Paul Theroux's New Book on Aging Big Wave Rider Drops Today...

Autoprax

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Jan 24, 2011
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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.
 
Oct 16, 2002
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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.
 
Oct 16, 2002
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GARRETT = CRINGE-WORTHY
So is the main character Joe Sharkey. I share your opinion and have had long talks with Paul about exactly that, he knows what he's doing. Incidentally, my mom who also lives on the NS is quite close to GM's mother, but has in the last several years distanced herself from her as she has gone deep down the wormhole of both born again evangelical Christianity and hard core conspiracy riddled Trumpism. That alone is plenty cring-worthy.
 
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JSC

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I thought the description of the main Sharkey character sounded like the late Alec Cooke, aka "Ace Kool" - I guess we will find out once we read the book!
 

donuts

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@ the fun house
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afoaf

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this guy fkn hustles!

didn't Plain of Snakes just come out?
 

afoaf

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yeah, and he's already got another one out?!

I didn't even have time to get the boys to Oaxaca for Dia de la Muerte yet....
 
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_____

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Thanks, ordered the hardcover. Maybe have to bring hammock on this weekend trip and crush it in a day or 2.
 

Autoprax

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this guy fkn hustles!

didn't Plain of Snakes just come out?
If you are able to write 4 hours a day 7 days a week, sh!t gets done.

(I'm not.)

He said that he's half way through his next novel.

Also, getting close to death will make some people really start cranking sh!t out because you know the end it near.
 

afoaf

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I really try to avoid any and all reading that is surfer and surfing-adjacent

I don't need someone else's words on my orgasm
 

Bob Dobbalina

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He could't come up with a better name than Joe Sharkey?

As far as big wave books go, it looks like Derek Dunfee wrote a book. While I'm not particularly interested, the tease of "why I don't ride big waves anymore" is somewhat interesting to me. From the looks of it it might be a combination of his photography and his writing that he's been honing for a bit with his Dekka 'zine.

https://www.derekdunfee.com/store/waking-up-in-the-sea-by-derek-dunfee
 
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Ranga

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Dec 31, 2008
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Glad you're back, Ash. Sorry for what happened around here while you were gone.