The Swimming Pool Library
Encyclopedia
The Swimming-Pool Library is a 1988
novel by Alan Hollinghurst
.
, the privileged, gay, and apparently sexually irresistible 25 year old protagonist Will saves the life of an elderly aristocrat having a heart-attack in a public lavatory. This chance meeting sets in process a chain of events that will ultimately require the highly intelligent but essentially carefree Will to substantially re-evaluate his sense of the past and of his family's history.
As recounted at the beginning of chapter 7, at William's unspecified prep school
, prefects were known as 'librarians', the designation often taking a prefix to indicate the particular prefect's area of responsibility. Will, a keen swimmer at school as afterwards, became the 'Swimming-Pool Librarian'. His father, writing to offer congratulation, amusedly comments, 'you must tell me what kind of books they have in the Swimming-Pool Library.' For Will, the Swimming-Pool Library is slang for the changing-room to which he and his friends would slip in the middle of the night for illicit sexual activities.
Also, at Charles Nantwich's home there is a room that has served as a library and was once a Roman bath.
And, Will borrows trashy homoerotic novels from one of the lifeguards at the Corinthian club. This as well, then, is a swimming pool library.
As the novel opens, we learn that Will is currently seeing a young, working-class, black man named Arthur. Will is deeply sexual and physically very attractive. His preoccupation with Arthur is almost entirely physical.
Will is a member of the Corinthian Club (‘the Corry’) at which he swims, exercises and cruises men. The Corry is in no formal sense a gay club, indeed it is made clear that there are non-gay members, but there is a pervasive homoerotic atmosphere.
Whilst cruising a young man in a London park, Will enters a public toilet to find a group of older men cottaging
. One of them suddenly suffers what is perhaps a minor heart attack and collapses. Will applies artificial respiration and saves the man’s life. He returns home to find Arthur bleeding and terrified. Arthur has accidentally killed a friend of his brother Harold's, after an argument about drugs. Will agrees to shelter Arthur.
At the Corry, Will meets the old man again and learns that he is Lord Charles Nantwich. Charles invites Will to lunch at Wicks': his club. Wicks' is filled with men “of fantastic seniority”. We learn here that Will studied History at Oxford, getting a 2.1 rather than the first that he says had been expected of him. That he has studied history will in the course of the novel be revealed as an irony.
Trapped in close confinement with Arthur, Will begins to resent him. Their boredom and tension occasionally erupts in bouts of vaguely abusive sex. Will goes to a cinema that shows gay pornography
and has anonymous sex. On the train home, Will reads Valmouth
, a novel by Ronald Firbank
, given to him by his best friend, James. James is a hard-working doctor who is insecure and sexually frustrated as a gay man. The novel by Firbank echoes themes central to The Swimming Pool Library; secrets and discretion; extreme old age, colonialism
, race and camp
; the sense of deeper truths residing behind a thin façade of artifice.
Back at the flat, William finds his small nephew Rupert, an enchantingly self-possessed boy of six, who has run away from home. Rupert loves Will and is interested in homosexuality. Despite his youth, Rupert exhibits a strong gay
sensibility. Together they look at Will’s photo album. Will then calls his sister Philippa and her husband Gavin comes to collect Rupert. Will goes to the Corry with James; on their return, Arthur has vanished.
Will visits Charles at his home, where he lives with his servant Lewis. Lewis is curt, even slightly aggressive and seems jealously protective of Nantwich. Charles’s house is filled with memorabilia and books; there are homoerotic paintings as well as a portrait of a beautiful African boy. In the cellar, they look at some Roman mosaics and Charles asks Will to write his biography for him.
At the Corry, Will is attracted to Phil, a young bodybuilder. Despite his physique, Phil is shy and a sexual novice. Will suspects that Phil is the man with whom he had sex in the cinema.
James believes that Will is wasting his intelligence and his literary skill and urges him to write Charles’s biography. Will returns to Charles’s house to find him locked in his bedroom by Lewis. Their master/servant relationship is complex and fraught. Will takes Charles’ diaries and notes home.
On the train, Will cruises a young man whom he takes home; they engage in sexual intercourse. He begins to read Charles’s papers.
Charles’s early life vividly illustrates themes central to the experience of being homosexual, privileged and British
. Will reads of his boyhood at public school, where he experienced sexuality by turns brutal and tender. He is cruelly raped by one boy but later taken under the protection of an older boy, Strong, who treats him gently. We learn that Strong became a soldier in the Great War, was badly injured and died insane. Charles becomes aware that he is strongly attracted to black men when he is openly propositioned by an American soldier. He experiences feelings of desperate arousal, fear and revulsion and flees.
As a student, Charles goes on a spree with some friends in the country. They go to an abandoned hunting lodge and drink champagne. Charles has sex with one of them; a young man who feels insecure about his (comparatively) modest background and sexual inexperience.
As a young man, Charles enters the Foreign Service
and travels to Sudan
to act as a regional administrator. He is enchanted by the land and powerfully drawn to African men but finds himself cut off by his race, his rank and his position as a colonial
. Charles ruminates on the sense of devotion that homosexuality can foster between men and how that devotion aids duty and right action.
Phil invites Will back to his lodgings in the Hotel where Phil works as a waiter. Phil wants sex but is too shy so Will seduces him.
Will goes to the opera
with James and his grandfather. The opera is Billy Budd
. Will is struck almost to tears by the homoerotic and emotional power of the work. During the conversation afterwards, the subject of Benjamin Britten
’s own homosexuality arises and they talk about his relationship with E. M. Forster
, who co-wrote the libretto. The relationship between gay sexual expression and art
is gently explored.
Will continues reading Charles’s diaries. On the way to a boxing club patronized by Nantwich, Will has an unpleasant encounter with a working class boy, who offers him sex for money. Will refuses; there are undertones of fear and violence.
At the match, Will meets Bill: a man he knows from the Corry. Bill is a weightlifter; a large muscular man who coaches teenage boxers. Trapped inside his body, Bill seems a fearful man. He is devoted to Nantwich, his patron, and to the boys he coaches. He is also carrying a torch for Phil.
From the diaries, Will learns that Nantwich has been to Egypt and then returned to London, where he met with Ronald Firbank
; an extraordinary portrait of effete decrepitude; camp and alcoholic.
Will takes Phil to visit Staines, a successful studio photographer who echoes Cecil Beaton
. Staines is a gossipy queen and socialite. His lover is a “school tart” grown old; a kept man drinking too much. Staines poses Phil bare-chested and oiled; as pornography. This episode overtly deals with gay artifice, staging and the image. Phil is idealized and objectified. Staines reveals that Charles’s brother was homosexually insatiable, exploited his servants and was subsequently beaten to death and that Charles’s uncle was likewise into rough trade
.
At Nantwich’s house, Will and Charles talk about Ronald Firbank. Charles gives Will a beautiful edition of one of Firbank’s novels as a gift. Afterwards, Will goes to Arthur’s address in a working class area of London and calls but there is no answer. Returning, he encounters a group of skinheads who demand his watch, attack and queer-bash him, destroying the Firbank novel in the process. Will goes home, where James patches him up but beauty is temporarily ruined. He reads Charles’s diary aloud to Phil: Charles describes a North African trying to covertly sell him gay pornography and is disturbed at being ‘outed’ in a foreign culture.
Will returns to Staines's home with Nantwich. There are several other men there, including two youths and a black chef, Abdul, who works at Charles’s club. Will is powerfully attracted to Abdul. It transpires that Staines and Nantwich are collaborating on the production of a pornographic film in which Abdul and the two youths are performing. The theme of voyeurism alienates Will, who finds it embarrassing and quietly leaves.
Will takes Phil out clubbing at The Shaft. He has not been there for many months and there are vivid descriptions of a night on the gay ‘scene’. Will and Phil drink, dance and meet several gay ‘types’, including a Brazilian bodybuilder. He discovers Arthur, who has been working for his brother Harold, in the bathroom and attempts to have sex with him. Arthur is obviously quite upset, and they part ways.
Will gets a telephone call from James; he has been arrested whilst seeking sex. This is ironic since James’s sex-life is non-eventful compared to Will’s. It appears to be a case of police-entrapment, with an undercover officer soliciting sex from homosexual men.
Charles’s diaries have entered the Second World War; he is entering middle-age and the tone is melancholy. He is passionately devoted to an African man; the beautiful boy whose portrait hangs in Charles’s house. The boy is now grown up and about to get married to a woman.
Will goes to an exhibition of photographs by Staines. The theme is soft-core homo-erotica. He is surprised to find Gavin there. Talking with Staines, he discovers that he and Charles have produced three pornographic films of the type that play in the cinema where Will first had sex with Phil.
From the diaries, Will learns how Charles’s life was ruined. The African man whom he loved was beaten to death. Heartbroken and unable to share his grief, Charles wanders the streets of London and desolately solicits a man for sex. The man is a policeman, who arrests Charles for public indecency
. Despite his rank, Charles is ruthlessly prosecuted by a conservative politician of the time, who wants to make an example of him. The politician is William’s grandfather; now the Viscount
Beckwith. Will’s wealth, his rank and his leisured gay existence are all built on a foundation of homosexual persecution. He also learns that Charles and Bill met in prison, where Bill, then a young man, had been thrown for having a love-affair with a boy three years younger than himself. The theme of natural love and sexuality destroyed by elite oppression is very powerful. Will decides that he cannot now write Charles’s biography, nor was he intended to do so. Charles has been educating him on his own past.
Will talks on the phone with Gavin, his brother in law. Gavin tells Will that he knew it was Will’s grandfather who imprisoned Charles. A past perhaps so distant that the archaeologist knows it where the historian does not.
Rupert has been told to watch out for Arthur; he reports that he has seen him with his brother Harold.
Will goes to Phil’s hotel. He encounters a rich Argentine
who propositions him. Will accepts until he finds that the man is obsessed with gay pornographic conventions, costumes and sex toys. Will finds this all slightly ridiculous and is not aroused. He refuses to consent to sex and leaves.
Upstairs, he discovers Phil having sex with Bill. Disoriented, he leaves and wanders to James’s and then the Corry, where Charles Nantwich reveals his designs in giving Will the diaries. Will and James go to Staines’s to see a film, not a piece of pornography but an archive recording of Ronald Firbank
in old age. The novel closes.
in 1988, and the E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1989.
In 1988, Edmund White
called it, 'surely the best book about gay life yet written by an English author.'
1988 in literature
The year 1988 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Margaret Atwood - Cat's Eye*J.G. Ballard - Memories of the Space Age*Iain M...
novel by Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst is a British novelist, and winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty.-Biography:Hollinghurst was born on 26 May 1954 in Stroud, Gloucestershire, the only child of James Hollinghurst, a bank manager, and his wife, Elizabeth...
.
Plot introduction
In 1983 LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, the privileged, gay, and apparently sexually irresistible 25 year old protagonist Will saves the life of an elderly aristocrat having a heart-attack in a public lavatory. This chance meeting sets in process a chain of events that will ultimately require the highly intelligent but essentially carefree Will to substantially re-evaluate his sense of the past and of his family's history.
Explanation of the novel's title
The title has at least three meanings.As recounted at the beginning of chapter 7, at William's unspecified prep school
Preparatory school (UK)
In English language usage in the former British Empire, the present-day Commonwealth, a preparatory school is an independent school preparing children up to the age of eleven or thirteen for entry into fee-paying, secondary independent schools, some of which are known as public schools...
, prefects were known as 'librarians', the designation often taking a prefix to indicate the particular prefect's area of responsibility. Will, a keen swimmer at school as afterwards, became the 'Swimming-Pool Librarian'. His father, writing to offer congratulation, amusedly comments, 'you must tell me what kind of books they have in the Swimming-Pool Library.' For Will, the Swimming-Pool Library is slang for the changing-room to which he and his friends would slip in the middle of the night for illicit sexual activities.
Also, at Charles Nantwich's home there is a room that has served as a library and was once a Roman bath.
And, Will borrows trashy homoerotic novels from one of the lifeguards at the Corinthian club. This as well, then, is a swimming pool library.
Plot summary
William Beckwith is a highly privileged, cultivated and promiscuous young gay man. He is the grandson and heir of Viscount Beckwith, an elder statesman and a recent peer. In order to avoid death duties, that grandfather has already settled most of his estate on Will, who therefore has substantial private means and no need of work.As the novel opens, we learn that Will is currently seeing a young, working-class, black man named Arthur. Will is deeply sexual and physically very attractive. His preoccupation with Arthur is almost entirely physical.
Will is a member of the Corinthian Club (‘the Corry’) at which he swims, exercises and cruises men. The Corry is in no formal sense a gay club, indeed it is made clear that there are non-gay members, but there is a pervasive homoerotic atmosphere.
Whilst cruising a young man in a London park, Will enters a public toilet to find a group of older men cottaging
Cottaging
Cottaging is a British gay slang term referring to anonymous sex between men in a public lavatory , or cruising for sexual partners with the intention of having sex elsewhere...
. One of them suddenly suffers what is perhaps a minor heart attack and collapses. Will applies artificial respiration and saves the man’s life. He returns home to find Arthur bleeding and terrified. Arthur has accidentally killed a friend of his brother Harold's, after an argument about drugs. Will agrees to shelter Arthur.
At the Corry, Will meets the old man again and learns that he is Lord Charles Nantwich. Charles invites Will to lunch at Wicks': his club. Wicks' is filled with men “of fantastic seniority”. We learn here that Will studied History at Oxford, getting a 2.1 rather than the first that he says had been expected of him. That he has studied history will in the course of the novel be revealed as an irony.
Trapped in close confinement with Arthur, Will begins to resent him. Their boredom and tension occasionally erupts in bouts of vaguely abusive sex. Will goes to a cinema that shows gay pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
and has anonymous sex. On the train home, Will reads Valmouth
Valmouth
thumb|1st edition Cover by [[Augustus John]] Valmouth is a 1919 novel by British author Ronald Firbank. Valmouth is an imaginary English spa resort that attracts centenarians owing to its famed pure air...
, a novel by Ronald Firbank
Ronald Firbank
Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank was a British novelist.-Biography:Ronald Firbank was born in London, the son of society lady Harriet Jane Garrett and MP Sir Thomas Firbank. He went to Uppingham School, and then on to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He converted to Catholicism in 1907...
, given to him by his best friend, James. James is a hard-working doctor who is insecure and sexually frustrated as a gay man. The novel by Firbank echoes themes central to The Swimming Pool Library; secrets and discretion; extreme old age, colonialism
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
, race and camp
Camp (style)
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...
; the sense of deeper truths residing behind a thin façade of artifice.
Back at the flat, William finds his small nephew Rupert, an enchantingly self-possessed boy of six, who has run away from home. Rupert loves Will and is interested in homosexuality. Despite his youth, Rupert exhibits a strong gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
sensibility. Together they look at Will’s photo album. Will then calls his sister Philippa and her husband Gavin comes to collect Rupert. Will goes to the Corry with James; on their return, Arthur has vanished.
Will visits Charles at his home, where he lives with his servant Lewis. Lewis is curt, even slightly aggressive and seems jealously protective of Nantwich. Charles’s house is filled with memorabilia and books; there are homoerotic paintings as well as a portrait of a beautiful African boy. In the cellar, they look at some Roman mosaics and Charles asks Will to write his biography for him.
At the Corry, Will is attracted to Phil, a young bodybuilder. Despite his physique, Phil is shy and a sexual novice. Will suspects that Phil is the man with whom he had sex in the cinema.
James believes that Will is wasting his intelligence and his literary skill and urges him to write Charles’s biography. Will returns to Charles’s house to find him locked in his bedroom by Lewis. Their master/servant relationship is complex and fraught. Will takes Charles’ diaries and notes home.
On the train, Will cruises a young man whom he takes home; they engage in sexual intercourse. He begins to read Charles’s papers.
Charles’s early life vividly illustrates themes central to the experience of being homosexual, privileged and British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. Will reads of his boyhood at public school, where he experienced sexuality by turns brutal and tender. He is cruelly raped by one boy but later taken under the protection of an older boy, Strong, who treats him gently. We learn that Strong became a soldier in the Great War, was badly injured and died insane. Charles becomes aware that he is strongly attracted to black men when he is openly propositioned by an American soldier. He experiences feelings of desperate arousal, fear and revulsion and flees.
As a student, Charles goes on a spree with some friends in the country. They go to an abandoned hunting lodge and drink champagne. Charles has sex with one of them; a young man who feels insecure about his (comparatively) modest background and sexual inexperience.
As a young man, Charles enters the Foreign Service
Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service
Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service is the diplomatic service of the United Kingdom, dealing with foreign affairs, as opposed to the Home Civil Service, which deals with domestic affairs...
and travels to Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
to act as a regional administrator. He is enchanted by the land and powerfully drawn to African men but finds himself cut off by his race, his rank and his position as a colonial
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
. Charles ruminates on the sense of devotion that homosexuality can foster between men and how that devotion aids duty and right action.
Phil invites Will back to his lodgings in the Hotel where Phil works as a waiter. Phil wants sex but is too shy so Will seduces him.
Will goes to the opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
with James and his grandfather. The opera is Billy Budd
Billy Budd (opera)
Billy Budd is an opera by Benjamin Britten, from a libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, was first performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London on 1 December 1951. It is based on the short novel Billy Budd by Herman Melville....
. Will is struck almost to tears by the homoerotic and emotional power of the work. During the conversation afterwards, the subject of Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
’s own homosexuality arises and they talk about his relationship with E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
, who co-wrote the libretto. The relationship between gay sexual expression and art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
is gently explored.
Will continues reading Charles’s diaries. On the way to a boxing club patronized by Nantwich, Will has an unpleasant encounter with a working class boy, who offers him sex for money. Will refuses; there are undertones of fear and violence.
At the match, Will meets Bill: a man he knows from the Corry. Bill is a weightlifter; a large muscular man who coaches teenage boxers. Trapped inside his body, Bill seems a fearful man. He is devoted to Nantwich, his patron, and to the boys he coaches. He is also carrying a torch for Phil.
From the diaries, Will learns that Nantwich has been to Egypt and then returned to London, where he met with Ronald Firbank
Ronald Firbank
Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank was a British novelist.-Biography:Ronald Firbank was born in London, the son of society lady Harriet Jane Garrett and MP Sir Thomas Firbank. He went to Uppingham School, and then on to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He converted to Catholicism in 1907...
; an extraordinary portrait of effete decrepitude; camp and alcoholic.
Will takes Phil to visit Staines, a successful studio photographer who echoes Cecil Beaton
Cecil Beaton
Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, CBE was an English fashion and portrait photographer, diarist, painter, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre...
. Staines is a gossipy queen and socialite. His lover is a “school tart” grown old; a kept man drinking too much. Staines poses Phil bare-chested and oiled; as pornography. This episode overtly deals with gay artifice, staging and the image. Phil is idealized and objectified. Staines reveals that Charles’s brother was homosexually insatiable, exploited his servants and was subsequently beaten to death and that Charles’s uncle was likewise into rough trade
Trade (Homosexual)
Trade is a gay slang term originating from Polari and refers to the casual partner of a gay man or to the genre of such partners...
.
At Nantwich’s house, Will and Charles talk about Ronald Firbank. Charles gives Will a beautiful edition of one of Firbank’s novels as a gift. Afterwards, Will goes to Arthur’s address in a working class area of London and calls but there is no answer. Returning, he encounters a group of skinheads who demand his watch, attack and queer-bash him, destroying the Firbank novel in the process. Will goes home, where James patches him up but beauty is temporarily ruined. He reads Charles’s diary aloud to Phil: Charles describes a North African trying to covertly sell him gay pornography and is disturbed at being ‘outed’ in a foreign culture.
Will returns to Staines's home with Nantwich. There are several other men there, including two youths and a black chef, Abdul, who works at Charles’s club. Will is powerfully attracted to Abdul. It transpires that Staines and Nantwich are collaborating on the production of a pornographic film in which Abdul and the two youths are performing. The theme of voyeurism alienates Will, who finds it embarrassing and quietly leaves.
Will takes Phil out clubbing at The Shaft. He has not been there for many months and there are vivid descriptions of a night on the gay ‘scene’. Will and Phil drink, dance and meet several gay ‘types’, including a Brazilian bodybuilder. He discovers Arthur, who has been working for his brother Harold, in the bathroom and attempts to have sex with him. Arthur is obviously quite upset, and they part ways.
Will gets a telephone call from James; he has been arrested whilst seeking sex. This is ironic since James’s sex-life is non-eventful compared to Will’s. It appears to be a case of police-entrapment, with an undercover officer soliciting sex from homosexual men.
Charles’s diaries have entered the Second World War; he is entering middle-age and the tone is melancholy. He is passionately devoted to an African man; the beautiful boy whose portrait hangs in Charles’s house. The boy is now grown up and about to get married to a woman.
Will goes to an exhibition of photographs by Staines. The theme is soft-core homo-erotica. He is surprised to find Gavin there. Talking with Staines, he discovers that he and Charles have produced three pornographic films of the type that play in the cinema where Will first had sex with Phil.
From the diaries, Will learns how Charles’s life was ruined. The African man whom he loved was beaten to death. Heartbroken and unable to share his grief, Charles wanders the streets of London and desolately solicits a man for sex. The man is a policeman, who arrests Charles for public indecency
Public indecency
Public indecency refers to conduct undertaken in a non-private or publicly-viewable location, which are deemed indecent in nature, such as indecent exposure and sexual intercourse or masturbation in public view. Such activity is often illegal...
. Despite his rank, Charles is ruthlessly prosecuted by a conservative politician of the time, who wants to make an example of him. The politician is William’s grandfather; now the Viscount
Viscount
A viscount or viscountess is a member of the European nobility whose comital title ranks usually, as in the British peerage, above a baron, below an earl or a count .-Etymology:...
Beckwith. Will’s wealth, his rank and his leisured gay existence are all built on a foundation of homosexual persecution. He also learns that Charles and Bill met in prison, where Bill, then a young man, had been thrown for having a love-affair with a boy three years younger than himself. The theme of natural love and sexuality destroyed by elite oppression is very powerful. Will decides that he cannot now write Charles’s biography, nor was he intended to do so. Charles has been educating him on his own past.
Will talks on the phone with Gavin, his brother in law. Gavin tells Will that he knew it was Will’s grandfather who imprisoned Charles. A past perhaps so distant that the archaeologist knows it where the historian does not.
Rupert has been told to watch out for Arthur; he reports that he has seen him with his brother Harold.
Will goes to Phil’s hotel. He encounters a rich Argentine
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
who propositions him. Will accepts until he finds that the man is obsessed with gay pornographic conventions, costumes and sex toys. Will finds this all slightly ridiculous and is not aroused. He refuses to consent to sex and leaves.
Upstairs, he discovers Phil having sex with Bill. Disoriented, he leaves and wanders to James’s and then the Corry, where Charles Nantwich reveals his designs in giving Will the diaries. Will and James go to Staines’s to see a film, not a piece of pornography but an archive recording of Ronald Firbank
Ronald Firbank
Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank was a British novelist.-Biography:Ronald Firbank was born in London, the son of society lady Harriet Jane Garrett and MP Sir Thomas Firbank. He went to Uppingham School, and then on to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He converted to Catholicism in 1907...
in old age. The novel closes.
Characters in "The Swimming Pool Library"
- William Beckwith, 25 years old, an idle young aristocrat; sometimes also called Will.
- Lord Charles Nantwich, 83 years old, an old aristocrat; he was jailed for being a homosexual.
- Lewis, Lord Nantwich's butler before he gets fired.
- Arthur Edison Hope, William Beckwith's black boyfriend at the outset; eastender.
- Harold Edison Hope, Arthur's brother, a drug dealer.
- Tony, a friend of Harold's whom Arthur killed in a scuffle.
- James Brook, a friend of William's; a doctor in General Practice.
- Bill, a man at the Corry, in muscular middle age, he knows Nantwich from jail.
- Robert Staines, a photographer.
- Phil, the second of William's boyfriend's in the book, met at the Corry. He lives in the dingy staff quarters of a famous hotel and likes to read.
- Rupert Croft-Parker, a.k.a. Roops, William's young nephew, 6 years old.
- Philippa Croft-Parker, William's sister; a stay-at-home mum.
- Gavin Croft-Parker, Philippa's husband; an archaeologist.
- Colin, a gay policeman who arrests James; William has had sex with him before.
- Gabriel, a gay Argentine who is obsessed with porn.
Major themes
- The novel is pervaded with references to Ronald FirbankRonald FirbankArthur Annesley Ronald Firbank was a British novelist.-Biography:Ronald Firbank was born in London, the son of society lady Harriet Jane Garrett and MP Sir Thomas Firbank. He went to Uppingham School, and then on to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He converted to Catholicism in 1907...
, up until the very last page. - Homophobia is addressed in many forms, namely through getting arrested by the police (Nantwich; Bill; James) and gay-bashing (William and the skinheads).
- Through Nantwich's diary, the novel is also concerned with the lives of gay men before the gay liberation movement, both in LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and in the colonies of the British EmpireBritish EmpireThe British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
.
Literary significance and criticism
The Swimming Pool Library won the Somerset Maugham AwardSomerset Maugham Award
The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to whom they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus...
in 1988, and the E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1989.
In 1988, Edmund White
Edmund White
Edmund Valentine White III is an American author and literary critic. He is a member of the faculty of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing.- Life and work :...
called it, 'surely the best book about gay life yet written by an English author.'