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All for a Few Perfect Waves: The Audacious Life and Legend of Rebel Surfer Miki Dora, by David Rensin
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, April 2008: Defining the life of legendary surf icon Miklos "Miki" Dora can be as elusive as the man himself. The self-proclaimed "King of Malibu" has been compared to trailblazers such as Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, and Pablo Picasso for providing the archetype of the counterculture surfer. Yet he was also a convicted felon who rarely missed an opportunity to scam even his closest friends. All for a Few Perfect Waves meets this conflicted figure head on, as David Rensin provides a rare look at the famously guarded Dora through hundreds of interviews with those who knew him best. The result is a portrait of a life wedged between hyperbole and vulnerability. His beguiling personality charmed many, but few relationships and situations were ever deemed off-limits to a con. Happily, any judgments are left up to the reader, as Rensin's engaging narrative seeks only to explore the inner workings of a man who truly lived life on his own terms. --Dave Callanan An Exclusive Q&A with David Rensin, Author of All for a Few Perfect Waves When profiling an elusive figure like Miki Dora, the "why" is evident, but not the "how." How did you manage to gain unfettered access to Dora lore? Rensin: To gain access to people, stories and material like letters, faxes, emails, photos, and interviews, I had to first gain everyone's trust - not an easy task when you consider that Miki spent his life mostly avoiding the press, complaining about it, telling his friends to not sell him about and not talk about him. And, when someone did break through and write about him, as I did for the August 1983 issue of California magazine - for a long time the only mainstream press story about Miki; the rest were in surf genre magazines, including interviews, and Dora's own stories about improbable international adventures - he was likely to threaten a lawsuit. (But never win.) I started with Miki's father, who sent me to Harry Hodge, the administrator of Miki's estate. Harry is from Australia, and he was head of Quiksilver in Europe, so we met several times when he came through Los Angeles. It really came down to the human connection. We hit it off. He told me what he thought a biography of Miki would have to entail: not trashing Miki, not whitewashing him, not sensationalizing. And the book still had to be warts and all - otherwise it would be seen as dishonest. I told him I could do that. I wouldn't dance on Miki's grave, but I also had to be totally independent. I would not let anyone control the story. My loyalty would be to the story, whatever I found. I also told him that I thought an oral history, with some narrative connective tissue, would work best because I could gather 360 degrees of opinion about and experiences with Miki. I thought that was the only fair way to go with someone who had such a multi-faceted personality, who compartmentalized so well. If I took a side, I'd get strong reaction against it from some quarter. Better to be non-judgmental about a character about whom everyone was very judgmental. This helped really put people at ease, and allowed me to get the best and most honest material. No one felt they had to defend a point of view. And though it might run counter to the classic biography, I didn't want to figure out Miki, but to let his mystique remain. Harry liked that and passed me back to Miki's father, Miklos Dora, Sr. We talked, I told him the same. I knew I had to be absolutely authentic with him and he was authentic in return. He had read the California magazine piece and thought it had captured Miki's character. He also told me I'd been "a little hard" on his son as well. I gave him some of my other books to read. He liked them and gave me the go-ahead. Now came the hard part: finding people who knew Miki and convincing them to trust me to do a non-judgmental book that wouldn't focus on the easy "outlaw" aspects of his life that landed him in jail for a short while, nor treat him only as a faded old celebrity surfer from Malibu. The idea was to do a portrait of the man, and in so doing, explain the myth. Harry had told me that when discussing the book with Miki over twenty years of lunches and dinners, Miki said he wanted to be thought of as more than just a surfer. As a journalist who had spent some years surfing, but not a surf journalist, I felt I could give him that bigger tableau. In the end, the tone of my interviews, the questions I asked, the passion I shared, and my willingness to listen instead of try to fit the story to preconceived ideas won out and people trusted me and word spread. I got over one million words of interviews from more than 300 people on five continents. I guess it worked. How do you think the famously guarded Miki would react to this book? Rensin: I was often asked how Miki would react to the book; would he even want it done? Miki had always emphasized how privacy was important. He supposedly hated the commercialization of surfing and his name. These were strong and authentic themes in his life. But they were not absolute. Did he hate being photographed? I've seen many, many snapshots of him. Did he hate surfboard companies and clothing companies? Not if they didn't try to rip him off. Yes, there was a general discontent and desire to be left alone at times--and he wanted empty waves--but his actions were often situational, not carved in stone. I think that publicly Miki would say he didn't want a book, but privately he would want it. He had to be able to put it down, to always have plausible deniability. Part of what I had to do to gain access to interviews was prove that Miki in fact wanted a legacy. I could do that because I had the correspondence as evidence. He had talked with potential book collaborators and had done some interviews. He met with people who wanted to make movies of his life. It never worked out. Some people say he just gamed these suitors for money, and in some cases that is true. But not always. I think Miki never did his book/movie because had to live his life instead of write about it, and because he wanted too much to be in control. I respect that: the wanting to get it just how he wants it. It's his life after all. He didn't want anyone interpreting it. But he had difficulty trusting co-authors. I suppose he was simply waiting for the right person with the right point of view to come along, but as an experienced collaborator, I wonder how well he would have weathered the ups and downs inherent in that kind of working relationship. It's never easy. In the end, Miki left the evidence of his life (letters, notebooks, etc.) that he could easily have trashed. He knew someone would inevitably do something. He called it the vultures picking at his bones. Anyway, does it matter whether or not Miki would have wanted the book? I don't think so. How would he have reacted? He'd have said I blew it, that I could have gotten the real story if only I'd taken the time. But he'd have carried the book everywhere, showed it around and, depending on the situation, would have said he hated it or loved it. That's Miki. How was Miki able to reconcile the fact that he played such a significant role in rise of 60's surf cinema? Considering that these films created the surfing population explosion that Miki loathed, it would seem that he made quite a complex bed for himself. Rensin: I don't think Miki played that big a role in the rise of surf cinema. The irony is simply that at a time when he was most loudly decrying the exploitation of surfing because Gidget and other beach party films had crowded his beloved Malibu, he was also taking money to be a stunt rider and technical advisor. Maybe his ego couldn't let him stay away. Maybe it was the free lunch at the craft services table. Maybe it was his notion that he could subvert from the inside by acting weird as an extra in the background. Maybe he met some women he wanted. Maybe it was just fun, there was no surf, and he needed to do something that day. Later in life he realized that he had in some small way aided and abetted, but I don't think he wasted much time with regret. Miki has been compared to everyone from Jesus to James Dean. However, after reading All for a Few Perfect Waves, I found my own comparison: he was the Tyler Durden of surfing. Akin to the Fight Club character, surfers cannot always condone Dora's antics, but we quietly support his pursuit for point-break perfection. Do you agree? Rensin: I agree. Miki, like Durden, was that sage of harsh reality who made his own way, and the hell with the rest of you. Like Durden he was not completely a loner, and was willing to bring along new initiates if they attracted him with their own inner search. Often while writing the book, I kept thinking about Fight Club and how the rule never to talk about Fight Club was Miki's rule for himself. Many of Durden's aphorisms apply as well to Miki: "The things you own end up owning you." "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything." And my favorite, "Fight club exists only when fight club begins and when it ends." Or, as Miki famously said: "When there's surf I'm totally committed. When there's none, it doesn't exist." How important was Dora's close and inflammatory relationship with Greg Noll? Rensin: Dora's relationship with Greg Noll endured fifty choppy years and I think it was an anchor, a familiar place to return to. Noll just didn't take crap from Dora, yet he appreciated the rascal in him. Noll had it, too. They met as kids. They were of an era and mindset. Noll never wanted anything from Dora. When they made "Da Cat" boards, he endured the games Dora played. And he wasn't afraid - after Dora would pay him a visit at home - to ask to check his suitcase for the silverware. He knew what Dora was about, and he let him know he knew, but he never shunned him for it. They could appreciate each other and that love, if you want to call it that, grew over time. Also, Noll is physically imposing. You don't mess with Noll. Dora didn't. What is your favorite Dora story or experience? Rensin: It's really tough to come up with a favorite Dora story or experience. Overall, I love his audacity, his willingness to go against the grain, to not be bound by the rules, to so cannily manipulate an innocent surf media to his advantage after they'd helped rip away his paradise of empty waves. He was always pulling stunts like wearing a see-though plastic mask, or letting his groupies chauffeur him around, or having what he called his "party kit" (everything from a glass with ice cubes to a tuxedo, so he could crash Beverly Hills doings with ease), to various little cons and pranks (baby chicks in the lifeguard tower). There are too many to go into here. But I guess if I had to chose, a favorite would be Miki being baptized in the Mormon church when he lived in New Zealand in 1975. He played on the eagerness of two young missionaries and led them on a merry chase. I'm sure he was authentically curious about their vision of the universe, but I think he was definitely tongue-in-cheek. And best of all, he went through with the immersion. Dora was living theater. The idea, the best approach now and then, was to sit back and enjoy the show.
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From Publishers Weekly
In this vivid biography, Rensin (The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up) takes on a daunting task: to clarify the clouded myth of legendary surfer Miki Dora. Growing up in post-WWII California, the half-Hungarian Dora came to surfing in the 1950s and '60s, when it was still an oddball pastime of random kooks riding longboards made out of redwoods off nearly empty Los Angeles beaches. Dora's grace and signature style brought him attention as surfing grew into the central image of the California endless summer. Yet Dora was no ordinary beach bum, and his restless intelligence led him around the world in search of waves as yet unsullied by the masses. Dora also possessed a darker side and had no qualms about ripping off even his closest friends. His credit card scams eventually landed him in prison. Rensin faces a difficult task in tracking down an elusive and paranoid target (Dora died of pancreatic cancer in early 2002). After a muddled introduction in which Dora is compared to everyone from Muhammad Ali to the beat poets, Rensin lets Dora's friends, lovers and rivals tell the story. The result brings a remarkable focus to a man whose greatest accomplishments were written on water. Dora's life tracked the explosion of celebrity culture and it's hard not to sympathize with Dora's ambivalence about his fame. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Product details
Hardcover: 475 pages
Publisher: It Books; 1st Edition edition (April 8, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0060773316
ISBN-13: 978-0060773311
Product Dimensions:
6 x 1.6 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.3 out of 5 stars
71 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#892,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Even though I was 13 years younger than Miki Dora, I still remember him showing up at our surf spot (circa '63, '64) at Sunset when the surf would inexplicably be down at Malibu. We were pretty good surfers at the time (Hoshi Surf Club), but not in the same league as Dora, so we would respectively get out of the water and sit on the cliffs while Dora and his coterie of 'hanger-ons' would put on a show for the crowd.Love this account of Dora's life, especially since it's told in vignettes of people who knew him. This is my second reading of Rensin's biography.
I know I did. But in the end, after Mr. Dora scams many across the globe, gets caught, does time, finds *some* post-penitentiary maturation and solace on Jeffries Bay in South Africa (and Biarritz, France), and copes with pancreatic cancer (which brought tears to my eyes), I was glad to have read this book to see some form of redemption in his character. What a romp! While I don't surf, Miki's divorced parents and hard-headed Eastern-European father definitely resonated with my own experience and his quest for tranquility by water and dislike of corporate culture resonated even more.The book itself can be somewhat confusing given the amount of contributions--there are a lot of stories to follow--but hats off to David Rensin for the monumental task of bringing it all together. (In retrospect, I wonder if childhood trips to Malibu ever afforded a glimpse of Da Cat from afar.)"All for a Few Perfect Waves" was recommended on a SUP forum along with Susan Casey's books, Blue Mind, Soul of an Octopus, Jaimal Yogis' books, Chris Dixon's "Ghost Wave", Daniel Duane's "Caught Inside", and so on.
Rensin has really done his homework and found out every minute detail there is to know about Miki Dora. He paints an enticing picture of the guy and it's worth it to know all these facts about the guy. And, to his credit, he doesn't glorify the guy too much, but paints a portrait of the narcissistic character that he must have been. I don't like Miki Dora after reading this. The writing isn't spellbinding, but it is interesting and seems quite accurate. It isn't like Rensin's goal was to 'put an end to the legend,' or 'tell the inside truth' about Miki. Because he's really nice about everything he says. Still, the guy comes off as a total jerk who looked pretty good out there on a board and pulled off some daredevil board maneuvers, and some nice postures on the board that caught on and made other riders want to copy him. . . more by virtue of his personality than any super-amazing skill as a surfer. That this type of arrogance and chicanery was lauded and emulated, says something about the surfer culture. He was one of the originals and, therefore, he set the tone and gave charisma and charm to a simplistic, down-to-basics way of existing. Appealing, maybe, if you're Adam or Eve, or a caveman. Or, totally into sun, surf, sex, speed, and substances . . . but kind of sad as an example of a role model for future generations of surfing aficionados. The problem is that a writer of a book like this cannot be too hard on the subject of the biography. Because who would buy it then, only to hear a mainstream voice once again criticizing a rebel-hero? As a writer, you kind of have to like this guy if you want people to buy your book. But, even so, Rensin is honest in his portrayal -- and perhaps that's what keeps the book from being a five-star gripping read. He sacrifices a totally compelling story built on playing the conflict and inner psychological conflict besetting a character in a leadership position for accuracy. He did allow the facts to dampen the impact of what might have been a super-compelling story. I give him credit for that because in my mind, facts are more important than story. (Maybe Dora was so shallow he had no conflict or guilt, but I don't believe it.) Even so, it is not a boring book. But also not one of those that you have to read in one or two (or three) sittings because you can't put it down. You CAN put it down, but you also can skip around in it and read 'the good parts' without feeling you've missed something essential. I'm glad to have this as part of my book collection even so.
I live in land locked Idaho, have lived in South Florida where the surfing is almost a joke, unless its hurricane season; have never surfed nor desired to try but found this biography extremely compelling. I was riveted from the start and found Miki's complex nature to be fascinating. He was easy to hate and as easy to love. The work to put this biography together must have been exhausting. Rensin has done an excellent job of wrapping it all up into a very readable book. I would highly recommend it to anyone, regardless of their status on surfing.This book is about so much more than surfing. Miki is a character with extreme depth and I wonder if anyone really knew the "real" man. I can feel his pain as surfing became everyone's playground. I felt the same way about snow skiing when the shorter skis and the snow boarders started to claim the moutains I once dearly loved to ski--where suddenly everyone was doing it, regardless of ability, and it became harder and harder to find your "pure" space.This book makes you re-examine your own world view and often brings you up short if you approach the exercise honestly. I have kept this book in my library and do not lend it out for fear of losing track of it. It is not a throw away biography but a collectible book of strength, wit, misery, charm, bewilderment, and even humor. I believe what makes this book so tangible is its ability to strike us in the sore places of our own souls. It certainly made me think. Not only about Miki, which goes without saying, but about the changing world around us and how its affected our lives on a very personal level.The ending was agonizing for me and I cried often. I was quite taken with Miki's father and found his love boundless and Miki's demise sorrowful. To me, Miki's father allowed him to die with grace surrounded by his father's unconditional love. Many fathers would not have taken Miki back so completely given his past actions.I read the book a while ago, so it's hard to dredge up specifics, but this is a great read. I would highly recommend it. The pictures add much to the overall thrill of the biography. KUDOS to David Rensin. You managed a very tough assignment in a very balanced way!
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