Gary Smith on Kelly Slater

I'm in that frat-boy demographic, and hell yeah, I care.

But unfortunately, your point is right. The rest of the boys my age around me -- very, very few of them read anything aside from labels on fastfood menus or beer cans.

And ringer, I agree with you, too. I'd like some of the old SI.

And yeah, this piece was fantastic.

 

I read it last night. Just fantastic, as usual by Smith.

I'd love to know how much time he spent with Slater to get all that.

 

A better question is "I'd love to know how much time he spent sitting around on his ass waiting for Slater, who's always running late because he's aggressively overscheduled and way too damn nice about it for his own good, to get all that."

It was okay. It was not nearly the worst Slater article I've read this year (hello, EXPN: The Magazine!) but not nearly the best this year, either.

 

big smith fan here. this one didn't work for me. feels like smith tried to ratchet up the emotional punch by creating a straw man -- why do i surf? -- that slater never engaged in much for the piece, never mind his entire life. feels like smith constructed a puzzle that he found more interesting, and real, than slater did and i just didn't buy it. obviously i'm in the minority here, but even that door-in-the-sea conceit? i understand how it could've been irresistible to any writer, but it felt like a photo-op blown up with a significance it didn't merit. beautifully written, though.

 

Not sure what they think of the piece.

 

Not my favorite Smith piece, but still a hell of a lot better than the useless interview with him in ESPN the Magazine.

 

Could you link me to a better article on Slater?

(No snark intended, I'd like to read it.)

 

Just read this piece on a plane and I agree with AD: Smith can write a story about a tree and make it sound pretty, but his narrative engine didn't work in this case.

Why do I surf?

My guess: It's the money, stupid.

I kept waiting for something really deep but it never came. Maybe Slater wasn't introspective enough to answer the question, but if you're going to write the cliched "it's lonely at the top" tale, you need something really deep and unusual to make it stand out. This didn't, and by the end I was rolling my eyes. (Especially at the part about the ocean not responding during Slater's comeback because Slater hadn't answered the "Why do I surf?" question)

Sometimes if it's not there, it's not there. Smith should've played in straight instead of forcing a weak storyline. He certainly had the scenes and details to make a nice story, but like every talented writer, he tried too hard to make it a "Gary Smith" story. This is a rare case where I'd like to know Slater's reaction, because I wouldnt be surprised if he read the story and was a bit surprised himself.

In the end, the story is always what should stick out, not the writing. It's Gary Smith, so the writing is fantastic. But in this case, the story was weak.

 

Apparently, it was a few months further back than I remembered — the fall '08 issue of Water magazine (which itself is sadly RIP thanks to a standout job of managing by the Surfline people).

http://www.surfline.com/surfnews/article_bamp_400_v03.cfm?id=18571

Honestly, the SI piece ... and I'm trying to be nice about this ... was well-researched. A lot of biographies have been written about Kelly Slater, a couple by Kelly himself; I suspect a lot of the stuff in that article came from them rather than from directly interviewing him. It's not like he has the time (or the patience) to sit down for an interview with that kind of depth and introspectiveness.

 

I had never heard of him before, so the whole story was new to me. The "Why" device would have been fine, but there was no payoff - he didn't answer the question. As great as he is, this felt like a generic Gary Smith story, and I never thought there would be such a thing. You had his typical urgency and psychologizing complete with childhood background & redemption etc. Think of the Agassi article which I liked a lot better, and I'm sure other that I can't remember right now.

Also, when I was done, I still didn;t really care that much about the guy.

 

I agree, Guy.

I had reservations from this just reading the headline. Poor, Slater. Cant figure out why he surfs. And when you're talking about incentive, I would think somewhere you need to mention how much the guy has banked over his career. Especially considering how big a motivator money is in everything we do. Maybe Smith touched on it, but I cant remember.