Backlisted - Haunts of the Black Masseur by Charles Sprawson

Episode Date: July 9, 2017

Author and critic Alex Preston and Rachael Kerr, Unbound's Editor at large, join John and Andy around the table to discuss Charles Sprawson's ground breaking 'Haunts Of The Black Masseur', together with all things aquatic. The subtitle of the book is 'The Swimmer As Hero' and Sprawson's book tells the tale of literary swimmers from Byron to Cheever. Also discussed; Outskirts by John Grindrod and Bleaker House by Nell Stevens.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)7'19 - Outskirts: Living Life on the Edge of The Greenbelt by John Grindrod, 13'42 - Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World by Nell Stevens, 23'52 - Haunts of the Black Masseur by Charles Sprawson* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. So Matt and I went to a recording of the Radio 4 program of Mousetapes. Mousetapes, I think is what you call it. And it was recorded at the Maida Vale Studios, the historic BBC Maida Vale Studios.

And we sat approximately ten feet away. We were in the second row while for an hour and a half Randy Newman played through his highlights of his back catalogue and took questions. Specifically about Sail Away. Yeah, so the album that he was specifically talking about was Sail Away, which is his third studio record, early 70s.

And the thing about Randy Newman is, Randy Newman is a great songwriter. We would all agree he's a great songwriter. I'd say to me he's the best, I think. But also, he is funny. Yeah. Proper funny. He is proper funny.

Dark funny, bitter funny. So when he plays the songs, if you've ever seen him live, you sort of know how the song's going to go. He tends to knock them out, bang, bang, bang. What he says between the songs is just gold dust. And Matt and I were talking about this. He's got that incredible timing where he can do so much with so little, right? He's one of my big loves of life.

I was first actually turned on to his music when I was doing my MA in English and American Literature from 1880 to the present day. One of my tutors sat us down and said you will learn more about America by this by reading and listening to this these lyrics than you will from any book about anything he's very funny about the Pixar songs and he said well that's what most people know me for it's like I had a second second chance in about the year 2000 where I suddenly became known and my job is that

my job is not to pack away some hidden message. They said what we want the song to be about in Toy Story is he's a kid and there's a cowboy and they're friends. So I went, you've got a friend in me, you've got a friend in me, you've got a friend in me. They went, that's exactly what we want.

It's genius. And it's a lovely song. It's a great song. But there's just something about everything he does that even though he's playing it straight, there's just the intonation. I remember sitting in with small children watching that and Tony Turek said, this is Randy Newman.

They've done the Pixar, I've got Randy Newman to do the thing. An unthinkable thing for a children's movie. But it worked perfectly. But there's just always that edge of humour in his voice. Like Derek Jacoby narrating in The Night Garden, you can always tell that he's viewing it in several different perspectives.

Oh, classicism. We're going to talk about... I'm really hoping that there are successive generations of children who will come to the work of Randy Newman in their teens. Through Toy Story. What a magnificent thing that is. It must have happened that they stumbled upon

these far more, these far darker songs. You know when your kids are going, oh, mums, turn that off, what on earth is that you're listening to? They actually did hear me playing Randy Newman. They go, is that the guy from Toy Story? Yes! Matt enjoys Randy's work almost as much as he enjoys the work of Warren Zevon as well, right?

Possibly more. Well, with the sound of Randy Newman in our in our ears should we start hello and welcome to backlisted the podcast that gives new life to old books we're gathered on the bank above a stretch of river in the garden of our sponsors unbound the website which brings authors and readers together to create something special i'm john mitchinson the publisher of unbound and i'm andy miller author of The Year of Reading Dangerously, and my forthcoming one-man show, Andy Miller Plays Sad Songs on a Guitar He Found in a Skip.

Why are you laughing? Just because it's funny, Andy, sorry. OK, that's fine. The way you tell them. Joining us today are the novelist and critic Alex Preston. Hello, Alex Preston. Hello, Andy. Hello, John. Hello.

And Alex is the author of three novels, is that right? Yep, well done. Three novels, This Bleeding City, The Revelations in Love and War, and you're also the co-author of a new book, which I'm just going to linger on very slightly, called As Kingfishers Catch Fire, which is a collaboration with the designer and artist Neil Gower, which I was very fortunate your publisher sent me a copy this week.

It's a beautiful thing. What a beautiful book, right? Can you just tell people what it is? So it's a celebration of birds in literature, and it's illustrated and it goes through bird by bird. So you have the swallow from Ovid to Ted Hughes, you have the barn owl

from Shelley to Richard Mabey and all of them with paintings by Neil. And Neil painted these specifically didn't he? Yes so I would send him the chapter that I'd written which attempts to kind of draw out these various kind of literary references

to the birds through time. I can't wait to see it. Do you know what they've done? And actually, Corsair, they've done an extraordinary job with it. It's strokeable. It is. And we're also joined today by Unbound's editor-at-larlarge Rachel Kerr. Hello, Rachel. Hello, everyone. And Rachel is not

only Unbound editor-at-large, she's also John Mitchinson's carer. And helper. That's right, Andy. That's right. That is right, yeah. They are spousally arranged. Sometimes.

Sometimes, yes. And Rachel is here for a specific reason other than assisting John today. So we're going to come on to that. In the orchard of guestage, an apple has been plucked. So the book we're here to talk to Alex and Rachel about is Haunts of the Black Masseur by Charles Sprawson. Engaging title. Amazing book. Haunts of the Black Masur is a book

about, it was published in the early 90s and it's a book about swimming. So we're also going to be talking about, I suppose we've had other specials on Batlisted. I suppose this is our swimming special. Well I did try and persuade you to to have it

outdoors tell people what you suggested well i suggested that you come down i live in in the on the south coast near rye and i suggested you come and have a swim in in the river near my house and then we record the podcast you know in the in the open air i was all for it i love a bit of river swimming yeah everyone else everyone who knows me went, has he ever met me? Does he understand? Has he ever actually listened to this podcast? I thought maybe we could have got one of those bathing engines,

one of the things that you wheel down to the river. We could have gone for the whole... You could have... A natty little sort of cardigan-type swimsuit. I would not remove my tie. Anyway, let's crack on. Andy, what damp book have you been reading this week? So I've been reading a book by our former guest on Backlisted,

John Grinrod, who came in and talked about six months ago about Memento Mori by Muriel Spock. And John has a new book out called Outskirts, Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt and John grew up in New Addington which is a estate area on the outskirts of Croydon so this is a book about he really does a really clever thing at the beginning of the book where he says we lived in the last road in London we lived in the edge of the estate where if you look behind us you could see the estate and if you looked in front of us you could see the green belt and in a sense looking in both directions

at the same time is what the book is about as a as somebody who grew up in the suburbs or about what the function of the green belt is and one of the things that he that is so interesting about the book he basically put weaves two strands together one is about the function of the Greenbelt is. And one of the things that is so interesting about the book, he basically weaves two strands together. One is about the history of the Greenbelt. And one of the things that you learn from the book is that whatever you think you understand by the term Greenbelt, the more you think about it and read about it, the less you know. It sort of can mean a huge variety of different things to different

people in different political contexts so in that respect it's it's similar to his previous book which is called Concreteopia but it's also a memoir of growing up in the suburbs and I must say that I found reading it it was one of those books that I read with my ever-present chip on my shoulder thinking, right, why aren't there more books like this? There should be more books like this by people who live in the places that most people live. Not the inner city

and not Hampstead. Edgelands. Paul Farley's Edgelands. There are so few books that deal with the places most people live, right? And John and I did an event at Rough Trade a few weeks ago where we tried to talk about a few of the books that might

feature, and it's hard to get beyond nine or ten. Richard Mabey's brilliant on that. You know, that's where he grew up as well, and that's what nourished his... We were talking about fiction. And Paul Farley did. Paul Farley, yeah. Edgelands is a great book. Red Hill Rococo by Sheena Mackay. Sheena Mackay, yeah.

Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel. Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel. And Nobbs, the whole Nobbs. And David Nobbs did it, absolutely. I mean, I guess Jonathan Coe is sort of in... There's two things I want to say about the book. I found the book very interesting and moving, but I also found it incredibly... It's a strange thing to say,

but I really found it quite moving to see sort of my experience of my place in the world set out in print. I just want to read a little bit, which will, funnily enough, relate to what we're going to talk about for our main book. So this is from the introduction of Outskirts, and this is what John says about the Greenbelt. Despite our best efforts, on the small island of Great Britain there are still ancient wilds, woodlands and moors

where few people venture, remote and apart from the towns and cities where most of us spend our lives. Places where nature still flourishes, red in tooth and claw, green in stem and shoot, pale in frond and fin. But much of the open space in Britain is not found in rugged

highlands or spectacular national parks. It is nearer the towns and cities where most of us live, a tame version of the country with little of that edgy glamour that people seek out for rambling treks, wild swimming or getaway weekends. It even has a name that suggests mere practicality, vanity even, as opposed to mystery and grandeur, the green belt. If mountains and locks are the cinemascope version of our countryside, the green belt is the sitcom. Cozy, it's good isn't it? Cozy, familiar, cyclical, to be seen in regular short bursts. It is the small pretty flowers of Laura Ashley wallpaper rather than the awe-inspiring atmospheric excesses of romantic painting,

a frilly green doily around the edge of our cities. Here the wildlife is the grey squirrel, fox and wood pigeon rather than the beaver, otter or wild wild cat city folk might go out there for a weekend cycle but for a proper break seek adventure in the real wilds beyond highland or north welsh folk might find this tame landscape almost funny it's the place where cross people meet to try and put a stop to the modern world whether it be wind farms fracking or road widening schemes yet it's also full of commuters building extra bedrooms and adding value, and farms with hillsides of yellow oilseed rape or golden barley, where developers win some and lose some.

And of course, there's much that's more surprising than any of this too. Strange small towns, landfill sites, abandoned military facilities, motorway service stations, follies. In England alone, the Greenbelt accounts for 13% of our total land, in Scotland 2%, in Northern Ireland 16%. Yet most of us would be hard-pressed to explain a few fundamentals about this strange phenomenon. What exactly is it? Is there more than one? If so, where can you find them? And why and

how did they come about? Was it an ancient idea we inherited from the baronial landowners of yore, or something more recent and practical, like health and safety laws or immunisation? Are there people we can thank for it? And why don't we know who they are? What do these green belts say about our temperament, our hopes and ambitions? Are they indeed an attempt to give us a national character? When it comes to answering these questions, have the solutions been hidden in plain sight? Have we not been able to see

the wood for the trees? He's a good writer. Isn't that great? And also, the thing about that, the thing that John is so brilliant about is outlining the way in which the Green Belt was an effectively socialist idea in the spirit of the NHS,

and like the socialist idea in the spirit of the NHS, has been appropriated by whoever wants to appropriate it subsequently. So, yeah, I really recommend it. It's very moving, very political, very informative. Good work. Good work, Grindrod. John, what have you been reading this week? I have been reading a book by Nell Stevens called Bleaker House.

The subtitle is Chasing My Novel to the End of the World. And I have to say, it comes blazoned with a... It's published by Picador, very good. Blazoned with a quote from Lena Dunham saying, my favourite debut of 2017. Kind of, it's difficult not to like.

It's about the attempt to write a novel. Managed through her university, Boston University. They have a creative writing fellowship. She got a chance to go and work in another country for three months to write a book. So she chose, for reasons I won't go into, she chose Bleecker Island, which is a small island off the coast of the Falkland Islands

in the southwest. It has a total population of two people so she kind of increased the population by one while she was there it's about not writing and not how not to write a novel she came she'd be doing a creative writing course she had a novel mapped out on her head I'll read you just a little bit which gives you it has I mean you know I know everything gets gets compared slightly to bridget jones in these things but it's it's much funnier than that much wittier and wiser than that in a way but here we go from my writing station in the sunroom carefully disarranged

laptop and notebooks blue pen black pen pencil bleak house bleak house is the novel she has with her and it's the the novel that she has a dialogue with throughout. With a view of the bay and the red-roofed shearing shed beyond it, I drink my whole day's ration of black instant coffee and make calculations. If a first novel should be 90,000 words, I read this somewhere on the internet once and cling to it as absolute indisputable fact. Then after my fault starts an archive digging days in Stanley, which produced only 10 000 i have 80 000 words to go i'm on the island for 41 days and will need to leave sometime at the end for revisions a week or so should be enough for that surely so say that leaves me with 32 writing days that's 80 000 divided by 32 which equals two and a half thousand i shall write two

and a half thousand words each day and by the time time I leave Bleecker, I will have drafted and revised a whole novel. Totally doesn't happen. Totally doesn't happen. But of course, the joy and the loveliness of the book is, it's a mad idea. She's on her own for most of that time. So she does, of course, go slightly mad. Her dreams become incredibly vivid.

She does write quite a lot of stuff. But what comes out of the book is not the novel. It is, in fact, Bleaker House. And, I mean, it sounds tricksy. It isn't because she's got a lovely narrative voice. She writes really well. Well, that's what I was going to ask you, right? See, I like books about nothing.

Yeah. Okay? If, and I do, if provided, because they often give a platform for someone who's got a particular style to expand upon that style without getting weighed down by having to convey information.

I'm quite serious about that. Does she have that? From what you read, it sounds like she has that. I know, she comes back. I'll give you the meat of the book she gets asked by somebody what's the hey what's the punchline of your book and she's going oh don't even ask me but she comes the punchline is that i did leave this island with a book and here's here's the bullet points solitude is the contented twin of loneliness variety is a kind of kind of company. Everything is a kind of work.

Do not look into your own heart and write, but do not be surprised if you end up there all the same. Despite what you think and despite what Ted Hughes might lead you to believe, there is no such thing as effortless concentration. And anyway, it kind of ends up in a very good place. And I think she's a good writer and I think she will probably go on to write quite a good novel.

But the bits of the novel that are in here that she's incredibly brave thing to do, there's bits that work better than others. Let's just say there are bits that work better than others. But the whole thing actually weirdly hangs together. It's a mad idea. It sort of works. It struck me as a book... I haven't read it. I read a couple of reviews of it

and one of the reviews was a classic. I mean, you know, we've all read and written reviews. It was a classic. See, I read the review, and I thought I liked the sound of this book because the person who's written this review didn't get it. No. Right?

Didn't get what was good about it. They reviewed the book that they would have written. Exactly. In that writer's shoes and is furious at some level that that's not what this person decided to go ahead and do a lot more thought and there's a lot more thought and a lot more care has gone into

the structuring and patterning of this book John Updike quote work out what spell the writer is trying to create and submit yourself to it as best you can and don't review a book that they didn't try and write. It's not

going to change anybody's life, but what it is going to do is give you a few hours of... I mean, it's really, really fun. I really enjoyed it. And it's a book you do read in a couple of gulps. I've heard of this thing called reading for pleasure. Would it fall into that category?

Did you notice, Andy, in the radio times, which podcast of the week feature this week. Did you say podcast of the week in the radio times? In the radio times, Andy, yeah. Claire Malcolm from New Writing North said we've sold out now and she's going to stop listening. We've become

establishment. You just reminded me of a Randy Newman. Randy Newman said this brilliant story. He said he was asked in an interview recently, could you give somebody a tip for breaking into the music business? And he said, why would you want to do that? Breaking into the music business these days is like breaking into a bank

that's already been robbed. God, that's brilliant. That's like publishing. Anyway, we should get on. We should crack robbed. God, that's brilliant. That's like publishing. Brilliant. Anyway, we should get on. We should crack on. Now, as is now traditional, or has recently been made traditional, we're going to take a break to hear from one of our authors.

And the one we're going to hear from today, this is, I think, a book that works perfectly in this context, I hope. House of Fiction by Phyllis Richardson, which is a book about the great houses of fiction. None of the houses obviously are necessarily featured in the book that we're talking about on the podcast but quite a few of them have got quite a few of them got swimming pools. But anyway here is Phyllis. My name is Phyllis Richardson. I am the author of a book called House of Fiction. It is a book about houses in literature, as they appear in English literature specifically,

and the relationships that the various authors had with houses that they visited or lived in or loved or were obsessed with, and how they translated those relationships into fiction, into fictional houses that most of us know, have heard of, have read about, and may have become a little bit obsessed with ourselves. The book begins with one of the earliest novels, Tristram Shandy, from mid-18th century, and goes right up to, well, it's the 1980s with Gill Julian Barnes and Metroland. So I'm talking about houses in a kind of historic sense, but also in the more modern sense, how housing changed, ideas of housing as in the suburban house with someone like Julian Barnes and also with J.G. Ballard talking about the high rise.

I'm reading from Chapter 9 of House of Fiction, and the title of the chapter is Rooms of Her Own, Virginia Woolf's Houses of Memory. And there's an epigraph in the beginning of the chapter. This is an extract from Virginia Woolf's diary from the 11th of August, 1905. She says, we could fancy that we were but coming home, and that when we reached the gate at Talon House, we should thrust it open and find ourselves among the familiar sights again. In 1905, 10 years after their mother died, eight years since the death of their half sister Stella, 18 months since their father had also passed away, and a little over a year after she herself had made her first attempt at suicide by throwing herself out a window, Virginia Stephen

and her siblings made a pilgrimage. Aged from 22 to 26, Vanessa, Toby, Virginia, and Adrian had recently embarked on an unconventional living arrangement in London that would give rise to the legendary Bloomsbury group of artists and intellectuals. But on this trip, they were taking a journey back in time to the place where they had spent 13 idyllic summers as a family. In 1881, their father, the eminent critic and biographer Leslie Stephen, had discovered Talon House in St. Ives, Cornwall, on one of his many walking expeditions. It was a three-story detached house sat on a hill overlooking Porthminster Beach with Godrevy Lighthouse visible in the distance. And from then on,

from July to September each year, Stephen installed his large family and an array of guests in the distance. And from then on, from July to September each year, Stephen installed his large family and an array of guests in the airy seaside house, which would become a touchstone for his youngest daughter's art. For Virginia Woolf, certain houses were of huge importance, and for specific reasons. Her first home in Kensington came to represent the Victorian enigma that she would battle against in her life and writing, while Talon House was a childhood idol that would inspire her throughout her life. The independent and relaxed lifestyle she was able to pursue in various residences in Bloomsbury gave her the mental space and courage to produce the experimental novels that are her defining achievement. And finally, the retreat

that she and her husband Leonard Wolfe had at Monk's House in East Sussex gave her the opportunity to recreate some of the atmosphere that she loved so well of those early days at Talon House, while having private space for herself and a continual stream of family friends whom she liked to see, quote, dotted about on the estate. The House of Fiction by Phyllis Richardson is published by Unbound and available to order from all good bookshops. Backlisted listeners can get money off by ordering at unbound.com using the code BACKOFF at checkout. That's all one word, B-A-C-K-O-F-F at checkout.

Now, here are our sponsors telling you what to do. And now we're back in the room to get on with the main matter in hand, which is the very, very singular book, Haunts of the Black Masur, by Charles Sprawson. Singular, literally singular, because this is Charles, to date, Charles Sprawson's only book, I think I'm right in saying. And it's a great pleasure to have Alex Preston here to talk to us about it,

and Rachel, of course, as well. Alex, so where did you first run into this book? So I was given this book by my best friend when I was, I guess, in my late teens. His name was Hugo Godwin, and he was the son of a man called David Godwin, who discovered this book. And so Hugo, best man at my wedding, and we swum together a lot and said, this is a book that you will love,

and indeed, I absolutely love it and have loved it and read it and re-read it ever since. Do you think that in order to love the book one has to be a swimmer of rivers, ponds and canals? No, no, I mean I think you've named three of the swimming places that I think Sprawson most disapproves of. Sprawson is a sea swimmer. You know, in, there's a lovely review of the book by Iris Murdoch where she, I think in the New York

Review of Books, where she talks about... I mean, she calls it, she says, as zestful as a dip in a bath of champagne or something. But she recognises that Sproulson looks down on her because she is a river swimmer. Sproulson likes swimming where there's a lot of danger and there's no danger in rivers and ponds. Okay, that's a fair point. But do you have to a river swimmer. Sproulson likes swimming where there's a lot of danger, and there's no danger in rivers and ponds.

OK, that's a fair point. But do you have to be a swimmer? No, I mean, I think it's a book for people who like books more than people who like swimming. Indeed, indeed, indeed. I quite agree. Rachel, where did you first encounter Haunts of the Black Mass Earth? Well, I was actually working at Jonathan Cape with David Godwin when Hugo was probably about 10. And I was the publicist for this book when it first came out.

And it was one of those moments in publishing where you read a book that is quite unlike any other book that you've ever read. there was a marvellous sort of glamour about Sprawson, who was this terribly well-spoken, sort of handsome, slightly military-bearing Raj, born in Pakistan in the 40s, sort of this author that came in and talked to us about the book, and there was a sort of moment where we all completely fell in love with him. And the book was just full of that easy, easy kind of erudition.

And you just felt you were learning. And I am the kind of swimmer who, you know, I hate a swimming pool. I can't bear chlorine. But I'm the kind of swimmer that is very, very terrified of weed at the bottom or anything getting wrapped around my legs. So it made me more adventurous when I was reading it. It was just one of those books that everybody got very, very excited about and completely fell in love with. This book came out 25 years ago, and I remember it coming out,

and I remember it being reviewed. Did you, as the publicist in charge of the book, when you were first presented with it, did you have any sense of where on the scale of how between easy and difficult it was going to be to get attention for the book. I just fell in love with the book. And I'm one of those really tragic people

that when I really love a book, I was like, you've got to read this book, and it's really complete. I got so... I was so thrilled by it. And so I remember I used to write letters to journalists in the days before email. I mean, this was long before anyone had an email account or you sent press releases. I would write, you know, personalised letters to journalists about things. I remember one journalist, I think it was Mick Brown at The Telegraph, once ringing me up and saying,

Rachel, I can't do anything with this book, but please never stop sending me your letters. Because if I was really excited about a book, it would be really effusive. And I think they probably found it quite amusing. But Rachel, you and I were talking earlier about lending books, and I always have more than one copy of this book in my house because I'm worried that I'll give away

my first edition if I don't. I love it so much and I press it on people. So where's our first edition? I know, I think, well, that's exactly it. When we were looking, no, we were looking for our first edition. I know, I think, well, that's exactly it. Class act. No, we were looking for our first edition, which I have, which in my memory I think is a signed edition, but it's not on our bookshelves.

And I know that I personally would never have given away a first edition of this particular book, because I love it so much. So I just know... Everybody's looking at me now. Everyone's looking at you. Well, I'm sorry. After one too many...

After a particularly bibulous Sunday lunch. It is exactly that kind of book you know it's exactly the kind of book you have a conversation and say i like swimming and you say oh have you read sports you must have read and of course you know the the title is remarkable enough and we'll talk about that maybe a bit a bit later on but it is it i mean from my memory i certainly remember i mean i'd read this book before rachel and i were together i was probably one of the people you sent a letter to when i was at waterstones and i read it in proof and got incredibly excited about it and i remember going to new zealand um uh with my Zealand with my then-wife and spent the whole holiday in New Zealand.

It was going to a friend's wedding, trying to find places that I could go and swim in. I mean, you know, we were up Tongariro, one of the mountains, volcanoes, and I was swimming in volcanic lakes. It did have an immediate and electrifying effect i think on a lot of people because it it's suddenly the sun the core of the book which is the idea of swimming as a connection with something bigger with some with the past was just it was the right book at the right moment

it's a template for an obsession yeah yeah yeah that's a brilliant description it's a very accurate description i felt two things i'd only ever dipped into the book. I'd never read it all the way through. Sorry, dipping in, I'll be saying it again. I apologise. But it's true. I'd only ever dipped into it. This is the first time I'd read it from cover to cover.

And the two things that struck me coming to it as a book that I remember from the early 90s, and so I sort of remember the context you're talking about, Rachel, and the way it was published and how it was reviewed. I remember it being around, you know. The two things that struck me were, first of all, at about the halfway point, I thought, oh, it's called Haunts of the Black Masseur,

and then the subtitle is The Swimmer as Hero. And I thought, that subtitle is brilliant. Whoever came up with that subtitle, because actually it's at the halfway point of the book, it begins to coalesce around the idea where you realise what you're reading, although it wanders around other topics, you are

reading about people as much as swimming. The idea of what we invest in from Greek times through to the present day in heroic figures. And in this instance, it's heroic figures in relation to swimming. But it actually could be, there's a whole subtext there, I think,

about human beings need to look at other human beings and put them on pedestals or diving boards, as you see fit. The second thing that I thought about it, coming at it at this distance, was this would be a book that it would be much, much easier at least to imitate now because of the internet. And reading it now, I actually thought there's so much, there's several, again and again, Sproulson does this thing

where I read a paragraph and I thought that's so condensed you must have read three or four books to get that paragraph, this must have taken you years to write with no access to that was part of our sort of

we were all blown away by the book, was the sort of, oh, my God, you know, this is full of stuff that sent you scurrying in those days, not to Google, but to a bookshelf somewhere. Oh, my God, and who's he talking about here? Who's this person? Who's that person? But it was just presented so elegantly and so i think sorry i was gonna say where's his learning right lightly yeah but but that's i mean

andy i think that's fascinating your your idea about what the internet has done to the idea of learnedness because one of the people that that i kept thinking of as i was reading it this time i think perhaps because i just read james wood's essay in the The New Yorker on the comedy of W.G. Sebald. I think that... No, I'm with him. I think Sebald's very funny. And I think Sproulson here is very funny. He's melancholy, he's nostalgic,

but he's also deeply, deeply humorous. Because like Sebald, he's learned, he learned he's melancholy he's nostalgic but i also i think there is a real humor here and i think it's a funny book yeah yeah i i agree with you in fact i think we should listen to a bit of this is spruces himself there was a film of haunts of the black mass serve which there is a little clip up on um youtube you can you can get it so it's a canadian production company it's a it's a good film, actually, if we listen to Sprawson speaking, this is one of those brilliant examples where once you hear his voice, you realise he writes like he speaks.

So let's hear him now. The Hellespont is the goal of every classical swimmer. A few miles inland are the remains of Troy. It's a place full of mythical associations. On the northern shore, on the European shore, the scenes of various Greek naval battles. So it's a place that's full of classical mystery. And for that reason, I and many other classes have wanted to swim it. When you come down the hill, as I did by car,

and approach the Hellespont, it looks far narrower than one imagined, especially the narrowest place, the narrowest part of the channel. And I immediately started swimming across. I thought it would be so easy. And within ten feet, I was pulled across towards the Aegean. If I hadn't clung to a rock,

I'd have been swept miles away, far out into the Aegean. So I realised it wasn't as easy as I thought. And I took the ferry boat back and next day arranged for a boat to accompany me on a far wider bit of the channel. And it was quite rough and quite difficult, especially the last 200 yards. And I only just managed to get there.

He's very wonderful. That's what I love about it. I'm so pleased you brought out the humour but also there isn't much scholarly apparatus there's not masses of footnotes there isn't even a bibliography it feels very like one of those wonderful 19th century

works of scholarship but with an incredibly kind of as you say, that modern sensibility of just rather this was all rather wonderful, now it's not so wonderful

but I don't mind. And it reminds you because actually he calls upon so many of the characters that he then writes like because I think the structure is very important that he starts off giving you, if you like, a literary introduction to swimming. And what he does is he gets all of these people on site.

So he takes you through people like George Borough, like Swinburne, Shelley, Byron, Jack London, and then he uses them in the second half of the book to describe the world of swimming. So he is writing in a literary history of great writers who have written about swimming. And the thing that astonishes is just how important swimming is. He puts a thesis down that you think, really?

Yes. And then he totally nails it. Absolutely. You realise that actually this immersion in water that he writes about, that they all write about, the sense of being... There's a brilliant bit where he throws in a bit of Freud, saying, you know, it's all about wanting to be mothered. Return to the woo.

The amniotic fluid. Or return to the woo. But he does it all... He doesn't force any of it. He tosses in his own observations almost casually. But what you realise is that, my God, yes, this being in water, from Goethe through to F. Scott Fitzgerald, so many writers you suddenly see.

I hadn't thought about literature. I hadn't thought about this strand of literature as being so important before. And he was talking in the clip we listened to about Hellspont there. Could you say something about... I mean, the extent of my ignorance in this area was profound, I realised as I read the book. But could you say something about why that is so important to the book and to... Well, because it was... To the book and to the swimming world.

So Hellespont is notoriously difficult to swim. I think my father tried it and maybe gave up, or there was one part of it where... Anyway, it's Byron is the reason. Byron swam it, and it was the mark of Byron's heroism. It was the thing that set him apart from the people who pretended to be heroes and writers and weren't.

And so for Sprawson, it is not only, you know, he's looking across to Troy, this is part of his classical background, but it's also about following in the footsteps of Byron, being the great swimmer writer. Well, we'll talk a bit about Sprawson later on, but I just want, normally on that list if i have you know recourse to life stories and biographies and journals and journals indeed sprossen's author note is in and of itself a tiny masterpiece this is the published information about the author charles sprossen at the front of the black masser charlesacre. Charles Sprawson studied at Trinity College Dublin, deals in 19th century paintings,

and recently swam the Hell's Pond. I mean, that's wonderful. Whoever allowed that to pass, Rachel? I seem to remember he was quite adamant that that was all that we needed. It's shrunk for the latest vintage edition. It's even smaller. I think they've cut out the bit about him dealing in 19th century fashion. It's just that Charles Prauschen's an obsessional swimmer

and diver who has swum the Hell's Pond. They've also, which is what I was trying to say, I think bafflingly taken the subtitle off the cover. That's a mistake. Which I would say is a big mistake. A deliberate mistake. This is in the vintage classics edition. Alex, could you read us something that you feel...

Well, I think, you know, so clearly Swimming the Hellespont is one of the kind of heroic moments of the book, but actually another great moment is when he tries to swim the Tegus in Lisbon, which is... This is great. It's just wonderful, which byron himself had done so my destiny i'm not going to read like him because because that would take the whole podcast my destination was a line of oil refineries on the other side which once in byron's

time had been full of orange groves and vineyards. After an initial crawl, I relapsed into a stately side stroke, which allowed me the leisure to look back at the shore through the palisade of masts in the marina. Behind the railway, the oblong factories and rectangular blocks of flats were occasional glimpses of the old Baroque balconies and twisting towers that William Beckford had once admired. This perverse and exotic voluptuary, adored by Byron, of the old Baroque balconies and twisting towers that William Beckford had once admired. This perverse and exotic voluptuary, adored by Byron, who was always trying to catch up with him, had exiled himself here to escape the consequences of some homosexual scandal in England.

It was along this shore that he rode every day and sometimes swam. He had installed in his extravagant apartment floor-length mirrors that reflected the bodies of young men swimming in the river below and looking down at night from his veranda on the little beach he would long to stretch himself on the sands by moonlight and devote all his wild imaginings to some lovesick languid youth reclining by his side alas he mourned will my own youth pass away without my feeling myself once more tremblingly alive to these exquisite though childish sensations by now i was well over halfway across and drifting towards the suspension bridge trying hard to distract my mind from what lay around and beneath me

with memories of Beckford and others, when my thoughts were disturbed by the wail of a siren like those I imagined sounded at Alcatraz when a prisoner escaped from the island. Shortly afterwards, a patrol boat bore down on me. References to Byron made little impression. I was dragged from the water and subjected to an hour's interrogation.

Apparently, no one was allowed to swim in the estuary unaccompanied by a boat and without the harbour master's permission. The river was considered too dirty and dangerous. Anyone spotted in it was either a drug smuggler or a stowaway and treated as such. From the boat, the further shore seemed disappointingly close, but perhaps it was just as well.

There was an ocean liner approaching fast from under the bridge and there seemed little likelihood of my avoiding it. Oh, so good. You know, so when this book came out, we couldn't really think of precedents, could we? No, there weren't any precedents. That was the really interesting thing. And that was why everyone was so excited about it.

It was that sort of moment where... I mean, it was a particularly brilliant moment to be part of Jonathan Cape. It was 1992 when we actually published it. We'd won the Booker Prize with Ben O'Cree in 1991. We had the legendary Peter Dyer designing all our beautiful covers. we were just fizzing with ideas of how to kind of get people to read books and stuff and the idea that that you weren't

publishing something because somebody else would publish something similarly we're publishing absolutely new kinds of books well this is the my point, is it might contrast to now where the swimming memoir or swim-wa. No! Yes, I saw it referred to. Swim-wa. That's become a genre. We're a peak swimming, aren't we? Peak swimming.

And Alex, I was going to say to you, I mean, I've just... Do you want to say something a bit about Philip Hall's... Well, I've just... I mean, I'm reviewing the new Philip Hall called Rising Tide, Falling Star, all one word, which is... Inspired by Change Is One Bowie.

Yes. I believe. I think you're right, and Bowie is very important in it. Bowie is one of the few figures who isn't entirely immersed in cold water throughout. Was David not a swimmer? Oh, dear. Sorry.

It's a book that owes a great deal to Sproulson, only because it's the same kind of blueprint of a mind, and that mind being totally immersed in water and in cold water. You know, I think that's the other thing about Sprawson, is that, yes, it's Mediterranean, but also you feel he's sometimes at his happiest when he's freezing. I've just been reading... Sorry, I keep saying this, dipping into...

I've been dipping into Jenny Landreth's book, which is called Swell, which was published by Bloomsbury earlier in the year. This is subtitled Water Biography. And this is a book about... Actually, in a sense, this is rather like John Grinrod's book Outskirts I was talking about earlier. This is a mixture of two things.

Her memoir of swimming but also the role of women in Her memoir of swimming but also the role of women in the history of swimming. Which don't get a huge part in, you know, if I were to put a criticism to it. Well I think that, and

Alexandra Hemmingsley's book, very similar. I finished reading Haunts of the Black Massacre and had had quite enough of gilded Johnny Weissmuller male torsos. Morbidly self-admiring is how he describes them himself. But that's exactly what they are. There's a phrase in Haunts of the Black Masseur which I'm not going to read out

because I don't think you would put it in a book now about the narcissism and how the narcissism relates to a particular medical condition that I think would probably be edited out now. Ah yes, wasn't that interesting? And so I could sort of see that was slightly dated

but I really agree with you Alex, I got to the end of the book and think well okay, and what's so interesting about Jenny's book actually almost she likes I asked her if she read Haunts of the Black Massacre Well, OK. And what's so interesting about Jenny's book, actually, almost, she likes... I asked her if she read Haunts of the Black Massacre. She likes it. She's not crazy about it.

I felt that actually what's so interesting about it is that it almost felt like a dialogue going on between her book and that book. There are several points, for instance, where Captain Webb, Captain Webb, who's the great... Who's one of the great stories in the course of his book. Victorian swimming heroes. Captain Webb, who's one of the great stories. Victorian swimming heroes. Jenny takes quite some time to counterpoint stories of female swimmers whose exploits and achievements could easily be compared with Webb's, who, of course, were not on the historical record in the same way.

It's interesting that Philip Hoare goes, I mean, I think, quite self-consciously goes in the other direction and brings in Elizabeth Barrett Browning, brings in Virginia Wolfe brings in, you know, it wasn't a story of Byron and his male acolytes. There's a brief cameo of Virginia Wolfe in the cam with

Rupert Brooke. But it's about him isn't it? One of the people that really stands out in the Sprawson book though is Zelda Fitzgerald Yes, that's true. I mean a spectacularly sort of intrepid diver and shucker off of flesh coloured satin.

We don't do conservation. She's marvellous. We should say that this book, The Haunts of the Black Massacre also contains like cameo appearances by several writers that we've talked about on Batlisted so my great favourite WNP Barbellion

author of Journal of a Disappointed Man is in here, Edmund Goss is in here author of Father and Son Denton Welsh who I discovered through Backlisted and now I'm obsessed with I think he's a wonderful writer Scott Fitzgerald is in here

who didn't swim because he was embarrassed of his feet. And J.G. Ballard. J.G. Ballard, here is Ballard. Ballard loved this book. The thing is, there's a Ballard's quote on the back here. It says, Part social and cultural history and part personal credo. Haunts of the Black Mass area is an exhilarating plunge

into some of the deepest pools inside our heads. Of course, J.G. Ballard, even in a blurb, unable to leave out a mention of a swimming pool. But also, we have a clip as well. You cannot talk about writing about swimming without talking about the story The Swimmer by John Cheever. And here we have a clip of Cheever reading from The Swimmer. Amazing.

Then it occurred to him that by taking a dog leg to the southwest, he could reach his home by water. The day was beautiful, and it seemed to him that a long swim might enlarge and celebrate its beauty. He took off a sweater that was hung over his shoulders and dove in. He had an inexplicable contempt for men who did not hurl themselves into pools. He swam a choppy crawl,

breathing either with every stroke or every other fourth stroke, and counting somewhere well in the back of his mind the one-two-one-two of a flutter kick. It was not a serviceable stroke for long distances, but the domestication of swimming had saddled the sport with some customs, and in his part of the world a crawl was customary. To be embraced and sustained by the light green water was less a pleasure, it seemed, than the resumption of a natural condition. And he would have liked to swim without trunks, but this was not possible considering his mission.

He hoisted himself up on the far curb, he never used the ladder, and started across the lawn. When Lucinda asked where he was going, he said he was going to swim home. Now, that is an extract of Cheever reading from the story of the swimmer in 1975. There was, of course, a film made of the swimmer,

a wonderful film. Brilliant film. As I was saying to somebody this morning, it's like an episode of The Twilight Zone directed by Antonioni. It's starring Burt Lancaster. Burt Lancaster, who is mentioned in Haunts of the Black Mass. Sir had to learn to swim for it.

The reason it's such a good story is because it gets that thing that, again, Sprawson does so well, of the kind of dreamlike altered state of being in water. That I think the thing at the end of The Swimmer, which we won't give away, because it is kind of an extraordinary reveal, but it does something

to your consciousness of a reader, and I always wish I could read that story for the first time again, because of the surprise of the ending. Yeah. I don't think... It's funny rereading Sprawson after so long, and

having read more, you know, you've more, 25 years, you've read Differences. But no one, I think, has nailed the sense of the sheer sensual... It's both sensual deprivation but also completely the relationship... I just wanted to read this little bit from Flaubert. The sense of the mind and body being kind of in harmony through swimming. He just says, My sole pastime, my only sport, was the purest of all, swimming. It seems to me that I discover and recognize myself

when I return to this universal element. My body becomes the direct instrument of my mind, the author of its ideas to plunge into water to move one's whole body from head to toe in its wild and graceful beauty to twist about in its pure depths this is for me a delight only comparable to love it's just that that's but what that's the genius of spruces genius of Sprawson going back to this internet this is years of reading and note taking and it's not cutting and pasting

from the internet you can sort of feel that it is the work of a lifetime it's as though he's just casually saying it all the way through he's just telling it just dropping stuff in as though you were having a conversation. There's one bit there to start

where he can't remember where the quote's from and he refers to something as like... He just said it somewhere. He says, yeah. That's right, yeah. He does this wonderful thing of getting both that sensuous...

You know, Roger Deakin in Waterlog, which is a book we might talk about, he talks about being enveloped by the water, this sensual, sensuous nature of it. But he also, Sproulson gets the kind of lustral, purifying nature of the water as well. And I think the balance there is one of the kind of, it's one of the frictions in the book that that drives it along

i love this quote here sorry uh alex uh you were talking earlier about the humor and there's a there's an anecdote here bertrand russell bathed by moonlight with rupert brooke off lulworth and in his autobiography records his last friendly encounter with Asquith, the Prime Minister, which he felt the most surprising incident of his whole life. Quote, I was walking on a hot summer's day in Oxfordshire along the banks of a small river,

and I got so warm that I thought I would go in and bathe. And I went in and bathed. The place seemed completely lonely, and I bathed without a costume. When I came out, who should I find standing on the bank but the Prime Minister? A great surprise to me. It was no occasion for dignity

or for serious discussion of great political problems. I put on my clothes as quickly as I could while he conversed in an amiable manner, and that was the last time i had a friendly comfortable relation with mr asquith it's so good but again it's what you were saying about um rachel what you were saying about the the an anecdote has been noticed in the reading of a book which presumably had nothing else in it that could be brought to the to the to the book noted down put away i like that bit in the introductory chapter

where he says there was a period where he was just writing notes about... Every time he noticed anything about swimming, he wrote it down. And then he said, the crazed irrelevance of these notes, I do now acknowledge. But you get that when you're obsessed with something, it's everywhere. He says, novels and poetry seem to revolve around water and swimming in a way that was quite out of proportion to the author's intentions. And anyone who's really... I mean, I've been doing it with birds recently.

It's like there's birds in everything I'm reading at the moment. It's confirmation bias. It's confirmation bias. It's total confirmation bias. But you know when it's working once you see the connection. Can I do one more funny anecdote? Because this made me laugh a lot. Signs of urine in his pool shocked Orson Welles. In an attempt to embarrass the culprits,

he found a chemist who had developed a clear colourless liquid which on insertion in the water could immediately detect those who had abused their privileges. We put this stuff in and we invited our friends out, naturally at the weekend, and they were swimming around in raspberry-coloured clouds. They were all doing it, you see. We discovered during our scientific investigation that it was overwhelmingly the men who did it, and women of advanced years.

This is very good, awful revelation that so many of us sophisticated friends habitually misuse the pool in this way greatly dismayed i mean it's genius you see that's that beautiful that greatly dismayed it's just a can i just read this this is why this is this is the. If you've read a book 25 years ago, and I haven't read it since, although I've pressed it on hundreds of people, you suddenly start reading it, and sentences that have somehow lodged themselves inside you come back. This is one that I...

He's talking about Diocletian's baths in Rome and how they were turned into a basilica and a church, a basilica designed by Michelangelo. And he's swimming in there and he's admiring the columns which are hewn out of single blocks of stone 43 feet high. He's distracted recently by the sight of those startling columns and that of a gypsy's naked breast feeding a pendant infant. I lost through her liquid fingers all the money in my possession. The most beautiful sense of humor.

I wrote that one down as well. He could do stand-up. He could do stand-up. But it makes you want to know about him as a person. Okay, so Alex, I want to go back to your learning. Why are there so many books about swimming and what's on the other side? Because you can sing that to the rainbow connection. Why are there so many books about swimming?

Well, I mean, I think partly for exactly what spruceson is writing about that there is a you know this is not a false this is not confirmation bias this is not a false relationship there is an intimate link between writing and swimming i think i think the kind of dream state that you get into when you're writing is very similar to the one you get into when you're swimming i think there's absolutely no surprise that so many writers have been obsessed by the sea. It's entering a different medium. It's finding a different way of relating to your own consciousness. And I think that it is a kind of, you know, the swimmer is hero.

It's you're writing stories as you're moving through the water. I do a lot of writing when I'm swimming. I swim in the pool mainly. I do swim in a river and in the sea occasionally. But on a Sunday night I will go and I will swim for an hour and I will come out energised and full of ideas. You know, also you were saying, weren't you, that we were talking about the narcissistic element

and the idea of mirrors is a big thing in the book and it occurs to me that it's a book in a sense it's an obsessive book as you say a book of obsession about obsessed people the swimmers that he is interested

in are the ones who will swim themselves to death often you know they are the ones who will immerse themselves so deep that they never come back. But listen, we have to ask, what happened to Sprawson? This is 25 years. So let me tell you a little bit about Sprawson before this was published because actually what I did when I knew we were doing this

was I went and I spoke to everyone I could find who knew him. So everyone from Tash Orr, the great novelist, great writer, to David Godwin, to Nicholas Pearson, who was his editor. So he was, as Rachel said, born in Pakistan, raised in India. His father was the headmaster of a school for Indian princes, as he sort of refers to at the beginning. He studied at Trinity Dublin, played squash for Ireland, and worked as a swimming pool attendant. He taught literature in Saudi Arabia and then established a fine art dealership in London, specialising in Victorian painting which he would go out and sell for a few weeks each year to people in the Channel Islands and this was his market and so he um and his coming

to the Channel Islands was a real red letter day for the tax exiles out there and he would have he would be asked to stay with various couples out there. One couple had asked him to get paintings of every British prime minister, of whom I think there have been 50 or so. Another couple used to wait until he drove his car onto the ferry to leave, and then they would let off a firework as he left. I could just say John and I and my faces could be described as priest with delight at the moment. Everyone

I spoke to was full of the most extraordinary, you know, you could just tell that people were grinning at the thought of him and he sounded like the most wonderful and I'm speaking he is still alive. he's still out there um

he another reason i love him is that so that one of the reasons i'm so totally obsessed with swimming is that my dad is a big swimmer and and taught me to swim and and we have swum a lot together and my dad read this book i gave it to him um and loved it so much he found out where Sprawson was living and started writing to him and they began a correspondence and I asked my dad when he'd last heard from Charles and he said well well it was a few years ago and he really wasn't well and and he came down with I think cancer of the throat a few years back back and has really been going through a difficult time. And obviously, you know, I got an email via Nicholas Pearson

saying that he was on the mend, that he was potentially coming out of hospital and that things are looking up and that he's working on another book. Wow. A book wow a book about uh a great and um obviously completely insane swimmer called uh uh i think sorry martin strel strel strel i think who's a slovenian who swam the amazon decided it wasn't quite far enough and carried on swimming. He holds all these amazing records back in Australia.

So, you know, but when I first talked to David Godwin about it, David hadn't heard that he was getting better and actually gave me some very... gave me very bad news about Charles's condition. And then my dad... I spoke to my dad again, and my dad said, I don't know whether to tell you this or not. I didn't tell you at the time because I knew you'd be so upset because I knew how much you loved the book.

But Charles came to one of your book launches because he'd heard that you were such a fan. And you were all caught up in it, you know, being a cock. And he didn't come and say hello. He bought a copy of the book and left. And just the thought, so I've actually Nicholas has put me in

touch with his stepdaughter and daughter-in-law, I can't anyway, with a member of his family and I am going to go and visit him because, you know, this is a book that has been one of the kind of props of my life and has played such a role in who I am

and what I'm interested in. And that thing you do when you reach about our age where you finally realise the things that make you really happy and you just do them as much as you can. And swimming and reading are two of those things and that's why I want everyone to read this book and that

going back to your question at the beginning it's not just a book for swimmers, it's a book about obsession it's a book about love and it's a book about literature Well, that's fantastic Alex and we can say no more.

That is an absolutely brilliant place to end. Thank you. Well, thank you to Alex. I'm not going swimming, though. I mean, I'll read another book. John, Rachel and I now take Andy and throw him in the canal. Again? There's a pike out there, Andy.

Well, thank you to Alex Preston, to rachel kerr to our producer matt hall and again to our sponsors unbound you can get in touch with us on twitter back at backlisted pod facebook uh facebook.com forward slash backlisted pod and on our page on the unbound site which is unbound.com forward slash backlisted thanks for listening we'll be back with another show in a fortnight. Until then, goodbye. I was going to sing some of Loudon Wainwright III's The Swimming Song at this point, but I decided that I can't possibly fall. I don't want the pathetic drop after Alex's wonderful.

I would like to add that what a pleasure it is, as it so often is on Backlisted, to have the opportunity to discover or discover anew a book like this one. So thank you very much, everybody. And we'll see you next time. If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts, you can sign up to our Patreon. It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted.

As well as getting the show early, you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted, which is Andy, me and Nicky talking about the books, music and films we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.