He works at the railroad for a time making a decent living but leaves to travel to the South Pacific with close friend and writer Bryan Di Salvatore.

Devastated by the break-up, Finnegan becomes aimless, mostly following his heart and his desire to find the perfect wave. After the abortion, which causes some emotional separation between the two, his girlfriend leaves him to find her father, who is wandering around southern California, addicted to LSD. Finnegan is deeply happy back in Hawaii with a woman whom he thinks of as the love of his life however, things become complicated when she gets pregnant and has an abortion. He writes about one of his close friends, who also loves surfing, being forced to drop out of the football team to surf.įinnegan attends the University of California Santa Cruz, but soon drops out, deciding to move back to Hawaii with his girlfriend in 1971. Sixteen, Finnegan has suddenly part of a counter-culture, one that he has always known and loved. Finnegan returns to California for high school, where he discovers that surfers have become outcasts. At the same time that he is looking for his own identity, he is seeking the perfect wave he writes about many waves that he rides off the shores of his new island home. As is common for middle schoolers, Finnegan is struggling with his own independence and against bullies that mock him for being himself. During this period of his life, Finnegan truly embraces surfing. Later in his life, when he is in the eighth grade, Finnegan's family moves to Hawaii for work. He remembers falling in love with the ocean at age four, learning to surf with his beach-hopping hippie parents. His parents were TV and film producers who were deeply liberal and encouraged Finnegan to devote himself to socially conscious causes and activities.

Finnegan's life begins in southern California. The book is broken up into epochs of Finnegan's life, and the various experiences he has both in and out of the water. He thinks of surfing as an art, and his love of the sport as a search for the perfect wave, much the way an author searches for the perfect word or line. Finnegan observes that though surfing appears to be a simple sport to many, being a talented surfer requires a life-long obsession.

In his memoir, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan, a writer for The New Yorker, writes about his experience surfing and how it has changed his life.

Barbarian days a surfing life review