The Surf Guru

by Dorst, Doug

• ISBN13: 9781594487613
• ISBN10: 1594487618
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781101456361
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-07-15
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

A book of brilliant, adventurous stories from the award-winning Doug Dorst. With the publication of his debut novel, Alive in Necropolis, Doug Dorst was widely celebrated as one of the most creative, original literary voices of his generation-an heir to T.C. Boyle and Denis Johnson, a northern California Haruki Murakami. Now, in his second book, The Surf Guru, his full talent is on display, revealing an ability to explore worlds and capture characters that other writers have not yet discovered. In the title story, an old surfing-champion-turned-surfwear- entrepreneur sits on his ocean-front balcony watching a new generation of surfers come of age on the waves, all but one of whom wear wet suits emblazoned with the Surf Guru's name. An acid-tongued, pioneering botanist who has been exiled from the academy composes a series of scurrilous (and hilarious) biographical sketches of his colleagues and rivals, inadvertently telling his own story. A pair of twenty-first- century drifters course through a series of unusual adventures in their dilapidated car, chased west out of one town and into the next, dreaming of hitting the Pacific. Dorst's characters have all successfully cultivated a particular expertise, and yet they remain intent on moving toward the horizon, seeking hope in something new. Likewise, each of Dorst's stories is a virtuoso performance balancing humor and insight, achieving a perfect pitch, pulsing with a gritty and punchy, distinctly American realism- and yet always pushing on into the unexpected, taking us some place new.

Author Biography

Doug Dorst is the author of Alive in Necropolis, runner- up for the 2008 PEN/Hemingway Award, winner of the Emperor Norton Award, and San Francisco's 2009 One City One Book selection. Winner of a 2008 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, Dorst is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. His work has appeared in McSweeney's, Ploughshares, Epoch, and other journals, as well as in the anthology Politically Inspired. He is also a former Jeopardy champion. A longtime resident of San Francisco, Dorst now lives in Austin, Texas, where he teaches creative writing at St. Edward's University.

Table of Contents

The Surf Guru	p. 1
Dinaburg's Cake	p. 17
La Fiesta de San Humberto el Menor	p. 55
Vikings	p. 87
Jumping Jacks	p. 113
Twelve Portraits of Dr. Gachet	p. 117
The Monkeys Howl, the Hagfish Feast	p. 137
Splitters	p. 159
The Candidate in Bloom	p. 205
What is Mine Will Know My Face	p. 215
Little Reptiles	p. 237
Astronauts	p. 251
Acknowledgments	p. 277
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