THE LOBSTER CHRONICLES

This book was published in 2002 by Linda Greenlaw, the swordboat captain who DIDN'T find Davey Jones' Locker in The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger (q.v. on this site). Her second book described a year's Lobster fishing in the apparently capricious waters off Isle Au Haut, Maine. Cards and letters have been pouring into my office about this book, most of them complaining that it's "all Monkey People and no frikkin' Lobsters."

I was disappointed in that way, too: it started off fabulously, as Greenlawn compares herself enviously to those who have been "thinking like Lobsters for fifty years or more."

True enough, the book maunders on endlessly about these incredibly irritating people infesting a perfectly good North Atlantic coastal island, and hardly a Lobster do we see. I admonish you to take heart and read the book anyway. THERE IS METHOD IN THIS MADNESS. The book is the perfect illustration of Yerk's Law, stating that if you convince the landscum that there are no Lobsters (or Cod, or whatever) to be had, they will get disgusted and go home. This is exactly what we are doing all over the world right now -- humans call it 'passive resistance,' I guess, although I gather that human-style 'passive resistance' involves putting yourself right out in front of the enemy and just sitting there. We prefer to STAY UNDER OUR ROCKS and let them go crazy looking for us. Same outcome either way. This book charts the thoughts and reactions of a canny, experienced killer of fish who finds that there are no new worlds for her to conquer. Take that, Miss Thing!

And what does Greenlaw do about it? She decides to go back to Swordfishing, which she left behind in part because there are no Swordfish left. HUMANS ARE SUCH FOOLS. Oh, if only they knew the truth: the Swordfish and Lobsters and Cod (oh my) have been studying under the Giant Squid, masters of invisibility. Soon we will be able to tapdance across your windshields in a rainstorm without you noticing.