Riding with Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books

This book is uncommonly interesting and well written. Supplementing the motorcycle adventure content the author discusses human interest and literary matters which add a fascinating additional dimension. The book is woven beautifully together by clear, entertaining writing.

Not a mere travelogue or another bike adventure...Bishop escorts the reader through the very essense of riding in the most spiritual, thoughtful and surprisingly, visceral treat of a book...yes, this little book travels well: I took a ride to New Mexico and there it sat patiently on my nightstands in all the different hotels, motels and inns along the way...then, upon opening the book's pages, it (the book) merrily displayed its well-crafted prose to bring together this joy of riding a motorcycle and the sheer bliss at reading the power and majesty of word after word, woven together into images and concepts of both of these Life-sustaining activities...OK, so it is not for everyone, it is for me and that's what we're talking about here...if you Love either, read it, if you Love both, devour it...if you Love neither, God help you, 'cause you are missing out on Life at its finest and the "Now," the moments...love of riding, love of words, love of Life...another tapestry to bring form and content to our Loves...live on that edge and slip back to write about it...darn, I'm going for a ride now: "four wheel move the body, two wheels move the soul" and I feel the call of the wind...

As a reader and rider, I enjoyed this book as a motorcycle travelogue with all its arcane bits of literary data strewn throughout. If I have a small complaint it is that Bishop spends too much time in Austin and not exploring more of the places he is terrific at writing about. When we were traveling with him, he made some of those stops come alive and gave the book some fun and substance. When he halted (as he had to in order to do the archive research), so did the cycle action. However, with that being said, some of the book's best and most poignant passages are his ruminations on reading and riding - his description on p. 112 about the "readiness of books" has been accurate in my reading life. And the couple of pages (p. 124-6) about silence and listening were memorable. So is the line: "I wrote on the bike and I rode in the reading room. I'm sure it's the same in offices everywhere." He's right, of course, as I work while I ride and ride while I work in the form of a quick daydream. Nice to know others have the same feelings.

Canadian superstar writer Ted Bishop bought a motorcycle and then spent his vacations from school riding to and from Canada to several US libraries and archives, where he prepared some academic papers and thought about Joyce, Woolf, Rilke, and other 20th century modernists. His book RIDING WITH RILKE has become an international sensation, and many people recommended it to me, saying that I had enjoyed Robert Pirsig's ZEN book back in the day, and that this was the next big thing, the book that would combine Buddhist principles of patience and laissez-faire morality with keen historical and critical faculties trained on sometimes minute points of detail. For example, in the Harry Ransom Humanities Center at the University of Texas in Austin, Bishop literally stumbles across an obscure notebook kept by a young male acolyte of Sylvia Beach, the proprietor of Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and the publisher of Joyce's scandalous novel ULYSSES. Did you know that every copy of the first edition of ULYSSES was numbered? And that Austin alone has 20 of these 1000? Conceivably you could match them all up and trace their peregrinations over time, if you had some sort of tally of who bought what book back in 1922 when the novel was first issued (in Paris). Well, that's just what the so-called Saillet notebook does! It was Beach's aide-memoire that told her, Copy #12 goes to Ezra Pound, copy #27 to Yeats, and so forth. So say you owned copy # 763, using the Saillet notebook you could find out who was its original purchaser! Simultaneously there's a lot about the strange paradise motorcyclists who are really into it feel when they're out on the road. The two strains of Bishop's memoir don't mesh as often or as delightfully as he thinks they do, but the sidelights are winning. He dreams of writing an article for CYCLE CANADA on "Motorcycles and Modernism," in which he would display his Trivial Pursuit-like knowledge of both subjects. Orwell was a keen motorcyclist, while Woolf fantasized about owning one. TE Lawrence, a friend of Woolf's, died on one purchased for him by Charlotte, the wife of George Bernard Shaw. A lovely book, marred only by some snide comments about one of my favorites, the US actress Gloria Swanson. Bishop dismisses her when he finds her copy of ULYSSES at Austin, in pristine condition, obviously unread (according to him). Not only that, she had the book re-bound in what he calls a "fecal" shade of leather. How on earth would he know, maybe she was just tidy? Lawrence's copy has motor oil all over it, but he too bought a second copy he put on the shelvee to keep it mint and glossy. Maybe Swanson had one copy just for reading? You know she would have made a great Molly Bloom, go get over your contempt for the truly great, Ted Bishop, and I won't try to give you biking tips!

Though the publisher's blurb makes the inevitable comparison to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, this book has none of the dour and depressing self introspection of Pirsig's work. Author Ted Bishop is an enthusiastic, if somewhat inexperienced, rider. I say inexperienced as no one in their right mind would ride a Ducati Monster from Edmonton, Canada to Austin, Texas and back. However, this is what makes him a real motorcyclist. He gets the whole riding experience and compares it with the wonders of wandering through various library archives. While this might sound a bit boring, it is not. His description of holding Virginia Woolf's suicide note in his hand is stirring. His account of a tour of the Ducati factory is equally moving. The rider will learn about the wonders of rare books and the rare, and sometimes eccentric creatures that care for them. The reader will experience motorcycling through an enthusiast's eyes and other senses. This book belongs on all riders' bookshelves, right next to The Perfect Vehicle and Rebuilding the Indian. Disclaimer: My motorcycle, and myself, are mentioned in this book. I'm not sure whether I should be upset that my bike gets more text than me. Typical motorcyclist!