William Finnegan

Describes the author's experiences as a lifelong surfer, from his early years in Honolulu through his culturally sophisticated pursuits of perfect waves in some of the world's most exotic locales.

A Surfing Life

Barbarian Days

Alawander Bouston 

Being adjacent to that much beauty—more than adjacent; immersed in, pierced by it—was the point. The physical risks were footnotes.

A deeply rendered self-portrait of a lifelong surfer by the acclaimed New Yorker writer Barbarian Days is William Finnegan’s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our noses—off the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships annealed in challenging waves. Finnegan shares stories of life in a whitesonly gang in a tough school in Honolulu even while his closest friend was a Hawaiian surfer. He shows us a world turned upside down for kids and adults alike by the social upheavals of the 1960s. He details the intricacies of famous waves and his own apprenticeships to them. Youthful folly—he drops LSD while riding huge Honolua Bay, on Maui—is served up with rueful humor. He and a buddy, their knapsacks crammed with reef charts, bushwhack through Polynesia. They discover, while camping on an uninhabited island in Fiji, one of the world’s greatest waves. As Finnegan’s travels take him ever farther afield, he becomes an improbable anthropologist: unpicking the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissecting the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, navigating the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity. Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, an intellectual autobiography, a social history, a literary road movie, and an extraordinary exploration of the gradual mastering of an exacting, little understood art. Today, Finnegan’s surfing life is undiminished. Frantically juggling work and family, he chases his enchantment through Long Island ice storms and obscure corners of Madagascar.

I don’t really understand the hype with this one. There was something cool about vicariously seeing what it was like to grow up as a surfer in Hawaii, and I was curious about seeing him keep this hobby as he aged, but the book was hard to get through and repetitive.

I had high hopes for this book. Looking back, admittedly too high. Over the past few years my husband and I have started travelling to surf destinations. I was excited to be inspired and energized to visit new places, and at times I very much was! However, the author writes with such detail and at such length, that I often found his journal style recaps belabored his experiences in each place he visited. 

Kaitlyn Wendler

incredible! i had no idea it would be so memoirish and that the author had led such an interesting life! definitely gets at the allure of surfing pretty poetically 

Mark Stenberg 

Vaibhav Yadaram

Robyn Smith

A fun read...especially if you have wanted to travel n surf more than you wanted too. He takes ya there and back!

john contreras

Madilyn Taylor

jack morris

I loved this book. Hearing about what it's like to grow up surfing on the coasts of Hawaii and California stirred some deep desire within myself to spend more time on the water. The author spent a lot of time describing his surfing in serious technical detail, which I appreciated for awhile but grew somewhat tired of by the end. It's hard to picture what the takeoff looks like for a 12-foot left when you've never surfed before. (Maybe I need to watch a surfing movie or something.) 

The best part about the book isn't the rigorous introduction to surfing. It's feeling the visceral *addiction* the author felt to surfing, throughout his teens and twenties. (I think a lot of people feel this same kind of physical dependence on skiing, golf, climbing, and lots of other activities besides surfing.) He gave years of his life to the pursuit of waves. He broke up with girlfriends, quit jobs, and traveled around the world searching for *the perfect wave*. I especially liked reading about his journeys around islands in the Pacific, through Asia and Africa, to Europe, and further west back home again.

At the beginning of the book I was dying to get out and learn to surf. By the end of the book I realized that surfing is a lifelong pursuit and I probably missed the boat on that one– I'll never catch a wave at Tavarua or Kirra Ocean Beach or even Ocean Beach. It's fun to read about though.

**Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography** “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 Included in President Obama’s 2016 Summer Reading List Barbarian Days is William Finnegan’s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our noses—off the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships forged in challenging waves. Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites-only gang in a tough school in Honolulu. He shows us a world turned upside down for kids and adults alike by the social upheavals of the 1960s. He details the intricacies of famous waves and his own apprenticeships to them. Youthful folly—he drops LSD while riding huge Honolua Bay, on Maui—is served up with rueful humor. As Finnegan’s travels take him ever farther afield, he discovers the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissects the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, and navigates the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity. Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, an intellectual autobiography, a social history, a literary road movie, and an extraordinary exploration of the gradual mastering of an exacting, little-understood art. Praise for Barbarian Days: “Without a doubt, the finest surf book I’ve ever read . . . But on a more fundamental level, Barbarian Days offers a clear-eyed vision of American boyhood. Like Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, it is a sympathetic examination of what happens when literary ideas of freedom and purity take hold of a young mind and fling his body out into the far reaches of the world.”—The New York Times Magazine “Incandescent . . . I’d sooner press this book upon on a nonsurfer, in part because nothing I’ve read so accurately describes the feeling of being stoked or the despair of being held under. . . . [But] it’s also about a writer’s life and, even more generally, a quester’s life, more carefully observed and precisely rendered than any I’ve read in a long time.”—Los Angeles Times

Eric Farkas

I read this because many people I respect commended it’s writing, and I was not let down. Finnegan’s writing is excellent. I don’t surf at all but I found his stories compelling. Would recommend to anyone looking for a fast-paced, compelling book.

Maytal

This would have been one star but I got to say he is a good writer so it bumped up to two. Just couldn’t root or identify with him and it was less about surfing or a drive than him reminiscing about his travels. Maybe I went into it with the wrong idea or intentions of what I thought I’d get out of it.

Winner of the Pulitzer Price and William Hill Sports Book of the Year: Barbarian Days is a deeply rendered self-portrait of a lifelong surfer looking for transcendence 'that recalls early James Salter' (Geoff Dyer, Observer) Surfing only looks like a sport. To devotees, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, a mental and physical study, a passionate way of life. New Yorker writer William Finnegan first started surfing as a young boy in California and Hawaii. Barbarian Days is his immersive memoir of a life spent travelling the world chasing waves through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa and beyond. Finnegan describes the edgy yet enduring brotherhood forged among the swell of the surf; and recalling his own apprenticeship to the world's most famous and challenging waves, he considers the intense relationship formed between man, board and water. Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, a social history, an extraordinary exploration of one man's gradual mastering of an exacting and little-understood art. It is a memoir of dangerous obsession and enchantment. '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

Megan McMorran

I don’t know why, but I loved this book from page one. Good reporting by an accomplished journalist and I love water sports. He includes a good bit of Hawaiian culture, racism, poverty tourism, and the sometimes brutal aspects of a boy’s life that makes it a much bigger picture than a surfer dude having fun. Surfing is something I’d never try because it scares me—if you’re going to be good you’re going to take big risks. This author has no fear.

Faheem Kajee

I read this book on a two-week surf holiday to Costa Rica. The only reason I managed to complete the book was because there were parts of it that I identified with as a beginner surfer, or that helped me understand what “real” surfers experienced. This was otherwise an extremely long and indulgent autobiography.

Barbarian Days A Surfing Life

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