ROWING AGAINST THE CURRENT: On Learning to Scull at Forty [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Barry Strauss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 9, 1999

In the midst of a standard midlife crisis -- complete with wine-tasting, yoga classes, and a failed attempt at a first novel -- forty-year-old Barry Strauss falls unexpectedly and passionately in love with rowing, a sport in which a twenty-seven-year-old is a has-been.

Strauss, a classics professor, writes about the unanticipated delights of an affair that, like so many others, begins as a casual dalliance and develops into a full-blown obsession. Drawn to the sport in part because of his affinity for Greek antiquity, he develops a love for old boathouses, a longing for rivers at dawn, a thirst to test himself, and, ultimately, a renewed sense of self-reliance -- as someone who had experienced sports humiliation as far back as Little League suddenly finds himself bursting into athleticism at an unlikely age.

From the awe-inspiring feats of the war-bound Greek triremes with their crews of 172 men rowing on three levels to the solitary pride of finishing a first race in which he gets stuck in the weeds and had to be fished out, Barry Strauss shows us why "there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half as much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

To be middle-aged and ghosting a scull through the early morning light of a Lake Cayuga dawn: thats where Strauss finds himself, a pilgrim of sorts, searching for a little self-affirmation. But hes also a junkie, rapt in the glow that pervades the ancient craft of rowing. The sport appealed immediately to Strauss (History and Classics/Cornell; co-author, with Josiah Ober, of The Anatomy of Error: American Military Disasters and Their Lessons for Modern Strategists, 1990). It wasnt just that he needed the workout (bookish, he had long preferred the couch to the gym) or that the oars seemed to speak to him of fluid dynamics and Nile oarsmen and red-brick-and-ivy regattas. Rowing also held the promise of testing the athletic competence and resolve of someone who had fumbled painfully as a child. Redemption seemed to lurk in the boat, a wedding of the cerebral and corporeal. Yet this isnt so much the story of a personal quest. Instead, Strauss revels in the sheer beauty of the sport, from the flow state brought on by the rhythm of perfect oar work to the burnished murk of capacious, ever-so-seedy boathouses. The authors enthusiasm is infectious, buoying the heft of his writing and allowing for an extended investigation into stroke mechanics, a complex, balletic suite of movements. Strauss also makes something well worth reading from the curious blending of elite and common that permeates rowing: it was a poor man's gambit in classical Greece, but an aristocratic pursuit in ancient Rome and pharaonic Egypt; it was a favorite sport of the Gilded Age, complete with race fixing and assorted scandals, and yet the sport also found a following in the mining towns of southern Canada. Redemption is a big word. Still, by any measure, Strauss has tapped into something special out there in his scull. He does fine service to his sport in this memoir. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

...he tells us in flowing prose how it is to row, to be in a boathouse, to hear a coach, to carry a single on one's head, to have blisters and use bandaids, and to row an erg. He especially tells us how it is to be in his 40s learning a new sport while enduring "a long argument between mind and body," only to find that when his mind finally understood the concept of rowing he was still stuck with a body "that was in no hurry to carry out, when the time came, what the mind had already grasped." -- Lew Cuyler, The Catch: Alden Ocean Shells Newsletter, February 1999

Donald Kagan author of On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace Rowing Against the Current is a delightful and inspiring book that makes you want to get into a scull and learn to work those oars, whatever your age. It is a charming account by a warm and witty man of the very special sport he has come to love. -- Review

His first session in a boat was awful. He and his fellow novices were out of sync, bumping into each other, hitting each other with oars, wobbling and weaving, shoveling water clumsily.

Still, something about rowing hooked Strauss, and he kept at it.... It had something to do with the Zen-like ecstasy when everything is moving right and the boat seems to fly, as well as the other gifts of rowing: a sense of discipline, mastery, self-control and proportion.....

Strauss describes it all, with grace, humor and eloquence, in Rowing Against the Current, a blessedly nonacademic extended essay that celebrates the lore and romance of rowing while also delivering an implicit pep talk. -- Philadelphia Inquirer, August 4, 1999

Rowing Against the Current: On Learning to Scull at 40 is a little bit history, a little bit instructional and a lot poetry. Barry Strauss, a history professor at Cornell who's determined to overcome his failure as a Little Leaguer, sees a "learn to row" sign and takes the plunge. Strauss makes his sport sound grueling and romantic at the same time, painful and rewarding. He makes me want to get my kayak in the water now. -- USA Today, March 30, 1999

Strauss describes it all, with grace, humor and eloquence, in Rowing Against the Current, a blessedly nonacademic extended essay that celebrates the lore and romance of rowing.... -- Philadelphia Inquirer, August 4, 1999

You'd expect a history and classics professor at Cornell University to write about oh, I don't know the Peloponnesian War?

And true to form, Barry Strauss did. His five previous books carry such titles as . . . "The Anatomy of Error: Ancient Military Disasters and Their Lessons for Modern Strategists." . . . .

But an unexpected love affair at age 40 steered Strauss onto a different plane of story- telling. Energized by bubbling creative juices, he sat down and wrote a book that is part how-to guide, part memoir, and part paean to his unbidden paramour: a small boat.

Cupid struck Strauss not with an arrow, it seems, but an oar. -- Syracuse Herald American, April 25, 1999

a wonderfully open account of learning a brand-new sport as an adult. He [Strauss] is honest and inspiring in his emotions about the pursuit .... -- Chicago Tribune, September 12, 1999

an introspective book that lets the beauty of the sport shine through.

We follow Barry Strauss as the scull turns from a class to a dalliance to an obsession as he learns that being exhausted and well-satisfied are not contradictory terms.

History, philosophy and good writing combine to give readers an inside look at an old sport. -- Everett, Washington Herald, June 24,1999

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1st edition (April 9, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684843218
• ISBN-13: 978-0684843216
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,388,031 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The personal saga empowers the rower and the reader., July 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: ROWING AGAINST THE CURRENT: On Learning to Scull at Forty (Hardcover)

I was surprised by how much I loved Barry Strauss's Rowing Against the Current. Although it's not meant to be the main course, I was smitten by the personal saga interwoven with the passionate and scholarly initiation into the history and technique of rowing and the unfolding drama of the powerful tug of the water's spell. This little book scrapes the clay off the feet of men and women who approach mid-life athletics with the same trepidation that anchored them to the sidelines in elementary school sports, the last to be chosen for any team. As the story progresses, the reader roots for the middle aged loosening of the harness of schoolyard gender constrictions as the athletic leftover of a boy becomes the multifaceted man. Strauss is a generous and complex writer who invites you into his childhood athletic struggles as seemingly effortlessly as he accompanies you to the boathouse, drinking in the sounds and smells at dawn, or ushers you into an art gallery brimming with images of boats on water- all in support of sharing his passion for sculling and the process of becoming a rower. Skillfully linking the modern rowers tensions and relational harmony with ancient male bonding rituals, Strauss translates the stories of Greek rowers in poetry as if anyone could. But he comforts the aspiring athlete in each of us who has participated as a beginner in any sport that looks so easy when done by the pros when he confesses: "Rowing was not simple for me. I nodded whenever the instructor made a point, as if I understood, but I could as easily have assembled the space shuttle as repeated the moves she was explaining." Strauss's self deprecating humor may be the slice of this book that resonates with many of our own armored adult convictions of who we are, but his reverence for the pull of the water and unsentimental questioning of his own niche in the world as well as his writer's eye and often lyrical prose not only make his book an experiential and compelling read, but an offering of who we may yet become. Even for those of us who have no proven intention of working out before daybreak, pledging our souls to the water or losing our balance in a long skinny shell, the reader closes the book with a smile and the feeling that the doors of possibility have opened.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice contemplation on rowing; good history on ancient sport, January 21, 2005

By 

Robin Wolfson "Reliza" (Cameron Park, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: ROWING AGAINST THE CURRENT: On Learning to Scull at Forty (Paperback)

From time to time you run across one of those books that wanders gracefully from one topic to another, all the time circling around a central theme. John McPhee's "Oranges" is like that, and so is "Rowing Against the Current." Mr. Strauss, a classics scholar himself, is perfectly poised to write a book about rowing. His background in classics gives him a special vantage point from which to appreciate the ancient sport of rowing and its survival into modern times.

Be warned, this is not a book for everyone. If you're looking for a book on rowing techniques or how to improve your stroke, look elsewhere. The subtitle says it all: "On Learning to Scull at Forty." This is an intensely personal memoire about one man's experiences taking up a new sport in middle-age (although some of us might regard him as a mere spring chicken).

But for those looking for a book that ranges from a description of what it's like to take out a narrow shell with a twelve-inch wide seat on a river at dawn to a comparison of the status of rowers in ancient Greece and Rome, this book is highly recommended. Think of it as a fireside book -- something to curl up with on a cold night. And if you like it, then move on to David Halberstam's "The Amateurs." Enjoy.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece of athletic angst!, April 1, 2001

By 

"hyperbolic26" (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ROWING AGAINST THE CURRENT: On Learning to Scull at Forty (Hardcover)

At first reading, I found Mr.Strauss to be a tad to prone to poetic whimsy. Though I found his prose style very impressive, he seemed to want to wax eleoquent about every aspect of his middle-age rebirth. However, after finishing the book, I could not get certain paragraphs out of my mind, and I would leaf through in order to re-read said paragraphs. Eventually I read the book four times, the resonance and poetry I so blithely dismissed as hyperbole, was replaced with an awed respect for the author. He is excited and curious, and those qualities rush forth in a flowery prose, but it is not extentanious, it is the childlike glee of learning a new sport. Through out this book, Mr.Strauss touches on topics that relate to us all: sports injuries, getting back in shape, juggling fitness with family and work. All of these topics touch most people and he handles them with an ease and grace that will inspire all that read this tiny tome. Nowhere is he more effective than when discussing the biggest reason for choosing so ardous an athleteic endeavor; that being a horrid Little League experiance that scared him for decades. In between humorous laments, and fresh diatribes, Mr.Strauss also covers rowing technique, history, and preparation. He becomes a whirling dervish, a man possesed! Yet he handles all these subjects with great prose dexterity, and a human touch that will reach out to all who buy this book. On a personal note, I found his description of the Concept 2 rowing machine( ergometer) to be wry, funny and dead on. I own one of these machines, and it is a hellish, brutish, sweet torture, and Mr.Strauss nails the experiance with great wit. This is a wonderful read, as the trials and tribulations of Barry Strauss are the same for most of the human race. Yet he shows how to handle these, to push oneself, to triumph in defeat with such grace that you will feel like attacking your personal foibles with rapier and musket!