Given that plenty (the majority?) of surfers think that whatever they read about surfing is inherently “good” just because it’s about surfing, the publication of “bad” surf books is sure to continue. However, judging by the plummeting price points of many surf books on retail sites (countless are available for less than a buck), one might inquire if the surf-publishing “boom” is waning. I concede that surfing’s metaphoric value will forever ensure that commercial authors employ our pastime as a preferred allegory of phenomena as wide-ranging as politics, innovation, technology, spirituality, and wellness. Hell, French intellectual—neither commercial writer nor surfer—Gilles Deleuze crowned surfing the default metaphor for the globalizing world in the 1970s (as inadequate paraphrase: in late modern capitalism, individuals can’t create waves; (s)he can only ride them to the best of her ability). If Deleuze could pass a surf metaphor off on late-century continental philosophy, then it makes sense that profit driven writers will continue to harness surfing’s metaphoric–and retail–value by connecting it to hollow keywords for an easily-impressed lay public.
Ultimately, in the spirit of advancing the intellectual quality of surfing’s literary activity, I commend two parties: 1) surf writers—past, present, and future—who raise their pens in attempts at rendering surfing meaningful through critical interventions, organic narrative, novel plotlines, and rigorous reflection, contemptuous of clichés and conscious of the surf book’s potential evolution in spite of decades of commercial erosion and 2) the surfer-readers whose skepticism is our only form of quality control in ensuring that inspired narratives are privileged over commercial hype.
* I concede that there are numerous quality surf books written over the last century. However, sub-par surf writing is far more prevalent as evidenced by even cursory revision of those 20,000 titles. My attempt here is not to canonize or vilify specific authors or titles. Warshaw provides adequate introduction to fiction in the ‘Surf Literature’ section of the History of Surfing, albeit with canonizing tendencies. Warshaw’s historiographical work exemplifies engaging and interesting surf non-fiction, and the (free?) digitalization of the Encyclopedia of Surfing is, by my estimation, downright noble.
