The Ninth Wave by Eugene Burdick. Houghton Mifflin (1956), 332 pp.
The Ninth Wave is probably the most famous of the small group of novels about California politics. It follows the life of Mike Freesmith as he moves from teenage surfer to political power monger. Mike never lacks for companionship, but he has only one real friend, Hank Moore. It’s clear from the early pages, when Mike blows off the high school teacher he’s been sleeping with, that he’s a pretty cold-hearted guy. But he’s a complex character as well, deriving deep satisfaction from overcoming danger. (Like other surfers he knows that the ninth wave is the biggest and most dangerous.) In some situations, notably during his service as a wartime naval officer, Mike’s need to dominate can appear to have an altruistic intent. The first half of the book closes with the Hiroshima bombing; the second half opens with Mike as a freelance political consultant in Los Angeles. Here the book begins to change. Its focus shifts from Mike’s character to his maneuvering. Its tone becomes increasingly aggrieved as it describes Mike’s political machinations. Eventually, even the viewpoint changes from Mike to Hank. The dust jacket says that the author took seven years to put the book together. So it’s perhaps not surprising that what begins as a character study winds up as a political exposé. And what’s exposed seems remarkably dated. One of Mike’s transgressions, for example, is using focus groups to hone his candidate’s message. Although the novel is uneven, political junkies of today might enjoy it. Eugene Burdick (1918-1965) had a Ph.D. in Philosophy and taught political theory at UC Berkeley from 1950 to 1965. The Ninth Wave was his first book. Two of his later novels, The Ugly American (1958) and Fail-Safe (1962), both co-written, became influential best-sellers that received upscale movie adaptations.