A review quote on the back of my copy of Barbarian Days by William Finnegan reads: "I don't know anything about surfing, but I was gripped by the intensity of his language" (Olivia Laing, Guardian). This most likely sums up the experience of many of Finnegan's readers. But I also find this quote near-offensively simplistic.
Finnegan is perhaps best known for being a long-standing staff writer at the New Yorker, reporting often from conflict and war zones, including South America, South Africa and Sudan. So what does it say about his talents that he also won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2016 with his 500-page epic, Barbarian Days?
Part-memoir, part travel epic, definitely surf-epic, the book charts Finnegan's journey from childhood to adulthood - a journey in both a physical and chronological sense. To all four corners of the world and back, always chasing the perfect wave, this is a life lived on the road and an adventurous example of how we're always searching for something new. It's a true life, yet reads like a mesmerizing piece of fiction to many of us.
You may be hesitant due to the simple fact that you don't care about surfing, but I would urge you to read on before you make your decision.
Why should you read it?
As all good travel writing, Barbarian Days has more to say than describing waves. If I had to identify a theme, it would have to be something like coming of age - though I'd rather not. Because we might think of coming-of-age books as finished by the age of around 25, while what Finnegan shows is that we never really stop coming of age. After finishing school, he embarks on an epic journey, circumnavigating the globe and stopping at the most isolated spots to surf, seemingly never quite satisfied, always ready to move on to the next best thing. This is the first element that makes the book hugely relatable.
There's also the simple fact that Finnegan's life reads like an adventure novel, albeit a very realistic one. I couldn't help shaking my head almost constantly. At the then uninhabited Tavarua Island in Fiji, he nonchalantly describes coming to grips with the dadakulachi, the three-step snake, so nicknamed due to estimated distance you would be able to make after it bit you (supposedly the world's sixth-deadliest snake). Other times, he writes that "Frequently, there came a moment when I thought, No, never mind, this is getting too heavy, I want to go back to shore. But it was always too late then." Reading about this controversial mind-set he faces almost every time he arrives to shore - the waves are too big, I definitely shouldn't go in, here I go - was one of the best elements of the book, as well as how he learnt to control himself in life-threatening situations and not lose his head. Surfing reads almost like a religion.
It is an in-depth glimpse into the obsession, the philosophy and mind-set of this world, one completely foreign to me. Yet due to his powerful descriptions and awe that shine off the pages, it looped me in. And despite the fact that a life of surfing can leave you mentally and physically impaired, Finnegan keeps coming back to this one constant element of his otherwise rather malleable existence. Like one long, continuous wave, it ebbs and flows throughout the book.
What was I not massively fond of?
Sure, there were times where for me, the surfing descriptions got a little too long, where I didn't feel as connected to the narrative as before. Some sections are action-packed, and some will just be ordinary days of a life, working and surfing and quarreling and surfing again. But I can hardly complain about the author telling a true story.
Finnegan is honest throughout, and there will be some decisions we may disagree with or scratch our heads in confusion - the logical isn't always the answer. It's hard to imagine that this is only one person's story. Finnegan builds lives in so many different places in the world, only to deconstruct them a month or two later, that he comes to embody almost a spiritual existence, a metaphor of the vagabond. And yet, he's as real as can be. Perhaps it's good for us to read something so far removed from our comfy sofas and daily commutes.
Overall...
What is the worst way you imagine yourself to die? For me, it is drowning under a giant wave. Nothing is scarier. I've tried surfing once, in knee-high water, and even that was terrifying. So to read a memoir of someone living a life doing the thing that scares me most was a fascinating experience.
Finnegan will make you feel like a newbie, an amateur, a poser; he talks about how surfing went from something completely unknown to 'sport' status, how it became a symbol. Now it's due to be an official sport in the Olympics. So here's an honest account of what it feels like to devote a massive chunk of your life to this obsession, while coming to grips with jobs, settling down, starting a family and what happens to our values in the meantime.
Despite its exotic aspects, this is not escapism: it is a stressful, beautiful human account of the search.
8/10
