My main Tonga interest is the Peace Corps murder of 1976, and there's news: the publication of former Peace Corps volunteer Jan Worth's novel Night Blind, which chronicles a young volunteer's response to the murder, in fictionalized terms. I 'm excited because the historical case has never got the attention it deserves and Worth's book will bring more light on a gross injustice. And Night Blind is a beautiful book. It deals with issues of 70s sexuality in spiritual, non-nostalgic ways, and tells a great story while it's at it.

The story involves the awakening of young Charlotte Thornton as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tonga, and the backdrop is the murder of volunteer Melanie Porter, allegedly by Mort Friedman. The tale is inspired by the murder of Deb Gardner (by Brooklynite Dennis Priven) in 1976.

Frank Bevacqua, a good friend of Gardner's, says that Worth's description of the way the murder affected her is "hauntingly well done and will probably conjure eerily similar feelings to any reader who was there at the time." (Not that it heals the wound for him. "It's been thirty years, but closure comes about in very personal ways over any period of time that it may take.")

Meantime, I asked the author about her book party last week, and here's her report:

I recognize that I'm obsessed, recognize too that at 46, my obsession is somewhat unseemly. People say that obsession is not a good thing, that it is about dead feelings, or nostalgia, or hang-ups, that it is passion curled back on itself. So I'm trying to remember how this started.

Alanis Morissette was never my cup of tea. I can say honestly that I didn't like her. Her early work (what I heard of it) struck me as mannered and self-conscious. Her regard for her own originality seemed egotistical; she could not murder her darlings, as the saying goes.

Then in January, I was driving around New Zealand's north island (on the same Pacific project I'm at work on now) when her label released "Hands Clean," the first single off the new album. I recognized her voice instantly, and with a wave of irritation. My finger shot out to flip the radio to another station-in fact, I was viciously excited to do so, to blank her out of the conscious universe again and forever-when something held me: The material was completely psychological, the mood was soulful.

The next time the song came on, I cranked it up.

"Hands Clean" is about an illicit relationship between a man and a young woman. It is told chiefly from the man's point of view, as he offers his rationalizations: "I know that you sexualize me, as a young thing would, and I think I like it …. "

But the refrain is from the girl's perspective. At these times, Alanis' voice surges powerfully:

And I have honored your request for silence And you washed your hands clean of this.

It may seem like an angry song, but it isn't. The girl's anger feels historical. She seems to see the relationship in its entirety, to recognize her own hunger for experience. There are tender and thoughtful moments ("What part of our history's reinvented and under rug swept?"), and her statement "I have honored your request for silence" is stately and even loving.

But it wasn't just the words. Alanis' voice had grown out of its youthful quaver into a strong, womanly instrument. She had emotional clarity and generosity, qualities that had me enthralled.

At that time my travels took me on to Australia and England, and notwithstanding my urgent business, I found myself driving around Fremantle or Hull waiting for them to play that song again.

Then the new CD came out at the end of February, and I bought it on Lower Broadway, just before starting another trip. My first stop was Albuquerque, and I upgraded to a midsize car so that I could listen to her on the CD player. Very soon it was clear that the same spirit of ampleness and emotional clarity that animates "Hands Clean" pours off the album.

Alanis had become one of my guides. I was interested in anything she had to say.

Or in point of fact, I was stuck. I rented seven more oversized cars in California and down through the Pacific, just to have a CD player and be able to hear her. (Not only was she now costing me hundreds of dollars, but in a couple of cases it meant renting S.U.V.'s, which violates every principle I believe in.)

In Hilo I put only 11 miles on the car (my interviewee drove me around), but sat in the rain at 5 in the morning at the airport for 20 minutes because I'd finally gotten the hang of the album. Then later in Waikiki, I went into a kind of fugue on Ala Moana Boulevard and Kapuhulu Road, with the windows rolled up and the air conditioning on high, because by then I'd identified the master cuts and was playing them over and over.

Come Australia and New Zealand, I put on another 700 Alanis-ridden miles.

By then, I confess even I was getting sick of Alanis, and so I tried to break the spell by loading other CD's: Dylan, John Lee Hooker, the O Brother soundtrack, Beth Orton and Mick Jagger's new solo album.

I listened to them all, too, but the truth is that I only played these albums so as to give myself a break from Alanis, so that I could return to life with Alanis. They were a kind of palate cleanser. Or in the case of Dylan and Jagger, comfort food, the macaroni and cheese that they first began serving me in the high-school cafeteria. I would calm myself down and give myself a break, and then play Alanis again, driving through priggish sleepy New Zealand villages like Clarence and Warkworth with Alanis on way too loud, upsetting the sheep and the Kiwis in their walking shorts.

Because Alanis is never calming. Alanis is highly psychically disturbing. Alanis plunges me into a raw and almost bleedingly reflective mood.

If you say "What is the album about?," it is about Alanis' search for a genuine relationship, for engagement that is respectful and intense and alive, at this moment.

Right now my favorite song is Track 4. It is about obsession, about Alanis being hung up on a guy she went out with over 10 years ago. It has the feel of a Poe story, as Alanis tries to understand the dead hand of these old feelings. The writing is touched, very nearly mad:

What are you, my blood? You touch me like you are my blood. What are you my dad? You affect me like you are my dad.

(And when Alanis sings "affect," it sounds like "fucked.")

I find this song, called "Flinch," almost too intense to listen to. It is really about consciousness. When a man at a party tells her that the object of her affection is in the next room, Alanis sings-clunkily and divinely:

This man knows not of how this information has affected me But he knows the colour of the car I just drove away in.

Recognizing the color of a car but not a powerful feeling is false consciousness. Alanis' goal is to tear away those beliefs, to determine what she really wants, now. And she is always running down men who rely on their intelligence, defensively, when her only real aim in relationship is emotional readiness and fearlessness.

I try and think when I have been obsessed with an album before. Rubber Soul when I was a teen; the Wailers' Catch a Fire when I was in college; Otis Redding Live when I moved to the Midwest; Joy Division when I met my wife. And in all those cases, the experience was eroticized-first crush, first love. The song was intertwined with passion that folded over on itself.

Now I would like to know what this middle-aged obsession is about. I suppose I'm vulnerable; I've been traveling on my own for most of the last year, and the historical material that I am exploring is often painful. It seems to me that I need Alanis' innocence and exaltation in my life right now (there is not one clever, arch or coy statement on this record).

The album winds up with two visionary songs, Track 9, "You Owe Me Nothing in Return," and Track 11, "Utopia." "You Owe Me Nothing" is about Alanis' ideal relationship, and it is naïve, romantic, stunning and confident:

You can ask for space for yourself and only yourself and I'll grant it You can ask for freedom as well or time to travel and you'll have it You can ask to live by yourself or love someone else and I'll support it …. You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have ….

Needing to hear it again, I borrowed a Toshiba computer with a CD player last night from a French anthropologist across the courtyard from me. (Who's studying volcano-dwellers in Tonga). She lent me her earphones, too. Still, I felt constrained. This guest house is crowded with Pacific islanders and others who might think I am crazy if they got a whiff of what I'm up to.

Tonight, I have a better plan. I will go to the men's club that is cater-corner to the Royal Palace and find the D.J. Kitione (or Gideon) Mokofisi at his usual spot on the bar. Gideon has a CD player; we listened to it in his van at the beach in January. And Gideon understands musical obsession-he's a D.J. I won't let Gideon buy a drink, and then I'll borrow his van and get lost.

Olive also said something startling: that the Kingdom of Tonga is the one country that allows people to swim with great whales. The humpbacks come to Tonga to give birth during the southern hemisphere's summer, and Olive said that small boats approach them and let swimmers out. And she added that the white people who operate such boats were cowboys, while the Tongans were sensitive about approaching the whales.

When I went back to the South Pacific last month (I'm working on a book there), I took a boat to the Tongan island of Vava'u, to check out Olive's statement.

Neiafu is a tiny old town. The waterfront is lined with a strip of colonial-era clapboard buildings with a continuous wooden roof over the raised sidewalk for the approaching rainy season. The harbor, which is called the Port of Refuge because it's so long and twisting, was filled with yachts from all over the world, bringing their loud late-night yachtie culture. I found a ramshackle hotel over the hill on the old harbor, for $10 a night, and the first night came into my room after dinner to see a brown spider the size of my palm on the bed. I sawed a plastic water bottle in half to capture it and carry it outside. Later I was told they don't bite, but that wasn't the point. If it had got away in my room, I wouldn't have slept.

Among the dive shops was a sign for Sailing Safaris, and recalling that Olive had recommended them, I booked with them: $30 for the day, pack your own lunch.

We went out on a Wednesday, and there was suddenly a lot of weather, a strong wind, chop in the harbor. Right at the start, 'Alofa, the pretty Tongan woman at the wheel of the 30-foot scow, announced that no one was going into the water; it was too breezy. I felt some relief. I'm not good in the water, and a snorkel confuses me. The thought of employing one in open sea brought back boyhood fears, and I was grateful for the excuse just to look for humpbacks from the boat.

Besides 'Alofa and Pita, the crewman, there were five others aboard. One was a Canadian talkaholic from a yacht who hated the lonely sea. Then an older Chilean couple, elegant, aquiline and private. And a young English couple, Andrew and Rachel, blond and game, headed out to Central America for a year to do good. I liked them.

We came south out of the sinuous harbor and into open sea, among the Vava'u islands, which are numerous and small. Then 'Alofa got a radio call and switched directions abruptly.

Andrew said he seemed to see a whale blowing. He was right. Two smaller boats were also in pursuit. The swell was pretty good, but by climbing onto the roof of our boat, I could see the whale clearly, her dorsal fin and part of her black back. She would blow out air and then sound, sliding under in a slow and graceful turn, not showing her tail. Pita said that there were two, a mother and calf. You could barely see the calf.

Once I heard her exhale-a hoarse sigh from 200 yards-but she avoided us, moving around among the islands, on the run. I understood how you harpoon whales. They don't move that entirely fast, and you can sort of figure where they're going. When they surface, you know it because you can see what 'Alofa called a footprint of calm water over the tops of them. You can follow them all day ….

After a while the smaller boats had had their fun, and 'Alofa did it her way. She kept her distance. The weather had calmed, and the whale seemed to calm, too. She spent a lot of time now lolling on the surface, feeding apparently. 'Alofa kept the engine on the lowest setting and let the boat drift closer.

Then 'Alofa said we could go in. Canada and Chile didn't budge, but England and I put on fins, mask and snorkel. Pita cranked down the back end of the boat, and at a sign we slid into the water and headed for the whales. I figure they were 200 feet away.

In no time, I had water in my mask and snorkel and up my nose, and I was grateful when the whales sounded. I managed to drop my head at that point, and caught what I thought was a glimpse of a great pale blue lentil-like object falling through dark sea, but that was it. Besides Rachel's pink bathing suit.

We finned back to the boat.

A half hour later, we got a second chance. The whales had stopped about a mile from an island, in calm sea and drifting. 'Alofa whispered for us to go in. Now I had the hang of the snorkel. I could see underwater, and watched Andrew and Rachel move sleekly ahead, like fish.

After a minute or two I saw them again, stopped. They were holding hands, tightly, as if holding on for their lives. I let myself sink down. As a boy, I had a picture book with a two-page spread illustration of a whale breaking up a boat. I always held those pages together, not wanting to see the image, and the same dread came over me now.

The whale seemed to be waiting for us. Her side fin hung down many feet, like a long oar catching the sunlight, and her black face with upside-down mouth was turned half looking at us, half away. Her calf was tucked at her side, on our side of her, its face partly obscuring its mother's face.

It doesn't really pay to detail something as haunting and magnificent as the presence of a whale a few feet away from you, in its house. Besides, I have only some impressions. Of the long body draped in a great arc, the tail less buoyant than the upper body, the tail sloping down into darkness. Of the crud in the water that seemed to drift off her, little bits of black debris from her mouth and fin, which seemed messy, barnacled.

Of her smallness and realness. The whale's actuality seemed to make it smaller-as if she were some very very large creature not so unlike us, trying to make her way, thoughtfully. We hung about 10 feet back; we dared not go closer. After about five minutes of looking at us, and us looking at her, she sounded. She lifted a fin and dropped her head, and at first sank slowly, and then more rapidly. I followed her some of the way. The calf was right with her. About 30 feet down, she gave a big swoosh of her tail (has Nike ruined that word?). The underside of her wide flukes waved, whitely, and she was gone.

When we got back to the boat, Andrew and I exploded with the usual male banalities after a powerful experience, a rain of adjectives.

Rachel dropped her mask on the deck. "Well, that's the best thing I've ever done in my life," she said, then turned to her husband with English crispness. "I'm afraid marrying you comes second, Andrew."

"How long's it been?" I said.

Andrew offered me a faint smile. "Two weeks," he said.

The next few hours on the boat were like the stupid grinning bliss after sex. The same tape of rock music played endlessly; we must have heard a song that went " Raa- Raa-Rasputin … He was a cat that really was gone " 10 times. Somehow it seemed completely appropriate. Andrew and Rachel told me the entire plot of Cast Away , in a kind of responsive reading.

For the next couple of days, I devolved-or evolved-completely into Olive-like thoughts. The Tongans had known how to pursue the whales. Whales must be protected.

The experience also gave me a better understanding of the unconscious, or what Ahab called, famously, the little lower layer. Seeing a whale underwater brings the unconscious alive. Every once in a while, I would poke my head over the surface and look at the small black island of the whale's back, then I'd go back under and here was this massive and fascinating creature dangling down in its own firmament. When it fluked and sounded, it went down into further depths of the unknown. Glimpsing such marvels under the rough metal plate of the sea surface made me an anti-intellectual. We know so little. It seems presumptuous to even begin to describe the life of the whale, so much is going on so far away. 'Alofa said that people have never seen a whale giving birth. I hope it stays that way.

The other thing I carry away is the dread. We kept our distance, the monster and I. No one was going to die; it all seemed quite amicable, thanks to the unstoppable Olive. Still, something else hung in the water between us-the violence and fear that had been in that childhood book of mine. As Melville scholar Elizabeth Renker pointed out to me by e-mail, whales only acquired their image as "gentle, intelligent giants" well into the 20th century. To Melville, they were terrifying and magnificent.

That was when these animals were a major industry-and a brutal one. Working on whalers gave Herman Melville rather broad experience of nature's cruelties and mankind's devilishness, and made Moby-Dick a wicked book, as he put it proudly.

Now that industry is over, and not because of any real charity on mankind's part. "If we still needed whale oil to light our lamps, we human beings might still be attached to old images of whales as monsters, so we could feel better about killing them," Ms. Renker, the Melville scholar, wrote to me. Now we get our oil from other places, which have terrors of their own.