“It’s awfully dark when you’re drowning in cold water, or at least it struck me that way. Claustrophobic from filling lungs, agoraphobic from the void below, I felt as if watching a celestial scattering of my own ashes: awestruck, and lonely. The waves holding me under were big enough, but my impending death had more to do with how little I knew about them.”
(from preface)
Thus begins Daniel Duane’s artistically biographical surf novel, Caught Inside, which makes the argument that when confronting the forces of nature, knowledge is our only means of survival.
“My impending death had more to do with how little I knew about them.”
The book follows the character, let’s just call him “Dan,” over the course of a year (or more precisely, three quarters of a year – a surf year) as he moves to Santa Cruz and learns to surf. The story oscillates from the various stages of learning through the natural course – that is, water time – and this strange, philosophy teacher’s-pet in which he “studies up” on the history of surfing and such things.
Personally, I moved to the Santa Cruz area later on in my surfing career, and the early phases of Duane’s book revived my personal nightmare: The tale of a kook getting in my way.
The book was well received by critics. I stopped reading less than fifty pages in.
The meter of the writing was chunked and choppy, as if it had been written over a long period of time, worked and reworked slowly and in many moods. I felt annoyed and edgy, and I put it away.
A few months later I picked it up again.
I was off the meds now, and that nasty footfungus was finally starting to go away. Or maybe it was deep winter and the droves of learners and tourist were thinning out the line-up. But this time, as I read Caught Inside, I go a whole new vibe. Duane’s real-life documentation pared with history research factoids and quotations, the rambling style echoed good Kerouac and the metaphor-trivia was arrayed with the meticulous ring of Ginsberg – it had beat. Strange jazzy rhythm. And it had smarts. Pearls of the ocean’s insight.
He used really good words. Big words. Carefully chosen words.
He worked hard on presenting a insightful document in the sacred indoctrination of becoming a surfer.
Maybe too hard. A undiscerning eye might be apt to misunderstand, to say Umm pretty… not knowing quite what they read, just knowing that some impression had been left.
(from preface)
Thus begins Daniel Duane’s artistically biographical surf novel, Caught Inside, which makes the argument that when confronting the forces of nature, knowledge is our only means of survival.
“My impending death had more to do with how little I knew about them.”
The book follows the character, let’s just call him “Dan,” over the course of a year (or more precisely, three quarters of a year – a surf year) as he moves to Santa Cruz and learns to surf. The story oscillates from the various stages of learning through the natural course – that is, water time – and this strange, philosophy teacher’s-pet in which he “studies up” on the history of surfing and such things.
Personally, I moved to the Santa Cruz area later on in my surfing career, and the early phases of Duane’s book revived my personal nightmare: The tale of a kook getting in my way.
The book was well received by critics. I stopped reading less than fifty pages in.
The meter of the writing was chunked and choppy, as if it had been written over a long period of time, worked and reworked slowly and in many moods. I felt annoyed and edgy, and I put it away.
A few months later I picked it up again.
I was off the meds now, and that nasty footfungus was finally starting to go away. Or maybe it was deep winter and the droves of learners and tourist were thinning out the line-up. But this time, as I read Caught Inside, I go a whole new vibe. Duane’s real-life documentation pared with history research factoids and quotations, the rambling style echoed good Kerouac and the metaphor-trivia was arrayed with the meticulous ring of Ginsberg – it had beat. Strange jazzy rhythm. And it had smarts. Pearls of the ocean’s insight.
He used really good words. Big words. Carefully chosen words.
He worked hard on presenting a insightful document in the sacred indoctrination of becoming a surfer.
Maybe too hard. A undiscerning eye might be apt to misunderstand, to say Umm pretty… not knowing quite what they read, just knowing that some impression had been left.
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