"Barbarian Days: A Surfing Odyssey" by William Finnegan
How do you write about, try to explain your obsession to others? How do you try to get across that one thing or activity that is totally immersive for you for all of your life?
"Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life," transcends the cliches and tropes of surfing and surfers. Instead the book takes us on a pilgrimage, a life’s journey and attempts to explain obsession. In this case an obsession I share – the art, the practice, the indulgence of riding waves.
It is a fantastic read, be you a surfer or not. Part adventure story, travel yarn, social commentary, meditation and autobiography Barbarian Days is a literary odyssey through the highs and lows of a life dedicated to the pursuit of the perfect wave.
Finnegan, an experienced war correspondent and New Yorker magazine staff writer won a Pulitzer Prize for the book, so the prose in understandably descriptive, propulsive and strong. As an autobiography alone this is a book that is hard to put down, but his skill in scene setting, and describing with detail and passion just how some of the world’s best waves happen and how you surf them is fantastic.
Plus as a lifelong surfer and reader, I haven’t read a better book that explains the hold that the ocean and its waves can have on a person. Yes surfing is a sport but you don’t play surfing like you play tennis. It’s also a leisure pursuit, a lifestyle, you have surf fashion, surf music and like those other pursuits that involve moving across nature by using nature i.e. sailing, snow skiing there is something soulful, damn near spiritual when it is at its purest.
That’s what makes this book work for the non-surfer. The insight through surfing into the relationship between the personal and the natural world, the physical and the metaphysical. Such is the quality of the writing and the bravado of the journey you don’t need to be able to ride a board to enjoy this book.
Of course it’s not all positivity and enlightenment, there are physical dangers, sacrifices and egotism. Not everyone sees surfing the same way and obsessions are selfish and dangerous things.
Barbarian Days is a must-read for adventurers and thinkers, sea farers and landlubbers alike.
'Reading this guy on the subject of waves and water is like reading Hemingway on bullfighting; William Burroughs on controlled substances; Updike on adultery. . . . a coming-of-age story, seen through the gloss resin coat of a surfboard' Sports Illustrated
Barbarian Days A Surfing Life
William Finnegan
Corsair Press 2015
What’s that? - Six songs about Surfing. I have done this list before but given the subject matter...
Surfing Magazines - The Go Betweens
Surf’s Up - Midnight Oil
Surf Wax America - Weezer
Head High - Headland
My Wave - Soundgarden
Charlie Don’t Surf- The Clash
