It is known that Kafka swam diligently, but perhaps less so than Lord Byron. Luanne Shapton, a former professional swimmer and artist, recalls her in “Swimming Sketches,” a “memoir” that feels like a work of art that could be added to the pages of classics like “The Swimmer” or “NA” stories. German spa from Virginia Woolf’s archenemy The Indomitable
This week marks the centenary of his death Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield, “an outsider” as he put it Leonard Wolfe, someone always treated with contempt by the exclusive and unsympathetic Bloomsbury group, being nothing more than a “provincial” who was allowed to “look but not touch” What they had — their fame, Bohemia, London — were born in New Zealand, and ended up in the British capital because nothing seemed enough for it. It is not fair that he went down in history as a footnote in Hayat Virginia Wolf —the friend-enemy with whom the author of “Mrs. Dalloway” claimed to rival, and without whom, she said, her books would be worse–being that she was a sort of force of nature who had spent 34 condensed years in the world.
No need to go back to your rebellious childhood — her grandmother had to raise her because her mother could not even see her: she wanted her to be a boy — nor what she would do for love when she lost her mind to a cello teacher at 14 — Mansfield was going as a soloist, she was a very good cellist and the music She to whom she planned to devote herself, that even literature crossed her way–or that at the age of fifteen she met Ida Baker, her first lover–and someone to whom she remained close to her all her life. Although it can be mentioned how he managed to deal with his boss’s wife –Beatrice Hastings– Or leaving her husband on their wedding night to run away with a violinist who abandons her out of boredom and gets pregnant after a month.
Staying in a spa, after that last rest, Bad Worishofen Spa in Bavaria, who went with his mother, Annie, inspired his first book of short stories, At German Spa (Alba), published in 1911. In 1911, Mansfield was 23 years old. It was at this spa that she suffered a miscarriage and lost her baby. His life went on. But in a sense, every time this book is opened, it remains frozen in time. Mansfield does not usually speak in his memoirs, as if he did Franz Kafkathan swam in those places he went so often–not that, the Bavarian resort, the only one he spent time in–but the protagonists of his stories–whose intrigues were always an inner struggle–yes they did.
happen with John ShaferFor example, something similar. As far as “The Swimmer” was written, it’s probably just not the best short story ever published–or How Life Could Be Nothing More Than Trying to Get Home, Through Your Neighbors’ Ponds, Completely Drunk and Lost. —but surely the best story ever written is about someone addicted to chlorine, or tempted by it, and prefers snowboarding. His “Diary” (Random House) is full of moments alone on frozen lakes, plotting stories. Despite being for brilliant literary swimmers, the aforementioned Kafka, who swam regularly in the Prague Civic Swimming School’s pool in the summer, and Lord Byron.
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The English poet is a good friend Percy and Mary ShelleyHe was such an excellent open water swimmer that, in 1810, he became the first person to swim across the Hellespont. It is narrated by Leanne Shipton in a fantastic artifact called swimming sketches (Platt and Rios). a “note” He tries to escape his status as a “diary”, and expand it into a work of art. Born in Canada in 1973, Shipton is the art editor of the New York Review of Books and a celebrated artist whose work has toured the world after appearing in the directors’ film She. Spike Jones About a man who loves an operating system, with a voice that simply listens to him and answers what he asks. And once she was swimming.
Shipton was on the verge of becoming an Olympian and her story is the most complete and deepest ever about real life underwater ”
In fact, it still is. But not seriously. Shipton was about to be Olympic swimmer And his story is, at once, a list of swimsuits, types of competitors, hostel pools, times with his mother – a Filipino immigrant in Canada, a lonely fish out of water – and times alone – many times alone believing life is what other people do all they do while swimming – It is without a doubt the most complete and deepest, The Abyss itself, ever done on real life underwater. Kafka, Lord Byron, Mansfield herself, and especially John Cheever loved to read them.. All life is a collection of moments that, over time, emerge as they are here, turbulent, and reach their true meaning.
