'The Boys in the Boat' is narrative gold. Book Club check-in

This is KUOW's book club, and we just read through the first half of Daniel James Brown's "The Boys in the Boat" about the University of Washington crew team's quest for gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. I'm your club guide, Katie Campbell. Let's get into it.

The term "hipster" got, ironically, popular when I was a teenager. It basically referred to someone who had discovered something cool before anyone else did — or thought they did — and thus, felt they had more of a claim over it. It could also refer to someone who believed themselves to be just a little too hip for mainstream cultural phenomena. I didn't move to Seattle until 2021, but I'm willing to bet Seattle was home to an awful lot of hipsters in the early aughts.

I mention this because I admit I expected "The Boys in the Boat" to be good. Just good. A book that had mass appeal and a heroic story that made it popular because everyone loves an underdog. I can't justify why I felt this way except to say I think I fancied myself a bit of a hipster — too cool to be riveted by a book just because George Clooney adapted it for the big screen.

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Well, dear reader, I'm ready to eat a racing shell full of crow. "The Boys in the Boat" is nothing short of narrative gold. I honestly wrote in my notes, "I can barely stand to stop reading to take notes!" Forgive me in advance for a somewhat long analysis today.

Part of the success of this book is, no doubt, the story at its heart. Brown was working with a fantastic true story about young men who overcame the odds in so many ways to do something amazing during a difficult time for the country and the world. But Brown has taken a good story and, in rowing parlance, given it 10 big ones. Much of that is thanks to Brown's graceful writing style that flows easily from one thought to the next. There are plenty of digressions from the core story to explain things like the physics of rowing or the economic circumstances during the Great Depression, but they don't bog down the central narrative. Rather, they help Brown set the table for the next scene, so we, the readers, can be immersed in the action. The titular boys' work and success on the water is made the more powerful when we not only understand the physical strain but also their lives off the water. To put it simply, Brown doesn't merely tell us our main character, Joe Rantz, is in dire straits, he spit-shines the lens through which he shows us that's the case.

Consider this poignant statement as the UW boys prepare to face the East Coast schools in Poughkeepsie:

Couple Brown's writing style with the way he juxtaposes the preparations in the U.S. with those in Nazi Germany, and it's easy to see why this translated well to film. It reads like cinema, cutting away from a hard-fought win for Rantz and his fellow "frosh" against Cal to Berlin that same day as Joseph Goebbels welcomed a daughter into the world — one of six Goebbels children who would later be murdered by their parents upon Germany's defeat in World War II.

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Let's talk about defeat, in one of its many contexts in "The Boys in the Boat."

Chapter 10 ends as the UW rowing teams win the freshman and junior varsity races in Poughkeepsie, having just defeated some of the best teams in the country. Joe Rantz and our frosh boys, now sophomores, proved themselves in the JV boat. But alas, head coach Al Ulbrickson does not return to Seattle with a clean sweep of victories over the East Coast elites — oh, and Cal. The varsity squad he subbed in over Rantz's crew lost, and badly. I think we all know how this story ends — I won't spoil it for anyone, just in case — but it's interesting to look back on the process by which Ulbrickson picked his historic crew. To see the faults and do a little Monday-morning quarterbacking is stressful as a reader. That's in part because we know how hard Rantz has worked to get to this point, and how well he stacks up to wisdom like this about UW racing shell-builder George Pocock:

As I read that passage, my heart swelled with a sort of pride in these young men who lived long before I was born. It made me think of the comradery and sportsmanship and goodness we see at the Olympics, that we just saw throughout the Paris Olympics. And I think of the, frankly, odd ducks who might call themselves "alpha males" today and how they would never last in a racing shell with Ulbrickson's boys. They wouldn't have the heart for it.

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That's what Brown has given us: a story with heart. It's not just about the sport, the rowing, the brute strength of the boys but also about family, struggle, and their sensitivity as incredibly young men living hard lives while trying to accomplishment something great.

I could go on, but I won't — because there's more reading to be done.