Patrick Moser's "Waikīkī Dreams"

Patrick Moser is professor of writing and French at Drury University. He is the author of Surf and Rescue: George Freeth and the Birth of California Beach Culture and the editor of Pacific Passages: An Anthology of Surf Writing.

Moser applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Waikiki Dreams: How California Appropriated Hawaiian Beach Culture, and reported the following:

After an introductory quote from the Los Angeles Times, page 99 begins:

Mary Ann Hawkins (1919–1993) was fifteen years old when she ran into Gene “Tarzan” Smith for the first time at Corona del Mar. “Pretty Mary Ann Hawkins,” as the Los Angeles Evening Post had called her, a “tall, slender’ swimmer for the Los Angeles Athletic Club who had won the national junior championship in the 880 freestyle in 1933.”

The rest of the page (the first of Chapter 4) provides further biographical details for Mary Ann Hawkins, tracking her rise as the greatest waterwoman of her generation in California during the Great Depression: swimmer, surfer, paddleboard champion—and lifeguard aspirant who, as an unofficial participant in the annual physical test, performed “on a par with the swimming prowess of the regular contenders” (i.e. the men) and yet was never offered a job because women at the time were not allowed to be lifeguards. This century-old gender bias still impacts surfing today in terms of fewer female surfers because surf culture in California grew out of the lifeguarding profession.

The Page 99 Test captures well “the quality of the whole.” Readers will gain a good sense of my path to treating broader ideas of appreciation and appropriation of Native Hawaiian culture during the interwar period: through the biographies of the top influencers. Hawkins and the other historical figures all have such interesting stories. I wanted to showcase their accomplishments by dropping into story-telling mode myself and (hopefully) pulling readers into the day-to-day lives of these women and men who had an important impact on the rise of California beach culture. Who were these young people and what did they do that made such a difference? To answer these questions, each chapter begins with a critical moment in the life of the influencer and then spirals out to capture the intersections where personal appreciation for all things Hawaiian turns into appropriation of Native Hawaiian land, culture, and racial identity.

While readers would gain a sense of the quality of the work by reading page 99, they would not necessarily fathom the broader directions that work would take them in. To help readers along that path, I use storytelling techniques—character development, detail and description, dramatic tension—to encourage them to turn the page. Part of the great debt that surfing owes to Native Hawaiian culture is its prevalence for “talk story.” I hope that Waikīkī Dreams acknowledges that influence in its own way.

Learn more about Waikīkī Dreams at the University of Illinois Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue