Brother to brother: The History of Swimming.Brother to brother The History of Swimming. * Kim Powers * Carroll and Graf* $24.95 Because it's a memoir by a writer for Good Morning America Good Morning America is a weekday morning news show that is broadcast on the ABC television network. The show was adapted from The Morning Exchange, a morning show created by and airing on the ABC affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio, and was launched nationally as (complete with a cover blurb blurb n. A brief publicity notice, as on a book jacket. [Coined by Gelett Burgess (1866-1951), American humorist.] blurb v. from Diane Sawyer  This article or section is written like an .Please help [ rewrite this article] from a neutral point of view. Mark blatant advertising for , using . ) you might assume that The History of Swimming is another of those trite "uplift" sagas so favored by TV. But Swimming is nothing like that. It's an exquisitely written examination of the limits of fraternal love--and of what it means to be a gay man who's a survivor in the age of AIDS. Kim Powers and his fraternal twin Noun 1. fraternal twin - either of two twins who developed from two separate fertilized eggs dizygotic twin twin - either of two offspring born at the same time from the same pregnancy brother, Tim, were close as children, somewhat estranged es·trange tr.v. es·tranged, es·trang·ing, es·trang·es 1. To make hostile, unsympathetic, or indifferent; alienate. 2. To remove from an accustomed place or set of associations. as adolescents, and after that pretty much at loggerheads log·ger·head n. 1. A loggerhead turtle. 2. An iron tool consisting of a long handle with a bulbous end, used when heated to melt tar or warm liquids. 3. . While Kim made a successful life for himself, Tim, who is also gay, drifted about, fell into alcoholism, suffered nervous breakdowns, and made attempts at suicide. The book captures all this through the device of a specific incident in which Kim finds himself searching for a suddenly vanished Tim, encountering lovers, friends, and strangers along the way. Kim fully expects to find his brother dead. It's a measure of their relationship that he not only expects this outcome but is at peace with it. The History of Swimming is a "work of mourning," conceived in advance of the deceased's actual death. Along its course Powers offers any number of insights both personal and cultural. He observes of the gay scene the brothers encountered in college--as with everything else, Kim came out before Tim-"I got angry that they were all doing each other, and I was the only stupid fag on campus who was bearing the cross of actually saying I did it." What he "says" in this memoir is about more than fraternal love in crisis. It's the bittersweet bittersweet, name for two unrelated plants, belonging to different families, both fall-fruiting woody vines sometimes cultivated for their decorative scarlet berries. song of love and loss an entire generation of gay men has sung--though rarely as sweetly as Powers does. The History of Swimming is gay literature on par with Denton Welch and James McCourt, with every so often a touch of the great Joe Brainard. In short, it's a supremely necessary read. |
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