Early surf fiction and the white worldview

Abstract

This paper examines the first 90 years (from 1849 to 1940) in the development of surf fiction. It focuses on how, at the genre’s beginnings, the view taken of surfing was shaped by the colonial worldview, with its attendant super-narrative of white cultural and individual superiority, marginalisation of non-white traditions, and disrespect for others’ values and practices. The period can be divided into two phases. The first extended from 1849 to 1920 with pioneering novels by Herman Melville, R. M. Ballantyne and others, including Jack London’s ‘The Kanaka Surf’ (1916), the long short story which we claim brought surf fiction to a new-found maturity in terms of cultural respect. The second phase, from 1921 to 1940, included lesser writers Stuart Martin, Don Blanding and Claude La Belle whose novels continued to trace the white world’s attempt to come to terms with the cultural and racial influence that surfing had begun to exert. Most surf-depicting fiction in this first 90 years was set in Hawaii and written in the Adult Adventure or Boys Adventure genres. This article examines how early surf fiction traced the impact of indigenous-based surfing on imperial-based white thinking, and proposes that some creative writers were sensitive to the on-going cultural appropriation of surfing and the lessons surfing could teach the colonialists about individual, racial and cultural respect. When the earliest creative writers tried to surf, they admitted they were inferior, but they admired Pacific Islander expertise. During the first 90 years of surf fiction, the narrative perspective moved from the colonial observer gaze to the participant view. Fiction sought to outline the growing Western awareness that surfing would be a key influence on cross-cultural thinking.