On Water - Hardcover

"In On Water, Farber's language and meaning are so densely intertwined that he recreates the experience of being in the water. . . Only a graceful (fluid!) writer can pull this off-to write about whatever you want, to wander all over the map, to present information in no other perceptible way than how your own mind works, to pull readers through that labyrinth and keep their eyes on the horizon."                      
--Los Angeles Times

In this lyrical freewheeling work of creative nonfiction, Thomas Farber dives in and explores our greatest natural resource. Mixing literary and scientific references with personal stories of surfing and sailing in California, Hawai'i, and Fiji, On Water accommodates the voices of poets, scientists, novelists, and naturalists of every era, giving this book an unusually rich and varied texture. Farber weaves together thoughts from such diverse sources as Melville, Tom Robbins, Shakespeare, Calvino, and Dylan Thomas as he considers everything from water's therapeutic qualities to its mythical association to human sexuality, from surfing and dolphins to drowning and baptism. On Water is a delightful and alluring look at the fascinations and mysteries of the element that finds its way into nearly every aspect of our lives.

Thomas Farber is a recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment fellowships for his fiction. He has been Visiting Distinguished Writer at the University of Hawai'i, a Fulbright Scholar for Pacific Island Studies, and Visiting Fellow at the East-West Center. His books include Learning to Love It, Compared to What?, and Who Wrote the Book of Love?