Evanston author falls into a whale! Lives to tell about it! (And then some!)

Daniel Kraus has a long tattoo of a sperm whale on his left arm. He got it last spring, to anticipate the breaching of “Whalefall,” his latest novel, which is his 21st and his best. He is that confident about “Whalefall,” and, probably, he should be. He lives in Evanston and grew up in Iowa, and until he began researching “Whalefall” in late 2020, he didn’t know a beluga from a barn. But gradually, word got out about the clever book he had coming, and how, if he could pull this off, he had a blockbuster, beyond publishing even. Soon his home filled with whales. Whale shirts, stuffed whales, whale cocktail glasses.

In more recent days, as it has become clear he did pull it off, Chicago’s Dark Matter unveiled a special Whalefall blend, and Orono Brewing of Maine created a Whalefall beer. More impressively, Imagine Entertainment, run by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, bought the rights to a screen adaptation, grabbing the option before it went to auction. Then The New York Times Book Review slapped it on front of its latest Sunday cover.

But here’s the thing about “Whalefall”:

It tells a very, very improbable — though not impossible — story, yet it is very good. It is also the latest variation of one of mankind’s cornerstone mythologies: It is about a boy eaten by a whale and his struggle to somehow escape the belly of that beast. This one is set off the Monterey coast of California and jiggers around, with touching results, between a claustrophobic race against time and the memories of a 17-year-old boy and his relationship with his late father, who weighed his body down and drowned himself.

I met Kraus the other day. He wore the hat from the old Chicago Whales baseball team. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: When you first told me about this book, I thought of that guy off Cape Cod a few years ago who said he was swallowed by a whale. His story was debunked.

A: Not exactly debunked. People are never swallowed by whales. But about once a year, you see a story like this. They’re mouthed, not swallowed. I’m not discounting how terrifying that would be, but these people are landing in whale mouths accidentally. The whales could not — or want to — eat them. No one is being swallowed here. As old as that story may be, it’s never happened. There’s a story about a guy in the 1800s, a whaler, who goes missing, his crew lands a sperm whale, cuts him out of the stomach and his skin is bleached from acids, he’s stark-raving mad. None of that checks out. He would be dead. There’s no air in a whale’s stomach. So, as far as we know, it’s never happened. But this will happen more as the climate changes and we tread more into their territory.

Q: You’ll get a letter from someone saying they were swallowed by a whale.

A: I found, in a scholarly book, a piece of evidence in a footnote that a whale was once found containing human remains. I chased that evidence through the Evanston Public Library, and it was a hoax. But you know, maybe we don’t know if this ever happened.

Q: So why then decide this is your next book?

A: It was in the midst of the Omicron wave, I was hanging out with friends near Jarvis Beach, socially distanced. They had seen a viral video of a humpback whale that breaches and gets a couple of kayakers in its mouth. Immediately I had this idea: Had anyone ever taken this seriously? Could you live? It’s usually metaphorical, myth, Biblical legend. There’s something primordial to the thought. Maybe we all remember instinctively when we were once prey and had to worry about being swallowed. Regardless, it’s an ancient idea so I assumed someone, in the past couple of thousand years, took it scientifically seriously. I couldn’t find anything. After Jarvis Beach, by the end of the morning, I was calling whale scientists to ask if it was possible. Theoretically, it was — with a sperm whale. Other types of whales have throats the size of soup cans.

Q: So now you’re trying to decide how a character could get swallowed.

A: It’s never going to happen on purpose. The only rational way, after talking to scientists, was that a diver would be swallowed by accident with something else. Which provided my whale a reason to get close to the surface: He’s chasing a giant squid. Which also allowed me a chance to introduce bioluminescence, which will be important later in the book. You also get this cinematic scene of a whale fighting a giant squid. We have evidence of those fights but nothing on film. The character gets pulled in because the squid is tangled up in the bag he has brought with him to collect his dad’s bones.

Q: OK, but now he’s swallowed by a whale in the process of swallowing a giant squid. That’s adding an improbable scenario on top of an improbable scenario.

A: But possible!

Q: In a story like this, how close can you get to a metaphor before it’s too close?

A: I think I was protected from that by scientific accuracy. If this wasn’t 100% scientifically accurate, I didn’t want to do it. We’ve heard the metaphorical takes. Before I could write any of this, I had to spend months researching with scientists and diving experts who explained every minute of what this guy would go through. But I also didn’t want to front-load all that information, so we should learn about the hard reality as he learns. Also, the reality of what’s going on with the character’s health and diving equipment is so immediate it was a balance against anything lyrical or metaphoric. Except for places where I dive into more cosmic elements on purpose. But I am not scared of metaphors. My two favorite artists ever are George Romero and Rod Serling, both of whom were metaphor machines. I was brought up to think in terms of metaphor.

Q: Are you a fan of high-concept film? I ask partly because, when you described the plot initially, I remember thinking Oh, it’s “‘Die Hard’ in a Whale.” “Speed” was “‘Die Hard’ on a Bus.” So why not? Your work has always seemed very movie ready. Plus, you co-wrote the book version of “The Shape of Water” with Guillermo del Toro and you finished a “Living Dead” novel that Romero started before he died.

A: I never think of a book that way. I’m also not a huge action movie fan. What excited me was the closed-room aspect of it. I like one-location stories. It’s a crucible upon which an artist can prove themselves. Strip away locations and characters and props, and all you are left with is ingenuity. Not just a character’s ingenuity but an author’s.

Q: Shift the tone here, and you have a Samuel Beckett play.

A: That’s right. There’s a movie from a few years ago called “Buried.”

Q: “‘Die Hard’ in a Coffin.” With Ryan Reynolds.

A: Good movie. My setting is smaller. A whale stomach is like an elastic sleeping bag.

Q: Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row” is a frequent touchstone in the book.

A: I was working with a diver named Connor Gallagher and still casting about where to set the book, and he lives in Monterey and suggested Monastery Beach there, which is extremely dangerous. If you swim 20 minutes off the beach, there is an epic Grand Canyon-size drop — right where you might encounter a sperm whale. So once I had Monterey, you can’t go 5 feet there without being reminded it was the setting for “Cannery Row.” I also didn’t want a book that necessitated knowing “The Book of Jonah.”

Q: What’s your relationship to “Moby Dick?”

A: Until I came up with this idea, I had never read it. Now I love it. I didn’t expect how funny it would be, but also how insane and bizarre. That also became a touchstone.

Q: At least two of your books now are centered on a father-son relationship.

A: It’s complicated, of course. My mom died when she was 52, and I was close to her. She was the one interested in books and movies, and my relationship with my dad is different. He’s a good person, he’s nothing like these characters, but we have different interests and we have acknowledged that. It’s strange though. My sister right now, as we speak, is dying of cancer and I spent a lot of the last week trying to decide if I should cancel this book tour, but she wants me to do it, so now I am going to try to reframe this as I am touring for her. So much of the book is about the concept of a whalefall, which is a term for when a whale dies and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Its body is large enough to spawn life lasting centuries. And the idea that death can create life is so present in the book. That’s what the book is about, in many ways. I am feeling this personally right now. The kid in this book, his only way out is to reconcile with his father and family, is to remember all the things they told him and somehow, by reconciling with them, it provides a way back to the surface. That’s his only chance of getting out alive.

Q: But let’s not say that he survives, or that he doesn’t survive. There’s a real foreboding in your books, and for a long time, I had no idea if he would survive.

A: I am not an upbeat person.

Q: Yet, say he dies — there’s still a story of hope here.

A: He’s made amends. He’s out there looking for the bones of his father and —

Q: Itself an improbable mission.

A: Yes. But he realizes he doesn’t have to look for his father’s remains. He is his father’s remains. We are what we are looking for. What feels missing is often found inside of us.

Q: If it’s a hit, could there be a sequel? “‘Die Hard’ in a Slightly Smaller Whale?”

A: You can’t go smaller and make this at all believable.

cborrelli@chicagotribune.com