No finesse player, but Cowser’s writing has that light-handed, knowing touch, elevating a violent sport into a thing of...
An English professor sinks his teeth into a piece of living history by joining the Watertown (NY) Red and Black semiprofessional football team—the oldest in the country—and enjoys himself enormously.
Cowser (St. Lawrence Univ.) is on the cusp of 31, a teacher and a new father, but he wouldn't believe that there was no room in his life for both the meathead and the egghead. He loved the game of football, played it in high school to some distinction, and yearned to reexperience its rough and tumble. Watertown is a long hoof from Canton, his hometown, but he made the commitment to be there twice a week, plus for a game on the weekend, for the ten-week season, plus the two months of practice beforehand. This is no Plimptonesque excursion into deep sporting waters, as Cowser is a sturdy 230 pounds (if less than six-feet tall) and ready to play any position as long as he gets on the field. He doesn't get as much playing time as he hopes for this first year—he will get much more the next year, as recounted in a short chapter at the end, on a brand-new team—but he does get to taste dirt in his mouth and strangle a pinkie finger when it gets caught in an opponent's jersey mesh. His writing in terrifically inviting, whether talking about his qualms in the hypermale space of the locker room or football's curious balance, the truly odd sense of grace and tranquility in the midst of “a game predicated on deception, feigning and faking, misdirection. And it is violent, brutal.” He worries, as a brawny intellect, if he is simply a tenure-track professor in search of his inner linebacker, though that is of less interest to him—and to readers—as his appreciation that semi-professional ball is a “world of semi-truths and fantasies,” where all sorts of strangeness is played out on the iron.
No finesse player, but Cowser’s writing has that light-handed, knowing touch, elevating a violent sport into a thing of gratifying harmonies.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-87113-923-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.
A disjointed debut memoir about how competitive swimming shaped the personal and artistic sensibilities of a respected illustrator.
Through a series of vignettes, paintings and photographs that often have no sequential relationship to each other, Shapton (The Native Trees of Canada, 2010, etc.) depicts her intense relationship to all aspects of swimming: pools, water, races and even bathing suits. The author trained competitively throughout her adolescence, yet however much she loved racing, “the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.” In 1988 and again in 1992, she qualified for the Olympic trials but never went further. Soon afterward, Shapton gave up competition, but she never quite ended her relationship to swimming. Almost 20 years later, she writes, “I dream about swimming at least three nights a week.” Her recollections are equally saturated with stories that somehow involve the act of swimming. When she speaks of her family, it is less in terms of who they are as individuals and more in context of how they were involved in her life as a competitive swimmer. When she describes her adult life—which she often reveals in disconnected fragments—it is in ways that sometimes seem totally random. If she remembers the day before her wedding, for example, it is because she couldn't find a bathing suit to wear in her hotel pool. Her watery obsession also defines her view of her chosen profession, art. At one point, Shapton recalls a documentary about Olympian Michael Phelps and draws the parallel that art, like great athleticism, is as “serene in aspect” as it is “incomprehensible.”
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15817-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
