The most surprising and enjoyable surf-related book you’re likely to ever find.If you read surfing books that are not how-to books, you’ve probably read your share of anthologies on the sport. There aren’t a lot of books about surfing by a single author, and there’s a fairly obvious reason. The folks who know enough to fill a book and keep it interesting would rather be… you guessed it, surfing, not writing! Some of the anthologies out there are good. Everyone of them will deliver a few good stories, poems or memories, but none that I have ever read can compete with Patrick Moser’s Pacific Passages: An Anthology of Surf Writing. (Surf riding. Surf writing. Get it?)
The usual line-up of authors is, naturally enough, surfers. That’s not really the case for most of Pacific Passages. Instead, Moser has reached back to such giants of history, adventure and literary standing as Captain James Cook, Captain William Bligh, Jack London, Herman Melville and Mark Twain. For the Hawai‘i history and culture buffs, maybe these names will ring louder bells: Samuel Kamakau, King David Kalakaua, Mary Kawena Pukui, John Pap i‘i, missionary Hiram Bingham, folklore collector Abraham Fornander and storyteller William Westervelt.
To continue the name-dropping game just a touch longer, the more modern bits are full of the familiar as well: musical matriarch Aunty Nona Beamer, Maui surf star Erik Aeder and Bruce Jenkins writing about Laird Hamilton.
The biggest shock I felt reading this amazing collection was that the oldest historic pieces and the newest magazine-articles were equally enjoyable. Granted, here and there, I might have been saying to myself—especially in the newest writing—“how does this qualify to be in a book with the likes of Kawena, Isabella Bird and Tom Wolfe? You may feel the same way for a few brief pages here and there, but there are well over 300 pages, of which at least 270 pleased me. Your 270 pages may be a different selection. Still, I know that if you can stand surf or history, good writing or biography, Hawaiian history or memoir, you will completely love most of these pages, and you’ll want to come back to Pacific Passages over and over—as I will.
I could do a lot of oooh-ing and ahh-ing about this book, but let me tell you the one miniscule tidbit of not-so-good news. Moser’s much better collecting and arranging other people’s writing than at writing intros. They often don’t give the wished-for facts, and they are most often lifeless. But, hey, intros is only intros, and how does an ordinary human being introduce the likes of these stars.
Here’s an ooo for you. There’s an anonymous article from an 1896 Thomas G. Thrum Hawaiian Almanac. It’s by someone from Kona, and it is very enjoyable, while also being very educational. This unknown writer knew how to write about surfing with respect, and threw in about a hundred things I didn’t know before, and did it all in what comes to only a bit over 6 pages in this book. The mysteries of old Hawai‘i mix with the realities of 1896 (then-perfectly modern) Hawai‘i in the odd language of the time. Irresistible.
And now for an ahh. Erik Aeder of Maui writes about… No, not Jaws, not even Maui. You won’t be surprised, if you know his photography or him, that his is a story of a surf break in a far-flung, still-remote corner of Indonesia. Aeder writes seductively and passionately. While the subjects couldn’t be more different, he reminds me of Brandon Wilson (Yak Butter Blues and Along the Templar Trail). I think what’s the same is the evidence of heart, and that these writers spend their passion on the place and the people of the place they are writing about. Neither wastes time telling us about his own personal joys. Instead, they let us share the joys and the occasional opposite of joy.
At 61, which is 41 years off the board for me, this book gave me a real taste of the thrill of the waves, as well as a healthy dose of surf history. It’s a keeper!