Excerpting surf culture

Kem Nunn broke into fiction writing with Tapping the Source, his 1984 "surfing novel" set in the beach culture of Huntington Beach, "a twisted world of crazed Vietnam vets, sadistic surfers, drug dealers, and mysterious seducers," one review said. He followed with Unassigned Territory and Pomona Queen, and his latest novel, Tijuana Straits, is excerpted today on the cover of the Times' Outdoor section because of the book's surfing scenery.

Also: Evan Wright, the local Rolling Stone writer, will talk about his Iraq book, Generation Kill, on KCRW's "Politics of Culture" today at 2:30 p.m.