Retort: “Bill Finnegan’s New Yorker story let Kelly Slater get away with too much!”

Take that Mr Pulitzer winner, writes angry bus driver from Lennox Head…

I have no beef with the New Yorker. Read it heaps. Never subscribed but I have a copy stashed away somewhere as a reminder of a little pilgrimage taken to visit Australian surf journalist Nick Carroll.

Caught the L90 from Dee Why junction to Newps with a hangover so disabling that when we finally got down to the business of a go-out I staggered around the carpark for long minutes in a wetsuit I’d managed to put on back to front.

Oh, he laughed all right.

But I ended up with a copy of the New Yorker and now I can’t remember whether he gave it to me out of pity or whether I trousered it while he wasn’t looking. 

It was full of that solid, objective authorial tone, described by Jonathan Franzen thusly: “The precision and the sobriety of which created a kind of negative emotional space, a suggestion of feeling without the naming of it”. The cool all-seeing eye of the author with his “finely wrought prose” –more Franzen – his “well educated white characters”, both written about and for.

I have no beef with Finnegan either. Barbarian Days was majestic. But his Slater essay blew goats, to use the Bribie vernacular, a completely different measure.

And finally the little reveal, a little aha moment where the author pulls back the curtain steps into the limelight to applause and all clap and turn sideways and mutter, “He’s ever so clever”.

By that measure Finnegan’s long-form reportage essay on Slater’s pool was note perfect. 

I have no beef with Finnegan either. Barbarian Days was majestic. But his Slater essay blew goats, to use the Bribie vernacular, a completely different measure. 

Allow an explanation. You get the first punch or the last punch. They are the only ones that count. And Finnegan played for the last punch. The definitive one.

On the question of a home-court advantage for Slater at his own pool Finnegan  allows this howler from Slater: “There’s a lot of guys on tour that have surfed this thing a lot more than I have” to pass without so much as a raised eyebrow.

Really?

A lot of guys on Tour have surfed Kelly’s wave a lot more than Kelly?

Like who?

Name five Kelly.

OK, name one.

With the cool, all-seeing objective authorial eye. With the weight of the famous New Yorker fact-checking team behind him, errors in fact and emphasis; lost opportunities to engage and unchallenged statements become egregious. 

He let Slater get away with too much. Maybe the “freebies” he took clouded his judgement. Who knows. 

On the question of a home-court advantage for Slater at his own pool Finnegan  allows this howler from Slater: “There’s a lot of guys on tour that have surfed this thing a lot more than I have” to pass without so much as a raised eyebrow.

Really?

A lot of guys on Tour have surfed Kelly’s wave a lot more than Kelly? Like who?

Name five Kelly.

OK, name one.

A lot of guys were surfing it for the first time. That is true. Practice waves were very hard to come by before the event. That is also true. And the home-court advantage turned out to be very, very real as Slater’s Mephistopheles, Adam Fincham , struggled with the inconsistencies of waves in the tub. Inconsistencies only Slater himself would have been familiar with. 

Maybe Bill and his New York elites use words differently to Bribie Island rednecks. Maybe I couldn’t understand his world nor him mine. We’d be like Wittgenstein’s lions to each other. 

Like, when I hear a word like democracy or democratize I hear the Greek root Demos, meaning the common people and them having say over a system of government or universal access to something.

But apparently Bill hears something else. He hears the Kelly Slater meaning. So when Kelly says the wave pool will “democratize surfing” he hears that it will make man-made waves available to the tech billionaires and hedge fund jerks who have fifty grand in loose change to buy a wave. 

Available to the common people?

Only in the  weirdest way possible when WSL tries a roll-out in Australia with the tubs pitched as high-end training centres for the Olympics it’ll be the taxpayer flensed of a few shekels to underwrite the cost.

Did you not ask about the business plan Bill? It really comes across like you were too busy admiring Kelly the “beautiful boy” whose looks have not deserted him.

Oh god, what a little bitch I am. 

You let him off the hook big time Bill calling him an “informed environmenalist”. Come now ambassador, you are really spoiling us now. These tubs, hungrily reliant as they are on the two scarcest commodities our environment provides, electricity and water, are a nightmare for dear old Mother Earth.

We’d need 15 or 20 spare ones to all live the life of a Kelly Slater. Maybe New Yorkers don’t see that? I really don’t know. Next time you’re down here I’ll drive you west and we’ll go visit a farm, tell ’em we are going to need megalitres of fresh water to play surfers in a tub. It won’t go down well I tune you, bru. Poor Old Mother Earth wakes up in the morning dreading another day  having to provide for the prodigality of Robert K. Slater.

Fact checkers. The famous New Yorker fact checkers. Did they slip out for a coffee when it came time to throw the fat in the fire? You said, “The 2019 Pipe Masters was cancelled, for vague and unpersuasive reasons”.

Incorrect. 

There were rumours of a massive tour change that were never confirmed and permit issues with the Honolulu bureacracy. Pipe Masters is on Dec 2019. 

I know it’s nit picking but it’s the fucking New Yorker. 

You said, “An enormous square pool in Australia opened recently, with a mechanism that is basically a giant plunger.”

Incorrect. The pool is circular/oval and it hasn’t opened. They ran a test over two days. It remains closed to the public and will be for the forseeable future.

It kills me to grind away like this, to have to do the fact-checking for the great and venerable New Yorker. But, fuck it Bill. 

You offered no objective observations on the WSL’s Grand Plan of making pro surfing accessible to the masses. You describe the pool as being “broadcast ready” but could make no judgement about the incomprehensible nature of it in terms of being a scoring sport?

Isn’t that a crucial part of the puzzle? If surfers can’t understand it, how can Joe Sixpack in buttefuck Missouri? 

OK. That divine little exchange with Australia’s pride and joy Steph Gilmore.

“As a purist,” Gilmore said, “would you be disappointed to see it not be an authentic representation of what surfing is?”

That one. What a gem. I did not see that coming. Who knew that perma-smile hid such a sharp, perceptive mind? 

And what did Bill do with that delicate little philosophical invitation, that perfect pass floating in a summer sky towards the touchdown line. 

He dropped it like a soft boiled egg. 

Purist? Who me?  He cowered. The author of the best purist memoir in surfing, won a freaking Pulitzer for it, took cover.

He squibbed it so hard. 

That was the chance to get deep with the person who makes Kelly’s wave look like the divine dance that once only nature provided. 

Gone. 

Sorry Bill, your book was fab but the essay blew goats. Too much Slater Kool-Aid, not enough fact checking.