As debut protagonists go, few are as fully realized – or as bizarrely named – as Corwin Ericson’s Orange Whippey. Despite having a name like a new brand of soda, or a previously undiscovered fruit-and-cream dessert concoction, Whippey proves to be the perfect foil for Ericson’s debut novel.

Swell is a wild ride through seafaring, smuggling and whale-based mobile phone networks, a ridiculously anarchic good read that makes Moby-Dick look about as exciting as a lobster fishing manual. If you’ve ever wondered what Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas might have been like if Hunter S. Thompson had set it at sea, then you finally have your answer.

This is usually the point where I’d offer a plot summary, but summarizing Swell‘s many peaks and troughs is an unusually challenging task. Eschewing many of the traditional cornerstones of narrative fiction, Swell instead rises and falls like the ocean, gradually working its way towards a conclusion that’s both emotionally satisfying and curiously open. If you’re looking for plot-driven adventure on the high seas, then you’ll want to look elsewhere.

Instead, Swell relies upon humor and its unexpectedly charismatic protagonist for its narrative drive, and luckily both are in abundance. Set on the fictional island of Bismuth, somewhere off the northeast coast of America, the novel follows Orange Whippey’s adventures as he becomes involved in seagum smuggling, gets hopelessly embroiled with whale herders from a pair of (fictional) Scandinavian countries, and generally drifts around Bismuth like a particularly battered piece of flotsam.

Swell follows a bizarre route through its own geography and history, and you have to admire Ericson’s vibrant imagination as it creates a uniquely warped world for Orange Whippey to inhabit. After the passages describing the migration of the original Finlindians and Estonindians across Greenland to northern Europe, or the mobile network formed by using herds of whales as migrating antennae, you’ll have to wonder whether Ericson has been chewing some of his own seagum.

We caught up with Corwin Ericson shortly after the publication of Swell, to ask him a few questions about his influences and the fictional island of Bismuth.

Dan Coxon: How long have you been working on Swell?

Corwin Ericson: I have been reading about National Novel Writing Month, and it’s been giving me the willies. By the standards of that tool/game/exercise, I took an obscenely long time to write Swell – more years than it is seemly to admit.

DC: Where did the initial inspiration come from?

CE: The initial inspirations are hard to track down by now. There were notions that generated characters and plots and there were characters that induced ideas and plots too. I suppose at first, my own interests and curiosities led me to some of the subject matter, and then the characters in the novel led me elsewhere.

DC: Why a story about the sea? Do you have a seafaring background, or was there a lot of research involved?

CE: I do not have a seafaring background. I’ve been on islands and boats, but more so, they were the subjects of my imagination. As much as I’m capable of complaining about the act of writing, it seems much easier than working on a fishing boat. Of course I relied on memory and observation, but, really, I made it all up and tried to be convincing. That required plenty of research, but mostly of the armchair sort.

DC: Swell’s witty and surreal tone is immediately striking, and it’s been compared to everyone from Hunter S. Thompson to Douglas Adams. Who do you consider to be the writers that have influenced you?

Corwin Ericson, author of 'Swell'.

CE: Some of the books that influenced Swell include Candide, Moby-Dick, the Odyssey, and Farewell my Lovely. I’ve read and enjoyed Thompson and Adams – but I’ve spent just as much time appreciating Jim Thompson and Charles Addams.

DC: The whale network sounds like a wonderful idea. Was that concept there from the outset, or did it arrive unbidden as the story unfolded?

CE: I’m not certain the Whale Network is a good idea. I mean, sure, for the novel, but it seems like a folly in practical terms. The idea of a special sort of telephone was in my mind from the start, but it was the history of whaling in New England that led me to decide how to re-exploit whales in the 21st century.

DC: The debt to (and parody of) Scandinavian culture is also a strong thread in the novel. Do you have any Scandinavian ancestry? Why did you target that particular culture?

CE: I’m not of direct Scandinavian descent. My great-grandfather Ericson was a Swedish immigrant. Most of my ancestors are from places along the North Atlantic. The Norse have a history and culture of literacy that predates Western European Christendom – they didn’t have to sift through the ashes of the Alexandrian Library to find out about the history of their civilization the way much of Europe did. But I didn’t really write so much about Scandinavian culture overtly, though it certainly informed what I wrote (especially the Kalevala). The European countries I created for Swell – Finlindia and Estonindia – trace their history from North American through the Arctic and down into Europe. I imagined them having been a distinct (though intermingled) culture from Scandinavia and frequently at war with them.

DC: What can we expect from you next?

CE: Another novel? I feel like I’m hardly done convalescing from having written Swell. Within a few months Factory Hollow Press in Amherst, Massachusetts, will publish a small book called Checked Out OK, which is a collection of police beat reports I made.

DC: And finally, I have to ask… where did you get the name Orange Whippey from?

CE: Orange and Whippey are both names I took from Nantucket gravestones. Both are actual family names. I presume both names came from England.

Swell is available now from all good bookstores, or the official Swell website, priced $16.95.