A book about a blob
Here’s a book that may be of interest to Exploding Whale aficionados: The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob and Other Matters of Importance by Theodore Carter.
For those of you that may be unfamiliar with the term, a “sea blob” — also known as a “globster” — is an “unidentified organic mass that washes up on the shoreline of an ocean or other body of water.” The title of the book refers to a highly publicized event in 2003 where one such “organic mass” washed up on the coast of Chile. Biologists were unable to readily determine what the “blob” was, and the world had to wait nearly a year before DNA testing revealed it to be the remains of a sperm whale. Many such events have occurred over the decades with the remains often misidentified as sea monsters, giant octopuses, or modern-day plesiosaurs.
Carter has apparently worked the Chilean sea blob into a collection of short stories, which his publisher describes as follows:
Honestly, I’m not really sure what that description even means! But if it catches your fancy, by all means click through and read the reviews for yourself. Carter is also selling some “sea blob bling” here. (Ok, fine, it’s really just a bunch of t-shirts.)Much as Theodore Carter’s title sea blob proves a challenge to classify, the other matters of importance in this, the author’s debut, story collection emerge as equally amorphous and downright slippery when it comes to categorization. Yet, fleshy narrative makes indexing possible by way of a catalogue of characters who aren’t simply arranged, but rarities that act — largely at great personal risk. From the competitive eater working against an internal clock to a disengaged young man beguiled by an animate voodoo doll, from a junior-high water-walker to an eyebrow arsonist, the affable oddities of The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob and Other Matters of Importance confront doubt in its multifarious forms, establishing classification — organized into engaging, compelling, and affecting — as tantamount to the anomalous lives we lead.
