Chris Dixon (5)
Autor(a) de Ghost Wave: The Discovery of Cortes Bank and the Biggest Wave on Earth
Para outros autores com o nome Chris Dixon, ver a página de desambiguação.
Obras por Chris Dixon
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Conhecimento Comum
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Estatísticas
- Obras
- 1
- Membros
- 59
- Popularidade
- #280,813
- Avaliação
- 3.3
- Críticas
- 3
- ISBN
- 32
Ghost Wave is—despite blurbs and reviews to the contrary—very much a "surfing book." Dixon is a surfing journalist, and he writes as if the reader already understands terms like home break, carve, slingshot, goofy foot, waterman, hold down, and the like. The people he's writing about are people he, himself, knows well, so his introductions of them to the reader (and the characterizations that would make one stand out from another in the reader's mind after those introductions) are given short shrift. By the later chapters, I was having difficulty keeping track of who was who in the large cast of characters. "You can't tell the players without a scorecard," the hawkers at the ballpark used to holler, and Dixon neglects to provide the reader with one.
The physics and technique of big-wave surfing, how they differ from surfing on less momentous waves, and why an open-ocean location like Cortes Bank poses unique hazards to surfers never get the kind of "101"-level explanation that they deserve. The lifestyles and psychology of big-wave surfers, and the conflicts within the community about whether, and how much, to share information get ongoing attention from Dixon, but he's too much a member of the community to step back and lay out the bigger picture dispassionately.
I enjoyed Ghost Wave while I was reading it, but (even as I write this, less than a week after finishing it) I find that very little of it has remained with me. It's not that kind of a book. If surfing has found its equivalent David Halberstam or John Feinstein—someone who can take non-participants deep inside the sport and the minds of whose who devote their lives to it—I haven't found them. Yet.… (mais)