Surf Nation

Top class job application

Courtesy of the fine folk at RollonFriday, here is a sensitive, well-judged and highly impressive job application.

 

A Cain-Camus-Bolano surf check

I am in a warm place where there are waves. I surf them when I can, which is often. When I'm not surfing, I read. On the way here, I read The Sea Close By and Summer in Algiers by Albert Camus. Before that I finished The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain and now I am immersed in 2666 by Roberto Bolano.

Is there a link to surfing in any of the foregoing?

In Cain's brutal and bleak novel, Malibu is mentioned. Surfboards aren't. In the mesmerising 2666, I keep expecting a reference to surfing. Everything else is present, so why not surfing? In Summer in Algiers, surfing is present by virtue of its absence; the descriptions of so hot and oceanic a place, where everyone swims, cannot but prompt thoughts of surfing. And in The Sea Close By, there is this:

Each wave brings its promise, always the same.  What does the wave say? If I were to die, in the midst of cold mountains, unknown to the world, cast off by my own people, my strength at last exhausted, the sea would at the final moment flood into my cell, come to raise me above myself and help me die without hatred.

Albert Camus, writer, goalkeeper, existentialist - and sage of the meaning of waves.