Skinny Dipping: And Other Immersions in Water, Myth, and Being Human (The Virginia Bookshelf Series) - Softcover

Lembke, Janet

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813922852 ISBN 13: 9780813922850

Publisher: University of Virginia Press, 2004

Synopsis

The author of the acclaimed Dangerous Birds followed that success with a new collection of essays on the natural world, these connected by the theme of water: exploring issues as varied as the joy that water brings, the wistful rememberings it engenders, and its sacredness. As with all of Lembke’s essays, the world of classical myth and its characters meld with her native haunts and their people, lending resonance to the seemingly simplest things: a beetle in the garden, a tangle of forgotten roses, an afternoon rainstorm.

Now available in paperback for the first time, Skinny Dipping brings us waters as diverse as the mythical River Styx and the Bullpasture, a stream near Lembke’s Virginia home. In the title essay she looks down a long corridor of time to visit Pliny, the natural historian, for a "skinny dip" in A.D. 79; "Up the Creek" examines a lazy day’s canoe trip with a frightened young friend about to leave home; "And This Way the Water Comes Down at the Gorge" is a tale of a burial―with a fine supporting cast of Faulkneresque characters. Skinny Dipping will delight all lovers of Janet Lembke’s other books, and anyone who appreciates the art of the personal essay.

About this title

About the Author

Janet Lembke is the author of Dangerous Birds, River Time, and Looking for Eagles, and is a translator of Greek and Latin classics. She divides her time between homes in Virginia and North Carolina, never too far from a good swimming hole.

From Publishers Weekly

Her theme is water, and Lembke ( Dangerous Birds ) takes us from the River Styx to the subantarctic island clusters of New Zealand, from an 18th-century survey to find the source of the Rappahannock River to the Luray Caverns of Virginia. With a friend she paddles up a narrow creek on a torrid afternoon; she plays host to a group of sailing campers marooned by wind. One essay remembers a favorite uncle and his love of the Bullpasture River in western Virginia; another describes a walk with Sally Doberman, the family dog. Lembke blends classical allusions with acute observations of people and places; her graceful essays, most of which are published here for the first time, are sheer pleasure to read. This may be her best collection to date.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0813922852
• ISBN 13: 9780813922850
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192