The Life - by Malcolm Knox
"They built you out of stories... how many times you banged some groupies in the jacuzzi, how many trips you took in one night, how many this, how many that, competing with each other to make DK into the biggest, craziest, wackiest mother what ever come by and none of it was true, none of it was you."
The Life is Malcolm Knox' fourth novel and follows the rise of Coolangatta surfer, Dennis 'DK' Keith. DK is the main protagonist and narrates the story which is told in alternating strands. One strand is set in the present day where a biographer has mysteriously landed on his doorstep to write an exclusive article on the now-fat and reclusive surfer. The other charts the rise of DK from foundling to charismatic cult hero of Coolangatta who tries to maintain order while subsisting in a precarious mental state.
Sound familiar? In telling the story Knox draws heavily from historical fact: MP is the obvious starting point for DK, while other characters, FJ and Tink, are barely concealed versions of PT and Rabbit. The story closely parallels the life of MP, fact jostling with fiction, until Knox' imagination takes reign moving it beyond its factual framework and into pure fiction.
The early part of the novel is spent telling DK's backstory. Surfers may be familiar with it yet the introduction is necessary to get inside the head of DK and understand his idiosyncrasies. The prose is choppy and angular, sentences end unexpectedly or start without forethought. It's not easy reading at times. One moment DK is narrating in the first person, next in the third person as if he is talking to himself, hovering above as events unfold around him without his control.
DK is disgusted by surfing's burgeoning professionalism yet is too competitive to turn his back on it. He finds himself unwittingly caught up in the make-believe world of surf stardom, struggling to equate who he is with the mythical figure they construct of him. In this sense The Life is a parable for the dangers of celebrity culture, a tragedy set in an age before handlers and media managers.
It is also a snapshot of Australia at a particular time, when seaside towns changed under the hands of developers and money began to roll in. Coolangatta is the archetypal Australian surf town and it is rendered beautifully by Knox: the Patch, the drugs, the fights, the inhabitants who drop everything when the swell is up.
Admirably, Knox makes no concession to the non-surfer - the language is crude and entirely peculiar to surfers. The Life is written by someone who's sat behind the rocks at Snapper, understands the sand flow at Rainbow Bay, and has spent a lot of time around surfers. In stark contrast to Breath by Tim Winton, which contained florid descriptions of 'men dancing upon waves', The Life is written in the language of the line-up: 'I done this', 'yous done that'.
As the tale slowly unfolds the two strands of Dennis Keith's life draw closer together, yet the reader knows only as much as DK's addled mind will grasp. It is not till the very end that the heartbreaking truths of his life are exposed to him.
Despite the popularity of surfing there is a distinct lack of quality surf fiction in Australia. Breath being the only notable work that comes to mind. With The Life Malcolm Knox fills that void, and then some.
The Life is published by Allen & Unwin and retails for $32.99. Buy it online here.
Comments
Sounds good, Stu! How about an interview with the author?
Heh heh...already done Al! Transcribing it as we speak.
Good one Stu. Heard this book reviewed last week and was going to let you know about this one just in case, but forgot the title.
Ah, old age, it's a beautiful thing.
The review was by a non-surfer and he was pretty complimentary and thought that the non-surfer would also enjoy it.
Here you go Al, an interview with Malcolm Knox: http://www.swellnet.com.au/news/2362-five-minutes-with-malcolm-knox-auth...
Where'd you hear the review B&F? Been curious to read or hear reviews yet only found Geordie Williamson's at The Australian. Nothing in the SMH, which I thought odd as Knox often writes for them.
The review in the Weekend Oz bordered on the hilarious, just the kind of worthiness that a wordy "intellectual" who knows nothing about the subject he is reviewing, which is often sport,tends to churn out. Mr Geordie Williamson writes about the main character's "widly unconstrained id," which from my limited knowledge of psychological theory is Freud's term for the instinctive part of our personalities, while he says Mr Malcolm Knox's writing style is "liberated from bourgeois order and temperance." And so it goes ...
Id is a funny little word that often turns up in supposedly serious writing about activities like surfing with the idea being, I suppose, that those who partake of it are wild and wacky dudes, like way out there, man - and that's a cliche that those who never go to the beach find easy to perpetuate. Anyway, amongst all the writerly wanking, Mr Williamson seemed to like the book - and so good luck to Mr Knox.