'Tripping Yarns' by Monty Webber

Stu Nettle picture
Stu Nettle (stunet)
The Depth Test

tripping-yarns-cover-lead_1.jpg“A lot of what you are about to read actually happened. Some of it to me, and lots more to others. A whole lot of it is also complete bullshit.”

Tripping Yarns is a book about chasing drugs, chasing girls, and chasing waves. All topics that lend themselves to a high degree of license. Monty Webber is, in polite terms, a storyteller, but we'll satisfy ourselves by calling him a Bondi bullshitter.

You know the kind of fella, so honest he tells the truth about things that didn't happen. His stories are outrageous, offensive, and you don't know where fact spills into fiction but he'll leave it to you to figure out the ratios.

The Bondi bullshitting lineage includes Pete Bowes – whose Bloodlines I read recently – and Robert G. Barrett, who doesn't surf but has the art form down pat basing ratbag characters on real life people.

Monty Webber is also a hedonist, let's make no bones about it. Ignore the drug, girl, and wave specifics for a moment, because in its entirety this is a book about chasing experiences. Monty proudly lives by Libertine principles, so what we have is a pleasure-seeking Bondi bullshitter and for an author that's a fucken great vantage point.

In Tripping Yarns Monty indulges us with 21 stories that cover all five senses and delights in each of the seven sins, many of them more than once. It's the sort of book that causes clean living folk to blush and turn away, meaning it's required reading for camping trips to lonely surfing outposts. Someone should post a box of copies to Ronnie Gates at Cactus stat.

Though at times he bares his comically dark heart, there's a distinct lack of moralising in Tripping Yarns. Clearly redemption is not Monty's motivation. This is someone whose seen the error of his ways and mined them for  both your entertainment and mine. Morals would only spoil the fun. Monty is both selfish and selfless.

He also has a humane eye for observation and circumstance: “The chick who sat in front of me had a tatt on her neck which read; “Family and friends forever”. I must have read it a thousand times and often thought how so many of those tattoos these guys had were like apologies to those they had let down.”

The finest yarn in the book is titled The Rivermouth and somehow it manages to combine communal living, dishpigging at the Pacific Hotel, reef rash, and then a spur of the moment raft trip down a flooding Clarence River ending in a rivermouth session at Yamba. How much of it is true? How much is bullshit? Who knows, but it didn't diminish the fun.

Printed in soft cover - good stock for rolling a roach - Tripping Yarns is available online.

Comments

Blowin's picture
Blowin's picture
Blowin Thursday, 16 Jul 2015 at 4:33pm

Nicely put Stu and thanks again Monty.

Get into it fellas.

It's good fun.

stunet's picture
stunet's picture
stunet Thursday, 16 Jul 2015 at 5:53pm

I was almost gonna use part of your review as the pull quote:

"You're a sick bastard and that's a rare and beautiful thing in the sterilised air of modern surfing. It's the kind of surf writing I love: adventure, humanity, and humour spiced with an enticing dose of sordidness." - Blowin

https://www.swellnet.com/comment/477700

finback's picture
finback's picture
finback Thursday, 16 Jul 2015 at 7:09pm

Love Monty's work. Suggest both Monty and brother Will do a "Webber view" of WSL events and future Webber Wavepool events.

peterb's picture
peterb's picture
peterb Thursday, 16 Jul 2015 at 9:47pm

No bullshit ever came out of Bondi .. It's all Kosher.

danyuul's picture
danyuul's picture
danyuul Friday, 17 Jul 2015 at 12:00am

Sounds fun! Where to buy though?

monty61's picture
monty61's picture
monty61 Friday, 17 Jul 2015 at 7:31am

Hahaha! Kosher ... too good. To buy email me at [email protected] Cheers guys, love Blowin's review, wish he was running swellnet!

ugoinm8's picture
ugoinm8's picture
ugoinm8 Friday, 17 Jul 2015 at 11:23pm

Hints of the ultimate aphrodisiac

ugoinm8's picture
ugoinm8's picture
ugoinm8 Friday, 17 Jul 2015 at 11:25pm

Sounds like a good read