March Not Fiction Book Discussions

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan is more than a memoir of a hobby or even an obsession; it is the story of one man's search for the meaning, purpose, and value of his very existence. Surfing is the vehicle for his existential quest.

Finnegan, a staff writer for The New Yorker and a contributor to other periodicals, has reported primarily on international conflicts and inequalities. In Barbarian Days, he examines with honesty and insight his passion for surfing. He has ridden some of the world's biggest waves--in California, Hawaii, the South Pacific islands, Australia, Indonesia, Asia, and Africa. Surfing is the constant as Finnegan moves down the line of his life, informing his development as a writer, a political thinker, a friend, a husband, and a father. After some of his initial, formative surfing experiences, he compares himself to Pip in Moby Dick, the cabin boy who jumps overboard and is rescued but has seen "God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad." This allusion evokes the themes of this great American novel, themes Finnegan also explores by examining his own life: duty and defiance, relationship and isolation, justice and inequality. Surfing, he says,

always had this horizon, this fear line, that made it different from other things, certainly from other sports I knew. You could do it with friends, but when the waves got big, or you got into trouble, there never seemed to be anyone around. Everything out there was disturbingly interlaced with everything else. Waves were the playing field. They were the goal. They were your adversary, your nemesis, even your mortal enemy. The surf was your refuge, your happy hiding place, but it was also a hostile wilderness--a dynamic, indifferent world. At thirteen, I had mostly stopped believing in God, but that was a new development, and it had left a hole in my world, a feeling that I'd been abandoned. The ocean was like an uncaring God, endlessly dangerous, power beyond measure. And yet you were expected, even as a kid, to take its measure every day. You were required--this was essential, a matter of survival--to know your limits, both physical and emotional. But how could you know your limits unless you tested them? And if you failed the test?

The young Finnegan sees in the best surfers on their best rides "long moments of grace under pressure that felt etched deep in my being: what I wanted, somehow, more than anything else."

What do you think? Do you have a long and complicated relationship with a dangerous activity? Why do you do it? What has it taught you about life? How did surfing open Finnegan's eyes to the world around him, especially its inequalities? Is there a correspondence between Finnegan's work as a war correspondent and his surfing? How does his relationship with surfing change over the years--physically, intellectually, ethically, spiritually? In the final pages of the book, Finnegan describes one of his last, manic days surfing Tavarua as an adult in what is perhaps another allusion to Moby Dick, to Ishmael's friendship with Queequeg. Inia, one of the boatmen who ferry Finnegan out to the waves, takes Finnegan under his care after a wave leaves him stunned and coughing blood. Inia is both a practical master of local wave knowledge and a lay preacher. He invites Finnegan to rely on his judgement, and he asks him directly about his trust in God's love. What does Finnegan learn from this encounter? How does Finnegan resolve his relationship with the fear line of his life? Does he find what he's been looking for?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, March 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, March 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed February's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann, then you might also like to read a couple of authors who Mann says influenced her photography and her writing, Marcel Proust and William Faulkner. You might also enjoy several books recommended by our discussion group members: On Photography by Susan Sontag, described by Sontag as "a progress of essays about the meaning and career of photographs"; Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan about American Indian portrait photographer Edward Curtis; and Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, a novel set among the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. And if you want to learn more about Mann and her art, check out the two award-nominated documentaries about her work, Blood Ties and What Remains.

February Not Fiction Book Discussions

In Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs, Sally Mann looks back over her life's work as a photographer for its sources in family, place, and mortality.

Asked to deliver the Massey Lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard, Mann notes that "My long preoccupation with the treachery of memory has convinced me that I have fewer and more imperfect recollections of childhood than most people," so she turned to the boxes of family papers in her attic and to the social and cultural history of the rural South where she grew up. She says, "I will confess that in the interest of narrative I secretly hoped I'd find a payload of southern gothic: deceit and scandal, alcoholism, domestic abuse, car crashes, bogeymen, clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land, abandonments, blow jobs, suicides, hidden addictions, the tragically early death of a beautiful bride, racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of a prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder. . . . And I did: all of it and more." Lively with incident, conversational and confessional in tone, Mann's memoir makes the reader feels as if she is having a conversation with Mann in her studio or walking with her on her beloved family farm in Virginia.

Mann's photographs are unconventional, and some would even call them controversial. In her photographic projects over the years, she has depicted her family's most intimate moments, her husband's body reduced by muscular dystrophy, the Southern landscape, dead and decomposing bodies, Civil War battlefields, and Black men. Acknowledging the inherently exploitative and reductive nature of photographs, Mann says of her work, "In general, I am past taking pictures for the sake of seeing how things look in a photograph, although sometimes for fun, I still do that. These days I am more interested in photographing things either to understand what they mean in my life or to illustrate a concept."And to viewers' shocked or judgmental reaction to her work, Mann responds, "How can a sentient person of the modern age mistake photography for reality? All perception is selection, and all photographs--no matter how objectively journalistic the photographer's intent--exclude aspects of the moment's complexity. Photographs economize the truth; they are always moments more or less illusorily abducted from time's continuum." Mann's photographs can be compelling, both beautiful and disturbing, calling up for the viewer unexamined aspects of their lives and the society and culture they live in.

Asked to account for her artistic interests and vision, Mann says, "As for me, I see both the beauty and the dark side of things . . . And I see them at the same time, at once ecstatic at the beauty of things, and chary of that ecstasy. The Japanese have a phrase for this dual perception: mono no aware. It means 'beauty tinged with sadness,' for there cannot be any  real beauty without the indolic whiff of decay. For me, living is the same thin as dying, and loving is the same thing as losing, and this does not make me a madwoman; I believe it can make me better at living, and better at loving, and just possibly, better at seeing." What do you think? What does Mann's memoir help you understand about her photographic works? If you had seen the photographs without benefit of the memoir, what would you have thought of them? What do you think of her understanding of the purpose of photography as a means of exploration rather than ornamental depiction? Is this a new concept for you? Do any of her photographs compel you, disturb you, or maybe both? Why do you think that is? How do you interpret the title of Mann's memoir, Hold Still? Do you agree that photographs essentially exploit their subjects and compromise memory? Have you found this to be true in your life? How has the use of photography in society and culture changed over the course of your life?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, February 2, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, February 18, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.