A swimming-pool pilgrimage
On a road trip, paying homage to swimming spots, in late-summer California.
Hello!
This is Xander Beattie (aka Alex Matthews), author of The President, and you're reading this because you're subscribed to my newsletter, a swimming pool library. If it's not for you, here's where you can unsubscribe.
Quick housekeeping note: I decided to leave Substack (the platform this newsletter has been hosted on since 2019). From here on, editions are being sent using a service called Ghost (and past editions are now archived there too).
Thwarted!
After reading about (and seeing photos of) Sycamore Pool in a book, I decided I had to check out this enormous public swimming pool in person (and maybe include it as a location for my rather swimming-saturated novel-in-progress, Flailing).
The pool, which was created when a naturally-occurring river was given concrete sides, is in a huge municipal park in the centre of Chico, a university and farming town in California's hot and dusty Sacramento Valley.
We arrived in the early evening after a few hours of driving, the sun still high, and excited about diving into the water. Fate had other plans: City of Chico signs warned against swimming due to an E. coli outbreak. I almost got in anyway but decided it wasn't worth the risk. We ended up wallowing in the motel's plunge pool instead. I came back the next day, sat on a bench taking notes and photos, staring out at the limpid water rather wistfully. I was bummed about the not-swimming, but, still, the pilgrimage was worth it.
Onwards and upwards
Our aquatic fortunes soon changed, thankfully. Basing ourselves in the quaint former mining town of Nevada City for a couple nights, we went for dips at various spots in the South Yuba River. I also swam the Donner Lake Open Water Swim, a 2.7 mile (4.3km) race from one end of an alpine lake to another. A combination of the high altitude (almost 6,000 feet!) and dealing with the tail-end of a respiratory infection contributed to a rather disappointing performance (sometimes I forget how hyper-competitive I can be; should've remembered that a little more during my training period lol). Still, it was wonderful to be in the water, to be racing. The excitement in the pit of my stomach as the minutes ticked towards the start was the exact same feeling I had when I did open water races as a 12-year-old.
Highway 49 Crossing (left) and Hoyt's Crossing (right) on the South Yuba River.
ART VS. AUTOCRACY
I keep thinking about I'm Still Here, the Walter Salles movie about a family torn apart by military dictatorship, which so vividly conjures up a very specific milieu (1970s Brazil) and yet has profound and haunting resonances with the present moment, especially in the Middle East and United States.
A scene I keep returning to is where Eunice Paiva (played with captivating charisma and depth by Fernanda Torres) is swimming at the beach while her family plays on the sand. Rio is being its ridiculously beautiful self, and you can see Eunice relishing in being in the water, alone but near her loved ones, the liquid and landscape a balm. The camera shifts and then you see an army helicopter judder overhead, and the feeling (perhaps both for you as viewer and for her) is as if suddenly swimming into a patch as cold as ice.
I recently read my first Henry James novel, The Ambassadors. Initially I found his style infuriatingly convoluted and highfalutin, but that somehow became less irksome/more manageable (or maybe I just surrendered to not always knowing what he was driving at). As I progressed, I found the plot rather pacy, a sprinkling of comedy and wit, and the occasional striking phrase that seemed to make it all worthwhile. (For example, James describes one woman as "dressed in a splendor of crimson which affected Strether as a fall through a skylight". It must have been a rather dramatic outfit!)
My favourite novel of the year so far is Consider Yourself Kissed by the London-based Aussie Jessica Stanley (who has a terrific newsletter chock-full of intriguing recs; forever grateful to it/her for putting me onto the amazing author Helen Garner). It’s been ages since I enjoyed a novel this much, or devoured one so quickly, or felt this sad to reach the end. Utterly enchanted.
Speaking of enchanting, I immensely enjoyed the latest poetry collections by Kevin Bertolero (In Passing) and Richie Hoffmann (A Hundred Lovers) which both evoke the contours of place and passion with dexterity and shimmering precision.
Apparently August is Women in Translation Month? Which makes it a fitting time for me to be reading (and hugely enjoying) We All Loved Cowboys by the Brazilian novelist Carol Bensimon (her first published in English; the second comes out in March next year and I cannot wait). The superstar literary agent Danielle Bukowksi offers some WITM recs in her newsletter and rounds up those from a few others: Clara, Michael Patrick Brady, and this thread by Kolina Cicero. Danielle also notes that Open Letters Books (a nonprofit literary translation-focused press) is offering 40% off on its titles by women this month.
I've been listening to very few podcasts lately, but a couple of things I found worthwhile:
- Louis Theroux's interview with the comedian and actress Tracey Ullman
- The Belgrano Diary: fascinating tale of a personal journal which contradicted the official narrative of the Falklands War and led to a coverup, scandal and dogged pursuit (both of the truth, and of the incriminating diary and its author)
- Sergei & the Westminster Spy Ring (co-hosted by the indefatigable investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr) asks important and frightening questions about Russian interference in British politics. I found it riveting, too
PUBLISHING NOTES
The artist edition of The President is now sold out in the US. A couple dozen or so are still available in South Africa from our lovely printing and binding studio, PULP. So far, we've donated ZAR21,000 (~$1,200) to the project's beneficiary, the Pride Shelter.
After our worldwide launch of the new pocket hardback edition on 7 September in London, it'll be available from The Common Press in the UK. Copies will be wending their way stateside, with the hardback landing well in advance of Christmas (stocking fillers SORTED, friend!).
