Originally published: [Boston, Mass.]: Faber and Faber, 1998.

The biography of the British director who made films like Frankenstein and The Invisible Man for Universal Studios in the 1930s, and who was described in Hollywood Babylon as a hedonist who enjoyed the sight of young men in bathing trunks and who was eventually brought down by a homophobic film industry. Whale made his mark in many genres, directing stage and screen versions of everything from The Man in the Iron Mask to Showboat and Waterloo Bridge. Distributed in the U.S. by Books International. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A child's enjoyment of a whale in the sea near his home ceases when the whale is suddenly never seen again. A final page emphasizes the necessity of preserving whales.

"Almost a Celebrity" is the no-holds-barred autobiography of radio megastar James Whale, a man who, for over thirty years, has never been afraid to say the unsayable.

"It appears to be the only individual emitting a call at this frequency and hence, has been described as the world's loneliest whale."—Wikipedia So here's how it all starts: James, a high school freshman, is worried that the young humpback whale he tracks online has separated from its pod. So naturally he emails Darren, the twentysomething would-be filmmaker who volunteered in James's special education program back in middle school. Of course, Darren is useless on the subject of whales, but he's got nothing but time, given that the only girl he could ever love dumped him. And fetching lattes for his boss has him close to walking out on his movie dream and boomeranging right back to his childhood bedroom. So why not reply to a random email from Whale Boy? Predictably, this thread of emails leads to a lot of bizarre stuff, including a yeti suit, drug smuggling, widows, a major documentary filmmaking opportunity, first love, a graveyard, damaged echolocation, estranged siblings, restraining orders, choke holds, emergency dentistry...and then maybe ends with something like understanding. See, it turns out that the thing that binds people together most is their fear that nothing binds them together at all.