Sharkey the Surfer Man

"Out of the water I am nothing." Duke Kahanamoku, legendary Hawaiian surfer

Copywrite 2021

There's a lot going on in Paul Theroux's latest novel, his 32nd, Under the Wave at Waimea, about an aging big-wave rider who resides on Hawaii's renowned North Shore. The title evokes Malcom Lowry's 1947 novel Under the Volcano, whose 12 chapters were symbolic of months in a year and more. Theroux's story takes 13 chapters, which no doubt has meaning, not the least is bad luck.

Beyond the title, at first I wondered if it was a thinly disguised tale about Popeye the Sailor Man, since the protagonist is linked to the ocean, boasts tattoos on his arms and falls for a woman named Olive. Silly me.

The story is about a 62-year-old surfer, Joe Sharkey, a hero and icon, at the end of his best days, who in a drunken, pakalolo-induced moment accidentally kills a man riding his bike. Sharkey was driving in the dark with Olive, 20 years younger than he, a health care nurse. The event sends Sharkey into a funk and a gnarly wipeout at Waimea, a notoriously dangerous wave.

The remainder of the book presents Sharkey's detailed back story, eventually returning to the accident, which Sharkey refused to honestly address at the time. Olive is instrumental in helping him sleuth out the identify of the unknown victim in the hope that this knowledge will restore Sharkey's failing self identity.

At age 80, following a prodigious career of writing books, author Theroux remains a master at his craft. He's got the surf talk down, Hawaiian-pidgin style. His descriptions are rich and sensational. Sharkey serves as his alter ego: a macho surfer who does not read, whose only life is in the water. Why read when you can surf? It's not that he is illiterate, rather it serves no purpose for him. He's got all the sex and adulation he could possibly want. Although his age has begun to reveal that his popularity is as temporary as a wave that rises in the ocean, swells to a liquid mountain of energy only to turn to foam and disappear.

The up-and-comig young surfers don't know him, see him only as an old guy in the water. His day is past, Now what? The water has been not only his identity but his escape from an unfortunate childhood.

In one chapter -- the Year of the Rat -- Sharkey meets a woman surfer, May, from a Chinese family and believes he has finally fallen in love, a relationship with a woman that is more than sex. Her strong connection with her ohana (family) impresses Sharkey who has no family. He meets May's family at a Chinese restaurant in Honolulu during Chinese New Year. This scene is possibly my favorite in the book.

Along the way Sharkey meets up with an old friend, the famed, drug-addled gonzo writer Hunter S. Thompson who presents Sharkey with his lastest book, a Hawaiian tale called The Curse of Lono. Sharkey accepts the book knowing he will never read a page of it. Thompson figures in several chapters symbolizing celebrity from the perspective of a writer. Here is another theme: the misplaced values of celebrity and privilege. Thompson the writer is afraid of the ocean, yet the surf community holds a sacred paddle-out for him following his suicide. Sharkey the surfer receives a pass after he kills a man, because of his local surfing cred.

A surfer friend who has read Under the Wave told me that you could drop the parts about Hunter Thompson and it would be a better story. I believe you could easily eliminate 200 pages of this 400-page novel and still have a decent story. Yet I read the whole thing and enjoyed untangling themes and scenes that were worth the trip. The final chapters solve the mystery of Sharkey's victim, and teach him the lesson of compassion. In a metaphorical sense, Sharkey the Surfer Man finally eats his spinach.