot of oceans in I there's some sort of gross legs. No, this is this book really is the opposite of the old adage, right with, you know, I knew absolutely nothing about whales and knew nothing about diving, knew very little about the ocean. So I was starting with nothing, you know, like usually when I start a book, i've got an idea of a lot, and then I kind of research to kind of fill in the gaps. But with this, no, there there are no books about this.

So I had a front low, the process, with about three months of intense interviews with the whale scientists and diving experts, and during that I was sort of like the diver inside the whale, and I was shining a flashlight at this part of the stomach and saying, what is this? What is IT feel like? What is IT smell like? What's over here? What happens if I tagged on this? And IT was like taking a college class in advanced wales? I guess I just learning, yeah, advanced internal wales was the class I took, uh, and know how to really learn inch by inch, in second by a second, what happens inside of a whale? To even beginning, to even understand what kind of plot I could have, because he was important to me that the book be one hundred percent .

scientifically accurate. You know, getting to the the I guess the heart of the book the stomach of the but the testing of the book um you know A J he gets swallowed by a giant firm whil that's not given anything away. No but while he's in the well he's alive. He's thinking about his father met and his regrets talk to us about this relationship with his dad and really how often I would say IT could be male, but I guess he doesn't have to be gender. How that relationship with the parent can weigh someone down in such an incredible way yeah.

well, you know, when I came up with the premise of the book, IT immediately struggling in something really like prieve al, almost and and powerful. Now, way like IT reminds us, I think, of when we used to be in some primordial part of our brain beings that had to worry about being swallow, they had to worry about being eden. And centuries of domination have sort of made that fear go dormant.

But it's still there. And for that reason, I think that the premise has a power, a simple power. And so I wanted to pair that with a relationship that also wasn't overly complicated.

I wanted to be something that was simple and everyone could understand. And the simplicity relationship is the first one we have, which is child and parent. Yes, j, and his father had a troubled relationship.

Know mitt was a man of the sea, a local diving legend, but also the kind of guy who couldn't hold down a job and felt sort of mascula ted by his domestic life and just wanted to be out in the sea. And he wanted to mold j in his image, and jay didn't want that. And so he was sort of kicking and screaming drug along to all these diving, exploited.

And you know, they ultimately, through some terrible things that the father did, became estranged. And so so jay leaves home for a year, and that's when mid gets cancer and dies. And jay never sees him, never visit him on his death bed.

So win J A swallowed he begins, you know, under the influence of the mEthane in the wee stomach and the injury in the panic begins to conflate the whale with his father almost as if the whale is his father. Ah, so the book becomes a one of reconciling ation that the father and the son have to sort of reconcile the regret of how they treat each other if j has any chance of getting out. Because the dad was the keeper of all the knowledge.

And he told that knowledge, he gave that knowledge to j. But j purpose sely tried to forget IT as kind of a screw you to his dad. And now he's got to make a mends if he's gna arrive.

What do you think about that? Because, you know, the relationship twin a parent in a child like going to wait you know, when you think about the way, like a parent can almost swallow a child hole in the since that your whole life right can be whether you are running away from who the parent was when you are trying to live up to what the parent want to jua be, you can be consumed by who your parents were and what they didn't did not do.

And and so I guess when you talk about reconciliation, what do you see that as? Because he does not like j does seem to come to the realization. There were good moments with his father, but there were a lot of bad moments with his father.

Is this reconciliation mean forgiveness? Does that mean letting go? Does that mean accepting?

I don't think that something has to mean any of those things. The book is divided in the two sections, and those sections are drawn from my reading of the book of Jenna. And the sections .

are title truth of mercy.

And so truth, I mean, there are truth. There are the facts of what they did to met and what MIT did to jay and i'm not saying they're equal you know I think mitt was worse to j and j ever was to MIT um but the second section of the book titled mercy points tored or hopes for a Better response a way to to understand that we've all been part of ugly truths and can can we win? The chips are down and particularly when when life is ending, can we show mercy? Um it's a complicated tony issue and I don't think IT ever fully gets resolved and I know, but how can I resolve IT know this issue since .

the beginning of time you you you bring up the book of jona because obviously when people hear about A A man or a Young man being a swell by will they think of you know jona in the bible who gets swallow by well um if I recalled my bible story correctly, won a jona was supposed to do something for the the laud told him to do something. He refused. He tried to run away, then he gets well by a while he gives out the wheel. He praise he and then he he spat out and he goes and does what lord wanted him to do. Is that I correct reading of that?

Yeah, that's pretty good. I mean, were about at the same level. I write a lot about even i'm not a religious person.

I write a lot about religion. Yes, IT fascinates me and and I find that just really interesting topic so much of human society is built upon IT. Um so when you write a book like this, you have to be aware of the touchstones people are going to have.

Movie deck knew people would think of jana. Yeah, I knew that people would think of movie deck, right? So you, those things are sort of on the table.

So when that used them, no one has to understand jona. To read this book is not required less soever. But to me, book of journal was about second chances, and IT was about this quality of truth versus mercy.

And sort of more importantly, I really, you this, this whale is not jaws. The whale in the book is not nefer ious. It's not a man either. Whales would never purposely eat a human.

The whale, as I envisioned, was something very um and in in fact kind of god like the whales are sperm wales are so interesting because their they will dive down ten thousand feet deep and yet they had to keep coming up the whales to breathe and I I kept on seeing that visual of them going from the abyss deep to the surface is almost like an elevator between words um and almost idot for MIT the ocean is heaven and the whales are sort of Angels and so when when the whale sort of becomes mid IT IT becomes IT starts a whole news cycle of sort of spiritual spiritualism in the book, even though MIT himself was professed to be very entire religious, but he had a religion. His religion was the ocean. His spiritual realism was the ocean.

And you know, he says in the book, what we're all looking for, whether it's from god or from nature, what we're all searching for, our moments of all, you know, we're all trying to find this feeling of being small. And sort of counterintuitively, by feeling small IT IT allows you to recognize the existence of something big. And that's essentially religion in a way.

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We're back with a sundays story. We're listening to a conversation I had with Daniel crowds about his new book, welfare. This is all about father's and sons. Did you draw from your own personal relationship with your father for this story, or from, you know, your relationship with your parents or a family member?

Well, I mean, I would I would not say my father's is like MIT, but there are some similarities is my dad is a big hunter, you know, and it's not something I ever took to. So there's there's a seed of IT there for sure. 我 IT was more that I was drawing from things happening around me at the time， like I just i'm forty eight.

I'm at that age where people I know we're starting to die. You know, it's just in the last few months i've had a good friend eye and my father died. My sister is dying right now.

Oh, my time. Sorry.

you know, he has very little little time not to live. And this book to your mom, i'm sort of doing in her honor, and that made me think, you know about, well, for you may be, think about what a good death is.

And and those sort of ideas collided with the that the basic high concept idea of being swallowed by a whale and, you know, being swallowed by whether it's your parents or the life that you've lived in, the regrets that you have, you know, and being in this moment, whether that's slowly dying in a bed or dying inside the body of, well, you are at this moment, there comes a time when we have to, there's no where else to turn, and we have to look into ourselves and determined, have we lived a good life? Have we lived a life worthy of wealth? All, yes, these are, these are all draw, make stuff, you know, and that's, and I and I like that in a way, I like that these ideas get kind of jumbled up inside of a thriller narrative.

No, I think IT deepen s IT and IT complicate IT. And, you know, I think when people read this book, but they're expecting as a real time breakneck ller and IT is that I think what they're not expecting is how moving is going to be. Um i've had so many reactions where people tell me they read the book and they loved IT, but they didn't expect to be crying by the end of IT and that was the risk and the appeal for me of writing the books to try to see if I could do all that at once.

You know we don't want to support the ending so i'll let you answer how directly however you you feel. But jay starts this entire adventure. He's searching for the literal bones of his father, but obviously he that can be uh a metaphor for guilt, for the past, for being wait down for the responsibility ie s that people have.

There's a great question in the book about what responsibility ie. S do sons have to their fathers? Um do you think that there's a way that you can allow the past to stay the past or that what is buried should stay buried? That sometimes we're going looking for closure as j kep you know kind of saying in air quotes ah and that's not there. That doesn't exist .

yeah I mean everyone's gna feel different about this and and answered in a different way. But yeah, I do think sometimes closure is not possible and that the only other option is the opposite sort of opening and just being open to everything, to all the feelings, all the emotions. You're right that jay was out looking for his father's remains boot.

What he sort of realized at some point is that the search was was silly. In away, he was pointless. He is his father's remains. We are all the remains of our parents. The search sometimes is is just looking inward and just having the courage to accept who are our faults, you know, our regrets and having the couch to stare them in the face. And you know if that happens to a lot of us when we're at the end of our lives, I think, but IT may be healthier and a good practice to do that a little bit while or still .

up and kicking. Daniel crows' new book is well far. Thank you for joining us.

Oh, absolutely my pleasure.

This episode of the sunday story was produced by ryan bk and Andrew mambo IT was edited by ed magnet and jim mt. Our team closely on a sim strong just in yan and irae a gucci is our executive producer. We'd love to hear from you.

Send us an email at the sunday story at in P. R. Dot org. Am a character at first, is back tomorrow with all the new, you need to start a week. Until then, have a great recipe weekend.

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