0274 | The Day of the Dolphin – Robert Merle
Context: Read this as we took our first flight on the double-decker A380 from Dubai to Seoul. Very nice.
REVIEW
Never heard of this until, scanning my copy of the 1001 list at a flea market, I came across the title. It seemed a bit obscure and, for the life of me, I cannot recall ever even hearing about the ‘sensational’ film that was supposed to have been made from this. Probably just as well. I’ve no idea how they would do it. This has dolphins talking English and people talking Dolphinese and, in a word, it’s bonkers.
Some guy’s researching dolphins and being funded by the US govt. He’s got them as far as monosyllables in English. Quite why they’d persevere in English is beyond me. I mean, if you’re going to tackle a language with another species, there are far simpler phonemic systems out there, not to mention grammar. Esperanto springs to mind… but hey, that’s what Frenchman Robert Merle has them do. At the same time, there’s an incongruent romance going on which doesn’t lend anything to the story at all I thought.
Well, he suddenly has a breakthrough and, meanwhile, in the background, there’s this disjointed political intrigue brewing with mine-laying dolphins at it’s centre. The Russians are in on it and the US is trying to beat them to it and deal with the debacle of Vietnam at the same time (the novel was published during the American War). Everything comes to a rather predictable climax when a US ship explodes for no obvious reason.. da duh daaaaaahhhhh
Anyway, the novel kind of peters out with everything hanging. It’s like he planned a sequel and never finished it. Quite honestly though, I didn’t care. I was just glad to get to the end. It may simply be the translation but I found it difficult to follow and quite difficult to read at times. Why this is on the 1001 list is beyond me. Maybe one of you can tell me…
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OPENING LINE
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CLOSING LINE
Because of us, he murmured doubtfully, or because of the humanity of the dolphins? |
RATING
Key: Legacy | Plot / toPic | Characterisation / faCts | Readability | Achievement Read more about how I come up with my ratings
I agree. At home we only speak Esperanto in front of our dolphin. We find English makes him peevish.
[quote comment=”21076″]I agree. At home we only speak Esperanto in front of our dolphin. We find English makes him peevish.[/quote]
ha… that cracked me up!
Hi John
Thanks for the very detailed review, and explaining the systematic way that you review books in general – that is something I appreciate, even though we differ in opinion on this book.
> Why this is on the 1001 list is beyond me. Maybe one of you can tell me…
I’m including my review of it on another site below for your consideration.
(
Maybe in the light of what’s happened on the world since 2010, particularly in the South China Sea and Ukraine might lead to re-consideration of the theme in the book.
I read in the book a scenario where an AI (Alternative Intelligence) views man and mankind. Even in the protagonist humans, look at all those rampant emotions colouring their view of the world, and as for those in poower, their own emotions clouding their view of how to behave in the world.
I can’t help but see the validity of the following comment too, by Ruth during an interview on her award winning “Tale for the Time Being”
Ruth Ozeki : Writers and readers are engaged in a reciprocal and mutually co-creative enterprise, and the book is the field of their collaboration. It’s very personal, and very individual, too. The book I write might be very different from the book you read, and this is because of the symbolic nature of the written word. Every word I write must be unlocked by the eye and decoded by the mind of a reader. My scenes come to life because a reader invests them with his or her experience and imagination. Of course, this means that every reader is reading a very different book, too. The A Tale for the Time Being that Reader A reads is very different from the A Tale for the Time Being that Reader Q reads, and anyone who has ever been in a book club knows this to be true. Again, it’s a beautiful analogue to quantum Many Worlds. The magic of fiction, of the written word, is that it is endlessly and infinitely generative.
You should try Ruth’s books, I see you have read a little Oriental Literature in your last reviews
0731 | The Tale of Genji | Murasaki Shikibu
Updated on 27 April, 2022
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“Why has intelligent life, if out there, not made contact with us?”
Why – because they are intelligent life, they took one look at us and decided to leave us out here – futilely trying to make contact from our warped view of intelligence.
That comment about dolphins only speaking Esperanto is cute, reminds me I really cracked up seeing a similar cartoon at the time I was reading DotD a few weeks ago
There’s theSE two scientists with mic’s in the water and a dolphin with its head UP studying the tally white board of its “sounds”, and shaking it in disbelief as the scientist are scratching their heads why this phrase has the highest frequency
” hah bluss ess pun yol ”
my review ….
I’ve read some of the 8 other comments, I am sorry that you didn’t all appreciate what I think was a brilliant book.
It portrays four dolphins, eight sympathetic humans, around 4 exploitive humans and the rest of the human race at risk of “accidentally strangling the entire human race”.
It is a work of science fiction there is no doubt, but it is very relevant today as it proposes another form of AI (Alternative Intelligence).
The dialogues of the humans with the dolphins, first in English then in whistling Dolphinese, expose the fundamental flaws in human intelligence – that being it is driven by self interest, and a massive sense of self-righteousness.
The predominant dialogue style (long, concatenated paragraphs where dialogue, thoughts, mixed speakers, flashback) illustrates the capricious and irrational nature of most of human thought. Even the sympathetic delphinologists display various degrees of personality weaknesses.