Never was a subtitle more appropriate. Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder explains perfectly what this book is about. Sam Fussell’s parents are scholars, literary critics. He grew up in Princeton, and went to college in Oxford. Nothing in his past could have hinted to his future. His transformation started in NYC. Sam was intimidated by the street characters, the thugs and the mentally unstable, and even though he was tall (6’4”), he was also a string bean. The book has photos to prove it. So he joined the YMCA, started to lift weights, and bodybuilding became his obsession. He made a 180° turn and abandoned “civilization” (more or less, that’s what his family and friends thought), and focused completely on bodybuilding, much to the chagrin of his parents.

The book is great in that it gives a sneak peek into the lifestyle of bodybuilding. I had no idea of what was involved. I knew it had to do with a lot of pumping iron and steroids, but that’s nothing. Sam goes into great details as to his daily life, his diet, his training, his “supplements”. Equally fascinating is the entire culture, more like a “cult”, that surrounds bodybuilding, and his descriptions of Vinnie, Nimrod, Sweetpea, and all his other buddies on both coasts.

Parallel to the account of his life as a bodybuilder, Sam goes deep into his reasons for pursuing such a career. I can’t remember a more honest memoir. He certainly gets to the bottom of his fears, his insecurities, and describes his muscles as a sort of armor that would protect him not from muggers, but from life itself. He was afraid of living. Not to go into too much psychoanalysis, but I can see how some of Sam’s insecurities may have been coming from an emotionally unavailable father. When Sam finally quits bodybuilding and tells his father that he’s going to write a memoir, Paul Fussell replies: “All is forgiven, literature is bigger than people”. What a thing to say. What is to forgive? The fact that he didn’t become a lawyer, like you had expected?

The book has some wonderful photos of Sam, before and after his transformation. The photos are very necessary to understand some of the competition poses. They are also easy on the eyes. What a hunkalicious bod. And what a dreamy face! Quite a complete package, smart, articulate, sensitive, handsome and ripped.

This is my second BookRay.

Reading order:

LyekkaMarengo
your-book-fairy
Hellie (dead-end)

And that's all for now. I messaged Meganh in Australia, as this is on her wish list, but no reply to date.

So off we go! Thanks for participating. I am looking forward to your comments.

I have been mapping the book's progress. You can see it here.

Received 09/28/2005. Looks like a good one. I have one bookring in front of this one.

I finished this over the week-end in one day. Very interesting book, though it ended sort of quickly. It was interesting and somewhat frightening to watch his personality change along with his body. His whole frame of reference to the "real" world was lost completely when his obsession took over him. The ending was a little abrupt and I wanted to know more of what happened to him in the end. But I loved the book and since he was by profression a writer it was very well told.

Thanks for the ring. I'll get hold of the next person to make sure they are ready for me to send it on.

I got this in the mail tonight and already started reading it. This is a subculture that I find so interesting, yet I know so little about. I held off on looking at the photos, but just couldn't help myself and now I'm amazed at the transformation this guy made. Imagine going back home for your high school reunion with a body like that!

This is (luckily) a pretty light week for me, workload wise, so I expect to have this one wrapped up in a few days and will post back then. Thanks to Gloria and LyekkaMarengo for getting the book to me!

This was a really interesting read, and I agree with both your comments. I didn't expect the author to be so honest, introspective and reflective about what his real motivations were, so I really appreciated that he was willing to be up front about his fears and his emptiness and how fake he was being, or even about the fact that he was clearly living a very diseased lifestyle.

I was also taken with the personality changes he went through, both by choice and through side effects. The bookring I was in before this one was for "Nickel and Dimed", and at one point the author, a PhD educated journalist, finds herself working in a WalMart and sees in that WalMart employee the person she could have been in a different life: cranky, bitter, tired all the time, chronically unhappy. So these two authors have now given me a lot of food for thought on what makes us who we are, how do we develop our personalities, and are they really as set as some people would believe? In other words, does it really take just a few years in the gym or a few weeks working at a WalMart to so dramatically change someone's core personality? Apparently it does.

I was also surprised at how well written some of the bodybuilding references were. It's such an insular, jargon laden pursuit, it would be easy for the descriptions of workouts or competitions to be really dull, but I was sometimes on the edge of my seat wondering how things would turn out. The writing style was surprisingly compelling, and I feel like I learned a lot about the ins and outs of this lifestyle (even if I feel like most of what they do is gross and/or unhealthy). However, I also felt like the ending was quite abrupt -- I wanted to know more about what happened to him and how his final decisions regarding bodybuilding played out. I tried googling him a bit, but the closest I got to any info is a rumor that he's back in NYC, working out at one of the local gyms.

Will be mailed to Hellie any day now, as soon as I get the address. Thanks again for sharing with me!

Had a bit of a problem getting PMs through last week, but I finally got Hellie's address and will be getting this in the mail to her today.

Looking forward to reading...thanks for sharing!