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Penguin Press

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

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Description

Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography Included in President Obama’s 2016 Summer Reading List “Without a doubt, the finest surf book I’ve ever read . . . ” —The New York Times Magazine 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. Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Press


Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 21, 2015


Edition ‏ : ‎ Illustrated


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Print length ‏ : ‎ 464 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1594203474


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 73


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.53 pounds


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.4 x 1.5 x 9.6 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #24,984 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #1 in Surfing #73 in Traveler & Explorer Biographies #226 in Memoirs (Books)


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • Even Better Read the Second Time
Format: Kindle
This is my second time reading this amazing, well-deserved Pulitzer Prize Winner. Every word cover to cover. Having grown up in Laguna Beach, Surfing has been a part of my life since I was 4 years old. No I don't surf but am fascinated by the mindset and lifestyle. William Finnegan recalls his experience with the surfing culture in vivid detail. The feeling of barreling down the face of a Big Wave is captured beautifully as are the Wipeout. An incredibly well written and detailed narrative of the Surfing Culture in the early 1960's when the phenomenon was in its infancy. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2025 by Shanta
    • A meditation on the human condition as rendered through one man's obsession
Format: Kindle
Prose, honesty, and a look at a bygone age. This was a new way to see the world, but vicariously.
Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2025 by Zachary
    • Classic Surfing Saga
A classic surfing tale - most suitable for hard-core surfing guru's. Interesting, well-told yarn about surfing in the early days of the sport.
Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2025 by William C Ruediger
    • Great Product
Everything worked out fine, fast shipping!
Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2025 by Lukas Klostermair
    • Read by a non surfer
Format: Kindle
A truly engrossing book written without hubris but with humility, keen observation and philosophical insight into much more than surfing.
Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2025 by S. B. Cooper
    • The More Things Change, the More the Waves Stay the Same
Format: Kindle
A terrific book on waves written by a professional reporter, Barbarian Days smashes the stereotype of the inarticulate surfer. The watery descriptions are so vivid you can taste the salt, even when the going gets so tough, its hard to understand why the hell anything but a fish would be out in such major surf. While many tails about summiting mountains, distance swimming in open oceans or surfing waves "three refrigerators high" seem rather tall, Barbarian Days stays grounded in factual detail. The in-depth descriptions approach meditations on ocean currents, winds, reefs, surfing technique and surf board models, and yet fails to explain the question why. Certainly not the pursuit of glory, the author makes clear. Despite popular misconceptions, in the early days, the original surf culture downplayed heroics; boasts were bad form and showing off on a wave was as uncool as scoring points in a contest. In a sort of "right stuff" tone, Barbarian Days captures the authentic experience, without romance or glamour and portrays surfing as a cold, solitary test of courage. Though the author tells all, starting with his teenage addiction to waves, a mystery hangs over the book. Why freeze in stormy waters for eight hours, or summit peaks or struggle with a terminal disease against insurmountable odds? Is it human or superhuman to push the limits of tolerance when agony seems prevalent and ecstasy elusive? I once asked a three-time channel swimmer what kept him going in the cold dark ocean for 13 hours and he said "Beatle songs mostly, they just run though my head. I could almost hear the author humming in Barbarian Days, pretending the adventures are normal, though some accounts include an implicit "don't try this at home" caveat cause maybe it wasn't so smart to take such risks. In some instances, he confesses that he can't believe he came out alive. This is not a dull memoir. The childhood sections were so touching I wished my teenage son would read the book. On the other hand, I am relieved that my son doesn't read because he is growing up in a very different world. Though the quest to discover unknown waves in remote corners of the globe took knocking about to extremes, in the 1960's -1980's, traveling around was a coming of age ritual. Sadly, in this day and age, the world is not nearly as safe and faced with school and career pressures most kids won't have the luxury of an extended time out. One theme of the book concerns change. The author returned some early haunts later in life to find a remote island transformed into a luxury resort, or a coastal fishing village overrun by tourists. Lives and places change. The author aged, married, became a war correspondent, but chasing big surf remained a constant. The interplay took on a rhythmic symmetry, the more things changed the more the waves stayed the same. Like climbers with their mountains, and swimmers with their channels, for surfers the waves serve as a measure, a proving grounds, a retreat, a source of friends and a challenge that never stops calling. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2015 by adel
    • Did I want to love this book!
Format: Hardcover
God, did I want to love this book. I read Finnegan's surfing trilogy in the New Yorker about 10 years ago. It has always stuck with me as one of the great pieces of writing ever. The tone, balance, and expression are extraordinary. In sum, they are perfect jewels, the like of which I have never read since. I read everything I could find by Finnegan afterwards: none quite matched up. I concluded that the singularity of the New Yorker pieces was the way Finnegan wove the intensity of life into the waves while somehow conveying something profound about how we all deal with the struggle for life and death in day to day life. It was also just a damn good read. So, when this book came along, I expected the same. Foolish me. Clearly, surfing and the author are bound closely: both professionally and recreationally. He loves the sport and made his name from it. That this autobiography is called "a surfing life" is surely not accidental. Finnegan made a splash with the trilogy and he is known for it and because of it. This book, however, does not approach the heights of the New Yorker pieces. It is as if the Beatles had done a concept album based on "A day in The Life" ten years after the song. Structurally, the main difference is that Finnegan was essentially a somewhat removed observer in the articles. The main character was an asthmatic doctor who overcame his condition because he had to surf to live and vice versa; the author is opaque; like Ross McDonald's P.I.'s he has no back story: he just is. In the book, its all about Finnegan. And this is the problem. A more honest title would be "My Life Including Surfing". There is far too much detail about the author's family, friends, and habits. Much of it is boring. The author even acknowledges that a lot of what he reports from his early life is taken from letters he wrote to friends at the time. A re-cap of forgotten memories of a 13 year old and his family are just tedious. If they were great and interesting characters whose stories the author recalls, then great; a different kind of book than a meditation on surfing and life but OK. Unfortunately, nothing interesting happens with the family and you get the sense that Finnegan is not really interested either. More problematic, the tedium inexorably detracts from the magic in the man meets ocean leitmotif. The book, I think could have been very good. But as it is, it is a middling autobiography of a not overly eventful life. Things happen. Author surfs. Ten more things happen. Author surfs. I had no sense of relationships or who the other characters really were or why they were important to Finnegan. There is also a fair amount of pomposity. At 15, Finnegan retained "a latent communardism". Ouch. The book needs a good editor. Maybe you don't get to do that with big guns in the literary world but Finnegan is far too generous to himself. There are 200 pages of biography fat on this book should have been trimmed off. It is just too long and mires itself in exactly the detail that the articles transcend. And that really was the point of those articles. You can cut life down to its quick and feel its bare pulse while riding the ocean. That is the elemental drive. This book is the very detailed account of a man who leads an ordinary and not particularly interesting life and likes to surf. What a missed opportunity. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2015 by pingufreddy
    • big adventure!
Format: Kindle
Yes indeed it was. Not much else to say. Gets a little old after 65% or so. Three more words
Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2025 by Daniel Mayer

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