Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero [Paperback]

Charles Sprawson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 13, 2000

As summer sends swimmers to the beach, here is "a fascinating scrapbook about swimming, loaded with lore . . . and suffused with the mystery of water."--The New York Times Book Review. An elegant and enchanting celebration of the art of swimming in all its incarnations--as sport, ritual, and consuming obsession--drawn from a variety of times and places. Photos.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sprawson, an English art dealer who swam the Hellespont, has produced a delightful, profound cultural and literary history of swimming, bathing and the social meanings of water from ancient Greece to the modern Olympics. Swimmers, he contends, frequently fall prey to delusions and neuroses spawned by their solitary training. Flaubert and Shelley had an "erotic, neurotic affinity with water"; Swinburne took a masochistic delight in being scraped by pebbles and pounded by waves; and novelist Baron Corvo (Frederick Rolfe), a passionate swimmer, bathed in "morbid self-admiration and absorption in a fantasy world." Sprawson deftly probes the differing values associated with swimming by various cultures. The English, who swam naked until the Victorian Age, saw bathing as a means of social reform. Germans from Goethe to Thomas Mann linked swimming to a Faustian quest for knowledge, to spiritual perfection and, in Leni Riefenstahl's films, to a cult of athleticism. In the U.S., according to Sprawson, swimming has been associated with refuge and withdrawal, citing as examples F. Scott Fitzgerald's fiction and David Hockney's paintings of Southern California. This invigorating excursion affords a fabulous dip with the likes of Poe, Byron, Virginia Woolf, Yukio Mishima, Esther Williams and Johnny Weissmuller. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this poor execution of an intriguing idea, Sprawson, an art dealer who is himself an avid swimmer, attempts to explore swimming and swimmers from both a literary and cultural viewpoint. He quotes extensively from such writer/swimmers as Shelly and Byron, focusing primarily on English literature but adding chapters on German, American, and Japanese swimming experiences. He also considers modern film and architecture. Unfortunately, his book stands in need of extensive editing: the sentences are awkward and obtuse; the quoted excerpts do not fit smoothly into the text and are not adequately prefaced. Not recommended.
- J. Sara Paulk, Concord P.L., N.H.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press; 1 edition (June 13, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816635390
• ISBN-13: 978-0816635399
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #277,162 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #67 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Water Sports > Swimming

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars water as life, intelligence and inspiration, July 14, 1998

By 

Marco Pagani ([e-mail]) (stockholm, sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero (Paperback)

I have this book in an italian translation and I would love to read it in the original language. The book in intelligent, accurate and gives you the right idea that underlines the love of generations of great men for the water. Water as adventure, water as duel and meditation, water as gathering matter and sense of life. Episodes and tales to think about, a book that pushes you straight to the closest lake, seaside or swimming pool. Makes you understand as, sometimes, the most valuable and exciting things are not hidden in the deep and dark forest but are easily available and are just waiting to be discovered.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Refreshing, Healing, Wonderful, February 18, 2005

By 

Doctor Quartz (Huntington Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero (Paperback)

I re-read this book every few years. It's one of my five favorite books of all time. If you like swimming, you'll love it. It's very poetic, the language is musical, it's unbelievably well written (James Joyce would like reading this), and a marvelous history of swimming, in the arts and in history. Reading it takes you straight to that place your head can sometimes go to, when you're swimming at midnight, in a dark, warm ocean, on a warm summer night, by yourself, and you slip into some kind of waking, crazy, ecstatic, dreamstate, nirvana/satori. This book is almost as good as swimming itself.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars plunging into the matter of life, September 4, 2004

By 

Robert L. France (cambridge, ma United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero (Paperback)

Sprawson's book, more than a decade after its publication, is still the best post-modernist collection of thoughts on swimming in all its forms. It will be of interest to both the atheletic dabbler and the scholarly plunger (not that the two, as ably demonstrated by Sprawson himself, cannot be the same). This remains the best book about the historic and intellectual roots of our modern swimming mad world. Readers wishing to continue their exploration of water's embrace on the human mind and body will find much of interest in my sequal to Sprawson's book - Deep Immersion: The Experience of Water (nominated as top environmental book of the year), which reviews over two hundred modern accounts by writers plunging into water around the world. Stay wet! As Thoreau wrote: "That part of you that is wettest is fullest of life" (quoted in Profitably Soaked: Thoreau's Engagement with Water; Green Frigate Books, 2003)