Hodding's Life Aquatic

Finn, Hodding's sister, writes that Hodding Carter (IV), that's Finn's brother, will be interviewed on NPR this morning and it will air at 6:51 and again at 8:51 and, if we're lucky, again at 10:51 US EST (Eastern Standard Time).

Tune in to your local NPR station. Or listen on the Web (click the "Listen Now" link and hear Hodding chatting with NPR's Steve Inskeep for Morning Edition -- 6'47" ).

His new book, Off the Deep End, is about this 45-year old, ex-collegiate swimmer's bid to qualify for the 2008 Olympics. 

Without having read it, I can say it sounds even more Plimpton-esque than his previous books: one about building a Viking knorr, assembling a crew of characters and retracing Leif Eriksson's sea-path from Greenland to the fabled "Vinland" (somewhere in Nova Scotia, I personally believe Vinland was actually Brooklyn -- there is simply no alternative explanation for Flatbush Avenue, Coney Island and Junior's Cheesecake); the other about retracing Lewis & Clark's river-path to the Northwest Passage (this has quite hilarious segments depicting Hodding, himself, and his side-kick, Preston, discovering mosquitoes and garbage on the Missouri River; Lewis & Clark will have had the one but not the other -- apart from deer poop).

There are a few others in the H Carter IV catalogue, one about the history of plumbing (a scatological indulgence) and another about the blight of the Florida Everglades (too far gone). While they too are about water or, specifically, about Hodding in water they are comparative placeholders in the auto-documentation of Hodding's life aquatic.

I anticipate this one about swimming is closer to the bone, even if the author is today still in Maine and not in Beijing with the rest of the U.S.A. Swim Team; perhaps because so.

Tune in today or later run the audio. Hodding is a funny, self-effacing very good read. Despite appearance, his scope of subjects is wider than himself and water, though he might not admit it.