Since 'Malibu LIzards' (the first surf story by John Severson which appeared in the seminal issue of "SURFER" magazine), much has been written about Surfing by surfers. Nowadays,the subject moves from the salty, seclusion of foreign beaches, into the Sports section of major newspapers, back into the hands of assorted writers, high profile contestants and various acolytes that call the life their own. And there have been some wonderful stories of the surfers and their lifestyle. As this work attests, there is also much to be said for the way the story itself is told . Daniel Duane's second book 'CAUGHT INSIDE-a Surfers year on the Californian Coast' is a skilled, poetic description of his introduction to Surfing on the Santa Cruz coastline of Northern California. Hypnotic in it's delivery , and as familiar in it's detail as that last walk along the sand, it could loosely be described as "Barefoot Adventure meets National Geographic". Daniel paddles the reader into a line up that is the preserve of those who would wish to know themselves. Join him as he becomes a player in the game many know as some saltwater quest, in a down the line take off with words, delivering much of the quirky and eccentric existence that is the Surfer's lot. Not for him, the excruciating,mind numbing details of sporting prowess and contest results. He records the surfer's sense of being at One; as he might wait for the tide to drop revealing that fickle reef, the stoke of a shiny new board, or maybe just reflect on last week's macker swell. At once humourous and revelatory, this is one surfer that has told his tale, and re-defined surf writing standards in the process. While for many of us the surf session is hopefully a lot of waves,a few hoots, maybe catching a rail, maybe perfecting that lip cutback, for Daniel it goes more like this... "A surf session is, then, a small occurence outside the linear march of time; sure you can catch your last wave,but rather than a natural conclusion to a well-lived tale,it will simply be the point at which the circle was snipped. So one hears instead of conditions - of a good west swell and light offshore breeze - solid overhead peaks wrapping through the inside. No conflict,no crisis and resolution; no difficult goal obtained or struggle between teams or even with oneself. No obstacle surmounted against great odds - in fact, the hardest part in surfing happens before you get to your feet. Talking about it to non surfers becomes much like saying " I went out and masturbated today, and it felt great." Who cares? The rich tradition of surf story telling has more to do with what guys did before and after the surfing than with the surfing itself, except, perhaps in the case of enormous,dangerous waves. Certainly,anyone can relate to the joy of clean water - birds,fish,dolphins,seals and otters and maybe sharks, kelp drifting with the swells, popping it's sea-hag heads up here and there - and perhaps one can picture the crystal curtain falling all around or the wild freedom of gliding into the golden ball of a dawning sun, but still, no yarn. Thus the tendency towards an "If you have to ask..." smugness, inarticulation as elitism: "Only a surfer knows the feeling..." One often hears surfing compared to sex; quite a stretch, except perhaps in the unself-conscious participation in a pattern of energy, in a constant physical response in a changing medium - at it's best, emptying your mind of past and future. Willie later described it to me as having the quality of Japanese dancing on rice paper, in which the dancer steps so delicately that the paper never tears, and pointed out how each wave washes away all that has come before ...." Excerpted from CAUGHT INSIDE by Daniel Duane. (North Point Press,Copyright 1996)

Highly recommended.

INSIDE SURFIN interviews DANIEL DUANE

INSIDE SURFIN: HI Daniel, thanks for talking to us about your book,CAUGHT INSIDE. Did the idea to write your book about Surfing come before you actually started surfing, or did it seems like a natural subject, once you were settling into the surfing life style?

DANIEL DUANE: I started surfing well before I got the book idea--a little as a kid, a little more in high school, then pretty aggressively when I got home from college. But it's true that before I moved to Santa Cruz in '92 I was more focused on climbing, and I wasn't living right on the coast. Then I got down to Santa Cruz and started surfing full time, really not doing much else for a few years, and that's when a writer friend of mine said, 'Hey, you should really write a book about surfing.' His name's Thomas Farber, incidentally, and he's written an amazing book called "On Water," definitely of interest to surfers.

IS: In retrospect, the Santa Cruz area with its variety of sea life, including the Great White Shark, seems an ideal location for your particular themes. Was this intentional, for Hawaii, Mexico or maybe Bali would appear at first glance to be the most colourful choice for a writer to capture this subject?

DD: It's more like that's where I was, so that's what I wrote about. If I'd been living on the North Shore, I'm sure it would have been a different book, and likewise Mexico. But it wasn't an accident that I was in Santa Cruz--I was really drawn to the beauty of that coast, and I needed a place I could really settle down and log some whole years at surfing. I was only just competent when I moved down there, so I wouldn't have had much business in Bali or Hawaii.

IS: Many surfers will see something of themselves in your observations of their life, and probably chuckle aloud reading through your book. Did the lifestyle suprise you in its depth of feeling towards all things 'credible', such as the right equipment, the right wave etiquette, the wave knowledge, and so on?

DD: Absolutely. Some of it made real sense to me, like wave etiquette and wave knowledge. Other things struck me as more cultural, like the preoccupation with longboards versus shortboards and leashes or no leashes, but every sport has a version of these obsessions, and there's a weird kind of pleasure in it all. I blew some of these things at first, because I hadn't grown up inside the culture and I learned by myself with no real input from other surfers. My uncle helped a little, but he lived too far away (Leucadia) to show me the fine points of water behavior and gear selection. As a result, I actually showed up at first peak Pleasure Point trying to learn to surf with a ten year-old baggy wetsuit, a five-eleven Schroff twin-fin, and zero clue. Not the best way to make friends and influence people. I finally met some guys, though, and hung around long enough, and was saved from being a complete barney at all times.

IS: When you began to write CAUGHT INSIDE did you set out to place the natural enviroment at centre stage, considering this most potent theme seems all but lost in many of the books on the subject that have come before?

DD: I guess I did. I was in graduate school at UCSC, and I was reading a lot of great nature writing, books by Edward Abbey and Barry Lopez and Gary Snyder. So that's what I was attuned to and interested in. Also, when I just tried to figure out what was at the heart of the experience, the environment was right there--at least at the rural point breaks I was surfing.

IS: After reading CAUGHT INSIDE, I have tried to think how your novel's approach would translate as a motion picture,maybe with voice over narrative. Have this thought crossed your mind? It would appear to be viable, and would certainly show surfers in a new and truer light to the general public.

.DD: A young screenwriter in LA actually wrote a nice script based on Caught Inside, and he's been working on finding production money for it. I'd love to see a film like the one he envisions, staying pretty true to the spirit of the book.

IS: Are there any areas of Surfing that you may have come across since finishing the manuscript, that you regret were not covered in the book? Can you see any room to maybe write a sequel?

DD: There are a few little things I'd like to muse on, but I'm really pretty happy with Caught Inside. You always see things you'd do differently, but that's partly because you've changed, learned more, so it's best not to worry about it too much. I guess the one thing I'd like to write about--and that could make part of a sequel some day--is surf travel. I had never travelled for surf when I wrote Caught Inside, and the first thing I did with the advance I got was take a big surf trip: Fiji, Tonga, New Zealand. I've done a lot of surf travel for magazines since then, too.

IS: Are you still surfing in Santa Cruz ? Do you think that understanding the culture more now, would make it harder to write the same book again?

..DD: I live in San Francisco, now, so I surf mostly at Ocean Beach, which is tremendous. But I do get down to Santa Cruz--sometimes when the swell's too massive for OB to be much fun, or when the wind's are wrong, or when the buoys are just so perfect I simply have to see the point breaks doing their thing. And yeah, I could never write quite the same book again. but again, that's just life--you only have one book in you at any given time, so that's the one you write.

IS: Thanks for the interview Daniel, and thanks for helping show your readers that many surfers really do understand about things that are real, more than they are usually given credit for.