The Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero

Cynthia spotted this book while dreaming of the Hellespont Swim and wanted more information so I thought I would share will all.

The Haunt of the Black Masseur : The Swimmer As Hero – Author Charles Sprawson. The book is published by Vintage and is available on Fishpond (www.fishpont.co.nz). Just watch on Fishpond as there are two editions and they differ significantly in price, the cheapest one is $32.00.

Here are a couple of reviews:

1. “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”.

2 “ Something primordial exists in swimming for those willing to recognize it, perhaps some residue of an ancestral species instinct to the sea, a subliminal memory of submergence in the amniotic sac, or the proffered suspension of temporal consciousness in its weightless rhythms. Sprawson explores this allure in athletics and in literature. Most central to his study are the Romantic poets obsession with swimming and water-- among them Goethe, Shelley, Swinburne, Pushkin, Poe and especially Byron who was a formidable marathon swimmer in his own right. he Romantic ideal was closely associated with Classical notions of the body and nature, and its notion of hero was intertwined with this. Hellenism held a special thrall over the Romantic period. This was the impetus to Byron's swimming of the Hellespont, and to a tragic sub text to his and other lives as they were swept up in naive movements or misadventure.
I was drawn to this book by an Australian broadcast on swimming during the Sydney Olympics, amongst which was excerpts from this book and an interview with Jon Konrads, the 1500 Meter Olympic Champion of 1960, who had returned to swimming in late middle age after decades of absence. In it he found a cerebral tonic, albeit at a much slower pace-- an invigoration, relaxation and something spiritually satisfying, even more so now than in his Olympic form. This is a worth while read for anyone interested in the sport and pastime. Even for the most pedestrian of lappers, it is an invitation to glide in eddies of imagination, sublimely cognizant of and refining the stroke, seeking some mysterious grace. There swimming provides an elixir of meditation and inspiration-- for those that it does not consume.”