Caught Inside : A Surfer's Year on the California Coast

Rating:
Summary: Life of a surfer, this is it.
Review: Duane takes "surf literature" to new level. And it is a level that all authors should look to. He is able to describe the events in his life as a surfer in a very simple, conversational fashion. It makes for a great work. This makes it fun and exciting. A wonderful book that shows the joys, and sorrows of loving the surf and coastal environment.

Rating:
Summary: from Chapter 15
Review: "The wave, ruler edge in the bright winter dawn, feathered ahead as I flew; cold, wet speed as the lip thinned to ten yards of spray, ready to break. Two toes off the tip trimming toward that shaking fringe, then carving high and, just as the whole wave lept forward, soaring along the breaking back. And, in that intant's tableau -- a telescopic view down a glimmering glass wall below a snocapped green mountain and a morning rainow -- I became airborne just as a truly enormous dolphin (perhaps nine feet long) exploded from the wave ahead, its shining gray body for a moment in flight. We both hung in the rising sun long enough for me to shout out loud in astonishment and lose all balance, tumble into the foam as the dolphin speared the surface and vanished. I bobbed about on my back, stared at the dark blue sky and tried to think of a God to whom I could give thanks."

Rating:
Summary: Caught Inside
Review: Of all the surf books I've read, this is the most beautifully written and evocative of the transcendent nature of the sport. Duane's writing is of the highest order, and reveals the eleiagic quality of the experience of sitting in the ocean on a piece of styrofoam, doing nothing. His precise introspection might help a lot of the women in male surfers' lives understand, or at least get a glimpse of what motivates their boyfriends/husbands to get up so early in the morning. An inexpressibly beautiful book about an inexpressibly beautiful sport.

Rating:
Summary: Writer who surfs or surfer who writes?
Review: Let's get this straight. It does not matter that this book is about surfing. It is so well written and picks its scenes and themes so well that it is a pure joy to read. Duane is the classic American writer in that he DOES something interesting and THEN writes about it well. Twain, Hemingway, London, get it? Ok, I surf and the fact that it was (mostly) about surfing made it that much better. Duane strikes such a good balance between the athete's "zone" of confidence and a writer's angst that you can't help but like him. He thinks well, then shuts off his brain and goes for it. Well, you can see I liked this one. By the way, his new book, "Looking for Mo" is excellent too. And I don't, nor would I ever, "go climb a rock".

Rating:
Summary: Is a "no star" rating possible?
Review: I dare you to read the preface and not want to vomit. My reactions are: "this guy gets published?" and "did he ever take a basic writing course?" Some examples of his skills: "...wonderfully human gourmet ghetto..." "...presumed unintimate..." "...painfully successful..." Save yourselves my friends. This book is not worth lifting, let alone trying to read. I envy Mr. Duane for getting money to "write" this drivel. I wish I were so lucky.

Rating:
Summary: A Fine Attempt
Review: Daniel Duane succeeds at many moments in this book at expressing what every surfer who wasn't born on a board and isn't quite yet a pot-bellied longboarder thinks and feels on a daily basis. There are times when Duane manages to sum up a whole month's worth of solutions to surfing problems in a single sentence. He nailed the difficulty of explaining surfing to non-surfers, the hard to accept but obvious reason why the most crowded breaks are so crowded (perfect waves), the heartbreaking inconsistency of the ocean, and the way a surfer finds it difficult to think of anything else. The only problem is Duane chose an impossible task. He seemed at times to be filling pages with the thoughts a mind generates sitting on a board during a long lull or sitting around your house waiting for swell. While an important part of the life, those tend to be boring times, and not always worth reading about. The history lessons and wildlife observations are interesting and occaisionally poetic, but cannot mask the truth. All surfers try to keep conversations about surfing alive with the peripheral elements to interest non-surfers. It doesn't work though, because each surfer, no matter what their attitude, knows in his/her heart there is a single meaning to why they surf; the feeling of riding a great wave. Everything else is just a means to get there as comfortably and nobly as possible. I'm sorry Daniel, try as we might, they'll never understand. Caught Inside is a valiant effort full of inspiration. Unfortunatelty it can't quite bridge the gap between surfing's reality and that of the rest of the world. The Philadelphia Enquirer says the book, "Looms on the horizon like a hurricane in a summer without waves." What else needs to be said ? They just don't get it. Maybe they're not meant to.

Rating:
Summary: Proust Goes Surfing
Review: If you like dense poetic prose about seashore flora and fauna you will love this book. If you want to read about sufing look elsewhere; less than 10% of the book is about surfing.

Rating:
Summary: Found what I couldn't put in words.
Review: I started surfing the San Francisco to Santa Cruz coast line back in 1963. I could never put into words the the beauty, joy and sense of freedom I experienced.Thank you Daniel Duane your book is everything and more.

Rating:
Summary: ..let's remember late Joe Wolfson, "Dr.360"
Review: Let this exemplar collection serve as memorium for Joseph Wolfson,CA surfer legend who died this Feb..at 50.

Rating:
Summary: Caught Inside is a great book!
Review: Duane does a superb job of narrating his experience exploring the sport AND the world around him. He does this in a very reflective and piognant manner. This book is full of wonderful allusions to "explorers" that have come before. It is fair to say he may be the Thoreau of a later generation. I found myself looking for some of the books that he makes reference to, many of which are good as well. Though this is a book about surfing, it is also about much more.