Leanne Shapton
It is fitting that the process of reading Leanne Shapton's memoir Swimming Studies feels almost like floating, drifting from moment to moment in her life as a competitive swimmer, getting brief glimpses of the girl, the athlete, or both, and then floating away. Sometimes a toe will touch on something significant, but mostly we watch her life go by us, moments coming into focus and then receding. Her delicate and often withholding prose compels the reader to keep on, exploring her memories of suburban adolescence as she trained for the Olympic trials, into her adult ruminations of how this rigorous athletic world affected her as an adult.
It is refreshing to read a memoir by an introvert – there is no desperation in her quest to tell us about herself. In fact, the narrative itself is gentle and gradual, with no grand linear reveal or crescendo. She never made the Olympics; no great tragedy or triumph befalls her. Moments easy to label as all-is-lost (i.e. her diagnosis with depression) are given less page space than lengthy descriptions of the pools she has visited, or the swimsuits she has donned and when. The tension between her life as a visual artist and as a swimmer overlap, creating some fascinating comparisons on how life might be lived, and how we might best spend our childhoods. The action and catharsis is always just a little below the surface, which, in its best moments, energizes the narrative.
Competitive swimming is not something I would elect to read about, but for the most part, I was held by the small details of the young swimmer's life: the solitude, the yearning, the boredom and excitement of competition. Young athletes live in a subculture all their own, with predawn wake-ups and group travel to swim meets. Equally compelling were the segments of her adult life as she takes up swimming again. She looks around at a health club locker room in the present day and thinks, "I'm convinced all other women know something I don't – about grooming, about their bodies, about things I never learned to do because I was too busy swimming."
Toward the end of the book, she admits to a lifelong preoccupation with the sentimental and ideas of true love – surprising, given that nothing in the narrative thus far has suggested this – but it's a pleasing surprise, one that she gently ruminates on and brings back to swimming: "In giving up the laps, the control, and the reward system that swimming used to represent, I know that I should do the same with my marriage; that as much as I need to maintain it and pay attention to its currents and riptides, it's not something to win." These beautiful segments ground the otherwise journal-like moments of simple memory reportage.
For the most part, the book gripped me in its watery dream state. But not every moment sparkles in the same way – there were only so many hotel pools described in tiny detail that held my interest; the statistics regarding how fast some long-ago swimmer swam were occasionally tedious, but only because of the way she held the reader at a distance. This distancing is what starts out as compelling, and ends up occasionally leaving the reader a bit cold.
However beautiful the prose and quietly moving its subject matter, it was startling to me to note that a non-linear memoir by a visual artist about her childhood as an unsuccessful competitive swimmer had been promoted so heavily, published by an imprint of Penguin USA, agented by Andrew Wylie. I was also confused by the details Shapton leaves out – her husband is simply "James," her career specifics aren't noted in detail; it's as if she doesn't think the reader should care, or assumes the reader already knows, about her present life. She provides a lot of detail about her childhood – the colour and make of a lost sweatshirt, what her mother drank while waiting for her morning swim practice – but leaves a lot out of the present-tense narrative.
She goes from living in her brother's basement in university to suddenly being a world traveller, swimming in St. Barts and in posh hotel pools all over the world. To clear up this confusion, I Googled the author and realized oh! she's already famous, working as an art director for The New York Times, married to James Truman, former editorial director for Condé Nast. Her last graphic novel has been optioned for a film that will star Brad Pitt. In a book that discusses in detail the meaning of accomplishment and competing for a goal, it is curious that Shapton would leave the details of her artistic achievements out of the text.
As it is, Swimming Studies is the kind of book that would normally languish in a slush pile, loved fiercely by a lone literary editor and then vetoed by the marketing department, if it weren't for who the author is. If only publishers took more chances with beautiful books by the less-connected, the literary landscape might be less bleak.
Zoe Whittall is currently adapting her latest novel for film with co-writer Lisa Foad.