Leanne Shapton is an artist, author and publisher and recipient of the 2012 National Book Critics' Circle Award for autobiography. Her most recent book, Women in Clothes, was a collaboration with Sheila Heti and Heidi Julavits. She lives in New York with her family.
“Swimming Studies sets out, through a fusion of words and pictures,
to capture a bittersweet part of the writer's past as completely as
a scent trapped in a bottle. The book is beautiful as both a
story and an object. It's about being very, very good at
something, when you want to be great. I was moved by it in
ways both expected and unexpected."
—John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead “If there is a
more beautifully observed examination of weightlessness, silence,
rigor, and delight of what it means to swim, I've never read
it. Leanne Shapton is one of the most broadly creative and
gifted people at work today; a true artist, both visual and
verbal. There seems to be nothing she cannot write or paint
about: adolescence, Canada, yearning, dawn - even cake, for
heaven's sake! - with a precision both surgical and poetic.
The joys of Swimming Studies are in being in the care of someone of
a prodigious and protean mind. My talent crush is official
and deep.”
—David Rakoff, author of Half Empty “I'm so happy this book
exists. Swimming Studies expresses what it's like to be
haunted by the person one used to be, and the search for how that
person exists in the present. Leanne Shapton writes with such
curiosity, ruefulness, intelligence, and grace. Here we see
how the discipline of being an athlete can condition one's way of
making art, and how the patience necessary to make art teaches
other types of patience. Like the patience required to be a
spouse and to love a person always. This book is a rare treat
for anyone who cares about any of these things.”—Sheila Heti,
author of How Should a Person Be? “A fusion of cool,
clear-eyed prose and watercolors, photographs and painted
portraits...[and] a curiously arresting study of the transition
from a world of rigor and routine to one of reflection and
recreation....The brilliance of Swimming Studies lies in its
delicate exploration of how the identities we’ve carved out for
ourselves in the present are both haunted and shaped by the people
we used to be.”—Time Out New York“[W]hat makes this book
astounding....[is] any dedicated swimmer knows exactly what Shapton
means; we sense and control our movements, from the tips of our
fingers to the flutter of our feet, breathing very specifically,
detecting any shifts in conditions, from the presence of other
swimmers to the tug of a current....Shapton pares down her
experiences as a swimmer and grafts the core lessons to other parts
of her life, allowing them to bloom in ways that have everything
and nothing to do with swimming.”—Buzz Poole, TheMillions.com“A
cool memoir about competitive swimming that might as well be called
The Unbearable Lightness of Being....Shapton, never self-pitying,
offers an original, mythical elixir of life in the
water.”—Newsweek“[A] thoughtful, exquisitely written
book...ostensibly about [Shapton’s] lifelong relationship to the
sport, complete with photos of her various bathing suits and
meditations on the difference between swimming (i.e., competitive
swimming) and bathing (i.e., swimming for fun)....She even includes
some haunting, cobalt blue illustrations of pools she frequents as
an adult, as well as a color guide to different swimming smells,
such as "coach: fresh laundry, Windbreaker nylon, Mennen Speed
Stick, Magic Marker, and bologna." These extra visual elements
dazzle, but the specifics of this world and her insightful take on
her own far-from-ordinary life are what makes any reader wonder if
Shapton's gold medal might have already been won—in
writing.”—Oprah.com, Book of the Week“Shapton draws on her
experience training for the Olympic trials in a refreshing and
thoughtful memoir about swimming as competition and way of life.
Her ode to the water is not only philosophical but incredibly
moving.”—Entertainment Weekly“The talented illustrator Leanne
Shapton, in her pointillistic and quietly profound new memoir,
Swimming Studies...writes as confidently as she draws, and
memorably conjures swimming’s intense, primordial and isolating
pleasures....Shapton’s prose frequently has the density of
poetry....[she] is so smart and so likable that you will pass her
book along to the swimmers in your life.”—Dwight Garner, The New
York Times“In this small, lovely book, [Shapton] combines words and
images in an exquisitely observed meditation on swimming and
memory....What’s thrilling about this book is its author’s careful
attention to detail and unlikely beauty. More impressionistic than
a traditional memoir, the book nonetheless sketches an arc that
brings the author back to competitive swimming, in masters races in
the United States.”—Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe“Painter and
illustrator Leanne Shapton relates with poignancy the details of a
competitive swimmer's life...beautifully written, beautifully
constructed, and thoughtful.”—Huffington Post“[Swimming Studies] is
brilliant, eccentric and moving—an immersion in a life....Shapton
has a novelist's instinct for the nostalgic charge of the
inconsequential....Her language is as crisp as the autumn day she
describes.”—Kate Kellaway, The Observer (UK)“Acknowledging the
ultimate incomprehensibility of athletic greatness, [Shapton]
nonetheless brings us closer to its essence....If those countless
practice laps and those not-quite-Olympian results were what it
took to produce Swimming Studies, it was worth it: Shapton has
bottled the elusive meaning of having tried and failed at a sport
better than any book I’ve read since Pat Jordan’s classic A False
Spring. Read Swimming Studies and enjoy the incomprehensible
greatness of the world’s best all the more.”—Ian McGillis, The
Montreal Gazette (Canada)“[Shapton’s] eye for detail [is] amazingly
shrewd...gaspingly beautiful in its insight, proving her project
actually has very little to do with swimming...Swimming Studies is
an intimate and beautiful meditation on human fallibility and the
embarrassing, often unstated anxiety of success.”—Stacey May
Fowles, The National Post (Canada)“In her illustrated memoir,
Shapton, a writer, artist, and former contender for the Canadian
Olympic team, grapples with the habits she learned as a teen-age
competitive swimmer....and her honed attention to detail gives the
reader the sensation of watching a meticulous mind watching itself,
down to the hundredth of a second.”—The New Yorker“It looks like
Shapton can succeed at whatever she puts her mind to; swimming is
where that started....As few people can, Shapton draws a connection
between making art and being an athlete, focusing on the unending
effort it takes to do well....She is, no doubt, a creative
powerhouse, one who puts words and pictures together with a quiet
force that comes only from solid, dedicated practice.”—Carolyn
Kellogg, Los Angeles Times“I was a competitive swimmer, and I have
never read anything that captured the sport so well. Shapton knows
just the details to include...Her sparse, satisfying prose is your
guide, and you’re glad to get to swim beside her.”—Carolyn Kormann,
TheNewYorker.com
“Through immaculate observation and evocative recollection, Leanne
Shapton’s autobiographical Swimming Studies achieves the seemingly
impossible. In a series of sharp snapshots of life as a competitive
swimmer and beyond, she has managed to find “the language of
belonging,” giving a voice to silent hours spent submerged in
water....beautifully written and gorgeous to look at,
too....Ultimately, Swimming Studies is about more than swimming.
It’s about how the discipline of competitive sport teaches routine,
perseverance and good habits. It’s about how the diligence of
athletic practice can translate into art, communication and even
love.”
—Nicola Joyce, The Washington Post
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