Bicycle love between the covers of a book

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Here's another bicycle book, entitled Bicycle, reviewed recently at Bookslut.com.

Most of the books I own about bicycles tell about their history, how to fix them when they're broken, or where and how to travel with one on an extended tour.

In other words, very nuts and bolts. Bicycle by Paul Fattaruso sounds more metaphysical. Described at Amazon:

“Somewhere between prose poem and sacred incantation lies Bicycle. In spare, comically surreal and beautiful prose, Paul Fattaruso does for bicycles what Richard Brautigan did for trout-he elevates them to the status of an idol. An intimate, inventive, and vibrant book.”

The reviewer, David Varno, at Bookslut believes the bicycle in this book represents “any common, universal objects that have great meaning to their owner, and therefore can be imagined to possess a consciousness all of their own.”

Oh yeah. Bike love.

The book contains 77 entries, writes Varno. Among them:

“The bicycle with a mind of its own; the bicycle that doesn’t know it’s a bicycle, the object of affection eclipsed by the bicycle (“Her freckles describe a bicycle moving too swiftly to touch”); the bicycle that goes where its owner goes; and the bicycle that shows the owner where to go.”

The book is illustrated by Adam Thompson.

Fattaruso signed copies of the book in DC recently, where the book caught the eye of the Washington City Paper:

“Not since Queen’s “Bicycle Race” has an artist been so fixated on the two-wheel mode of transportation. But now we have Paul Fattaruso’s latest book, Bicycle, which falls somewhere between prose and poetry, with one sentence, one thought, per page, accompanied by an occasional sketch by Adam Thompson.”

By the way, Fattaruso's bio says he rides a silver bicycle.


Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2008/04/07/bicycle-love-between-the-covers-of-a-book/

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