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Barbarian Days : A Surfing Life by William Finnegan (2015, Hardcover)
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About this product
Product Identifiers
PublisherPenguin Publishing Group
ISBN-101594203474
ISBN-139781594203473
eBay Product ID (ePID)175197846
Product Key Features
Book TitleBarbarian Days : a Surfing Life
Number of Pages464 Pages
LanguageEnglish
Publication Year2015
TopicEditors, Journalists, Publishers, Special Interest / Adventure, Personal Memoirs, Essays & Travelogues, Surfing
IllustratorYes
GenreTravel, Sports & Recreation, Biography & Autobiography
AuthorWilliam Finnegan
FormatHardcover
Dimensions
Item Height1.4 in
Item Weight24.4 Oz
Item Length9.5 in
Item Width6.3 in
Additional Product Features
Intended AudienceTrade
LCCN2015-472507
ReviewsBob Shacochis, Outside Magazine : "Fearless and full of grace." O, The Oprah Magazine : "Irresistible." Bookforum : "As it progresses the whole book turns into a portal...It's tempting to say that Barbarian Days will bring readers as close as they'll get to the surf, short of actual surfing. But I had a stronger reaction: The book brought me closer than I'd ever been, or expected to get, to the real, unfathomable ocean." O, The Oprah Magazine : "Irresistible." BBC.com : "A dream of a book by a masterful writer long immersed in surfing culture. Finnegan recaptures the waves lost and found, the euphoria, the danger...the allure." Publishers Weekly (starred review) : "Panoramic and fascinating...The core of the book is a surfing chronicle, and Finnegan possesses impeccable short-board bona fides...A revealing and magisterial account of a beautiful addiction." Mark Rotella, Publishers Weekly's Best Summer Books of the Summer: "Like that powerful, glassy wave, great books on surfing come few and far between. This summer, New Yorker writer Finnegan recalls his teenage years in the California and Hawaii of the 1960s--when surfing was an escape for loners and outcasts. A delightful storyteller, Finnegan takes readers on a journey from Hawaii to Australia, Fiji, and South Africa, where finding those waves is as challenging as riding them." Kirkus: "A fascinating look inside the mind of a man terminally in love with a magnificent obsession. A lyrical and intense memoir." Library Journal : "An up-close and personal homage to the surfing lifestyle through the author's journey as a lifelong surfer. Finnegan's writing is polished and bold...[A] high-caliber memoir.", Publishers Weekly (starred review) : "Panoramic and fascinating...The core of the book is a surfing chronicle, and Finnegan possesses impeccable short-board bona fides...A revealing and magisterial account of a beautiful addiction." Mark Rotella, Publishers Weekly's Best Summer Books of the Summer: "Like that powerful, glassy wave, great books on surfing come few and far between. This summer, New Yorker writer Finnegan recalls his teenage years in the California and Hawaii of the 1960s--when surfing was an escape for loners and outcasts. A delightful storyteller, Finnegan takes readers on a journey from Hawaii to Australia, Fiji, and South Africa, where finding those waves is as challenging as riding them." Kirkus: "A fascinating look inside the mind of a man terminally in love with a magnificent obsession. A lyrical and intense memoir." Library Journal : "An up-close and personal homage to the surfing lifestyle through the author's journey as a lifelong surfer. Finnegan's writing is polished and bold...[A] high-caliber memoir.", Kirkus: "A fascinating look inside the mind of a man terminally in love with a magnificent obsession. A lyrical and intense memoir."
Dewey Edition23
Dewey Decimal797.32092
Synopsis**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., **Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography** "Reading this guy on the subject of waves and water is like reading Hemingway on bullfighting; William Burroughs on controlled substances; Updike on adultery. . . . a coming-of-age story, seen through the gloss resin coat of a surfboard."-- Sports Illustrated Included in President Obama's 2016 Summer Reading List 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. Praise for Barbarian Days "Without a doubt, the finest surf book I've ever read . . . But on a more fundamental level, Barbarian Days offers a clear-eyed vision of American boyhood. Like Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild , it is a sympathetic examination of what happens when literary ideas of freedom and purity take hold of a young mind and fling his body out into the far reaches of the world." --The New York Times Magazine "Incandescent . . . 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] 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." --Los Angeles Times
LC Classification NumberGV838.F58A3 2015
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Ratings and reviews
Most relevant reviews
- 30 Aug, 2022
Ura omote ga nai!
I am deliriously happy to own this book. Finnegan is a venerable warrior... excavating his own experience and vulnerabilities & combining them with magical writing skills (and a really fine editor). That it is a signed copy, and photos were included, makes this a book, a reading experience I will always treasure. The best thing I have read in 10 years. Best value in 20... "Ura omote ga nai": My father was born in Japan the son of missionary, and this is a samurai phrase used by our family that means to have "no back and no front"... utterly transparent writing, like the invisible filament of some of his waves... S.Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned
- 20 Mar, 2022
good read
i bought this book as March read for Noahs book club he always hits a homerun with his choices every book i ever read he picked was good.Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned
- 19 Jul, 2019
Surf babyyyyy
Makes me wanna get in the water. Live the dream. It will happen once I graduate. I am compelled towards the ocean. Pulled to it like the receding tide. This hardcover was less than my lunch. Great story. Buy this book if you love/have remote interest in surfing or memoirs/ autobiographies. I happen to have an interest in bothVerified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned
- 06 Apr, 2018
excellent surf true story
pulitzer prize winner, enough saidVerified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned
- 11 Oct, 2019
WAHOO!!!!!!
It arrived and in an stoked!Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned
