The Travels + Literary Giants That Inspired a Surf Writer
Did you read William Finnegan’s Pulitzer Prize winning surf memoir Barbarian Days? Of course you did! It was fantastic surf writing.
So you probably remember the name of one of is most consistent surf companions while he was discovering some of the best waves in the world. It’s Bryan Di Salvatore, and he is also a ‘real’ writer who has done time with The New Yorker and other fine publications.
The thing I love about guys like William and Bryan is that they can just up and leave the ocean in the rearview. Currently Bryan is living in Montana and has for some time. Claims he will never surf in a wetsuit again. Strong words. Must have surfed some great waves in his day to just live hundreds of miles from the ocean. Don’t blame him. I hate most ‘typical’ surfers as well as crowds. And most people in general.
Anyway… there must be a lot going on in Bryan’s brain to keep him occupied out there and lucky for us he is letting us take a peak at his inspirations. Get your pen and paper ready….
“My wife calls me a hermit with social skills. She doesn’t know the half of it: sometimes my own company flat out pisses me off. People grate on me. In the water, too. Especially. If I were to list the most dreadful spot in the world, it might well be Kirra at full pump. Part of my aquatic misanthropy is garden-variety neurosis, part of it my constitutional passivity and shyness, and a lot of it plain selfishness. I was, at my best, a journeyman out there, lower-middle of most packs. I got angry, satanically envious, watching Honolua pass me by. Kirra, too. Even wayback Rincon. So I sought out places not a quarter as grand or majestic or lovely and gave them my heart, ran with them all the way to heaven, got to know their every bleb, bump, blemish, and wen. Day after day after day. Tens, dozens, scores of waves a session. I, or my friends and I, depleting their emptiness, aiding their imperfection. Briefly, along the way, Bill Finnegan and I got the best waves in the world to ourselves, Tavarua before it became, uh, Tavarua.
Alone, or nearly so, I could study, without pressure, without anxiety, those waves I chose—those waves the watery equivalent of girls who had good personalities and sewed their own clothes. I could…relax. I could do out there what I do now with words: muse, doodle, dawdle, ponder, give leash to whimsy, experiment, goof, screw up. Play.
I guess you could say I was writing those waves. I guess you could say that these days I surf the language.”
Click over to THE SURFERS JOURNAL for the influences of great surf writer Bryan Di Salvatore.
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