I got my copy yesterday
I think surfers will read it for verisimilitude and feel like PT will come up short.
I will read it for PT's crazy fun and dry humor.
(Good thing I officially quit surfing.)
That PT is still hard at work at 80 makes me happy.
I am already somewhat deep into it and as expected, while some of the descriptions of surfing are undeniably cringe-worthy to the gnard-core cognoscenti, they at the same time also offer new and fresh views into a subject we think we know well. Not unlike Jack London's at first jarring “Ah, delicious moment when I felt that breaker grip and fling me. On I dashed, a hundred and fifty feet, and subsided with the breaker on the sand. From that moment I was lost.” And he certainly writes better than anyone else who has tackled the subject in recent times other than perhaps William Finnigan, (An old friend of his).
Jamie Brisick is very close to Paul and was the sounding board for much of the surfing terminology and jargon, but there were quite a few others. The main character, Joe Sharkey was very loosely based on his long term friendship with Garret McNamara. This is in a sense a coming home for Theroux who has been a 30+ year resident of the North Shore and has long dreamed of setting a story against that backdrop.