Sitting on Top of the World with Steven Wilson
[Episode 8] Steven Wilson is still living those carefree days at the beach of his childhood. For him, that thrill of youth that we all feel is captured in his passion for surfing. Surfing became that connection, that path to happiness. Over the years, Steven has been able to carry that joy with him and although life is much different for him now than it was on the beach on Eastern Long Island in the 1970s, that connection to those experiences affords him perspective on life today. We hope you enjoy our conversation with our good friend Steven Wilson.
Episode Book Pairing
Each episode the The Gray Matters podcast is paired with a book that complements the episode’s subject matter. Steven chose this aptly named title, we hope you enjoy it.
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
by William Finnegan
**Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography**
Included in President Obama’s 2016 Summer Reading List
“Without a doubt, the finest surf book I’ve ever read . . . ” –The New York Times Magazine
Barbarian Days is William Finnegan’s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life.
Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our noses–off the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships forged in challenging waves.
Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites-only gang in a tough school in Honolulu. He shows us a world turned upside down for kids and adults alike by the social upheavals of the 1960s. He details the intricacies of famous waves and his own apprenticeships to them. Youthful folly–he drops LSD while riding huge Honolua Bay, on Maui–is served up with rueful humor. As Finnegan’s travels take him ever farther afield, he discovers the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissects the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, and navigates the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity.
Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, an intellectual autobiography, a social history, a literary road movie, and an extraordinary exploration of the gradual mastering of an exacting, little-understood art.
Get your copy of Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life at Bookshop.org.
About Steven Wilson
Steve Wilson knows there’s always a better way. In his professional life as a creative director, he understands that the first idea is usually not the best idea—you have to dig past that first-generation thinking before unearthing the nugget of gold.
The same goes for his passion in life—surfing. When he first tried stand-up paddle surfing (or SUP) after a lifetime of traditional prone surfing, he realized it was a better way—at least for guys his age. Hear his story of youthful exuberance only to be seasoned by a wiser use of time, energy, and equipment in his lifelong quest to bag the perfect wave.
