Greek sea gods conform to a single type: that of Homer's "halios geron" or Old Man of the Sea: Nereus, Proteus, Glaucus and Phorkys. These sea gods are not as powerful as Poseidon, the main god of the oceans and seas. Each one is a shape-shifter, a prophet, and the father of either radiantly beautiful nymphs or hideous monsters (or both, in the case of Phorkys). Nymphs and monsters blur, for Hesiod relates that Phorcys was wed to the "beautiful-cheeked" Ceto, whose name is merely the feminine of the monstrous Cetus, to whom Andromeda was due to be sacrificed. Each appearance in myth
The Sea Is My Brother him to write "Sea". The author, who was 20 years old when "Sea" was written, allegedly thought that the book was "a crock [of shit] as literature", and apparently did not bother to shop it around to publishers. Dawn Ward, editor of the Penguin edition of "The Sea Is my Brother", holds that while the novel is not the same as the great work Kerouac produced later in his life, it illuminates Kerouac's early development as a writer. "It was referred to briefly in letters, but nothing that led anyone to believe that there was this really large volume ...