Holding My Breath For Tim Winton

Laird Hamilton at Jaws
(source: stills from Riding Giants)

You know that recurring dream where you are faced with an impending test you have not studied for? Well, in a more naturalistic version of this dream, as I stand by the sea, I am faced with a fearful big wave surging upwards and I feel half powerless, half spellbound. That may sound at least as scary as the school test, but oddly enough I always wake up from it feeling stress free and sunny. The more I am dwarfed by that wall of water, the biggest my fascination. Sometimes during my dream the wave will stand still for a moment and I manage to look at the beast in the eye and then outrun it (barely!) before it explodes onto the shore with feral force.

The fact that I grew up in Rio de Janeiro partly explains my obsession with the sea. Over there agitated waters are a constant and it can be fun to gather around the shore to watch big swells (my paternal grandmother was also fascinated by them). Sometimes the raging Atlantic causes mayhem, as waves lick the ocean drive and cars and passers-by are sprayed. Occasionally tragedy strikes such as the late eighties swell which claimed the life of British young dancer Graham Bart, who drowned engulfed by a furious wave as he watched the ocean from a dangerous spot. Me and my family had often seen him in performance and I remember we were very saddened and in complete shock.

Big mouth: Laird and the biggest "lip" at Teahupoo

I see rough seas as a contradiction of nature: so threatening and at the same time so harmonious, as waves may rise and peel down beautifully (see Teahupoo picture above). That's why I have always found surfing so fascinating, initially purely as a spectator (to me it has the same aesthetic appeal as dancing - surfers are to water what dancers are to music) and many years later as an occasional participant - but one strictly confined to gentle waves. I have absolutely no aspiration, or skill, to tackle anything seen as "big" and thus I am happy to take my dose of radical sports adrenaline purely from watching or reading the surf adventures of demigod Laird Hamilton or those of Jeff Clark at Mavericks.

Man and Beast: where is Jeff Clark?

While there are plenty of interesting documentaries about surfing (Riding Giants, Step into Liquid, Endless Summer, Thicker Than Water...) it's hard to find compelling, well written books on the same topic. Other than short stories (Zero Break) or collected surf magazine articles (such as "The Big Drop") the best I have come across until now is Daniel Duane's "Caught Inside", a memoir of his "year spent surfing" and doing little else in Santa Cruz. Sounds very simple yet this is a book so eloquent and full of poetic imagery it earned Duane the moniker of "Henry David Thoreau on a fiberglass board". Agreed, but that's still a personal memoir, not fiction.

How refreshing then to stumble upon Tim Winton's latest novel "Breath" - which according to the Times Literary Supplement tackles surfing as a radically aesthetic life choice and dwells on the themes of fear and friendship, loneliness and boredom, the lure and danger of life lived intensely. Sounds compelling enough. Time to park all the feminist prose I have been reading of late (thanks to the arrival of Persephone Books in Kensington!), and embrace a sea change. More later...