Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

My favorite book of this year and possibly now in my top 10 of all time. A billion stars. And I don't even surf.

I had hard times with surf jargon at first and probably still do but this story was an amazing life to read about.

The waves are calling and I wanna go

Must read for surfer, and everyone who wants to know what makes surfing so addictive. This book captures like no other why surfing is a way of living, not a sport. Also beautifully written.

Makes me wish I could surf

This book is filled with lovely writing that captures the author's awe and respect of the ocean, and his lifelong obsession with surfing. The prose is at once winding and meditative as it is forceful and reckoning, much like waves themselves. Being a (hitherto) lifelong competitive runner, I can also relate to the obsessive dedication to a physical pursuit; however, his nearly scientific knowledge of the ocean, and the terminology of surf culture, and the adventures of various elite beaches across the world was previously wholly unknown to me; so in that way, the book is an invitation into a completely different lifestyle. Each beach, with unique waves that the author describes in great detail, become more than setting, evolving into powerful characters that yet resist anthropomorphism. Yet, I did find myself getting a bit tired of the writing style, which grew more indulgent with each chapter. While each wave is described differently, the prose starts to feel recursive halfway through, I suppose like the waves themselves. Still worth a read, I think, if for nothing else than to read majesty and nuance and depth into what (I, at least) have always considered a bro culture.

“I was not afraid, I just didn't want this to end”

I have no doubt one of the most special and meaningful books I've ever read.

Will update with a full review.

Solid read. I read it because it was about surfing, which fascinates me, but wanted less surfing and more Finnegan doing his reporting by the end. The best surfing section, was the cold water surfing he does outside of New York, and one particularly intense surfing section off of Portugal.

How much of your life have you spent thinking about surfing? Until a week ago my life total could've been measured in seconds. By Tuesday, having completed this review and my post-reading digestion, I fully expect to return to a life in which surfing occupies as much of my thoughts as does cricket or the economy of Kuala Lumpur. Barbarian Days has not changed my life course in any way; if anything, it makes it even less likely that I'll ever even try surfing. Not because it sounds dull—quite the contrary!—but because it's clear that the peak rewards are only for those with years to spend on it and with youthful strength and vigor.

Yet I don't in the least begrudge my hours of reading. Surfing turns out to be much more interesting than I'd imagined; more complex and profound. Part of that is Finnegan himself: it turns out, you can spend your young years as a bum, following a passion, outside the system, and still lead a meaningful life; even contributing (more than most!) to the wellbeing of our fellows. Finnegan's is a life well lived, his book a reminder that this life is too precious to waste.

If Finnegan wasn't a staff writer at the New Yorker, I wonder if this would have been a Pulitzer winner. Memoirs are navel-gazing at their core but this one felt especially so. I tried not to compare it to this year's Pulitzer winner for the same category – [b:The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between 28007895 The Return Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between Hisham Matar https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1457891417s/28007895.jpg 48015462] – and failed. I'm looking forward to discussing this with book club this weekend, but this one was Not For Me.

For me, this was just OK. Finnegan tends to ramble on and on in this memoir. Heavily focused on his surfing life, he does a good job of explaining the technical details for non-surfers - but I still feel like I missed out since I'm not a hardcore surfer. A solid “meh” personally although I'm not surprised other people love it.

This was my first memoir in nearly a decade - I'm glad I branched out to a new genre, but I read this book based on a recommendation immediately after I mentioned “I like to read in my free time.” Clearly, that wasn't enough context for my tastes. :)

I read three memoirs in short succession: this, Sum It Up (about the winningest NCAA basketball coach, Pat Summit), and Hillbilly Elegy (about marginalized, white Appalachian poor). It's hard not to compare, and this memoir - by New Yorker journalist and lifelong surfer, William Finnegan - is definitely the best-written, but also the most... indulgent? It's an artful, introspective look at a relatively easy life: while Finnegan does some “light war reporting” for the New Yorker, and things do get dicey there (though it's not really explored much), it's mostly about his various epic trips to far-flung surf spots (Fiji, Indonesia, a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic), and the sublime Zen of emerging from a wave's tube with dry hair.

I fetishize surfing, big time, so I gobble surf writing and surf photography up. I love the nature-ness of it, and the Zen-ness, and monotonous ritualism of it. And Finnegan writes about that stuff superbly. Just like The Wave, another surf book, many glorious passages are written about, basically, the same thing: dude rides wave. But I can never get enough! He also touches on the commercialization of surfing (bah!), and the fragility of our oceans (woe!).

Woven through the wave stuff is Bill Finnegan growing up: from anxious young teen in Hawaii, to super obnoxious self-involved Orientalist 20something (oh Lord, do I know people like this) on his shoestring surf world tour, to settling down 30something in San Francisco, to aging reporter discovering a sweet surf spot in the Atlantic while battling an older bro's body. You definitely feel his character maturing, and that's quite a writerly achievement. At least, I couldn't stand his 20something self-importance in Fiji (I also lived in Fiji for 2 years, and felt very eye-rolly at his descriptions, and omg his douchey desire to bed some “exotic ladies” uggghh), but he seemed a lot more tolerable by his 50s as a dedicated NYC surfer. Kudos for being honest, I guess.

I was curious about how a book focused on surfing could win a Pulitzer, but in spite of the surfing details (or maybe because of them), it turned out to be absorbing. I liked reading about his youth in Hawaii the best; it gets a little dry near the end.