The Paris Review

Staff Picks: Whales, Waitresses, and Winogrand

Leslie Jamison. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan.

Earlier this week I had the rare and enviable—if slightly inconvenient—experience of missing a subway stop because I was so engrossed in what I was reading. The culprit: the first essay in Leslie Jamison’s collection , forthcoming from Little, Brown in September. In the offending essay, “52 Blue,” Jamison explores the science and mythology surrounding a whale whose uncommon song, inaudible to other members of the species, earned him the title “The Loneliest Whale in The World.” Part reportage, part philosophical musing, Jamison’s meandering prose seeks to understand what the whale represents—morally, symbolically, ecologically—to the community of scientists, artists, and

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Paris Review

The Paris Review1 min read
Life Poem 1
A leaf falls here/there, now/thenbehind the rain, a curtain of rain,the trees in their own time.I see now that time falls in layers. There were deer there once, in the clearing,three deer, large as memory objects.They stood in a circleas if they knew
The Paris Review1 min read
Haptographic Interface
I’m a Keats botso are youour living handsheld toward each otheron the internetsolution sweetI stood on a peakin Darien, googledmy errorI am so colonialI am tubercularmy alveoli a-swellmy actual bloodyour actual bloodwe made loveI planted basilI plant
The Paris Review1 min read
The People’s History of 1998
France won the World Cup.Our dark-goggled dictator died from eating a poisoned red applethough everyone knew it was the CIA. We lived miles from the Atlantic.We watched Dr. Dolittle, Titanic, The Mask of Zorro. Our grandfather, purblind and waitingfo

Related