Still, Finnegan is handsome, tall, fit, has a full head of silver hair and sports a crisp white shirt.

The skin is mottled and adorned with fine scars. In person there’s no missing the legacy of a lifetime being bashed by waves, blasted by sun and perforated by rock and coral. I thought people might recoil and say, ‘oh you’re just a dumb surfer, I don’t need to pay attention to you’.” The New Yorker’s then editor-in-chief, he recalled, had “general disdain for athletes and outdoor people”. “Writing about surfing seemed indulgent and silly. It’s quite a turnaround from the 1980s when Finnegan hesitated to reveal his secret to east coast magazine editors who paid him to write about politics, apartheid and war. Who knew that the dudes out on the waves were existential explorers? as a role model for a life fully, thrillingly, lived,” trilled the Wall Street Journal.įinnegan has made surfing worthy of philosophical probing. “ Dare I say that we all need Mr Finnegan. “ If the book has a flaw, it lies in the envy helplessly induced in the armchair surf-traveler,” pined the New York Times, echoing a wistful refrain among reviewers. “ An utterly convincing study in the joy of treating seriously an unserious thing,” glowed the New York Review of Books. It has debuted at No 5 on the New York Times bestseller list, trailing ecstatic reviews. Finnegan was in Los Angeles on a west coast tour this week to promote the book, which is published by Penguin Press. 'My memory of learning a spot, of coming to know and understand a wave is usually inseparable from the friend with whom I tried to climb its walls.William Finnegan thinks all good surfers start before they’re 14: ‘After that it’s too late to be any good’ Photograph: Courtesy of William Finnegan Surfing is a secret garden, not easily entered.' 'But waves dance to an infinitely complex tune. The goal is to understand the purpose of riding them - what the waves are doing and especially what they're likely to do next,' Finnegan states. 'The science of surfers is not pure, obviously, but heavily applied. The movie, by award-winning director Darius Devas (Being Films), releases to the general public for the first time since premiering at Byron Bay Film Festival in October 2017.įinnegan's 'Barbarian Days' is a tribute to the writer's life-long obsession with surfing, capturing the mechanics of the activity in beautiful detail as well as exploring more mysterious, ineffable aspects of the sport.

It is narrated by William Finnegan and features former US surfing champion, Rusty Miller. The film, titled 'William Finnegan - Barbarian Days,' features an excerpt from the best-selling novel, together with stunning visuals of Byron Bay surfers and coastline. A short film portrait of William Finnegan's Pulitzer Prize-winning non-fiction novel ' Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life' has launched online.

Barbarian days of surfing