The book’s central figure — the one from which Hoare’s centrifugal energies radiate — is German artist Albrecht Dürer. The book’s marine angle, initially anyway, is a beached whale that Dürer traveled to see but never saw; perfectly indicative of the strange, seemingly spare ingredients that Hoare likes to turn into feasts. In Dürer’s time, whales “presented a great challenge and allure” to artists, because “they were so difficult to comprehend. Like God, no one could agree what they really looked like, or what they might be capable of.”

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This book requires patience, and a mild tolerance for passing clouds of pretension or obscurity; but these hazards are just residual effects from the forceful weather system that is Hoare’s imagination...