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Book into the waves4/29/2023 ![]() ![]() He enjoys a level of renown, though some younger surfers haven’t heard of him, and ageing fame isolates. But this surfer dude – famous at 17, a champion at 20 – is now 62 years old, not really a dude any more, and not too sure about the surfer bit either. This is the story of champion surfer Joe Sharkey, to whom surfing is “a dance on water … not a sport at all … but a way of living your life”, who surfs a wave as though “carving his signature on it”. Theroux’s new novel is a full-fat epic, inspired by his adopted home of Hawaii (he divides his time between there and Cape Cod: must be rather tiring, to quote Basil Fawlty). Not for him the approach of Saul Bellow or Philip Roth, whose fiction dwindled into novellas before stopping entirely. It was worth my time and may be worth yours.Paul Theroux, who has averaged roughly a book a year since 1967 and who turned 80 last month, isn’t slowing down. It’s a delicate work of simplicity and heart. Whether intentionally or not (probably intentionally), Dungo sets up the pair of Duke and Blake as a reflection of Kristen and himself, with Duke and Kristen being these larger-than-life figures of passion and inspiration and Blake and himself seeking comfort from brokenness in the break. This is a fresh work of grieving, a tribute to a woman and to the sport she loved and shared (Dungo took up surfing himself despite a fear of the sea, inspired by Kristen). ![]() In water tones, he speaks of love and loss, remembering his girlfriend Kristen who would die in 2016 at age 24 of cancer. In earthen tones, he unspools the history of surfing, largely through two figures, Duke Kahanamoku and Tom Blake. Dungo skips back and forth in history, telling two stories. (Incidentally, while Grant is in Australia, both Dungo and Dwinell are local to Southern California, which makes me happy.) In Waves though may be the first I’ve read that is properly about surfing. I’ve read two others, Pat Grant’s Blue, which focuses on surfing and immigration, and Kim Dwinell’s Surfside Girls, which is more of a ghost mystery with protagonists who also happen to be surfers. ![]() It was a comfort and I look back on those days with fondness.Īll that is to say that when I cracked open AJ Dungo’s book In Waves, I was happy to see another graphic novel devoted to surfing. As with Dungo at book’s end, I went out alone more often than not. None of that childlike fussiness has stopped me, however, from appreciating surfing - or from understanding just how it feels to be out there in the line-up, anticipating the next set, enclosed deep in the green room, feeling that rush of jubilance when it spits you out again. ![]() He would have loved to share his great passion with me but I was too much of a stubborn little ass to allow him that happiness (I think I subconsciously feared not being any good at it too). I boogie boarded, skimboarded, skateboarded, and body-surfed, but in that way that kids can be tragic punk a-holes, I always demurred whenever my dad offered to teach me to surf. My dad was a surfer (at age 73, he still surfs whenever he’s in town) and we lived a 2 minute walk from a point break and the sweetest left I’ve ever ridden. I grew up in surf culture, a son of the waves. ![]()
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