Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
And a warm Inkwell welcome to Michael Scott Moore and his wonderful
book "Sweetness and Blood" 
  

    
I'll be leading the discussion. 

Ed Ward is a long-time journalist who's written predominantly about
music, although never, to his recollection, surf music. He met Mike
Moore in Berlin, where Mike was running a roundtable for bloggers,
which has now expanded into a free-for-all gathering held irregularly.
They immediately disagreed about Saul Bellow, and became friends. Ed
now lives in Montpellier, France, where he's working on a book of
social history and another on how not to expatriate. 
  

    
Michael Scott Moore is a novelist and journalist from California,
2006-2007 Fulbright fellow in Berlin. "Too Much of Nothing" (2003) is a
novel set in a fictional California beach town. This territory got
raided a couple of years back by Thomas Pynchon's "Inherent Vice," but
that's OK. "Sweetness and Blood" (2010) is a travel book about the
spread of surfing to odd corners of the world, named a book of the year
by Popmatters and The Economist. 

Former stage critic for SF Weekly, currently a European correspondent
for Miller-McCune and editor-at-large for Spiegel Online in Berlin.
  

    
So, since this is a very annoying question, let's get it out of the
way right here and now. Surfing isn't noted for producing a lot of
great non-fiction writing. Or much fiction writing, either, although
I'm a big Kem Nunn fan. Is this a valid attitude? Is there any writing
on surfing you think is equal to -- or even better than -- your own
that a non-surfer would enjoy reading? 
  

    
The obvious answer to that one is Tim Winton. He hasn't been relegated
to a surf-writing ghetto like Kem Nunn, maybe because he's Australian.
But he grew up in a working-class beach town in Australia in the 60s,
and his novels about that time and place are terrific. "Breath" won an
award a couple of years ago, so he gained some recognition outside
Australia. But "The Turning," which is a linked collection of stories,
affected me even more.

Australia's big cities are all along the coast, so surfing there is a
national sport. It's become a natural part of daily life, and
Australians can talk about it without the 'Gidget' jokes.

Which is what I like about "The Turning," by the way: It gives you the
rhythm of an Australian surf town without being *about* surfing (the
way "Breath" is).

It's not an annoying question, by the way, because it oppressed me for
a long time. As a kid I assumed my own material wasn't "literary." But
that's received wisdom, and of course it's wrong.
  

    
Is this guy's stuff available in the States? Reason I ask, one of the
Well folks has been living in Australia for some months now and is
always posting recommendations of Australian books that nobody can find
in the States. Which is kind of odd. You can always say that low sales
of books leaves very little money for translation of literary stuff,
but Australians speak English! Well, almost.

Also, I thought if Nunn was going to be relegated to a ghetto, it'd be
noir. 

So your requirement for a literary surfing piece is an acknowledgement
of place and making it palpable in the work? (He asked, beginning to
turn the discussion to Sweetness and Blood). 
  

    
"Breath" should be available in the States. I think my editions of his
books are British, but I'd be surprised if "The Turning" were
unavailable in the US.

Also: Pynchon lived in Manhattan Beach (where I went to high school)
while he worked on "Gravity's Rainbow," and he finally broke down and
wrote a surf-noir novel about the place. But I suspect he was stoned
while he wrote "Inherent Vice."

I don't impose any special requirements -- character and story have to
be vivid in any good piece of writing. So does setting, and for me it
was always a huge disappointment that writers for surf magazines could
travel to such exotic parts of the world and come home with articles
that told you nothing serious about the places or the people.
  

    
I think Pynchon writes stoned, which accounts for his uncanny
replication of the wow! This is a good idea! Except it's fading...
feeling of being stoned. His later stuff irritates me. 

And I'm not sure the not-noticing thing is only for surfers. I've got
a friend going around the world right now, and she posts on her blog,
but doesn't seem to notice much except the tourist spots her Lonely
Planets point her to. She doesn't eat the local food, can't speak the
local languages, and sticks with those who are like her. 

Somehow Americans abroad are like that, writers and non-writers. I can
see not putting much info into a surf magazine article on, oh, Santa
Cruz, but to go to some of the lesser-known (but well-enough known that
you omitted them) international surf hot-spots and not clue people in
is criminal. 

While you were researching the book, though, you showed me what
purported to be a serious Surfing Journal or something. Is even that
publication so tunnel-visioned?

And, although it's almost a dumb question to ask, what international,
non-U.S., surfing destinations did you skip? Which, I guess, is asking
what your criteria for inclusion you applied to the places you did go
were. 
  

    
Actually Surfers Journal is a good magazine that tries to bring strong
intelligent writing to the sport. But travel is so vital to surfing
that I'm surprised no one thought to write a book like mine before I
did.

The point of Sweetness and Blood is culture clash -- how did modern
surfing get to these far-flung places, and how does it mix? I decided
to skip the most obvious countries like Mexico or Brazil, South Africa
or France. I wanted countries would be surprising even to some surfers,
like Germany. And I looked for countries with a good "creation myth,"
a good story of the sport's arrival. In Morocco and Japan the first
surfers were U.S. servicemen stationed near good waves after World War
II. As I say in the book, American pop culture arrived in those places
by force of arms.

Indonesia is famous for its waves, so I almost left it off the list,
but the culture clash there, and the creation myth, were too strong. 
  

    

I'm American and living in Australia (and suggesting books people can't
find) - it is very interesting to see how surfing fits in here - it isn't so
much a sport as a way of life - I just saw a great documentary about the Bra
Brothers (Bra being short for Maroubra, a ocean side suburb of Sydney) -
kids who had no hope/no parenting, were taken in and surfing replaced
alcohol, drugs and fighting. When there were race riots in Cronulla, that
centered on beach culture, the Bra boys stood up for the Lebanese and made
public statements of inclusion.

I like Nunn, have not fallen in love with Winton, will try again. Your book
sounds interesting, does not appear to be in my local libraries yet.
  

    
No Australian edition? Are your publishers mad?
  

    
liked kem nunn up until 'dogs of winder'; loved daniel duane's 'caught
inside' (for nonfiction); read don winslow for socal surf noir; and weirdly
it was reading the catalog copy/product romance for 'territory ahead'
clothing that alerted me to global surf culture
  

    
I've seen Bra Boys -- good film. What's interesting is that surfing
catches on at different social levels in different countries. It
started as a a working-class thing in Australia, a middle-class thing
in California, and a chic fashionable thing in France.

Wherever it goes, though, it becomes a mark of local authenticity. I
never questioned that in California, and of course not in Hawaii. But
when Cornish or Moroccan kids learn to surf, for example, they start to
cop the same attitude. Or Israeli or Balinese kids. Once the sport
takes hold it's just a matter of time before some local hotshots start
to act like they belong, with their boards and their gear, while other
people don't. I thought that was funny. But it shows how surfing is
really an international sport like soccer -- universal and intensely
local at the same time.
  

    
@Ed: They're not mad; in fact we're still hoping for an Australian
edition. But it's up to the agents and not the publisher.
  

    
reminds me of how when i moved to nyc in 1983 and met a fellow who grew up
in alex baldwin's hometown on south shore of long island --- who among other
accomplishments was also a surfer --- and i was floored. i grew up in socal
and had lived in the bay area for a decade --- and it had never occured to
me that someone from massapequa (sp?) could be a surfer...
  

    
Maybe Lon Gisland for Son of Sweetness?

Is there anyplace you wanted to go for this book that you couldn't?
Why couldn't you, if so, and where was it/why did you want to go?
  

    

That is interesting about how it is different classes in different
countries. Do you think it is a sport like other sports though, or something
more? It seems to me, at least for some people, it is a whole identity in a
way that other sports don't seem to be.
  

    
As a non-surfer -- and I'm curious what Mike'll say about this -- to
me it seems to be the only solo sport which offers a kind of
transcendent relationship to nature, harnessing forces you can in no
way control. 

Mike?
  

    
I think the relationship to nature is one reason for the "lifestyle"
or identity that comes along with surfing. You have to learn certain
universal rules about the ocean to master the sport, a certain respect.
That's why the surf community is so strong no matter how diffuse it
becomes. But every good surf break also has quirky conditions that give
locals automatic authority.

The connection to a natural, specific stretch of sand could explain
why surfing becomes such a local cult wherever it goes. It's connected
with Cornish nationalism in the UK (Cornwall has always resented
interlopers from London), Berber nationalism in Morocco (at least in
the south, where Berber feeling is strong) and Irish nationalism in
Ireland.

In Israel and Gaza, though, it's becoming a force for peace, because
Israeli surfers have tried to break the blockade with donations of surf
equipment for Palestinians on Gaza Beach. So there's something
subversive and anti-authoritarian about surfing, too. It inspires a
sense of self-reliance and it tends to confuse the dominant local
authorities (like Hamas in Gaza, or the government in Cuba).
  

    
Ireland, by the way, is one country I wish I'd visited for the book.
The waves are terrific on the west coast, and Irish surfers are fairly
hardcore (since the water's cold). The UK has less interesting surf,
but a more colorful early history -- starting with an Italian ice-cream
vendor on the Cornish seashore in the 1930s -- and, of course, Captain
Cook. He and his men were the first Europeans to see surfing in
Hawaii, since they stumbled upon the islands in the 1700s. They may
have even been the first Europeans to surf.
  

    
Another country I wanted to visit was Peru, because fishermen there
were using horse-shaped surf boats made from thick reeds as long as
3,000 years ago. People can stand on them now, and ride pretty big
waves, so some people think the Peruvians deserve credit for developing
the sport outside Hawaii. But the boats were probably used mainly for
fishing, not for festival contests and pure fun, like Hawaiian
surfboards.

I mention Peruvian surf boats in the book, but I could have written a
whole chapter on Peru.
  

    
That sounds amazing, too.   

Really enjoying this, though I do not (so far) have a copy of the
book. I would say, in reply to what Ed asked about danger and
transcendence, that my family has always been involved in mountain
wilderness sports, and that kayaking a wild river or solo climbing a
remote mountain can bring on a soul-stirring dance with nature too.

I don't know much about the history of sport, but are there any other
ancient sports from anywhere that you see as having some commonality
with surfing then or now?
  

    
Well, soccer is similar. There were ancient forms of "football" in
China and South America, but the sport you see on TV was standardized
by the British and carried around the world by their empire. But
there's no link between the far-flung ancient sports and the rules that
developed in Britain (as far as I know). 

So the analogy I give in my book is actually with the blues and rock
'n' roll. America didn't invent surfing; but it came to America and
became something modern and rebellious and new, just like the blues
came to America and electrified. During the 60s, in both cases, they
rocketed around the world.

The strange part is that American missionaries almost snuffed out
surfing in Hawaii during the 19th century. Too much naked frolicking in
the dangerous waves. In a few cases they turned old surfboards into
schooldesks.
  

    
Readers of this interview who aren't on the Well can send Mike
questions via inkwell@well.com and they'll get posted here with
alarming speed. 
  

    
I am enjoying this book, I'm up to Japan; it is making me hungry!
  

    
I'm also enjoying the book; I'm nearing the last page. Will save my
comments, recollections, and questions until I've finished it.