Rumpus Book Club Member John Francisconi with thoughts on July’s Book Club pick, The Surf Guru by Doug Dorst.
Continuing on in my reading, I’m finding more and more enjoyment in The Surf Guru. This week I’ll give my thoughts on the five stories that follow “La Fiesta de San Humberto el Manor,” (“Vikings” – “Splitters”) one of which I highlight as the collection’s finest piece.
After “La Fiesta…” comes “Vikings,” a story about two twenty-somethings journeying, as twenty-somethings are wont to journey, north towards Alaska, fleeing authorities, the memory of girlfriends past, and, as is suggested by the story’s chilling final paragraph, any semblance of what once could be called home. The story revolves, loosely, around an abandoned baby, a gay, balding billiards player, and a lascivious, middle-aged, redheaded bar-hopper.
The first word that comes to mind when I think of “Vikings” is full. This story felt full. It gives backstory to its characters, as well as context for where their lives are heading, and, in some cases, ending. The main character’s friendship is oddly tender and rendered unsentimentally. There’s a moment where one emotionally and physically defends the other, but it doesn’t feel hackneyed, maybe because the friend doing the defending (Trace) is under the influence of some serious methamphetamine. The defense, then, can be attributed to his altered, unreasonable state of mind. Or, if you like, Trace’s defense while under the influence shows that his platonic love for Phil transcends the dense haze that obscures reality immediately after drug use.
I’d gladly follow Trace and Phil for their entire trip north, in a novel perhaps. Or a film. Is it just me or does Dorst seem to write with a screenwriter’s ear for dialogue and eye for description? His writing can, at times, be very literary, structurally and prosaically (as evidenced in the next story), but in general his sentences and paragraphs have all the vividness, to me, of a good movie scene or short film.
Following “Vikings” is “Jumping Jacks,” which, at three pages, is more like a song than a story. And what a song! Every sentence has all the energy (and then some) of the 4th of July fireworks that were lit in “Vikings” (sharp “like cracks of the bat, a roll on a snare drum, popcorn popping”). Bombs over Baghdad “pippitypop” and “batterclang.” Ignited jumping jacks act like firecrackers, “spray[ing] spark trails of red and purple and gold and blue as they sizzle and wheel and whirl and spit and squeal”. Four lines are given to poetic variations of the phrase “fucked up.” Even better, the story being told, so well, is so good.
It’s a childhood memory of an unwise decision quickly made, brought to the narrator’s mind as he watches America announce, loudly, unwisely, its Second Gulf War, on television. In the memory, the narrator is in the same position: spectator. He watches as his friend, Bunk (see: Bush), sets fire to six acres of forest, using alarmingly explosive jumping jacks. “Let it burn” Bunk says, deadly serious, suddenly determined that the land’s destruction is acceptable, showing no regard for anyone but himself and his newfound appreciation for ruin. The narrator runs home, having tried and failed to stamp out the fires. Years later, as he sits at home, watching fires of far greater magnitude, fires beyond his or any one person’s control, started by bigger kids, this memory, like a match, flares and fizzles out in the front of his mind. He sits in its smoke. In my opinion, “Jumping Jacks” is this collection’s masterpiece. If it didn’t make an impression on you, try reading it again, out loud.
The next story has Dorst playing, again, with form. 12 headings signal 12 scenes featuring the title character, Dr. Gachet. Each heading marks a different “portrait” of the doctor, an apt term given that both the doctor and the live-in artist who he is treating, are painters.
The story takes place in Paris, a location that sticks out like a sore thumb in the collection as a whole. Its setting works, though, and only adds to the romantic mood of the story. There is no personal romance (though one is thinly hinted at), but instead a romanticism of art, specifically painting, and its power. Dr. Gachet, a doctor of “uncertain health”, nurses a manic-depressive artist who creates works that, according to the doctor, make the world “more beautiful, more bearable”. The story juxtaposes the joy that art is capable of producing with the sorrow often felt by its creator during production.
It’s a thoughtful examination of the “tragic artist” figure, with the added element of giving equal (perhaps more) attention to the person trying to cure (however half-heartedly) the artist of his melancholy. Dr. Gachet assures the artist that melancholy “most inevitably… afflicts the great artists”, suggesting that melancholy, in its unexplainable way, can lead to the production of great art. Gachet’s (and so, Dorst’s) idea is persuasive. Do we not value the “mad geniuses”? Is there not often a creative impulse in the face of great sadness?
Two other focuses in this story: time’s passage and identity. Like every story before it, Dorst shows a key interest in the passage of time. It is not a knock against the collection to say that little in it feels immediate; everything feels weighted and tested by time, actions from the past, and concerns for the future. Time’s passage is represented, concretely, here by timestamps in each “portrait” heading.
Dr. Gachet has identity issues. He is an artist, but he’s a copycat artist, incapable of satisfyingly painting an original creation. Even his self-portrait is a replica of a portrait. He struggles with how he wants to sign his paintings, how he wants himself, on a very elemental level, to be known. The story’s ending also suggests that, even in his final days, the doctor cannot ever be happy with himself (unless in the presence of art, that is), concerned more with famous painter Toulouse-Lautrec’s “growth” than he ever, apparently, has been with his own. Is Gachet’s selflessness, his magnanimous “Dr.” mentality, noble or naïve? A personal strength or weakness?
“The Monkeys Howl, the Hagfish Feast” is about masculinity and the extreme lengths to which people are driven for love. It’s about love during wartime, love-as-reason-for wartime, in fact. It follows a rebel army on their way to a nameless Queen’s castle. Three rebels are given close focus in the story: the lovesick general, a sociopathic lieutenant, and a nameless “kid” prone to diddling with himself in the dead of night.
These three characters display three separate models of masculinity. In solitude, the general acknowledges his plentiful physical shortcomings: a belly that “lolls over the waistband of his shorts”, tics and twitches, a false nose. These blemishes probably don’t go unnoticed by the soldiers under his command, but the general will never publicly address them, for he barely addresses them in private. It is not like a man, particularly a man of power, to face such failings with sincerity. Men of power do not afford themselves the right to focus, seriously, on their misgivings, be they physical (see: above) or emotional (an unreasonable and costly love).
Alvaro, the lieutenant, is machismo personified. In my mind’s film adaptation, he is played by a swarthy, Spanish Sylvester Stallone imitation. He is a Spike TV man.
The Kid, however, bears the heart of a lover. A horny lover, to be sure, but a young lover, never loved, never a stealer of “secret kiss[es]”, appreciative of female beauty for its sexual and aesthetic value. The sight of the girls at the end of the story may “stiffen” him, but their beauty also lightens his steps, and inspires in him high hope that he will live to see more beauty yet.
The story’s interpretive ending is made all the more effective because it allows the reader to create the fate of the story’s only admirable and sympathetic character.
The next story, “Splitters”, completely satisfied my longing for experimentation. Photographs! Footnotes! In Dorst’s words (here) the story is about a “misanthropic botanist”. It takes the form of an edited and annotated “lost manuscript” of deceased (fictional) plant taxonomist, H.A. Quilcock. Quilcock’s manuscript, a series of scathing profiles of his contemporaries, is, in short, hilarious, and his frequent use of the (actual) word “lickspittle” had me cracking up. I don’t know what to say of the story except that it was a joy to read. Probably the collection’s most entertaining and enjoyable story thus far.
How are you enjoying The Surf Guru? Which story is your favorite so far, and why? Any duds? Was there a sympathetic character, besides the Kid, in “The Monkeys Howl”? How much fun was “Splitters”? Let’s discuss in the comments!
