"I don't think you see many Third World teenagers indulging in the kinds of practices that we're talking about. Winton reckons young recklessness and the "strange proliferation" of body piercings, branding, implants and sado-masochistic culture is a reaction to Western culture. "The boys, Sando to some degree, and Eva certainly, feel so mastered by their own bodies that it's an act of resistance - there's nothing more involuntary than breathing." One of the themes of the book is of people trying to seize control over their bodies by holding their breath. Physical cowardice has a virtue of survival." I just felt that being in the ocean I was availing myself of the world's greatest poultice."Īnd he concedes that at some point he was a coward. I didn't do much in the way of drugs for the same reason: I was totally obsessed in the water, diving and surfing, and I think in some strange way you're angry for reasons that you don't even understand in adolescence.
"I'm not as confident that I would have survived adolescence without it, in the sense that I did a lot less driving of fast cars than some of my other friends who died in fiery car wrecks or ended up in jail. Indeed, he reckons had it not been for his love of the ocean he would not have lived as long. "In terms of me stopping at certain points, that was partly good luck as much as good management. He and his mates drove cars recklessly, did drugs and indulged in their fair share of sexual misadventure. "There was this palpable compulsion towards risk," he says, "and that had to do with defeating the empire of boredom." Winton recognises the wildness in his characters from his experiences growing up in Albany, south of Perth.
It begins simply enough, with staying under the river water for as long as possible, but moves on to the more intense physical and emotional risks posed by huge surf and confronting sexual experiences. The boys become obsessed with risk and danger. That is probably because there are enough people in the book doing it for him.īreath is a rites-of-passage story of Pikelet and Loonie, two risk-taking mates who team up with a gun surfer, Sando, and his fractious wife, Eva. TIM WINTON will not be holding his breath for the publication next week of his first novel for seven years.
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