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Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

William Finnegan

4.24 · Rating details · 20,482 ratings · 2,101 reviews

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 Hawai 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 whites-only 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. ...more

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Hardcover, 447 pages

Published July 21st 2015 by Penguin Press

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Rating details

· 20,482 ratings · 2,101 reviews

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Jun 12, 2016 Matthew Quann rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: memoir fans, surfers, adventure-seekers, literary, award-winner

Shelves: pulitzers, audiobooks, memoir

I spent a lot of car-locked hours listening to William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life while I drove through three provinces to get to a two-week placement and back again. In fact, the 18 and a bit hours of Finnegan’s Pulitzer-Prize winning memoir lasted through two driving companions, one who joined me for the book’s opening hours, the other who took in the final three hours. The later companion remarked, with nary but an hour left in the audiobook:

”Man, he’s just all about the surfin ...more

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Aug 31, 2017 Paula rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Paula by: Pulitzer

Shelves: pulitzer-prize, non-fiction, best-prose, favorite-books, audio-book, memoir, read-in-2017, published-2015

One of the best books I have ever read!

What a wonderful book. I listened to the audiobook and was glad I did. William Finnegan has a delightful voice. So soothing that you feel calmed. This Pulitzer Prize winner is so worth the read.

Highly recommend.
5 out of 5 stars.

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Dec 24, 2018 Brina rated it really liked it

Shelves: california, surfing, pulitzer-winner, memoirs, hawaii

I have an ongoing personal Pulitzer challenge that I engage in each year. This year was a struggle all the way around but I managed to read six nonfiction winners and one player. Next year I am setting the bar higher and will participate in a Pulitzer challenge in the nonfiction Pulitzer group. It is not as much of a challenge as a way for me to track my books. That aside, December is a time where everyone I know is either busy with holiday preparations or rushing to get books read for challenge I have an ongoing personal Pulitzer challenge that I engage in each year. This year was a struggle all the way around but I managed to read six nonfiction winners and one player. Next year I am setting the bar higher and will participate in a Pulitzer challenge in the nonfiction Pulitzer group. It is not as much of a challenge as a way for me to track my books. That aside, December is a time where everyone I know is either busy with holiday preparations or rushing to get books read for challenges. I selected Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life as it is not a lengthy, historical tome. Rather, New Yorker staff writer William Finnegan details his life of surfing both in and out of the water, paying homage to the how chasing an endless wave is a metaphor for life.

Born in 1952 in New York to film editors Bill and Patricia Finnegan, at age two William Finnegan found himself on the move to the fledgling film industry in suburban Los Angeles. The family eventually grew and Bill, Sr was constantly at work on one film or another. His work allowed the family to keep a weekend home in coastal Ventura or with friends on Newport Beach. By age ten, the surf called and William Finnegan was on a board for the first time. Growing up in both California and Hawaii, Finnegan had many chances to surf on a nearly daily basis. His skills improved each year to the point that by the end of high school, the waves called his attention more so than academia. After one year at University of California Santa Cruz, Finnegan rejoined his family in Hawaii and the life of a surfer.

By the time Finnegan reached his mid twenties, he has been disillusioned by academia completely. Yet he pined for the endless wave and convinced a surfing acquaintance named Bryan Salvatore to embark with him on a two year adventure to the Southern Hemisphere chasing the perfect wave. The two traveled to out of the way places as Fiji, Samoa, a stop in Australia, Indonesia, and Singapore. They surfed waves as Tavarua, Fiji that today are known in the surfing community but in the 1970s were virtual unknown. Both men got a flare for local life and took up writing, eventually leading years later to both writing for surfing and other respectable magazines. Salvatore, being five years older than Finnegan, returned to the United States after two years, leaving him at a crossroads. The spirit of adventure beckoned more than surfing, as Finnegan traveled to South Africa where he taught English, Europe, and eventually home. Surfing was always on his mind even if his journeys took him to landlocked countries. While not a perpetual beach bum, Finnegan had become, in his father’s words, hooked on the barbarian days of youth.

William Finnegan has written as a staff reporter for the New Yorker for the last thirty years. He makes New York his home but embarks in at least one surfing vacation a winter to places like Portugal, Fiji, Mexico, and the Caribbean. In each location he hones his journalistic skills by interacting with locals while also chasing the perfect wave. This memoir was a change of pace for a Pulitzer winner and is more than just about surfing. Finnegan discusses the history of the sport, human conditions in diverse countries around the globe, and surfing as a metaphor for men chasing eternal youth. Much has changed since Finnegan first started surfing including better equipment that allow for physically fit people to surf well into middle age. Surfing has been for Finnegan like the fountain of youth although at this point he knows his limitations and does not try for the largest wave in the ocean. Content with watching his daughter grow into adulthood, Finnegan has learned to balance surfing with family life.

Thinking that Barbarian Days would be about the life of a quintessential California beach bum, I had few expectations when I began this book. I have found the Pulitzer winners I read to be well written even if the subject matter doesn’t necessarily interest me. Barbarian Days ended up being about how the baby boom generation has grappled with growing older as well as an overview of the history of surfing and a quasi travelogue. If anything it has made me pine for the beach in the middle of winter and has me eager to read more Pulitzer winners in the year to come.

4 stars ...more

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Mar 23, 2017 Elyse Walters rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, biography-autobiography-memoir, travel

William Finnegan, has a sultry pleasant voice.
His voice - alone - was alluring.

I enjoyed listening to the never-ending surfing stories as I might a guided meditation.....
BUT.....
like meditation.....
I often drifted into 'ozo-land'...... taking detours away from the spiritual path. I didn't have the endurance to keep up with the Zen of Surfing -God.

William Finnegan is a phenomenal writer -- blows my mind a surfer could be so lyrical and descriptive. BUT THERE IS NO LET UP!
Very impressive ongoi ...more

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Aug 10, 2018 Spencer Orey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: surfers, l-a

The writing was so vivid that I ended up having nightmares about trying to learn how to surf. I'll be coming back to this especially for the descriptions of surfing, reading the wind, and shapes of waves.

There's a great interweaving of politics of places as the author surfs through them, engaging with his decisions and his relationships with people in the moment and over time. ...more

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Jul 08, 2017 Diane rated it really liked it

Shelves: travelogues, audiobooks, memoirs

Let's get this out of the way: I don't know how to surf, I've never been to Hawaii, and what little I do know of surfing was gleaned from watching cheesy movies like 1991's "Point Break" and 1987's "North Shore."

To wit: I am not the ideal audience for this memoir about a surfing life. And yet, I really enjoyed this book!

For starters, it has some seriously gorgeous prose. William Finnegan writes for The New Yorker and he won a Pulitzer Prize for Barbarian Days, which is how it came to my attenti Let's get this out of the way: I don't know how to surf, I've never been to Hawaii, and what little I do know of surfing was gleaned from watching cheesy movies like 1991's "Point Break" and 1987's "North Shore."

To wit: I am not the ideal audience for this memoir about a surfing life. And yet, I really enjoyed this book!

For starters, it has some seriously gorgeous prose. William Finnegan writes for The New Yorker and he won a Pulitzer Prize for Barbarian Days, which is how it came to my attention. The memoir chronicles Finnegan's childhood spent in California and Hawaii, his stories of learning how to surf, making friends and enemies among the local gangs, and eventually of his adventures traveling around the world looking for great surfing spots. My favorite stories in the book were about his dangerous surf outings (I lost track of how many times he nearly died), of his travels with various friends and girlfriends, and of how he tries to balance his surfing obsession with being an adult who has a job and a family. Surfers never grow old, it seems.

If you like audiobooks, I highly recommend Finnegan's narration. He has a beautiful, deep voice that is perfect for storytelling. (His voice reminded me of the actor John Slattery — kinda dreamy.) This is a great ride of a book.

Favorite Quote
"But surfing always had this horizon, this fear line, that made it different from other things, certainly from other sports I knew. You could do it with friends, but when the waves got big, or you got into trouble, there never seemed to be anyone around. Everything out there was disturbingly laced with everything else. Waves were the playing field. They were the goal. They were the object of your deepest desire and adoration. At the same time, they were your adversary, your nemesis, even your mortal enemy. The surf was your refuge, your happy hiding place, but it was also a hostile wilderness — a dynamic, indifferent world. At thirteen, I had mostly stopped believing in God, but that was a new development, and it had left a hole in my world, a feeling that I'd been abandoned. The ocean was like an uncaring God, endlessly dangerous, power beyond measure." ...more

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Apr 13, 2020 Kevin Kelsey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2019, favorites

Posted at Heradas.com

No matter what we tell ourselves, we all secretly want to live forever. It follows that a good memoir serves as vicarious life extension, toward this eternally minded, unachievable end. A glimpse into an alternate possibility. Between the pages unfolds what could’ve been — if. If we were born at a different time. If we had different circumstances. If we had different interests. If we were altogether different people through any number of natural or nurtural deviations agains ...more

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May 06, 2015 Ken rated it it was ok

Shelves: finished-in-2015, contemporary

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life is more the subtitle than the title -- that is, a surfing life. To break it down further, it is more life than surfing, as it follows William Finnegan from youngest years to the present day, from continent to continent, from schools to jobs, from here to eternity. Is there a lot of surfing in that life? Yes. Is there a lot of life -- maybe too much life -- in this book? Yes again.

Meaning, I felt that 464 pages was a bit much. Surprising, considering Finnegan is a N ...more

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Jul 19, 2015 Aloke rated it liked it

Shelves: travel, memoir, hawaii, borrowed

Barbarian Days review

This is a memoir built around surfing. Despite knowing nothing about surfing I enjoyed most if it. That's an accomplishment. It's also got a great cover.

The book is split into three parts. The first part, set in California and Hawaii, is the strongest. It talks about Finnegan's childhood and his discovery of surfing. If this were a superhero movie this would be the part where the protagonist discovers their powers. Some of this was excerpted in The New Yorker and it's what Barbarian Days review

This is a memoir built around surfing. Despite knowing nothing about surfing I enjoyed most if it. That's an accomplishment. It's also got a great cover.

The book is split into three parts. The first part, set in California and Hawaii, is the strongest. It talks about Finnegan's childhood and his discovery of surfing. If this were a superhero movie this would be the part where the protagonist discovers their powers. Some of this was excerpted in The New Yorker and it's what drew me to the book. Sketches of Hawaii interspersed with passages about surfing. These, although cryptic, coalesced into a vivid picture of what makes surfing so exciting.

In the middle of the book, Finnegan wanders around the world with his buddy Bryan surfing and traveling. The organizing principle is, of course, surfing. This actually seems like an excellent idea since it takes him off the beaten path to some interesting places. But surfers are an introverted lot and the singleminded pursuit of waves leaves the reader feeling like Finnegan's missed the forest for the trees. It's not culture that interests surfers. Most stops on the journey are summarized by their breaks: Fiji becomes Tavarua, Australia is Kirra and Indonesia turns into, well, not much since they don't manage to find any great surf spots there. You'll never forget that you're reading a surfing book. And we get a lot of it. If this were a romantic comedy, this would be the part where those endearing quirks start turning into annoyances.

Finnegan redeems himself in the end with two long pieces. One is about big wave surfing in San Francisco and another concerns Madeira, a Portuguese island off the coast of Africa. The SF piece was also written for the New Yorker (and I read it greedily after reading the Hawaii story). The writing is more relaxed and funny. The jargon washes pleasantly over you. You find the characters more engaging. If this were a dinner party you'd be starting your third drink.

But it's just too long. You have to commit to this guy like his wife committed to vacationing in surf spots. It goes by pretty quickly but the good bits are overwhelmed by a relentless accretion of surfing. For surfers it might be the opposite, too much life and not enough surfing. There is a review of the book in Surfer magazine. It's polite. Great pictures though. Maybe I'm being too harsh when I say he's got a great face for radio: he writes gripping magazine articles but a collection of magazine articles doesn't make a book. I haven't read his other books but that's what I thought of this one. ...more

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Aug 26, 2015 Eric Kirkman rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2015

This was the longest 450 page book I have ever read. This memoir covers the surfing life of New Yorker and New York Times Reporter William Finnegan from his humble upbringing in Souther California and Hawaii, through a southeast Asian/Pacific wanderlust surfing tour with his friend Bryan in his twenties, and ends with a middle-aged father slumming nor'easter chop on the island and the Jersey Shore. If I read one more description of a wave, whether it be how it breaks, whether it's a reef break, ...more

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Jul 25, 2017 Ayse_ rated it really liked it

Shelves: reviews, favorites

Barbarian Days is Finnegan's autobiography/memoir of his life as a surfer. His interest in surfing starts at a very young age in California and becomes a real passion when his family moves to Hawaii when he is in middle school.

Finnegan states that surfers are perfectionists. I don't know the others, but he certainly is one. He spends most of his life (almost till the end of his 40s) searching for the perfect wave and perfect place to surf. This journey takes him literally around the world (many ...more

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Sep 13, 2016 James rated it it was amazing

Shelves: surfing

Finn Again

This book is not about moonlight on the bayou. It's about structured water. Water, and other media, muscled with vortices.

Feminine Wave, by Hokusai

...more

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Aug 20, 2015 Tania Malik rated it it was amazing

Visceral details and descriptions and insider jargon draws us into the author’s globe-trotting adventures as he chronicles his enduring love for the art of surfing. The search for a clean set of waves influences, shapes, and affects the choices he makes in life, and it is a sweet ride to bob along beside him as he tries to understand what the pursuit of surfing did to his soul.

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May 31, 2020 Judith E rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, audible

William Finnegan loves surfing so much that he has chased it to the ends of the earth. From a carefree and independent child of the 70’s and surfing the California and Hawaii coasts, to his worldwide pursuit of every imaginable surfing locale, his adventure is elegantly chronicled. Finnegan’s writing is meditative and technical about swells, waves, boards, reefs and weather. His desperate journey is nearly unbelievable at times but it’s clear he has been given a lifetime gift of surfing love and ...more

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Aug 25, 2017 Aloha rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: a-own, 1-favorites, c-pulitzer-award, genre-memoir, a-audible

This is a dazzling book like the glints from the sun on the surfing waves. While there are some philosophy of life and memoir mixed in, the book never deviated from the theme of surfing.

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Nov 18, 2016 Scott Grossman rated it it was ok · review of another edition

D-BAG DAYS: SPARE THE ROD AND SPOIL THE CHILD

My magnanimous gesture for the prize-winning best-seller is rounding up to 2 stars from the 1.5 stars it most certainly deserves. The book became more and more painful to continue the deeper I ventured into Finnegan’s tube. By page 380 I’d given up hope. I felt like it was I being held under water, getting pummeled by wave after literal wave. I think no other book can make readers feel like they themselves are drowning--gasping for air under a self-in D-BAG DAYS: SPARE THE ROD AND SPOIL THE CHILD

My magnanimous gesture for the prize-winning best-seller is rounding up to 2 stars from the 1.5 stars it most certainly deserves. The book became more and more painful to continue the deeper I ventured into Finnegan’s tube. By page 380 I’d given up hope. I felt like it was I being held under water, getting pummeled by wave after literal wave. I think no other book can make readers feel like they themselves are drowning--gasping for air under a self-indulgent swell of redundant prose. Did this author not have an editor?

Yet the surf-centric, highly repetitious text is the least of this books failings. How did this flotsam win the Pulitzer? The book’s dubious award status says much more about the demographics of the Pulitzer committee than it does about its literary merits, which are nil.

“I had never though of myself as a sheltered child,” begins Finnegan in a lazy and amateurish opening that contains a weak ‘to be’ verb followed by a negator. A better start: It was not a dark and stormy night. His crimes against the reader continue. We learn the conflict for this section and three more to follow: little Billy must cope with moving back and forth from his stable upper-middle class home in Woodland Hills, CA to the tropical paradise of Oahu, where every day he surfs the break in front of his house. Pobrecito! To engender sympathy, the author details getting his ass kicked in a Hawaiian middle school. And these are the only truly enjoyable parts of this book, reading how the entitled little prick gets the shit kicked out of him, either by a big wave or by a kid with a beef. In fact, the number of times I myself wanted to kick him in the nuts is equal to the number of pages he filled with his drivel.

Finnegan effortlessly gets accepted into UC Santa Cruz, which is a very good school. But alas, he leaves after only a year. What was his dire reason for dropping out? The school’s lack of “institutional gravity.” Who says that? What a dick. He returns to Hawaii so he can slum it on Maui. He takes a job in a bookshop where he condescends to the tourists who're there buying coffee table books, instead of buying, what, Ayn Rand? This narrator has no likable qualities, unless the reader likes his obsession with waves and surfing. Which I do not. His tunnel vision for catching waves causes him to treat everyone else like crap: his girlfriends, his family members all fade into the background. Only surfer boys are real people to Finnegan.

The crimes continue. He’s in New York City, why? We don't really know but he hears about a big show featuring Jimi Hendrix and Janice Joplin called Woodstock. But tickets costs money so he won’t go. Dude, how lame are you? He’s back in Maui living like a pig. He tells the reader he won’t ever listen to Sly and the Family Stone because the annoying neighbors play it too loud. If only Finnegan had listened through the wall to Sly’s record Fresh. He might, for once, be Thankful n’ Thoughtful. The book’s enduring theme is this: I’m pretentious, disloyal and selfish. He paints himself as the cheapskate who likes to surf. As evidence, he abandons his teenage girlfriend in some remote corner of Greece. They were together hitchhiking through Europe (how original) and he decided to go do something else. What a guy!

Next, Finnegan extends his adolescence into a second decade by hiding out in the recesses of the South Pacific. He and a buddy are on an epic surfing juggernaut. Here he abuses the islanders and not simply his reader. Without the slightest remorse, the author chronicles living off of the backs of the impoverished locals he encounters. He shows up in remote villages, takes advantage of their hospitality, and leaves, giving villagers who’ve washed, cooked and procured for him next to nothing in return. Cheap trinkets from Hong Kong. Years later, we learn, it is brought to Finnegan's attention that he has actef like a total douche. Still, he equivocates about his abhorrent treatment of the Pacific Islanders, unsure of his duty to repay people, unwilling to admit to culpability in their exploitation. Finnegan is an imperialist with a surf board. He states point blank he idolizes Magellan. I would expand that to include all European colonizers who've exploited in the name of exploration and Western progress. If only the descendants of Lapu-Lapu would've run through Billy Finnegan with their spears and arrows, as they had with Ferdinand when he invaded the island. Time and again, the author shows up uninvited, expecting to be accommodated like a visiting chieftain. I suppose this was a common expectation for his time.

You see, Finnegan is born of the late Baby Boom generation. As such, everything a Boomer has ever done is by definition the first and the greatest. The unexamined entitlement of a Boomer is through the roof and that is how this book reads. It's a penis measuring contest for adult men going on 13.

He arrives in apartheid South Africa and takes a teaching job at a black school. Finally, I gasped, he will redeem himself with a Jaimie Escalante “Stand and Deliver” moment. No. After some self-congratulatory talk about how he hates racism Finnegan splits town. The year is over. He made his money. The reader keeps reading, looking, waiting for any small glimpse of humanity--or even some sign of humility--and the reader is constantly disappointed. Except, what about the surfing? Clearly, you just don’t get it. You don’t mention the bitchin' surf adventure, ya barney.

I’ve rode through the rushing barrels of the Pacific, felt the elevator of fear shoot to the top when I looked down to see a school of sharks beneath the reef. I’ve been inside the timeless cathedral of the hollow tube and know full well its intoxicating allure. In fact, the rating I give the book is largely for one line about surfing: Waves aren’t measured in feet. They’re measured in increments of fear. Not Finnegan’s own line but he had the sense to propagate it so he gets an extra star. This book still sucks ass. Yup, he’s been to a lot of famous spots. He discovered the iconic breaks and the remote atolls before any of us mortals had even heard of them. He’s forgotten more about surfing than I’ll ever know. All true. He’s still a turd and his book still blows.

Big deal, you take off on really big waves… try something else scary like turning into a human being before you're 40 and too physically diminished to drop in on a short board. The narrator is entitled and privileged. (He describes Montauk -the Newport Beach, CA of Long Island as a quaint little old fishing village) He surrounds himself with even more entitled and privileged d-bags and, somehow, he thinks that makes for a good story.

I can plane rough planks into boards and tack them up with hand forged nails. I can cut fish scale shingles and affix them one by one to a pitched roof. I can dig a perfectly vertical hole and fashion a mother-of-pearl crescent moon for the narrow door. But at the end of the day, it’s still an outhouse and it won’t be too long before it stinks like shit. That is this book, a meticulously crafted shitter crafted by an asshole who also surfs. ...more

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Jan 27, 2016 Bill Vaughn rated it really liked it

Endless winter One sparkling May afternoon in 1979 I answered a knock at the front door of our house in Missoula to discover a large, angry man. “Bill Finnegan and I vowed that the first one to get back to America would kick your ass,” he said.

My wife had some nice pieces of antique furniture I wanted to spare so I stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind me. “Who are you?”

So began a confrontation that would end peacefully but leave me bewildered.

I had taken a job the year working ...more

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Apr 02, 2020 Vivian rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2020-odyssey, autobiography

Ode to the Sea

Finnegan recounts a lifetime of surfing and along the way relays epiphanies and the process of self-actualization.

Surfing, to begin with, was not a "sport." It was a "path."

"Waves were the playing field. They were the goal. They were the object of your deepest desire and adoration. At the same time, they were your adversary, your nemesis, even your mortal enemy."

It is an interesting glass from which to view historical events as they pass by in waves, some which Finnegan rides, oth Ode to the Sea

Finnegan recounts a lifetime of surfing and along the way relays epiphanies and the process of self-actualization.

Surfing, to begin with, was not a "sport." It was a "path."

"Waves were the playing field. They were the goal. They were the object of your deepest desire and adoration. At the same time, they were your adversary, your nemesis, even your mortal enemy."

It is an interesting glass from which to view historical events as they pass by in waves, some which Finnegan rides, others not.

The shortboard revolution was inseparable to the zeitgeist: hippie culture, acid rock, hallucinogens, Neo-Eastern mysticism, the psychedelic aesthetic. "

Insights into the mechanics, the method, and mindset of surfing:

Surfing is a secret garden, not easily entered. My memory of learning a spot, of coming to know and understand a wave, is usually inseparable from the friend with whom I tried to climb its walls.

The rule of thumb is that it will break when the wave height reaches 80 percent of the water's depth. A eight-foot wave will break in ten feet of water.

Waves are not stationary objects in nature like roses or diamonds. They're quick, violent events at the end of a long chain of storm action and ocean reaction. Even the most symmetrical breaks have quirks and a totally specific, local character changing with every shift in the tide and wind and swell. The best days at the best days have a Platonic aspect--they begin to embody a model of what surfers want waves to be.

Frustration is a big part of surfing. It's the part we all tend to forget--stupid sessions, waves missed, waves blown, endless-seeming lulls.

Buzzy Trent, an old-time big-wave rider, allegedly said, "Big wavs are not measured in feet, but in increments of fear. [...] The power of a breaking wave does not increase fractionally with height, but as the square of its height. Thus a ten-foot wave is not slightly more powerful than an eight-foot wave---because the leap is not eight to ten but from sixty-four to a hundred, making it over 50 percent more powerful.

From the water's edge, looking out across a stepladder of six or seven walls of cold, growling, onrushing whitewater, the idea of paddling out actually carried with it the whiff of lunacy. The project looked impossible, like trying to swim up a waterfall. It took a literal leap of faith to start.

Mortality. Anyone who's spent enough time in the sea has a moment where they think, 'This is it. Game over.' You've played to close to the edge. You've accepted the price. And the aftermath, the disbelief, the realization that you've escaped.

In fact, this was why most surfers didn't own a board over eight feet; it might raise the question of someday actually going out in conditions that require that much surfboard. Once, in Wise's shop, I heard a surfer mutter as he and his friends studied a 10'0" gun on display, "This one comes with a free pine box."

And glimpses of underlying truths about life in general:

Surf spots are created and destroyed, both naturally and by human enterprise.

This was wonderful. Not a surfer, but having spent thousands of hours in the sea I loved how Finnegan spoke of the ocean. I grew up with warm Caribbean waters so the idea of surfing NY in the winter or off Finland sounds absolutely nuts, but his relationship with the water--I adore. ...more

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Aug 06, 2015 Mike rated it really liked it

Five stars for surfers, 3.5 for lay people. Lots of detail about waves, weather, paddling, etc that might become repetitive for those who haven't spent a lot of time in the ocean.

Incredible travelogue of surfing the globe, primarily in the '70s and '80s from a writer for the New Yorker. He and a friend were 2 of the first 10 or so people in the world to surf Tavarua, and they would not speak of it by name in the hope that it would remain undiscovered.
Deep insights into the lives of his closest ...more

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Jul 12, 2016 Kasa Cotugno rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: subj-sports-surfing, awards-winners, audio, genre-biography-memoir

For those of us who have never surfed and never will, the sport has always held a mystic otherworldly glamor incorporating a strength of purpose that is almost superhuman. From an early age, surfing was part of Finnegan's DNA, thanks in large part to the freedom he enjoyed as a kid first in California, then, Hawaii. His father, working in the film industry, was largely responsible, not only because of these locations being necessary for his work, but also because of one remembered incident when ...more

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Jul 28, 2015 Craig MacIntosh rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: anyone who surfed or loves exotic travel spots

Recommended to Craig by: My daughter purchased it

Loving this story...I lived it, at least the Hawaii part. Ten years older than Finnegan, my Hawaiian surfing days were rudely interrupted by a summons from Uncle Sam. It would be twenty years before I picked up surfing again. Finnegan nails the lure of the waves perfectly. He's brutally honest about his man/child existence from his high school years on. Traveling to exotic surf spots and exploring reefs across the South Pacific takes him around the world. Great eye for details in a colorful, at ...more

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Jun 24, 2015 Michelle Carrell rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: won

The images contained in this book made me feel like I was reading a treasured journal or scrapbook. It made me feel welcome and willing to dive deep into FInnegan's memories. Which, by the way, I am severely jealous of his superb memory. I could almost smell the salt in the air and faintly hear the waves off in the distance. I could taste the author's fear, I reveled in his happiness and sympathized with his childhood troubles. Very well written. I am very honored to have won this book in a good ...more

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Jan 02, 2021 Peter Tillman rated it it was amazing

Shelves: award-win-nom, own-copy, bios-memoirs, travel, reread-list

First-rate book. You should read my GR friend Vivian's take, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
-- by "a mermaid who has lost her tail,
longing for the sea." Woot!

And jrendocrine's, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
"Honestly, Finnegan's writing is reminiscent of Proust." !!

Most highly recommended. I have next to no interest in surfing, although I like to watch them for a few minutes. Can't imagine hangin out for hours in the cold Calif water, waiting for a wave...
But I recommend his ...more

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Sep 16, 2020 Michelle Curie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, memoirs

"Surfing, to begin with, was not a sport. It was a path. And the more you poured into it, the more you got back from it."

More than any other thing we call sport, surfing encompasses an entire lifestyle. I've been to and lived by seas often enough to know that feeling of connection to it is addictive and inexplicable at the same time. This memoir tapped into that, exploring what it means to dedicate your life to a passion.

William Finnegan is a renowned writer at the New Yorker and while he ...more

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Feb 07, 2017 Liza Fireman rated it liked it

Shelves: read-from-shelf, ebook, 4000-books, read-audible

I guess this book can be awesome for someone that loves surfing. I found it way too long and repetitive. William Finnegan is moving through his life, from continent to continent, and there is a lot of surfing on the way. Some great description, but could be easily cut in half.

The first part, set in California and Hawaii, is the strongest. It talks about Finnegan's childhood and his discovery of surfing.
In the second part, his friend and him are going around the world, finding out great surfing p ...more

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Nov 12, 2015 Brian rated it really liked it

Full disclosure: I grew up in the same L.A. suburb and graduated from the same high school from which the author's surfing life originates, in part. So there was an extra personal resonance that carried me through some of the repetitive installments of wave-catching negotiation, description, reflection, and reverie. Finnegan's writing is smart and emotionally engaging enough that even if you've never thought about surfing culture, you're likely to ride these memoire waves with enthusiasm. At tim ...more

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Dec 29, 2015 Shari rated it liked it

Having been born and raised in Hawaii to a father who learned to surf in the 60's, and me learning to surf in the 70's -- I really thought I'd like this book more. I enjoyed it, except that I felt it was at least twice as long as it should have been. It suffered from needing an editor. Badly.

If you were into the 60's and 70's surf scene, you might find this interesting, but be prepared to stand by with a dictionary and some long nights, as Finnegan is VERBOSE and definitely enjoys showing off hi ...more

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May 12, 2015 Beth rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2012-2015, 1980s-1990s, 1960s, 1970s-80s, 2000-2010, surfing

Oddly enough since I have always lived on the Northern plains and have only been to the ocean a few times, I loved this book. Finnegan does a marvelous job of explaining and describing the intricacies of both waves and surfing. Many times it felt as if the reader was riding along on the board behind him - seeing those huge waves barreling across the coast.
Occasionally I would have liked to have had a glossary of surfer terminology, but for the most part it was possible to glean meaning from the ...more

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Dec 22, 2020 Carol Storm rated it liked it · review of another edition

Barack Obama recommended this book, and it won the Pulitzer Prize. It's easy to see why Obama liked it, since the first few chapters give a really kick-ass description of what it was like to be a teenager in Hawaii in the Sixties. Not only the surf and sun, but the drugs everywhere, the gang fights, the sordid underbelly of the whole tourist scene.

So the first few chapters are really good. It's hard not to root for William Finnegan when he's a kid in Hawaii getting beat up by Samoans and having Barack Obama recommended this book, and it won the Pulitzer Prize. It's easy to see why Obama liked it, since the first few chapters give a really kick-ass description of what it was like to be a teenager in Hawaii in the Sixties. Not only the surf and sun, but the drugs everywhere, the gang fights, the sordid underbelly of the whole tourist scene.

So the first few chapters are really good. It's hard not to root for William Finnegan when he's a kid in Hawaii getting beat up by Samoans and having his board stolen. The problem is, as William grows up, he becomes more and more of a stuck-up, pretentious, know-it-all jerk. He can't just write about the surf, or the breaks, or the bitchin new boards. Oh, no! He has to convince you he's a great philosopher, a heroic knight on a quest, one part Beatnik, one part Percival searching for the Grail.

Typical moment #1. Finnegan is just fifteen when Bobby Kennedy is shot. He gets all misty-eyed, which is nothing original, just Boomer Nostalgia 101. Only not. Because he's at his girlfriend's and they've been making out all night, and she's innocently asleep on the bed while he watches the news. And instead of sharing how she felt, he makes some snotty remark about how they never had much to talk about. And then her dad comes home, and he slithers out the window, and makes some crack about how her dad is stupid too. The genius of Finnegan is so unappreciated in this book! I'm surprised he didn't kick the family dog on the way out, like, "this one's for you, Bobby!"

Typical moment #2. Finnegan's best high school surfing buddy is a tough Italian kid named Domenic, who (needless to say) comes from a less privileged background. Finnegan's dad is a wealthy TV director, and he gives young Domenic a start in the business. So Domenic makes good and later becomes successful in TV. And at Domenic's wedding his father comes up to Finnegan's father and thanks him for making all his boy's success possible. And dear old Finnegan lets us know "it was like a scene from the Godfather." Johnny from the Karate Kid couldn't have said it better. The return of the Sneering Surfer!

Typical moment #3. Finnegan spends not one moment wondering whether he could cut it in combat, or even in basic training. He never writes one paragraph about what Vietnam did to the guys who went. (Some of them were surfers too!) But he's oh, so very careful to suggest that surfing in itself was some kind of antiwar statement, and that the entire surf scene was, and I quote, an antiwar subculture . . . "however incoherently!" I could not stop giggling for about twenty minutes after I read that page.

"However incoherently!" I mean, when I write drama I sound like Shakespeare, however incoherently! And I can explain Einstein's Theory of Relatively really well, however incoherently! And the Confederate States of America was formed to preserve slavery, but most Confederate soldiers were actually against slavery, however incoherently! For the rest of the book I wanted to see "however incoherently" burned into Finnegan's long board . . . or the skin on his behind!

So most of the book is harmless enough. It's just our brilliant genius hero hitting one remote, exotic surf spot after another, boasting about how he got there first, and then bitching about the "tourists" who turn up later. (A tourist is any white person not named Finnegan.) And he's always pulling a humble-brag about the locals, like, "though I quickly realized I could never compete with the legendary Makaha Crew, my respect for these simple surfers and my deep reverence for their bold and authentic style soon won me a place in the lineup." How did Charles Dickens put it? Be humble, Uriah. It's what goes down best!

Oh, speaking of Dickens. Finnegan can't just read James Joyce. He has to tell you he reads James Joyce. And he can't just sing his baby a bedtime song. It has to be a song from Shakespeare! Over and over I kept wondering, "Who is this guy? Why does he have to try so hard? Who is he trying to impress?" But by the end of the book, I just didn't care. Finnegan writes best about things he isn't trying to enjoy, like watching his parents die of old age. His worst writing is always about stuff he he wants you to think he cares about . . . however incoherently! ...more

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Aug 17, 2020 Julia rated it it was amazing

Sooooooooooooo good. Every time I wasn't reading it I wanted so badly to be reading it. Filled with moments of humbling intensity— at the waves themselves, of course, but also at the mystery that shrouds everything worth loving. Now I can't stop watching surfing videos. ...more

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About William Finnegan

William Finnegan

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William Finnegan is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He has won several awards for his journalism and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for his work "Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life." ...more

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“The particulars of new places grabbed me and held me, the sweep of new coasts, cold, lovely, dawns. The world was incomprehensibly large, and there was still so much to see. Yes, I got sick sometimes of being an expatriate, always ignorant, on the outside of things, but I didn't feel ready for domestic life, for seeing the same people, the same places, thinking more or less the same thoughts, each day. I liked surrendering to the onrush, the uncertainty, the serendipity of the road.” — 16 likes

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