Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread from Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, With Some Unexpected Results - Couverture rigide

Moore, Michael Scott

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1605294276 ISBN 13 : 9781605294278

Editeur : Rodale Pr, 2010

Synopsis

Book by Moore Michael Scott

A propos du livre

Revue de presse :

“Moore and a robust we suit have boldly gone where only seriously unhinged dudes have gone before, mapping out fresh, unexpected cartography of the waves...What he has done, subtly and beguilingly, is write a book about surfing that often is not really about surfing but about simply being alive. Moore is a modern surf troubadour, singing the adventures of a cast of eccentric pioneers...Moore writes in a spirit far closer to Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia than to the latest issue of Curve.” —Andy Martin, author of Stealing the Wave, New York Times Book Review

“A wild, passionate, and thrilling ride; in the company of Pacific princes, beatnik athletes, and outlaw long-boarders, Michael Scott Moore catches surfing's global wave through a sweeping history of America's most liberating, taut, and tanned cultural export. Glorious!” —Rory MacLean, author of Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India

“Warm, smart, funny, and beautifully written. Sweetness and Blood goes off the beaten surf-path to give us a bigger, more interesting surf world.” —Matt Warshaw, author of The Encyclopedia of Surfing

“Michael Scott Moore has delivered a perfect tale, filled with adventure, insight, and exquisite turns of phrase. For those who think surfing is just some Cali boys running around saying ‘dude,’ he shows that wherever there’s water, from Munich to the Gaza Strip, taking a ride on it means freedom—and the siren call is universal.” —Deanne Stillman, author of Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave

“Sweetness and Blood, Michael Scott Moore’s moving personal hejira through wave-riding’s undiscovered back country, is a constantly surprising and emotional ride as it proves both surf culture’s truly pervasive influence, and how the world of waves—wherever they may be, and whoever rides them—lead to the heart of the world itself” —David Rensin, author of All for a Few Perfect Waves: The Audacious Life and Legend of Rebel Surfer Miki Dora

“The most fun, riskiest, most joyful, highest form of travelogue lit. Everyone will have their favorite chapter and section. Like Theroux combined with the best part of the best travel story of vintage Granta magazine...love, love, love this book!” —Joy Nicholson, author of The Road to Esmeralda on Waves: The Audacious Life and Legend of Rebel Surfer Miki Dora

“A wonderful and engaging book, Sweetness and Blood combines folk history, pop art, and great, old-fashioned travel writing into a fun-filled tale of surfing's global conquest. From the shell-shocked beaches of the Gaza Strip to the shell-packed beaches of Bali, Moore has packed enough cool cultural ephemera into this one volume to make this book a must-read for anyone interested the sport.” —Steven Kotler, author of West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origin of Belief

“Sweetness and Blood is a lively tour de force of travel writing and enterprising research that tells the truly fascinating story of surfing's spread into unlikely corners of the globe. This is like Beach Boys music for the sun-hungry brain, imagination, and soul.” —Francisco Goldman, author of The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop

“Sweetness and Blood reveals a great deal about the evolution of surfing but even more about the currents of globalization—which are as complex and as hard to fathom as those of the ocean itself. There is a remarkable character, a surprising bit of history and a fresh insight on every single page of this wonderful book.” —Ethan Watters, author of Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche

Extrait :

AUTHOR'S APOLOGY

as a history of surfing, this book isn't definitive. It completely shortchanges--among other major forces--Dale Velzy, Mary Ann Hawkins, Greg Noll, and most of Australia. What I've tried to assemble is a folk history of surfing, a personal sketch for any curious reader of how the modern sport moved around the world and mingled with cultures that either have nothing to do with Hawaii or have strong reasons to resist pop silliness from the first world. The result is a story of hippies, soldiers, nutcases, and colonialism, a checkered history of the spread of Western culture in the years after World War II.

"Dude, you should have gone to Brazil," people told me. Or, "Are there really good waves in Gaza?"--as if the point were to search for beautiful surf. No, no, no. I left out major wave-riding nations like Mexico, France, and South Africa because most surfers know about them. Wherever possible I chose offbeat nearby countries (Cuba, Germany, Sao Tome and Principe) to give the general reader an idea of how surfing reached each general part of the world and still, I hope, offer the dedicated surf historian something new--about how the sport mingled with Communism, or how it wound up in the North Sea.

The travel--spread over several years--starts with Chapter 2. Chapter 1 is really a prologue, a highly subjective but (I hope) still interesting review of the basic facts. I set out on this book as a landlocked scribbler, living as a journalist in Berlin. But I'd never stopped being a surfer, and I'd lived too long thinking the material I grew up with, the relentless superficial glare of southern California, had no value for a writer. Even pop culture has a human history, and modern surfing happens to be as American as baseball or jazz. By that I don't mean to claim it for America--surfing, almost as much as soccer, is a world sport--but I do want to provide ammunition against the eternal domestic bigots who say certain (ever-shifting, normally coastal) parts of America somehow don't belong; or against Europeans who think everything exported by America is bad; or against Northeastern snobs who think surfing isn't worth their time. Those three groups of people would never care to be caught together at a dinner party, but to me they're partners in ignorance.

Anyway, this isn't Endless Summer. It's not a pleasure trip, or a search for the ultimate stoke. When a surfer takes off on a wave, there are two possible results, and my book is about them both.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Rodale Pr
• Date d'édition: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1605294276
• ISBN 13: 9781605294278
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 328