This well-written combination of history, memoir and travelogue should find a welcome home in many climbing collections.
A spirited journey in the footsteps—or footholds—of the mountaineers who first explored the Sierra Nevada.
An experienced climber in the mountains of California, Arnold decided to trace his literary and alpinistic ancestry by examining “high and visually striking” mountains that inspired other adventurers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, profiling the men who undertook them in the process. Over several years, he divided his time between library and mountain wall. In order to recapture his ancestors’ spirits, he “had to climb the way they did,” which meant leaving behind safety ropes, carabineers and other “modern climbing paraphernalia.” His first stop was Mount Brewer, high in the Sierra, whose namesake had been climbing the range since 1860 from the Mexican border to Mount Shasta, but who had not visited the central, toughest wilderness of peaks behind Yosemite, “a dense parade of mountains, sharp summits, and narrow spires,” until 1864. A weird pyramid of broken boulders awaited him and his party, a mountain that captivated Brewer, who “had seen nothing so large and lonely in America, nor so desolate.” Similar experiences awaited Clarence King, John Muir, Norman Clyde and other legendary climbers, who exploits introduced lowlanders to such things as Kings Canyon and Mount Whitney. Arnold had plenty of exploits of his own, as when, on Mount Clarence King high in the middle Sierra, he stepped on a loose plate of rock and watched as it caromed down 500 feet, striking a cliff several times before exploding, “filling the air with thunder and a smell like shot gunpowder.” Yet, as he recounts, only five minutes later the mountains are quiet again, having absorbed the event and regaining their eternal composure.
This well-written combination of history, memoir and travelogue should find a welcome home in many climbing collections.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-58243-519-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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