A deeply-rendered self-portrait of a life-long surfer by the
acclaimed "New Yorker" journalist
"Barbarian Days" is William Finnegan's memoir of an obsession, of a
complex enchantment. Surfing looks like a sport, but that's only to
outsiders. To initiates, it is something else entirely: a beautiful
addiction, 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, 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--and dramatizes
the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships annealed in
challenging waves.
Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites-only gang in a tough
school in Honolulu while his closest friend was a Hawaiian surfer,
and of 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
acid while riding huge Honolua Bay on Maui--is served with rueful
humor. Their knapsacks crammed with reef charts, he and a buddy
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 a novice's gradual mastering of a
demanding, 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.
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