For most of his life, Sam Fussell was pretty similar to any of a half dozen people I know. The son of two English professors (we read his Dad's book, The Great War and Modern Memory, for an English class at Colgate), he attended Lawrenceville and Oxford, then took a year off to work at a publishing house in Manhattan while planning on going on to get his advanced degree and claim his birthright in the Academy. But then a funny thing happened; though he stood 6'4", he weighed in at a skeletal 170 pounds, and he found himself completely overwhelmed and terrified by the brutality of early 80's New York City. Riding the hostility filled subways, passing the homeless, walking the mean streets, it all scared the bejeezus out of him, until:
I was ducking for cover, as usual, when it happened.
This time it was a man with a crowbar and a
taxi medallion, worth $50,000 at the going rate,
which he had just ripped off the hood of a New
York taxi cab. Spotting me as a likely customer,
he advanced upon me, brandishing the crowbar
for emphasis. I quickly sought shelter in
the nearest building, which turned out to be the New York
landmark, The Strand bookstore. It was an
appropriate refuge--I'd used books all my life for
protection. I caught my breath and, as was
my custom, made my way to the autobiography section
(I frequently found myself there wondering how they
coped with life.)
It was in this aisle, in this store, in September
of 1984, that I finally caught "the Disease". Here it
was I came across Arnold: Education of a Bodybuilder
by Arnold Schwarzenegger. A glimpse of
the cover told me all I needed to know. There
he stood on a mountain top in Southern California,
every muscle bulging to the world as he flexed and
smiled and posed. Just the expression on his
face indicated that nothing could disturb this man.
A victim? Not bloody likely.
And that's where it hit me, right there in The Strand.
I knew it in an instant, my prayers were
answered. What if I made myself a walking
billboard of invulnerability like Arnold? Why couldn't I
use muscles as insurance, as certain indemnity amidst
the uncertainty of urban strife? Arnold had
used iron to his obvious advantage, why couldn't
I? And if the price was high, as a quick glance at
the tortured faces in training photos suggested,
well, wouldn't four hours a day of private pain be
worth a lifetime of public safety?
Nothing else had worked for me. The Harvard
Club tie and The New York Society Library card
had done nothing to ward off attack. As for
Tae Kwon Do, one had to actually engage in street
combat to use it. But muscles--big, loud muscles--well,
they were something else altogether.
Surely a quick appraisal of my new gargantuan body
would guarantee me immunity, even from the
criminally insane. And the beauty of it all
lay in the probable fact that I would never be called upon
actually to use these muscles. I could
remain a coward and no one would ever know!
It was that simple at first--at least, so I thought.
By making myself larger than life, I might make
myself a little less frail, a little less assailable
when it comes down to it, a little less human. In the
beginning I planned to use bodybuilding purely as
a system of self-defense. It wasn't until later, 80
muscle-crammed pounds later, that I learned to use
it as my principal method of assault.
So begins a long, strange, genuinely hilarious trip from the Upper East Side to California's Golden Valley Physique Classic IX (Heavyweight Division). What starts out as a way to protect himself, ends in drug addled obsession as Fussell sinks further and further into the netherworld of serious body building. By the time of the final competition that he enters, Fussell is so weakened by diet that his friends have to carry his magnificent form around as if he were a baby, he is a quivering mass of steroid altered psychoses and he hasn't brushed his teeth in weeks because his Crest has too high a level of sodium content. Along the way to this bizarre condition, he meets an astounding cast of characters and finds a subculture that few of us ever imagined.
In her book The Orchid Thief (see Orrin's
review), Susan Orlean wrote about the obsessive world of orchid collectors,
while holding that obsession at arm's length. Samuel Fussell's book
is an honest, self aware, account of what it's like to surrender to such
an obsession and allow it to take control of your life and, in his case,
allow it to reshape your body and your mind.
(Reviewed:)
Grade: (A)
