Steve Mentz

THE BOOKFISH

THALASSOLOGY, SHAKESPEARE, AND SWIMMING

  • Home
  • Steve Mentz
  • Humanities Commons
  • Public Writing
  • The sea! the sea!
  • The Bookfish
  • St. Johns

Waterlog

February 9, 2012 by Steve Mentz 2 Comments

Roger Deakin’s engaging Waterlog narrates his travels around the United Kingdom in search of “wild swimming.”  It’s become a cult classic among environmentalists and swimmers in the UK, and has spawned various clubs and  a strand of do-it-yourself travel guides.

Deakin begins with ocean swimming in the Scillies, but the heart of the book is about poaching fresh water spots in rivers and harbors that have been forgotten or browned-over by industry.

In the water, including the moat around his Suffolk, Deakin reconnects to the lived experience of England’s land-and-sea history, from the “contingent” (193) coast around East Anglia to assorted trips to rivers, fens, mountain streams, and coasts.  He loves the cold water, and seeks it out as a psychological cure-all:

There is no anti-depressent quite like sea-swimming….I leave my devils on the waves.  (74)

It’s mostly a nature book, full of lush descriptions and lively water-folk, but Deakin also engages some larger claims about water and humans.  Quoting D. H. Lawrence (on Typee), Normon O. Brown, and Elaine Morgan’s writings on the aquatic ape hypothesis, he strains for solutions in the water:

Perhaps we are simply more at home in or around water than on dry land.  Perhaps dry land is our problem.  (149)

As a swimmer, I’m struck by Deakin’s persistent choice of stroke: the breaststroke.  He swims with his head up, immersed but able to see ahead of him.  To some extent, Deakin’s breaststroking reflects the way English men were taught to swim through mid-century — he observes that when he’s breaststroking in Australia, the other men there are shocked, because, “In Australia swimming strokes are deeply gendered” (313).

I’m a front crawl guy myself, with my face down in the water and a pretty small range of vision, though for long open-water swims I raise my head every 5 strokes or so, to see where I’m headed.  Deakin givens a nice picture of the arrival of the six-beat crawl stroke to Cambridge swim racing in the 1920s, as well as the previous history of the “trudgen crawl,” with a sidestroke kick, earlier than that (41-2).

What a difference the choice of stroke makes! Deakin’s in the water and the landscape, looking around him while paddling through old English fantasies about the land.  I can’t seen far when I’m swimming, only a few feet into the water below and ahead of me.  The line on the bottom of the pool, or a sandy bottom if I’m lucky and in shallow water.  But I’m the one, I think, who’s really in the water, all the way.

 

Filed Under: Books

Comments

  1. Jenny Davidson says

    February 9, 2012 at 5:06 pm

    I had a very similar reaction, when I read the book, re: this question of breaststroke for distance swimming!

    http://jennydavidson.blogspot.com/2007/10/doing-lengths-in-moat.html

    Reply
    • Steve Mentz says

      February 15, 2012 at 6:15 pm

      I think it’s a British thing, too, or at least it once was: breastroke as more elite / upper class. Pretty slow, though, it seems to me! Some consideration, esp in the 16c swimming manuals I’ve been reading for a future book project, about what sort of aquatic animal you should imitate: a frog, or a dog?

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

About Steve

Steve Mentz
Professor of English
St. John’s University
Read Bio

Twitter Feed

Steve MentzFollow

Steve Mentz
Retweet on TwitterSteve Mentz Retweeted
dlitephulDr. Danielle Lee 👊🏿👊🏾👊🏽👊🏻@dlitephul·
18h

So, I'm doing a thing... So excited!! @MarGalarrita @UCRiverside https://twitter.com/margalarrita/status/1380539647944663044

Reply on Twitter 1380623150900248576Retweet on Twitter 13806231509002485761Like on Twitter 138062315090024857613Twitter 1380623150900248576
stevermentzSteve Mentz@stevermentz·
9 Apr

I'm so excited to hear my brilliant colleague and #sjuenglish grad talk about her research on early modern race next Friday, courtesy of UCR's Race in the Premodern Period speaker series. Registration details here! @sju_english

Reply on Twitter 1380486199110995968Retweet on Twitter 13804861991109959681Like on Twitter 138048619911099596816Twitter 1380486199110995968
Load More...

Pages

  • OCEAN Publicity
  • #SAA 2020: Watery Thinking
  • Creating Nature: May 2019 at the Folger
  • Audio and Video Recordings
  • Oceanic New York
  • Public Writing
  • Published Work
  • #pluralizetheanthropocene

Recent Posts

  • Zoomtopia! #shax2021
  • #bluehumanities thoughts for the New Year
  • S21: New Semester, Still Zoomin’
  • Blue Humanities
  • Bookfish in 2020

Copyright © 2021 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in