 Whale Talk Chris Crutcher Copyright © 2001 All rights reserved. Young Adult Published Hard Cover 224 pages ISBN 0688180191 $15.99 Click here to buy this book. Soft Cover 224 pages ISBN 0440229383 $5.50 Click here to buy this book. Audio Published by cassette tape ISBN 080720708X $26.00 Click here to buy this audio book. Read an Excerpt "This being Crutcher, the action is fast and furious, the language foul, the victims' stories heart-rending, the climax violent and the themes thought-provoking." ~Chicago Tribune "In the hands of a lesser storyteller, the tale would fall apart under its own weight. But Crutcher (Ironman, 1995, etc) juggles the disparate elements of his plot with characteristic energy, crafting a compulsively readable story that rings true with genuine feeling and is propelled by exhilarating swimming action to an end that is both cataclysmic and triumphant. A welcome return (Fiction, YA)" ~Kirkus "The veteran author once again uses well-constructed characters and quick pacing to examine how the sometimes cruel and abusive circumstances of life affect every link in the human chain, and a heartwrenching series of plot twists leads to an end in which goodness at least partially prevails. Through it all, as expected, shines Crutcher's sympathy for teens and their problems." ~Booklist "Crutcher uses a broad brush in an undeniably robust and energetic story....T. J. himself is witty, self-assured, fearless, intelligent, and wise beyond his years." ~School Library Journal "Through TJ's narration, Crutcher offers an unusual yet resonant mixture of black comedy and tragedy that lays bare the superficiality of the high school scene. The book's shocking climax will force readers to re-examine their own values and may cause them to alter their perception of individuals pegged as 'losers.'" ~Publisher's Weekly "Crutcher's superior gifts as a storyteller and his background as a working therapist combine to make magic in Whale Talk. The thread of truth in his fiction reminds us that heroes can come in any shape, color, ability or size, and friendship can bridge nearly any divide. A truly exceptional book." ~Washington Post "Chris Crutcher, therapist and author of seven prize-winning young adult books, here gives his many fans another wise and compassionate story full of the intensity of athletic competition and hair-raising incidents of child abuse. " ~Amazon.com "Crutcher's wry wisecracking is in full force in WHALE TALK's hero, T. J. Jones, whose good heart and flair for the sarcastic make him one of my favorite teen book characters ever." ~Teenreads.com "Crutcher knows his stuff, and he pumps adrenaline through the sports scenes while honestly acknowledging the personal struggles of his adolescent readers. T.J. (short for The Tao Jones-yes, really) is a self-proclaimed good-looking and talented athlete who uses his abilities-as well as his anger-to champion the weak, giving us a great performance both in and out of the water." ~Horn Book AUDIO BOOK: "There's a lot of dialogue in this book and Corrigan's fully-voiced reading skillfully individualizes the characters in Crutcher's novel of redemption and loss. However, the voice that really stands out, as it should, is that of TJ. It is a strong voice, with just the right connotations of youth. I am always amazed at how my perception of a book is often different when I listen to it. I was one of Whale Talk's strong defenders when it was published last year, and yet I have a new appreciation for Crutcher's storytelling and new insights into the characters after listening to this audio book." ~Capitol Choices, Noteworthy Excerpt Chapter One In the end, write it down. Back up and find the story. Mr. Simet, my English and Journalism teacher, says the best way to write a story, be it fact or fiction, is to believe aliens will find it someday and make a movie, and you don't want them making Ishtar. The trick is to dig out the people and events that connect, and connect them. No need to worry about who's wearing Nike and who's wearing Reebok, or anybody's hat size or percentage of body fat. Like Jack Webb on the Dragnet series on Nick at Nite says, "Just the facts, ma'am. Just the facts." The facts. I'm black. And Japanese. And white. Politically correct would be African-American, Japanese-American and what? Northern European-American? God, by the time I wrote all that down on a job application the position would be filled. Besides, I've never been to Africa, never been to Japan and don't even know which countries make up Northern Europe. Plus, I know next to nothing about the individuals who contributed all that exotic DNA, so it's hard to carve out a cultural identity in my mind. So: Mixed. Blended. Pureed. Potpourri. Adopted. Big deal; so was Superman. And I like Superman, I was adopted by great people. The woman I call Mom - who is Mom - Abby Jones, was in the hospital following her fourth miscarriage (and final attempt) at the miracle of birth) where she met my biological mother, Glenda, right after my presumed bio-dad, Stephan, had assisted in my natural childbirth only to come eyeball-to-eyeball with the aforementioned UNICEF poster boy. A second-generation German-American married to a woman of Swiss-Norwegian descent, he was a goner before my toes cleared the wet stuff. Any way he matched up the fruit flies, he couldn't come up with me. Because my mom is one of those magic people with the natural capacity to make folks in shitty circumstances feel less shitty, she consoled Glenda and even brought her home until she could get her feet on the ground. Evidently Glenda was as surprised as Stephan; she'd had a one-night stand with my sperm donor to get even for a good thumping and had no idea the tall black-Japanese poet's squiggly swimmer was the one in a billion to crash through to the promised land. Things sped rapidly downhill for Glenda as a single mother, and two years later, when she brought Child Protection Services crashing down on herself, getting heavily into crack and crank and heavily out of taking care of me, she remembered Mom's kindness, tracked her downa nd begged her to take me. Mom and Dad didn't blink - almost as if they were expecting me, to hear them tell it - and all of a sudden I was the rainbow-coalition kid of two white, upwardly mobile ex-children of the sixties. Actually, only Mom was upwardly mobile. She's a lawyer, working for the assistant attorney general's office, mostly on child-abuse cases. Dad likes motorcycles; he's just mobile. We never did hear from Glenda again, Mom says probably because the separation was too painful and shameful. Sometimes I find myself longing for her, just to see or talk with her, discover more about the unsettledness within me; but most of the time that ache sits in a shaded corner of my mind, a vague reminder of what it is not to be wanted. At the same time all that seems out of place, because I remember nothing about her; not what she looked like or the sound of her voice or even the touch of her hand. I do admit to having a few laughs imagining how history rewrote itself inside Stephan's head when my shiny brown head popped out. It's interesting being "of color" in a part of the country where Mark Fuhrman has his own radio talk show. My parents have always encouraged me to be loud when I run into racism, but I can't count on racism being loud when it runs into me. Very few people come out and say they don't like you because you aren't white; when you're younger it comes at a birthday party you learn about after the fact, or later, having a girl say yes to a date only to come back after discussing it with her parents, having suddenly remembered she has another engagement that night. Not much to do about that but let it register and don't forget it. I learned in grade school that the color of a person's skin has to do only with where their way-long-ago ancestors originated, so my mind tells me all racists are either ignorant or so down on themselves they need somebody to be better than. Most of the time telling myself that works. Once in a while my gut pulls rank on my mind, and I'm compelled to get ugly. I called "All News All Talk Radio" a couple of days after the first time I heard the spectacularly racially sensitive ex-L.A. detective giving Spokane and the rest of the Inland Empire the hot poop on big-time crime fighting. The talk show I called had featured the mayors of an eastern Washington and a north Idaho town declaring that the racist label put on this region is undeserved, blown out of proportion due to the presence of the Ryan Nations fort over in Hayden Lake, Idaho, and the existence of several small militias spread out between central Washington and eastern Montana. The mayors had departed when the talk-jock finally said, "We're talking with T.J. from Cutter, about fifty miles outside our great city." I said, "So this racist label, it's undeserved?" 'I believe it is," he said. "An entire region can't be held responsible for the ignorant actions of a few. Certainly you can't argue with that." "You're right," I said. "I can't. But if the racist label is about perceptions, and in this case, undeserved perceptions, why would you guys have the Mark Fuhrman show?" "Have you tuned into Mark's show?" "Not purposely," I said, "but I was scanning the stations and landed right on him." "How long did you listen?" "Long enough to convince myself it was really him, that you guys weren't just pulling my chain." "Then you heard a man who knows a lot about crime prevention and an accomplished professional radio man." I said, "His voice was okay." The jock said, "What's your point, T.J.?" "That if you guys are running the most powerful AM station in the region and you're worried about people's perceptions of that region as racist, you might think twice before you give one of the true icons of racism in this country two hours of drive-time radio every week." "We didn't hire Mark to talk about race relations. We hired him to talk about criminals and the criminal mind, and about the intricacies of police work. He's written books on the subject, you know." "You didn't hire him because of his famous name?" "No, sir, we did not." "So when you decided your listeners needed to learn about Spokane, Washington, police work, you figured you'd get better expertise from a dishonored ex-L.A. cop rather than some retired veteran Spokane cop who might have covered Spokane's streets for twenty-five or thirty years?" He said, "How old are you?" "What does that matter?" "Your voice sounds like a kid." "You tell me why that matters, and I'll tell you how old I am." "It matters because if you're too young, you might lack the experience to carry on this conversation intelligently." "I'm a fifty-six-year-old retired Spokane policeman." I said, and paused a moment. "Guess I don't have the voice for it." I hung up. The above is excerpted from Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission from HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022 Imprint: Greenwillow; ISBN: 0688180191; On Sale: 4/10/2001; Grade Range: 7 and Up; Format: Hardcover; Subformat: ; Length: ; Trimsize: 6 x 9; Pages: 224; $15.99; $23.95(CAN) |
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