Books I wish I had written

I am not about to launch into a solipsistic journey into my literary passions, don't worry. But just occasionally you read a book that is close enough to your own interests or frame of mind to stand out as one you wished had been yours. Haunts of the Black Masseur by Charles Sprawson is exactly that kind of book. Subtitled Swimmer as Hero it presents an erudite but also seductive history of the culture of swimming and also vividly communicates the physical elation of moving through water from someone who has swum the Hellespont. There's Byron leaping into the surf at Shelley's beach funeral, Virginia Woolf weighting her coat pockets with pebbles before quietly walking into her Sussex river suicide, Hart Crane swallow-diving to his death in the Bay of Mexico. He reminds us that in England everyone swam naked until about 1840; that the Germans from Goethe and Thomas Mann to Leni Riefenstahl associated swimming with a Faustian quest for spiritual perfection through godlike athleticism while in the States swimming has been inextricably linked with refuge and withdrawal. There's Esther Williams and David Hockney; Edgar Allen Poe and Yukio Mishima and of course Johnny Weissmuller and Mark Spitz. The book is a great modern example of the work of a true amateur in its original meaning. I wish I had written it.