BOB ARNOLD'S "SWWIMMER" ~

"Artists feed each other: John Cheever fed one of the best. Bob Arnold was inspired by the John Cheever’s short story.“The Swimmer” to write a fact based novel SWWIMMER (the double “W” is intentional) that honored Cheever’s achievement. In doing so, Arnold created a rare work of art: a stunning trade book that is also an artist-book, an example of masterful writing, exquisite design, and a story that takes the particulars of personal family relationships and makes them universal as they develop the themes of love, loss, abandonment, the striving to return to inner peace by finding a way outward, “swimming” into the world’s confusions and mysteries." — JOE NAPORA

"The list of can’t do’s for a non-swimmer living by a river, is staggering. We decided we would never give up. And at the age of eight, one June day near his birthday, after we took a trail down to the river through the woods and kicked our sneakers off on the rock ledge and figured this 500th swim would be up for a fight, we heard a splash. Our dog Bo was still beside us." [pp 8-9]

There are so many fine aspects of this writing: the  long “trailing” description of the walk to the river, the detail of kicking the shoes on the rock, but what is most important to notice is what is missing, a narrative voice that tells of the boy jumping into the water. Arnold accomplishes this by staying with the present, acknowledging the privacy of the spot, none other than the boy could make the splash since “Our dog Bo was still beside us”. 

This absence involves the reader. The writer is not presenting a scene, he offers one to our imagination, taking us to the scene that he too can only imagine as he can only hear the sound the boy makes as he jumps into the river.

I am reminded of a similar scene from a very dissimilar scene in the movie Lawrence of Arabia. Not a river but a desert. Not a boy making a splash in the water. A man shooting a companion, a friend. We never see the man being killed. We see the effect on Lawrence as he pulls the trigger of the gun. We see his arm move as he pulls the trigger again. The sound of the gun takes us there. Sound connects. That is masterful directing by David Lean. It involves us.  That is masterful writing by Bob Arnold.            — JOE NAPORA

 Bob Arnold

SWWIMMER

Longhouse

2026

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New, perfect bound, 170 pages

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