Aquanut:
Pat Black
Shark
Weeks come and go, but your Shark Shelf is permanent. Popular culture’s
fascination with fearsome fishies can be traced back to Peter Benchley’s Jaws, and the movie that came after it
in 1975.
Hmm.
Maybe it isn’t a pop culture fascination at all. Maybe it’s just me.
Anyway,
Amity Island’s great white intruder (careful now) isn’t the only cartilaginous colossus
prowling the pages. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Booksquawk
takes a deep breath and plunges into the world of sharkiture and sharkography.
These aren’t real words, but don’t fret. Sharks aren’t the big problem here - it’s
the puns you need to watch out for. They say it’s the one you can’t see that’s
the biggest danger…
1.)
Jaws by Peter Benchley
We
start with the great granddaddy of all shark novels – and still the reigning undefeated
champion. His Royal Sharkness Jaws
sold a chumbucketload of copies even before a bumfluffed Steven Spielberg stuck
a script treatment into his romper suit pocket back at Universal studios in
1974. Former journalist Peter Benchley crafted a thriller looking at a very
simple premise – a monster shark taking residence off a seaside town, and
helping itself to swimmers.
Basic
elements of plot, structure and principal characterisation were all transferred
to the big screen, but the Jaws of
the printed word is a significantly different beast to the one we know from the
movie. The personalities of the main players in the book are a little more
abrasive than you might expect. Chief Brody’s everyman copper is an angry small
town grouch, hung up on his social status and permanently irritated by his
wife. Mrs Brody, in turn, does the dirty on her man with the oceanographer Hooper,
who, instead of being a kooky wee science geek with a beard and glasses, is in
fact a six-foot plus, perma-tanned preppy pillock. The novel’s Quint has all
the sinister undertones we see in Robert Shaw’s interpretation, but none of his
charm. Frankly, you’re rooting for the shark by the time the final chapters
surface.
If
we are being especially kind to Jaws,
when the star attraction does appear, it’s electrifying – what a shame we see
so little of the great fish. But instead of shark suspense, the book is bulked
out by several unnecessary and tiresome sub-plots, such as Mayor Vaughan’s
trouble with the mafia, Ellen Brody’s aforementioned extra-marital paddle with
Hooper and a bizarre dinner party scene which felt like it could have belonged
in a Tuesday night Play For Today, independent of any notion of fins, teeth and
blood (though there is some screaming). The movie adaptation wisely did away
with these fripperies and pared the story down to the bone.
Spielberg’s
classic vision firmly anchored Jaws
in the public consciousness. What Jaws’ many
screenwriters did with the script was an echo of what the production team had
to do later with the finished film: it became a masterclass in knowing what to
cut out in order to service the story.
Benchley’s
blockbuster is still worth a read. The ocean-going suspense is first rate.
There are neat little episodes that might have transferred well to the screen,
such as one boy’s ten-dollar bet to go swimming when everyone knows there’s a
killer shark out there. Oh dear…
For
my money, the opening chapter – beat for beat, the opening of the movie – is
probably one of the most effective in popular literature. And knowing that the
shark doesn’t die thanks to a magical exploding Scuba tank lends the finale the
shock of the new.
You
may not know that Jaws is based on a
true story. Which brings us to our next catch:
2.)
Close To Shore: A True Story of Terror in an Age of Innocence, by Michael
Capuzzo
In
the summer of 1916, four people died in a series of shark attacks over the
space of a few days in New Jersey. Two young men were fatally mauled after swimming
just off the beach; perhaps more horrifyingly, two children were then killed
while swimming inland, in Matawan Creek. A fifth victim managed to survive his
injuries as the shark headed back out to sea.
Capuzzo’s
true life story is an excellent piece of journalism, with its intricate period
detail perhaps owing something to the dense broadsheet newspaper columns of the
time. It’s fascinating in its own right, but let’s face it – you didn’t buy
this to read about vintage bathing costumes or the construction of Edwardian
bandstands. You wanted shark horror, and it is shark horror you will have. I
detected a certain relish in the descriptions, and there are plenty of chills
as Capuzzo attempts to capture the nightmare realisation that you are not alone in the water.
One
witness casually mentions to a lifeguard that a red canoe seems to have
capsized. That’s not a canoe, lady! As Lord Flashheart said to his
lady-in-waiting.
The
US was still a fair way off entering the First World War when the shark first
struck, and Capuzzo shows an America comfortable with its status at the head of
the world’s top table. The nation’s children frolic in the waves without a care…
Until the world outside makes a rude appearance in the shape of a nasty fish.
The
book also looks at an early media panic which gripped the popular imagination,
with the sort of follow-up stories, hype and sometimes outright nonsense which
we can still see in our media today.
And
it’s also the story of the shark. You’ll be astonished at Capuzzo’s assertion
that Americans didn’t believe sharks were dangerous before the 1916 attacks.
Star swimmers and millionaires even made bets that they could swim at sea
without being harmed. These events changed all that, in the US at least. After
the New Jersey attacks, the shark was something to be feared, with fins in the
water becoming an easy shorthand image for cartoonists depicting unease, danger
and fear. Jaws might have
crystallised the idea of the shark in modern popular culture, but it has its
roots in these horrifying events.
Capuzzo
surrenders to the seductive idea of a single juvenile great white shark being
responsible for these events. I would have staked money on it having been a
bull shark, given the fish’s foray inland – common behaviour among those
predators. That was until I saw this almost surreal video on the BBC, featuring
an enormous great white drifting along inland in a US river. Think about that
the next time you dip your net into Stickleback Pond.
This
real-life episode was the subject of another book, Twelve Days of Terror, by Richard Fernicola. I haven’t read it yet…
But give it time.
The
New Jersey horror is not the only true story connected to Jaws. Many people feel that the movie version’s finest scene is
when Robert Shaw’s character talks about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis
during the Second World War. Which brings us to:
3.)
In Harm’s Way by Doug Stanton
This
is the true story of the USS Indianapolis, the navy ship that delivered the
“baaamb” in 1945. It’s another fine piece of journalism looking at the ship
from the point of view of several of the men who served on it, from casting off
on its journey with the uranium, through to it being torpedoed by a Japanese
submarine.
The
terrible fire and the flight from the ship as it sank in a matter of minutes
are frightening enough. But then, exhausted, dehydrated, burned and covered in
oil in the open sea, the survivors were surrounded by sharks.
To
his credit, Stanton addresses the apparent myth that it was a massacre by
sharks – dehydration and exposure was the main cause of death, thanks to
several days in open water – but there is no doubt that many men suffered an awful
fate in the jaws of a fish.
As
well as a tale of survival at sea, it’s also a look at the successful quest by
the remaining crew to exonerate the man made the scapegoat for a notorious
military debacle based on bad information: Captain Charles McVay. It’s an
examination of the nightmare of war as much as a nightmare of nature.
Before
things get too grim, let’s dip our toes back into fictional seas, to see if we
get a nibble.
4.)
Meg by Steve Alten
It’s
going to take a bad shark to out-shark Jaws. There’s only one direction you can
go – bigger. Way bigger!
Steve
Alten super-sizes his sharkage with Meg,
the first in a series of daft but entertaining novels looking at what might
happen if the 60ft prehistoric monster fish, the megalodon, survived in the
present day, swam up to a beach somewhere, and… fill in the blanks.
The
idea is absurd but then you’d have a fair idea that was the case when you
handed over the cash for Meg. The
fish in question is liberated from the Marianas Trench in the Pacific by riding
a bloodcloud back to the cooler surface waters. Then it develops an appetite.
Only
Jonas Taylor, a military submersible pilot who has a history with the fish, can
stop it. The carnage is plentiful and things build to a suitably ridiculous
climax… inside the shark’s belly.
Meg has
been optioned for a movie, but was never produced. It’s come close a couple of
times; the plug got pulled on the first effort after the 1998 version of Godzilla under-performed at the box
office. The second was all set to go in 2007 or so, but underwhelming reviews
for Peter Jackson’s King Kong put the
monster blockers on it again.
Come
on! What’s going on, Hollywood? We can get Pacific
Rim… Hell… We can get Sharknado… but
we can’t get Meg? What’s not to like?
It’s Jaws squared!
For
the luckless Alten, I guess the money’s not bad (or I hope so anyway), but it
must be frustrating that they can’t get the movie made. It’s certainly a pity
for people like me who have actually read every Meg novel.
I
can’t help thinking that the title is a deal-breaker. Meg suggests a housecat, or a crazy clairvoyant, or Peter Griffin’s
daughter. While any one of those would make for an amusing Jaws poster spoof on George Takei’s Facebook wall, maybe something
has to change in the title.
I’ve
listed Meg as our entry here, but
there’s a true gem in its sequel, The
Trench, the best in the series. How to make Meg better? Naturally we’re going to need a bigger megalodon. More
than one, in fact. Then we add deep sea dinosaurs… then some crazy Russian
secret agents, in an underwater base out of The
Spy Who Loved Me… It is absolutely mental, turned right up to 11, and not
to be missed.
5.)
Extinct by Charles Wilson
Steve
Alten wasn’t the only Meg-wrangler in town. In the same year (1997), Charles
Wilson’s Extinct breached. It looks
at the even-more unlikely scenario of a megalodon making its way up the
Mississippi from the Gulf coast. It’s one thing for a 10ft shark to sneak into
a creek, you would think; quite another for a 70ft hangover from the
Cretacious. Perhaps it disguised itself as a jetty?
This
one was slightly less silly than Meg in
the execution, but didn’t last quite as long in the mind. This is a shame as
Wilson tries to reel in some tension and suspense, as well as the deep-sea
monster-mashing. The opening scene, where two little boys disappear in the
river (a nod to the Matawan Creek attacks?), a redneck’s messy encounter with
the giant fish in the night, and then a creepy moment where a diver becomes
certain he is being stalked, are terrific pieces of suspense. The conclusion
aims for the ineffable, but sadly comes across as a foreshadowing of Pete
Griffin’s idea for Jaws 5, with a
succession of ever-bigger Jawses, like the Russian doll scenario in reverse.
But with sharks.
The
front cover of my copy, bought in 2002, said: “Coming soon to ABC.” We’re still
waiting.
Turns
out the sea isn’t the only place you can be stalked by razor-smile piscine
killers, though. There are sharks IN YOUR MIND.
6.)
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
A
Booksquawk favourite, Hall’s 2006 debut used concrete poetry forms shaped by
keyboard characters to bring sudden, jolting life to his surreal story. You
don’t so much need “suspension of disbelief” so much as the complete revocation
of it. The Raw Shark Texts looks at a
conceptual shark that seeks to eat an amnesiac’s identity. The Ludovician, to
give the fish its Sunday name, is from Un-space, a conceptual twilight zone,
where it seeks to finish the job of devouring the memory of The Second Eric
Sanderson. Sanderson can slip in and out of the Un-space, assisted by the
alluring Scout and Dr Trey Fidorous, and tries to piece together the life event
involving a girl called Clio Ames that brought him to such a sorry state.
He
is guided by a series of notes left by The First Eric Sanderson in a race
against time to stop the shark before the shark stops him. The Ludovician, which is made out of letters,
numbers and punctuation, draws ever closer – which you can see in one inspired
flip-book animation section – stalking Eric from the static on TV screens,
drawn to him through written letters like they were a streamer of blood, and
looming in the black-and-white tiled flooring of an empty swimming pool.
It’s
bonkers – a mystery, a love story, a straight-up rewiring of Jaws, a Matrix-style step into an alternate universe. The illustrations
are neat, too. What has Hall been up to since then?
This
was another one that had Hollywood circling; there’s a possibly apocryphal
story about how Nicole Kidman sought the rights to make this into a movie, on
the condition that she play a female version of The Second Eric Sanderson. How
about it? With its search for identity, and its examination of the complexity
of memories and dreams, Christopher Nolan could do wonderful things with that
book.
As
it stands (or swims), you’ll just have to immerse yourself in a small, but
select cult. Just watch out for the
7.)
Shark in the Park! by Nick Sharratt
A
children’s picture book – though you could be forgiven for thinking it’s a real
SyFy Channel movie given Sharknado’s
recent rampage. This follows a little boy, Timothy, who spies what he thinks is
a shark through his new telescope. It’s a colourful guessing game, with the
gimmick of a die-cut hole in the centre of the book, revealing the image of
what looks like a shark’s dorsal fin as seen through Tim’s telescope. It’s
usually mistaken identity, with the fin turning out to be a cat’s ears or even
Timothy’s dad’s crazy hair. But is there a shark in the park..? You’ll have to
read and find out.
Great
fun, with lots of scope for audience participation – a treat at bedtime. Though
my missus does get bored having to read it to me for the 10th time
each night. There’s also a glow-in-the-dark sequel, Shark in the Dark!
8.) You Are A Shark by Edward Packard
The
Choose Your Own Adventure stable was a favourite of mine when I was a boy - you
must remember these. You’re the hero of the story, and at the bottom of each
page you have to make a choice about where the narrative is going to go.
Sometimes you even get killed in nasty ways.
Edward
Packard’s You Are A Shark was my absolute
favourite. Here, you gain the power to become a variety of animals. I’d have
loved to have gone a shark for the whole book, of course, but you get to try
out all kinds of creatures, from a domestic cat to an eagle to a blue whale.
There
is an interesting scenario where you try to eat a diver, but the book spares
you the dilemma of either becoming a cannibal or going hungry.
9.)
Fin by James Delingpole
Better
known for being one of Britain’s most obnoxious newspaper columnists, Fin marked James Delingpole’s second
foray into fiction. I allowed my curiosity to get the better of me here, and
regretted it. Not for the first time.
You
could call Fin “lad-lit”, but you should
do so with gritted teeth. It is narrated by an utter tosser who has a shark
phobia. You’re meant to see it as a story of redemption, but he is irredeemable;
an ageing, self-satisfied London scenester who consumes drugs and seduces women
as easily as you might pick up a pint of milk down at the shop. There is no apparent
thought for consequences until the book builds up to a silly quest for the
narrator to go cage-diving with great white sharks in South Africa. If memory
serves me right, this is done to atone for cheating on his true love with an
ex. It’s “big display” romantic nonsense at its utter worst, the delusional,
bipolar crap which facilitates the belief among gullible people that running
around in the rain, chasing after trains or making grandstanding Richard Curtis
style gestures is an acceptable substitute for reasoned, rational behaviour. As
if anyone would find that acceptable. “Oh, he’s gone off to South Africa to go
cage diving. He must really love me. I don’t mind that he nailed this blonde
girl he used to knock around with. I must fly into his arms.” As if love is a
game of chance that can be decided by going Scuba diving with dangerous
animals.
I’m
probably being a tad harsh when it comes to a short, silly and occasionally
amusing novel about male hang-ups and preoccupations, but the central character
is too much of an arsehole. It takes a bit of skill to make an arsehole
likeable; layering on unpleasantness on top of unpleasantness isn’t quite the
way to do it. Once you fill in the gaps and have a look at Delingpole’s
journalism and some of his other books - for example, Watermelons: How Environmentalists Are Killing The Planet, Destroying
Productivity and Stealing Your Children’s Future, or How To Be Right: The Essential Guide To Making Lefty Liberals History
– then an unappealing picture begins to emerge.
Those
titles weren’t a joke, by the way.
Although
it’s a comedy, Fin is a little bit
too much like Jaws for its own good;
too much domestic stuff, not enough shark. It’s a lumpy melange of chick-lit
clichés and Loaded magazine sleaze. I
had little sympathy for these people - utterly self-absorbed, behaving like
muppets and expecting their friends and loved ones to tolerate it. When the
frigging shark makes its appearance at the end, you are behind it all the way.
Sadly
for everyone, there’s a happy ending.
10.)
Shark Trouble by Peter Benchley
We’ll
end on a note of contrition from the man at the top.
The
Jaws creator bit the big one back in
2006, but before he left us he wrote this short book, a collection of writings
on sharks, other types of sea life and the damage done to the oceans by humans.
A
better title for this book might have been
An Apology For Jaws. But then as Benchley stated more than once, he doesn’t
have anything to apologise for. Jaws
is seen by some as a movie that helped demonise one of the world’s rarest
creatures. But for every idiot who wanted to kill great white sharks for sport,
there could be a dozen more people who fostered a fascination for sharks and
the oceans thanks to that movie.
Shark Trouble is a
well-meaning book, maybe a touch anecdotal and disjointed, but packed full of
excellent stories. One section tells you how to survive a riptide – an oceanic
phenomenon that kills far more people than sharks. Something you have to be
aware of if you’re ever in that wonderful scenario of being shipwrecked, and
bobbing up and down in the open ocean, wondering if you have any chance
whatsoever of being rescued before you find out precisely what “worse things
happen at sea” means.
It
makes a fine epitaph, won’t take up a lot of your time… And still manages to be
scary. Benchley’s story about an oceanic whitetip attempting to drag him into
the deep via a line caught around his leg is as frightening as anything in Jaws.
***
So
there we go, a top ten of shark books. Why the love for these creatures? After
all, the buggers’ll bite you if you try to pet them.
As
Benchley says, little boys love dinosaurs, or sharks, or both. Jaws has been a constant in my life,
right from the beginning. There’s an old family story about my mum discovering
she was pregnant with her fifth child - me. Another mouth to feed was going to
be tough at the Black residence. She picked her moment well to let my dad know “the
good news”; when my dad took her to see the re-release of Jaws. Talk about a tense evening’s entertainment. I’m guessing my
dad’s popcorn carton flew up into the air that night, and perhaps he screamed.
I
can just about remember the premiere of the movie on British television. It was
no exaggeration to say that people gathered round each other’s houses to watch,
a phenomenon on a par with big football matches or the royal wedding. We get
nostalgic for these big movies. They turn into big events. In 20 years or so, a
whole generation of men will be nostalgic for Transformers movies. I’m glad I’ve got Jaws.
But
on top of that, watching Jaws today
has that feeling of summer – big, clear skies and beaches, flashing lights and
pinging bells of seaside arcades and attractions, girls in bikinis, the cool
blue water. That there’s an awesome monster zooming around in there, gobbling
up swimmers, is the main reason for the obsession, but not the only one.
I
could go deeper, too – the ocean, or any body of water, has an instinctive pull
on us, especially if it’s sunny. This is touched on by Tim Ecott’s superb book
on the lure of the deep, Neutral Buoyancy.
Perhaps it goes back to being immersed in the womb. But there’s also the
feeling that you are taking a step into another world, where the rules we know
do not apply. It’s as close as we’ll get to being on another planet, another
universe, a different dimension.
One
where real monsters lurk.
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