Surfing with the Journalist: A New Yorker Writer Rides the Waves

John Diaz, William Finnegan

• 
• 

“I was reluctant to come out as a surfer,” says William Finnegan, about his memoir Barbarian Days. The celebrated New Yorker staff writer, who has made his reputation reporting from some of the most war-torn places on earth, will compare journalism with writing this lyrical, existential book about his secret and abiding passion, surfing. The New York Review of Books delivered a glowing review of Barbarian Days, calling it “an utterly convincing study in the joy of treating seriously an unserious thing.” Barbarian Days was awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for the Biography/Autobiography category.