Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
A Book Review
Artfully crafted, visceral, and vivid, Barbarian Days not only depicts a surfer’s intimate link with the sea and the intricacies of riding waves, but also how this path directs the arc of his life toward the places, people, and experiences that are most important for his evolution as a person. He masterfully moves readers through time periods and locations, depicting scenes of oceanic power, equal parts splendor and terror, with striking lucidity. I admired his poetic use of language and some of my favorite parts of the book were his beautiful and powerful descriptions of waves. I’m generally a fast reader, but this book read so much like poetry that it required a more languid kind of attention. I had to slow down my pace to be in sync with it and to be able to fully absorb it — not just what he explicitly states but also the implicit messages flowing just beneath the surface, powering the narrative from those hidden depths. In this way, his writing style is not unlike the mighty waves he so deeply reveres.
The book is an autobiographical account with surfing as the focal point of the narrative. I couldn’t help but see surfing not just as an art form requiring specialized skill, intense dedication, and a humble reverence for the untamed power of the sea, but also as a metaphor. My interpretation is that the ocean represents (among other things) a higher, spiritual power, and surfing is a way to come to know that power. I don’t mean this necessarily in a religious sense, but just that it represents something bigger and deeper than everyday life and consciousness, and something that is mostly unknowable to us except for small glimpses and brief moments of clarity. Those small moments are what surfers are chasing on those waves — those fleeting seconds where we, in our mortal humanity, can touch something divine.
The book is an intimate portrait of his relationships — with surfing, with waves, with himself and how he comes to know himself through surfing, with the friends he makes while surfing and the people he meets on his travels chasing waves. He was always searching — always craving that wave, that oneness, that naked awe. He describes how his enchantment with surfing blossomed during his upbringing in California and Hawaii. We see him grow up against the backdrop of cultural upheaval in the 1960s and 1970s and how this affected the mass consciousness at the time. Throughout these changes and his coming of age, he heeds the call to travel the world and search for great waves on foreign shores. On the surface, such a pursuit might seem trivial or careless, and there were times when even he saw it that way, but on a deeper level it was profound and necessary despite the hardships and times when he doubted himself.
He lived spontaneously, following his calling as he traveled around the world — the Polynesian islands, Australia, South Africa — learning about the cultures and people and riding the waves. Despite his lack of financial means and the dangers of many of the locations, he really enjoyed learning about people and began informally interviewing locals about their lives. It was his time in South Africa, where he got a job teaching, that lead him to an interest in politics, journalism, and issues of power, and it was also where he met his future wife. He must have found what he was looking for because after this period in Africa he went back home.
As he gets older we see him start to question whether abandoning all responsibilities to chase waves, as many of his adult surfer friends continued to do, is really a wise thing. While his love for surfing remains in tact throughout his life, his relationship with it develops more layers of complexity into his older years. Also as his journalism career takes off, his attention is needed in other, more pressing areas. As he says: “These were serious matters, consuming as work, self-justifying as projects. Surfing was the opposite.” After one particularly grueling near-death experience he vowed “not to commend my soul to the ocean at its most violent in hope of some absolution.” Though surfing had a dark side and he struggled sometimes in his relationship with it, he was always an avid surfer, forever enchanted by its mystical pull.
I loved his exquisitely gorgeous descriptions of waves, many of which had spiritual undercurrents, such as this one: “…tube rides had the quality of revelation…They were always too brief, but their mystery was intense.” He celebrates the “sharp glimpses of eternity” gained from riding an especially magnificent wave and he explores the richness of a wave’s color palette: “…a glorious wave, with hues in its depths so intense they felt like first additions — ocean colors never seen before, made solely for this wave, this moment, perhaps never to be seen again.” He describes a group of enthralled surfers watching in awe as a mighty set rolls in: “The whole scene had the feeling of a religious shrine…once the swells started pumping, large pools of awe seemed to collect around us, hushing us, or reducing us to code and murmurs, as though we were in church.”
This line felt very poignant: “The heightened sense of a vast, unknowable design silences the effort to understand. You feel honored simply to be out there.” This is very profound and spiritual in that it indicates a higher power’s design at work and a deep, unspeakable reverence for it. He described the wave at Honolua Bay as “commanding such devotion that I could see renouncing all other ambition than to surf it, every time it broke, forever.” To feel such awe is truly an enlivening, gratifying, and even transcendent experience.
It seemed that for a lot of surfers, there was not only a spiritual undercurrent to surfing, but also a deeply emotional element as well, as if it is a way for them to get in touch with their repressed emotions or to somehow uncover and soften whatever pain or trauma had been buried in their psyches. He even says that after very intense sessions “I was surprised to find myself sobbing.” I got the sense that he had some suppressed emotional trauma which came out during intense experiences like when he broke up with his first girlfriend and when surfing facilitated the inner exploration of his psyche and emotional body. In this way, surfing was also a cathartic emotional cleanse, and a way for him to intimately know not only the waves but himself. He says “After particularly intense tubes or wipeouts, I felt a charged and wild inclination to weep, which could last for hours.”
Throughout human history water has always had a rich symbolism. In religious contexts, wisdom traditions around the world, and just due to the fact that our bodies are mostly made of water and we literally can’t live without it, there is an intimate link between life and H2O. It has been known across many different cultures and religions to represent purification, transformation, healing, redemption, protection, catharsis, as well as the emotional, spiritual, and unconscious realms. Some also believe it represents the divine feminine (as does the earth itself whereas the elements of fire and air are divine masculine expressions). Water is a powerful, life-giving force, and our planet’s surface is largely covered by oceans. So there is a deep and intimate connection between humanity, our planet, and water. It’s very healthy to connect our bodies with the earth, especially the sand and sea, because it facilitates cleansing and renewal on the physical, emotional, and spiritual levels. We’re supposed to be connected to the earth because we are of the earth and part of the earth. I felt those undercurrents very strongly in this book — that primal life-giving link between humans and water / the ocean.
To me, this line was the most beautiful and I had to reread it, slower each time, to fully savor the gorgeous imagery describing a wave the author finds particularly exquisite: “…its roaring, sparkling depths and vaulted ceiling like some kind of recurring miracle.” Oh, wow! And I also particularly loved this comparison of waves to music, as that is a language I understand. The technical surf terminology went over my head but when I read this it made sense and it made me smile: “The problem can indeed present itself musically. Are these waves approaching in 13/8 time, perhaps with seven sets an hour, and the third wave of every set swinging wide in a sort of dissonant crescendo? Or is this swell one of God’s jazz solos, whose structure is beyond our understanding?” There is such beauty and mastery of the written word in this narrative — it blows my mind!
I especially liked how the book ended with a spiritual twist, as the author lets himself be guided through a very powerful set of waves by the religious boatman. In some sense, I feel like this was his way of accepting, acknowledging, and/or surrendering to a divine influence and the connection he creates with it through surfing. Especially after the death of his parents, he may have needed this spiritual intervention, so to speak, to help him process and feel the swell of grief. This scene was beautifully written and very touching. Simple on the surface and straight-forward, but masking a deep, profound meaning. After finishing the book I was so touched I paused for a few moments of silence to fully absorb the feeling.
I never knew surfing had such intimacy at its core. This book opened up a whole new perspective that I never knew about and have now had the opportunity to experience through the author’s eyes. This is such a powerful story and it utilizes language so beautifully and with such poignancy. Even if you know nothing about surfing (I didn’t before I read this book), there is so much to glean from this masterfully crafted narrative.
I wasn’t expecting this book to be so beautiful. I would never have guessed it from the title and description. This is the March pick in Noah’s Book Club (check out Noah Syndergaard’s social media pages for more info on his book club), and I’m glad he chose it because it probably wouldn’t have found its way to my bookshelf otherwise. And it is a gem — for its exquisitely beautiful use of language and metaphor, ability to open up new perspectives for readers, and its exploration of the intimate language of waves and of the ocean with all its complexity and hidden depths which are as frightening as they are beautiful.
