Out at Sea: A comparison of two stories

Life's Swell by Susan Orlean is a tour de force. Instead of being turned off by Orlean's beefy paragraphs, I went down the rabbit hole with her. Her writing was as alive and in the moment as the surfer girls she wrote about. Coveting Gloria's wild hair, wearing clothes that could be either wet or dry, the color and texture of the surf, speaking in dialect - all images and dialogue that put you right there on the beach, in the water, and under the bright sun with the girls. Orlean's dialogue showed us who these girls were: their energy, their need, their hunger to be. The small bits of information interspersed throughout: the remoteness of Hana and the fatherless families and poverty of these girls' lives, provided enough tork to plunge us head long into the heads of these tough surfer girls.

Lost in the Waves by Justin Heckert was a study in contrast to Orlean's. Where Orlean used dialogue to create immediacy and "show us" the girls, Heckert used exposition. It was obvious Orlean advantageously observed and spent time with her subjects. Heckert's dramatic thrust was a recreation that he described. He didn't observe. He retold. His stance as a writer was also more distant than Orlean's. Although spending a night bobbing out at sea, not knowing if you would survive or whether your son was dead or alive, is horrific, I kept thinking of what his ex-wife would say to Walt. I empathized with his ex-wife. Walt had proven, yet again, he had really lousy judgement.