Maybe you can guess, maybe you can't. He ain't
pretty like Chas but he's good!
Sean Doherty! Did you guess already? Of course
you did! There ain’t a surf fan who doesn’t pine for Sean’s spiked
analysis of each day’s surf competition.
If you haven’t seen, met, or sighted a photograph of Sean, you
must let me describe. He’s a little under the old six-foot measure
(more than a little, but let’s be kind! Short people ain’t got the
humour us regs do), he has the strong torso of a lifelong surfer
(which is surprising because he likes to put away beer), must be
very close to forty years old, his crown is relieved of the burden
of hair, and as for his surfing ability… yes. He
surfs!
And he’s good enough to combo a wave from mouth to ass and enter
and exit a tube. On his passport are enough stamps for Hawaii to
guarantee his bone fides when it’s over four foot.
Sean is also the author of the definitive biography, MP: the
life of Michael Peterson. I feel so bad when I think of this
book because when it came out in 2003 I was just launching
Stab with my friend Sam McIntosh. We both worked with Sean
at emap and while we enjoyed, very much, his company, we felt his
style at Tracks was on the wrong side of the
surfer-as-patriot line. All those old-school metaphors!
And so when I reviewed the book, which is something like an
historical artefact in hindsight, I concentrated not on the skill
of the man who pulled it all together but on the character failings
of the surfer it covered. And when I saw Sean at some kinda movie
premiere shortly afterward he wore his heart on his sleeve and it
was bloodied as all hell.
“I was disappointed with what you wrote,” he said.
I acted tough (“Well, fuck, man, that’s what I felt”) but I
burned inside. What book had I written? What compelling paragraph
had I constructed, even?
Anyway, times change, and over the last couple of years, in
particular, I’ve grown to love Sean’s reportage. He’s been in the
biz long enough to have good contacts. People trust him. He
listens. He watches. He’ll drink at the bar all night if the bro’s
are in a fever and so he is included among the pro surfing
fraternity, unlike me who constantly frets over his weight and
panics if he isn’t asleep by midnight.
In every other sport there’s a handful of writers who define a
sport and who write its history, and by history I don’t mean in
retrospect, I mean when it’s happening. Sean is surfing’s poet
laureate. It’s man of letters.
And so I had many questions to ask. For instance, what is good
surf writing?
“The act of surfing itself is quite boring to write about and
few people ever do it well,” he says. “My pet hate is the
over-romanticising of riding a wave – gliding like a dolphin,
soaring like an albatross, that kinda shit – turning surfing into
some existential masturbatory act. I like writing that illuminates
the characters who do it, because most people I know who surf tend
to be unhinged in some way while magnificent in others.”
Sean is the only person that I’m aware of that
actually…reports… from surf events. Why does he think this
is so?
“No one else seems stupid enough. The great conundrum in writing
surf online for chicken feed is that when you’re being paid $150
for a story you fall into the trap of writing $150 worth of pure
mediocrity. The problem then comes when the Internet keeps your
horseshit contest report alive for eternity with your byline stuck
to it in 40-point type. The trick is to write like your story is
going to hang around and either help you or haunt you forever. It’s
the same principle you should apply to all the menial jobs in your
life… lavish the detail on the small things and the big things take
care of themselves.”
Does he enjoy this lack of competition?
“I occasionally feel like the last Tasmanian Tiger wandering
around the cage in Hobart Zoo,” he says. “It was great for a while
when guys like Steve Shearer were writing and there was a bit of a
rising tide happening but those days sadly seem long gone.”
Sean’s reporting style is of the purist kind (“I’m the wanker
with the notebook,” he says). He isn’t in the media scrum and he
eschews the use of cameras.
“The better stories tend to gestate inside bars, in car parks
and at parties,” he says. “And I like quirky observational shit.
Like, on day one at Snapper this year, the first heat of the first
event under the new ASP, and their quest to modernise pro surfing
kicked off with Creed’s Arms Wide Open blaring over the PA. It was
raining cheese and that was truly a gift from above. You couldn’t
make that shit up. But it’s always fun fossicking for a crumb of
meaning amongst the general soullessness of pro surfing… and even
more fun thrusting meaning upon things that don’t have it. It’s
like making a dog talk.”
I say to Sean, I’ve noticed your writing has become more
sophisticated over the last year. Have their been external
influences? Have you been reading more?
“The only thing I read growing up was the back of an Orchy
bottle so I’ve spent my later years trying to backfill the
classics,” he says. “I’m pretty voracious these days trying to
catch up. It’s amazing how elastic and regenerative the brain can
be even after 15 years of sticky green punishment.”
I feel like the best writing comes when you can accurately
record, on the page, how you actually feel. So often, I write
something, and it doesn’t communicate exactly what I want it to
communicate. What about Sean? Is he happy with his results? The cat
is honest.
“Not particularly. It all seems a bit disjointed and lost and I
don’t really seem to have a voice. I also tend to fall into the
habit of plagiarising narratives from whatever book I’m reading at
the time and overlaying it on whatever the fuck is going on in the
water at the time. It works sometimes… other times not so much. I
was reading Mailer’s The Fight during Pipeline last year
with Mick and Kelly going for the title and it fitted snugly. Mick
and Kelly resolved nicely into Foreman and Ali respectively. One of
my favourite characterisations ever came from this book when Mailer
described how Foreman dreamed of pummeling Ali and turning him
into a “long thin dying clown”. Other times it doesn’t work quite
as well. I was reading Morrissey’s autobiography during Snapper
this year, but sadly there’s a shortage of misanthropic dandies on
tour these days to play the role.”
Is there any ultimate aim in his writing?
“I never really work with a higher purpose, which may explain
why I’m stuck writing about surfing,” he says.
What are the keys to becoming a great reporter?
“I suppose you have to highlight the distinction here that you
are reporting on surfing and not on American interventionism in the
Middle East or a car crashing into an orphanage, so you got to make
it fun. Again, it’s just surfing.”
And what advice could first-class surf reporter Sean Doherty
give someone wanting to break into the game?
“For the love of God, don’t.”
Read Sean Doherty’s work on coastalwatch.com and at
Surfer magazine. Click here!
