Mind Over Water: Lessons on Life from the Art of Rowing

by Craig Lambert

Overview

In this wise and thrilling book, Criag Lambert turns rowing--personal discipline, modern Olympic sport, grand collegiate tradition--into a metaphor for a vigorous and satisfying life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780618001842
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/07/1999
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	723,523
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Craig Lambert, a staff writer and editor at Harvard Magazine, has also written for Sports Illustrated and Town & Country. He trains and races in single sculls on the Charles River in Boston, and occasionally competes in major rowing events, such as the Head of the Charles Regatta.

Read an Excerpt

"Like Einstein, we wish to know God's thoughts. We shall attempt to pry them loose with an oar. The raw elements of the sport are our teachers: the wind and the water, the boat and its oars, our own bodies and minds."

Editorial Reviews

Lambert has finished the course well in Mind Over Water, which has the same attributes as the rowing he adores: precision, grace, and total immersion. Boston Globe

"A staff writer and editor for Harvard Magazine tells how sculling became a path to personal growth and how 'lessons learned afloat carry over onto dry land.' The result is a 'thoughtful, lovingly drawn meditation,' Caroline Knapp wrote here last year. 'The river becomes a character in its own right, something to dip into for a time, something transporting.'" The New York Times —

From the Publisher

. . .[A] thoughtful, lovingly drawn meditation on . . .[a] brand of transformation. . . .This is no simple ode to the beauty of river and shell; nor. ..is it a chronicle of the sport's physical rigors. Lambert covers both those bases. . . .But even the heaviest moments are offset by light . . .
—The New York Times Book Review

Caroline Knapp

Although fishing has had many advocates who see it as a metaphor for life, Lambert, a staff writer and editor at Harvard magazine, draws many comparisons between rowing and life. The first such deals with the importance of steering and finding one's way. The second, "Equinox," relates to balance, as both rowing and life are difficult, if not impossible, without it. The last section, "The Powerhouse Stretch," involves the endgame and giving your all, and "never taking no for an answer"--familiar tropes from any comparison of sport and life, sport and business, sport and love. This is not a "how to" manual, by any means, although there is quite a bit of description about the mechanics of rowing. Mostly, Lambert's aim is to mesh his philosophy on life and rowing, and, on occasion, on other pursuits, such as electronic engineering and gardening: "To gain greater effect as athletes, we do not necessarily have to do more. The secret may be to do less, to suppress noise.... The skilled athlete eliminates motions that do not serve the desired result. Our tomato plants thrive when we weed the garden." As in this example, much of the writing is exceedingly earnest and many of the metaphors exceedingly forced. Although rowers will no doubt be hooked, others will likely head back to their Izaak Walton. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Fragments of good rowing material peek through this otherwise bloated fusion of pop philosophy and inspirational drivel from Lambert (an editor at Harvard magazine). In this memoir, Lambert recounts that he was branded a "brain" in his youth, thus effectively eliminated from the sporting life. Then, at Harvard, he briefly dabbled in rowing before giving it up: too many winter hours in the dark tank room convinced him to stick to academics. Then later, after graduation and various locational and vocational moves, he returned to Boston and to the sport. He continues to row, though he is better known for his writings on the sport, which have a nice rhythm of their own and a wicked way with describing the torturous pain involved. This book shows patches of that flair, but they are tethered to a profusion of banalities that are meant to inspire and instruct. Life as a battle against headwinds is typical of his painful analogies. Other groaners include: "mistakes are not failures; they are results that diverge from our expectations"; "a steersman takes charge of life's course"; and "lessons learned afloat carry over onto dry land, where we also want maximal forward motion in our lives." (Is that the Harvard "we"?) And there are obvious stabs at mimicking fellow Bostonian Alan Lightman, the quirky descriptions of place and light, wildly original comparisons, revealing etymological dissections, that never touch his level of inspiration. Rowing is an obscure, elite sport that could use some exposure for its practitioners. Lambert might have offered that chance, but inexplicably, he fails to ply his obvious talent.

Kirkus Reviews