Wave chasers, ski bums, river rafters - these people driven by their private will to adventure can seem like narcissists. In “Barbarian Days,’’ William Finnegan’s great new memoir, the driving force is his passionate, almost primal attachment to surfing.Ī 447-page navel-gaze at the surfing life could have been the literary equivalent of a horizon-blotting, two-wave hold-down.
Whether it is Laurie Lee searching for answers about his upbringing in an isolated Cotswolds village in “Cider with Rosie,” Rian Malan trying to understand the intersection of family and apartheid in “My Traitor’s Heart,’’ or Annie Dillard looking at wilderness in “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,’’ some of the best memoirs of any era are the ones where the writers are working out not just what they care about, but why.
Obsession is often what separates memoir from autobiography.
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