Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2013 August 16 • Friday

Also mentioned in Surf Beat was a certain Gidget. I'm sure you know the name. I did. I remembered seeing bits of re-runs of the Sally Field TV show a long time ago.

What I didn't know was that Gidget started as a book in 1957, a book which was very directly adapted from the real experiences of the author's teenage daughter. It was a bestseller and spawned something of a mini-empire.

The back cover excitedly declares the heroine to be "part Holden Caulfield, part Lolita". That's half right. Gidget is something of a mirror image of The Catcher in the Rye: California instead of New York, girl instead of boy, focus instead of confusion, surfing instead of fencing. In fact, if you asked Judy Blume to right a reverse Catcher in the Rye, Gidget might be close to what she came up with.

The 1950s always seem to be viewed as the squarest time ever but 15-year-old Franzie—Gidget is her surf name, just as the other surfers, all men, have names like Moondoggie, Kahoona and so on—drinks, gets high, smokes cigarettes, drives without a license, is looking forward to sex and lies to her parents so she can spend all day (and sometimes all night) hanging out with a crew of older, rowdy male surfers.

It's hard to imagine what a 2013 equivalent of this book would be like!

It's a great read, very well written and Franzie's (or Gidget's or Kathy's) voice is clear, honest and compelling. The point of the book ends up being about her independence and personal achievement.

The first line is "I'm writing this down because I once heard that when you're getting older you're liable to forget things and I'd sure be the most miserable woman in this world if I ever forgot what happened this summer".