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 also because while it is a book about A Surfing Life — as the subtitle states — 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.
Finnegan’s treatment of surfing never feels like performance. Through the sheer intensity of his descriptive powers and the undeniable ways in which surfing has shaped his life, Barbarian Days is an utterly convincing study in the joy of treating seriously an unserious thing ... Barbarian Days is less an ode to independence than a celebration of deliberate constriction, of making choices that determine what you think about and who you know. Surfing demands intuition and familiarity with one’s surroundings but it does not allow for the perceptive disregard that so often accompanies deep knowledge. As Finnegan demonstrates, surfing, like good writing, is an act of vigilant noticing.
...once it emerges from the adolescent-rebellion stage of its development, surfing presents itself as a problematic passion, and it is one of this book’s many great strengths that it unflinchingly addresses the various forms this problem takes as Finnegan grows up, commits to a career as a journalist and has a family ... There are too many breathtaking, original things in Barbarian Days to do more than mention here — observations about surfing that have simply never been made before, or certainly never so well.
...Barbarian Days transcends its putative subject. Elegantly written and structured, it’s a riveting adventure story, an intellectual autobiography, and a restless, searching meditation on love, friendship and family.
No pretension or flab here. Just sturdy verbs, a casual flowing power, tantric masculine reticence, a melancholy sense of a sidewise-drifting life, little humor. There isn’t a line the most mischievous critic could single out for ridicule. Barbarian Days reminds you, though, that not being able to find fault with something isn’t the same as loving it. This is a very long book with excellent things in it, but it can be like watching a brooding film that’s mostly fine cinematography. The characters (including Mr. Finnegan) only rarely squeak to life ... As both travel writing and memoir, Barbarian Days often slips into the horse latitudes between the ode to joy that is Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and the misanthropic wit that fills Paul Theroux’s accounts of his adventures. There’s little sting in its tail.
Occasionally I wish that he’d shared more explicitly here what surfing has meant to him as a reporter ... Finnegan’s work is a tribute to wandering. Finnegan now builds sentences, and he — who once shunned even using a surfboard leash — may now be more tethered, but he’s certainly captured those colorful splashings for the rest of us. In this book, the depths shimmer.
Finnegan’s descriptions of riding waves are filled both with the magical argot of his craft and the clean-hewn simile with which his writing on other subjects is distinguished ... It would have been interesting to understand more about how this obsession had intersected with his marriage. His wife, Caroline, is a criminal lawyer with her own successful career. The couple have a daughter, Mollie. But in addition to foreign reporting trips, Finnegan recounts long winter surf breaks with his friends when his family is left at home.
Although surfing culture has long been dominated by men and tends to attract showboats, this contemplative book is hardly a trophy case of macho conquests ... [Finnegan] carefully mines his surfing exploits for broader, hard-won insights on his childhood, his most intense friendships and romances, his political education, his career. He's always attuned to his surroundings, and his reflections are often tinged with self-effacing wit.
Barbarian Days is overflowing with vivid descriptions of waves caught and waves missed, of disappointments and ecstasies and gargantuan curling tubes that encircle riders like cathedrals of pure stained glass. These paragraphs, with their mix of personal remembrance and subcultural taxonomies, tend to be as elegant and pellucid as the breakers they immortalize. Of course, that doesn’t stop them from starting to blur together once you’ve reached the 50th or so description, and it can be hard for noninitiates to keep their enthusiasm keen. But despite a little bit of chop, this memoir is one you can ride all the way to shore.
With Mr. Finnegan’s bravura memoir, the surfing bookshelf is dramatically enriched. It’s not only a volume for followers of the sport. Non-surfers, too, will be treated to a travelogue head-scratchingly rich in obscure, sharply observed destinations.
...an evocative, profound and deeply moving memoir ... The proof is in the sentences. Were I given unlimited space to review this book, I would simply reproduce it here, with a quotation mark at the beginning and another at the end. While surfers have a reputation for being inarticulate, there is actually a fair amount of overlap between what makes a good surfer and a good writer. A smooth style, an ability to stay close to the source of the energy, humility before the task, and, once you’re done, not claiming your ride. In other words, making something exceedingly difficult look easy. The gift for writing a clean line is rare, and the gift for riding one even rarer. Finnegan possesses both.
Surfing is the backbone of the book, but Finnegan’s relationships to people, not waves, form its flesh. He is witty about the bullies at his Hawaiian junior high. He writes well about his girlfriends, forever waiting on shore. He dwells wonderfully on the daily tug between family and getting out on the water. But he is most interesting when he writes, as he does in depth, about his surfing buddies.
Finnegan’s epic adventure, beautifully told, is much more than the story of a boy and his wave, even if surfing serves as the thumping heartbeat of his life.
Because he treats the waves as the book's primary characters, there are sections of Barbarian Days that are less Point Break and more dispassionate oceanic survey course ... In a sense, Barbarian Days functions as a 450-page thank you letter, masterfully crafted, to his parents, friends, wife, enemies, ex-girlfriends, townsfolk, daughter — everyone who tolerated and even encouraged his lifelong obsession. It's a way to help them — and us — understand what drives him to keep paddling out half a century after first picking up a board.
What's a break, you may ask. It is one of many, many technical surfing terms you'll come to know by the end of this book without their ever actually having been defined. It's like an immersion course in a foreign language. Just let it flow over you. By the end, you'll have some idea what's going on ... A surfer from Oregon named Andre explains why 'chicks' have such a tough time when they get involved with surfers. 'It's like if you or I hooked up with a fanatical shopper,' he said. . . . 'You'd have to accept that your entire life would be traveling around to malls. Or, really, more like waiting for malls to open.' How about reading a 447-page book on that topic? If anyone could make it work, it's the stylist and storyteller William Finnegan.
Barbarian Days, in the tradition of the great adventure memoir, is not only an account of events, of waves caught and conquered — it’s a reflection on fear, mortality, and the seductive pleasures that can be found at their very edge ... But the waves are only part of this lyrical, intellectual memoir. The author touches on love, on responsibility, on politics, individuality and morality, as well as on the lesser-known aspects of surfing: the toll it takes on the body, the weird lingo, the whacky community. Finnegan’s world is as dazzling and deep as any ocean. It’s a pleasure to paddle into and makes for a hell of a ride.
