We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,707,836.00 | Books Available: 749,127 | Members Online: 0

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life (Thorndike Press Large Print Biographies & Memoirs Series)

Barbarian Days A Surfing Life - Thorndike Press Large Print Biographies & Memoirs Series
Author: William Finnegan

?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 — — Barbarian Days is William Finnegan?s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. ... more »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

ISBN-13: 9781410485892
ISBN-10: 1410485897
Publication Date: 1/27/2016
Pages: 643
Edition: Lrg
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Thorndike Press
Book Type: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 1
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Biographies & Memoirs >> Travelers & Explorers
Biographies & Memoirs >> Memoirs
Sports & Outdoors >> Water Sports >> Surfing
Travel >> Specialty Travel >> Adventure

Back to the Top ↑

Search - Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life (Thorndike Press Large Print Biographies & Memoirs Series)

Loading...