The Cellar Door Book Society: It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Narrative Swing

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown.

Viking, 2013. 404 pages.

Non Fiction and Biographies

With hours-apart recommendations from two reliable reading sources, we launch into this hybrid sports-story-biography-narrative-history with great anticipation. Testing the waters, we understand that there will be no surprise denouement: the subtitle pretty much summarizes how it all plays out. In 1936, the University of Washington Men's eight-oar crew masters collegiate rowing and travels to Berlin, defeating elite rivals and Adolf Hitler’s German team in pursuit of Olympic gold. We know, then, the who, the what, the where, the when—it’s the why and the how that place this among the most rewarding non fiction we’ve read in a long while.

It's a great art... rowing. It's the finest art there is. It's a symphony of motion. And when you're rowing well, why it's nearing perfection. And when you're nearing perfection, you're touching the Divine....

Brown introduces each chapter with a quote from George Yeoman Pocock, English-born racing shell designer, mentor to the Husky crew, visionary philosopher of the sport. The epigraphs, along with contributions from periodicals, personal recollections, diaries, and photos, work in concert to reveal the poetry of the sport and the power of the story.

The Husky Men Varsity Eight, 1936.

The narrative's emotional center rests with one of the boys in the boat, Joe Rantz. Shouldering a legacy of abandonment and abject poverty, he rows not for esoteric glory but to repair a shattered youth, to build a brighter future and to find, perhaps, a place on some distant shore to call home. From Rantz’s storm-tossed biography, we ripple outward to his teammates, to Pocock, and to Al Ulbrickson, dubbed the Dour Dane by reporters confounded by the taciturn Washington coach. We move from the Husky Boathouse through Depression-era America and across the Atlantic to Hitler’s polished and propagandized Berlin.

Taking the Gold, 1936 Berlin Olympics.

These are men of extraordinary physical prowess, to be sure. Ultimately, though, it is each rower’s extraordinary character and unwavering trust in team that charts the course to Olympic gold. From Lake Washington, to the Oakland Estuary, to the Poughkeepsie regatta, to the Princeton trials, the boys in the boat remind the world—and world-weary 2013 readers—of what may be accomplished when everyone pulls together. As Nazi storm clouds gather on the horizon, the Husky crew’s commitment and guileless optimism lift the spirit and move the mind in potent, unexpectedly patriotic ways.

Before they take on the world, the Washington rowers confront adversaries from eastern colleges and universities: The western representatives... seemed to embody certain attributes that stood in sharp contrast to those of their eastern counterparts...self-made, rough hewn, wild, native, brawny, simple, and perhaps, in the eyes of some, a bit coarse... their eastern counterparts seemed, as a rule, well bred, sophisticated, moneyed, refined, and perhaps, in their own eyes at least, superior. Brown hearkens to another East-West rivalry of the era, this one equine in nature....

An oddly put together but spirited, rough-and-tumble racehorse named Seabiscuit... appear[ed] on the western horizon to challenge and defeat the racing establishment’s darling, the king of the eastern tracks, War Admiral.

Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand.

Ballantine Books, 2002. 399 pages.

Non Fiction and Biographies

Forget, for a moment, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Adolph Hitler, and Benito Mussolini: a crooked-legged racehorse with a forlorn tail is the biggest news maker in the world in 1938. This is a classic underdog story, perhaps an underequine story, and one with indisputable narrative swing: an owner, a trainer, and a blind-in-one-eye boxer-turned-jockey transform overanxious, apathetic also-ran Seabiscuit into one of the swiftest and niftiest horses in American racing history.

George Woolf on Seabiscuit.

We establish connections between human athletes, equine athletes, and extraordinary nutritional requirements: Without a budget for an expensive training table, every afternoon the Washington boys... [are] compelled to choke down first a glass of a chalky-tasting pink calcium solution, then a glass of Knox Sparkling Gelatin... After reading an article about (coach Al) Ulbrickson’s nutritional regimen... a horse trainer named Tom Smith would go in search of hay with a high calcium content for a racehorse named Seabiscuit.

And now, more caloric intake information, and a cameo appearance by a fellow Olympian: After parsimonious menu restrictions were lifted on the S.S. Manhattan, the United States’ Berlin-bound team boat, the University of Washington boys began more or less living in the tourist-class dining salon... They were the first of the athletes to sit down and the last to get up. And no one—with the possible exception of Louis Zamperini, the long-distance runner from Torrance, California—out-ate Joe Rantz. We recall our reading of:

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand.

Random House, 2010. 473 pages.

Non Fiction and Biographies

On a mid-afternoon in May 1943, a United States military bomber hurtles into the Pacific ocean, leaving only a splash of wreckage and a smudge of blood-tinged fuel on the water. All seems lost... until a young bombardier bobs to the surface, gasping for air, struggling to a life raft, hauling himself aboard. The downed airman’s name is Louis Zamperini: rambunctious child, rebellious adolescent, transformed first into a 1936 Olympic miler and then, with the coming of war, into a valiant-yet-doomed Air Force lieutenant.

Louis Zamperini.

In the aftermath of the crash, Zamperini survives wave after wave of ruthless ocean, circling sharks, a disintegrating raft, dehydration and starvation, enemy aircraft fire and, almost incomprehensibly, greater trials after he is rescued. My goodness. We incredulously re-read the subtitle, cheating and flipping ahead in the story to make sure that the resilient and redeemed Louis Zamperini does indeed survive.

Seeking further evidence of human resiliency and redemption—and thinking we’d like to read something more by Daniel James Brown—we turn to an often gruesome and always gripping narrative history of late nineteenth-century America:

Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894 by Daniel James Brown.

Harper Perennial, 2007 (2006). 256 pages.

History and Travel

On September 1, 1894, two forest fires—fueled by months-long drought and reckless lumbering practices— converge on the town of Hinckley, Minnesota, consigning scores of spontaneously besieged residents to death by firestorm. The fire creates its own macabre milieu: hurricane-force winds, airborne bubbles of glowing gas, towering flames that push temperatures to nearly 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. It annihilates buildings, melts metal, and fuses train wheels to the tracks.

Near Hinckley, Minnesota, September 1, 1894.

Some escape death by dropping into wells or plunging themselves into nearby ponds or rivers. Others crowd aboard two smoldering trains that manage to depart the flaming town. James Root, engineer on a southbound train from Duluth, saves hundreds of lives by reversing his train nearly five miles from the Hinckley depot, allowing passengers to blindly scramble across smoke-glutted terrain and to submerge themselves in the muddy waters of Skunk Lake. The four-hour inferno claims over four hundred lives and wreaks unimaginable havoc over three hundred square miles of east-central Minnesota landscape.

Back to the Boat. Frequently and eloquently, George Yeoman Pocock reflects upon the transformational power of rowing:

When you get the rhythm in an eight, it’s pure pleasure to be in it. It’s not hard work when the rhythm comes—that ‘swing’ as they call it. I’ve heard men shriek out with delight when that swing came in an eight; it’s a thing they’ll never forget as long as they live.

Speaking of swing, the Olympic-bound Washington Huskies cap a New York City night on the town with a visit to Loew's State Theatre to hear Duke Ellington and his band. Let's get that swing, circa 1943:

Stroke by stroke, page by page, The Boys in the Boat, Seabiscuit, Unbroken, and Under a Flaming Sky find narrative swing—resonant rhythms and summary messages more poignant and memorable than disparate parts and players. We are delighted, even honored, to be along for the ride.

Postscript: Narrative History We're Reading Now.

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan.
Simon & Schuster, 2013. 373 pages.
Non Fiction and Biographies
Drawing upon recollections and reminiscences of the women who lived it, this narrative history with swing (shifts) shares the compelling and overlooked story of thousands of civilians—many of them spunky young ladies from small southern towns— who converge on the covert city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, during World War II, patriotically contributing to the war effort even as they unwittingly develop materials for the Manhattan Project.