Surfing Waves

Can surfers read? Well, certainly some can write.

I'm reading the 2015 book titled, Barbarian Days - A Surfing Life by William Finnegan. Finnegan is talented writer. He had the good fortune of learning to surf in his pre-teens in SoCAL and then moved at age 13 with his family to Oahu. Finnegan grew up in the 1960's. I'm enjoying this book very much because I know this time period; the California and Hawaii places in his life; and the Hawaii culture he experienced as an excluded hoale and an accepted local.

I am tremendously enamored with a big paragraph on page 27. So much so, that I'm attaching a jpeg of this paragraph below for your reading pleasure. If you are inclined to read it, too, then I encourage you release your imagination. Imagine the Old Hawaii. Imagine surfing in warm water and living in a culture so wholly immersed in surfing that work ceases so that nearly all can go surfing in warm, wet waves.

(You can click the jpeg below and it'll open in a new screen that may be easy to read)

I really enjoyed reading that while I was in Lombok , Frontier land somewhat still!

I'm currently in the middle of it....good book!

Are you implying that the old Hawaiians had their lifestyle properly sorted?

Its definitely a good book. I'm pretty sure Old Man mentioned he has read it, and a couple of others as well. There are a few good podcast interviews around with Finnegan (from a few years ago when the book was released) if you want to follow that up.

His descriptions of how he spent months surfing in Indo and Fiji are very out there. Particularly (what became) Cloudbreak and his island accommodation

I enjoyed Barbarian Days because the writer is a surfer... IS A SURFER!!!! I have read a few books that were written by writers who it seems to me took up surfing to write a book. Those can be interesting because they show a different aspect of surfing that I never saw, the world of novice surfers and kooks. Finnegan is a surfer of the type I used to know as a kid growing up. In fact he was close to the Kalakukui family and Finnegans pal Glen Kalakukui surfed at the same beach I did but not as much as his brother Fred who I knew. Long ago surfing was an important part of Hawaiian culture but far less important these days.

I have read books by Kelly Slater, Gerry Lopes, Laird Hamilton, Mick Fanning, Garrett McNamara, Gregg Noll, Fred Van Dyke and probably some others who were obviously surfers but they aren't really writers. Finnegan is a surfer who became a writer which makes him awesome to write about surfing.