The Great Book Explosion
The Great Book Explosion
LEANINGS
Peter Egan
PEOPLE ARE FOND OF SAYING THIS IS THE Golden Age of Motorcycling, and maybe they’re right. For evidence, we have such wonders as the Guggenheim show, the resurgence of traditional or nearly lost brands such as Triumph, Ducati, Guzzi, MZ, etc. and the ongoing success of Harley-Davidson, not to mention the sheer performance of new sportbikes. Things are looking good.
I sometimes wonder, however, if we aren’t going through more of a pleasing rebirth of interest than a certified golden age. For a true golden age, we might have to figure out how to get huge numbers of young people as fired up about bikes as they were when I was in high school (1962-1966, yes, a diploma in only four short years!). Until then, the present age smacks more of Centrum Silver to me than pure gold. It’s still an aging group that’s doing a lot of the buying and riding.
But if there is a genuine golden age happening right now, it must certainly be in the book business.
To misquote Winston Churchill, never have so few had so much good stuff to read about so many bikes. Piled next to my bedside stand right now are at least a dozen books about nearly every aspect of motorcyclingtravel, adventure, restoration, racing, marque history and so on. We’ve never had it so good.
To go back to those darkly distant high school years of mine, when Honda 50s and Triumph Bonnevilles swarmed the Earth, there were very few books to read on the subject. Our school and public libraries had essentially none, and if you deigned to spend some of your hard-earned bike fund on a book (fergodsake!) your choices were limited mostly to shop manuals, tune-up guides and introductory how-to books on dirt riding, with a small handful on the racing heroes of the age.
There were very few books on specific marques (except for a few rather dry tomes out of England dealing with pre-war Sunbeams or the like), and almost nothing about the spirit and adventure of motorcycling itself. Maybe we were too busy riding to read this stuff, but it was missing from bookstores nonetheless.
When I went to restore my 1967 Triumph Bonneville in the late Seventies, for instance, I knew of no book anywhere that showed the model-bymodel development of these bikes. Without old copies of Cycle World and the many sales brochures Ed hoarded in musty boxes, I would have had no way of finding out-or rememberingexactly what color a ’67 Bonneville was supposed to be painted, or how the stripes lay on the tank. Now (thanks to Lindsay Brooke and David Gaylin-and Classic Motorbooks), I have three different books on American versions of Triumphs alone, and three others of general history, along with J.R. Nelson’s Bonnie.
At last, I can pick up a book and see which direction the bolts are supposed to go through the fender stays, and which decals were really on my sidecovers and tank. (Turns out the peace symbols and marijuana-leaf decals that came on my Triumph were not stock.) In 1978 no one knew this stuff except grizzled old bike dealers with good memories, or the mechanics who had uncrated the bikes when they were new.
Or how about the more inspirational stuff?
The first book I ever read that explored the philosophical side of motorcycling was, of course, Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which didn’t hit the shelves until I was 26. Before that, we just had a few smatterings from T.E. Lawrence to light the way. Now I have in my nightstand stack a book by Melissa Holbrook Pierson called The Perfect Vehicle, a thoughtful examination of the meaning of the sport, and another by Fred Haeffele called Rebuilding the Indian, a parts-quest adventure that is about considerably more than just rebuilding his Indian.
Travel? Ted Simon’s great ’roundthe-world book, Juniper’s Travels, is finally in reprint and I’m reading it again, after lending my original copy into oblivion some years ago. I also see that the fabled One Man Caravan by Robert E. Fulton Jr. about his globetrotting adventures on a Douglas Twin in the Thirties, has just been reprinted by Whitehorse Press.
Added to this, my friend (and Pancho Villa Tours guide) Ken Upchurch just sent me a copy of Helge Pedersen’s 10 Years on 2 Wheels: A Photographer’s Journey Around the World. Beautifully illustrated as you might expect, and nicely written. Ken tells me this book changed his life. I’ve just started reading it and am resisting the temptation to sell the house and take off on a BMW R80GS even now, preferably before this column is finished.
Racing? Allan Girdler’s superb The Harley-Davidson and Indian Wars is my focus at the moment. Also waiting in the wings is Wayne Rainey: His Own Story. And now there’s even a mystery novel that revolves around motorcycling, Deadman ’s Throttle, by Jerry Smith, an old friend who also happens to own my original Craftsman tool chest. (If you ride motorcycles long enough, you meet just about everybody.)
On top of all this, there’s a new Vincent book by the famed Vincent guru “Big Sid” Biberman called Vincents with Big Sid, a fine memoir I’ve just finished reading, filled with wonderful black-and-white photos of the bike shop and club scene of the Fifties.
In short, there are enough new motorcycle books stacked here to cause blindness, but that’s all right. I just got a powerful new set of bifocals last week-the kind with small, round lenses that make you look less like an airline pilot of the Seventies and more like a Trotskyite of the Twenties-so I’m ready. Bring on the winter. The Golden Age of Books and our annual Midwestern Ice Age make a good combination.
