Jours Barbares, a life of surfing
William Finnegan gives us the story of a life devoted to the pursuit of ephemeral sea monsters, waves that confront him with the immediate fear of physical death and the more insidious fear of social death. For the curves drawn by the surfer on thousands of waves, like so many blank pages, disappear immediately; the exploits, the apotheosis, the exhilaration, what’s left of them?
The American surfer recounts the evolution of surfing from the 1970s to the present day. We discover that Bali in the 1970s was already being taken over by hordes of tourists, and how waves that are now legendary were discovered at the time and almost immediately handed over to the crowds.
Surfeur magazine reported on the Tavarua wave in Fiji, which had become the exclusive preserve of a resort run by two Californian surfers: the concept of the private wave was born, closely followed by that of the boat trip.
Articles on the discovery of a new big wave are a staple of surfing magazines, but when it comes to concealing its location, the unspoken rules are strict. The name of the continent may be divulged, but never that of the country itself, or even, sometimes, that of the ocean… In this case, all the rules had been flouted.
In pursuit of the waves, but also of a form of idealism of its own to the 1970s, the narrator takes us around the globe, to Hawaii, Fiji, Java, Nias, California… His story is the story of so many other surfers. It’s certainly more difficult today to discover a quality virgin wave, but not impossible. It’s harder to keep the discovery to yourself – that’s the law of scarcity. The same applies to waves as to endangered species: the temptation to profit from them is strong.
The book is interesting, but the French translation struggles to convey any notion of surfing. And for good reason: the translator probably has no notion of surfing at all: a surfer himself can barely understand the technical descriptions relating to the ride and variations in the ocean environment. My grandmother, who used to swim the “crapillon” (a stroke of her own invention) all summer long on Capbreton’s central beach, would certainly have described the breaking of a wave better.
Nevertheless, it’s a pleasure to read from the inside about a surfer’s experience, from his first waves through to middle age, which is not the age of wisdom but rather the age of submission to the rule of compromise.
More than just a sport, surfing is the common thread running through many human lives, and Jours Barbares is a perfect illustration of this.
