Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
This book has languished on my TBR pile for a very long time. Every time I looked at it, and wondered if that should be my next read, I returned it to the pile. My instinct told me I was not going to enjoy it. It turns out my instinct is still quite a potent force, because while there were parts of the book that were more interesting than others, I really struggled to make my way through it, which, for a book which comes with some pictures, is not a great recommendation.
If I was asked to describe my perception of this book, I would respond with that for me, the book seemed more like an introspective research diary, coupled with a pondering over the methodological approach he should adopt for writing the novel he wanted to, but did not, write. And at the heart of it, this is my particular problem with Wrestliana. It would have made a great novel. It had all the raw ingredients for a great novel, because William Litt's story, if well-crafted, is poignant, interesting, and engaging. The fact that the author told us that he could not piece together all of the relevant information would not signify much of anything if he was writing a novel. We don't expect our novels to be 100% historically accurate. Instead, the author became bogged down in the research journey, determined to piece together the entire story, when that was never going to be possible.
For me, the entire book felt as though it was haunted by the novel that could have been. And it felt, and I hope he can forgive me because there is some excellent writing in it, a little self-indulgent. That said, the historical aspects of the novel were of some interest to me, and he does capture a sense of the importance of wrestling within the local culture and time. But all in all, I was glad to consign the book back onto the book shelf.
I can't seeing me getting it back off the shelf again any time soon.
If I was asked to describe my perception of this book, I would respond with that for me, the book seemed more like an introspective research diary, coupled with a pondering over the methodological approach he should adopt for writing the novel he wanted to, but did not, write. And at the heart of it, this is my particular problem with Wrestliana. It would have made a great novel. It had all the raw ingredients for a great novel, because William Litt's story, if well-crafted, is poignant, interesting, and engaging. The fact that the author told us that he could not piece together all of the relevant information would not signify much of anything if he was writing a novel. We don't expect our novels to be 100% historically accurate. Instead, the author became bogged down in the research journey, determined to piece together the entire story, when that was never going to be possible.
For me, the entire book felt as though it was haunted by the novel that could have been. And it felt, and I hope he can forgive me because there is some excellent writing in it, a little self-indulgent. That said, the historical aspects of the novel were of some interest to me, and he does capture a sense of the importance of wrestling within the local culture and time. But all in all, I was glad to consign the book back onto the book shelf.
I can't seeing me getting it back off the shelf again any time soon.
slow-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Quite simply, this is a delightful book. Come for the meditation on masculinity and fatherhood, stay for the charming details of Cumbrian geography, sportsmanship, eighteenth-century culture wars, and the mishmash of curious details you never knew you needed to know (smuggling, anyone?).
It gets meta as the book is also about its own difficult coming to being. Writers everywhere will empathise. Although technically a memoir, it's as much about Toby Litt's ancestor, Cumbrian author and wrestler extraordinaire, William Litt, as it is about the author. If anything, as the author himself admits, he might have written more about himself. William is such a larger-than-life character that he tends to take over the narrative. William is an oddity, as someone who marries sportsmanship and penmanship, begging the author to ask whether it's possible to be both.
It gets meta as the book is also about its own difficult coming to being. Writers everywhere will empathise. Although technically a memoir, it's as much about Toby Litt's ancestor, Cumbrian author and wrestler extraordinaire, William Litt, as it is about the author. If anything, as the author himself admits, he might have written more about himself. William is such a larger-than-life character that he tends to take over the narrative. William is an oddity, as someone who marries sportsmanship and penmanship, begging the author to ask whether it's possible to be both.
Wrestliana is a complicated book, on the surface it is a biography of Toby Litt’s great-great-grandfather William Litt, but it is also an exploration of his relationship with his own father, his sons, and representations of masculinity.
I was lucky enough to receive this from Galley Beggar Press to read and I really appreciate the chance as Toby’s writing is clear and impelling.
William Litt was a champion Cumberland and Westmoreland Wrestling athlete and writer and this book follows his life around the wrestling circuit and further abroad.
It is the joining of these two modern day extremes, ‘Jock’ and ‘Nerd’ that Toby explores, both in William’s life and his own.
Positing that William’s era was possibly the beginning of separation of body and mind as distinct social personas, body and mind was commonly combined. But with the rise of educational specialism and professional sports they became irrevocably sundered.
A really great read written with understanding and passion.
I was lucky enough to receive this from Galley Beggar Press to read and I really appreciate the chance as Toby’s writing is clear and impelling.
William Litt was a champion Cumberland and Westmoreland Wrestling athlete and writer and this book follows his life around the wrestling circuit and further abroad.
It is the joining of these two modern day extremes, ‘Jock’ and ‘Nerd’ that Toby explores, both in William’s life and his own.
Positing that William’s era was possibly the beginning of separation of body and mind as distinct social personas, body and mind was commonly combined. But with the rise of educational specialism and professional sports they became irrevocably sundered.
A really great read written with understanding and passion.
Wrestliana is a complicated book, on the surface it is a biography of Toby Litt’s great-great-grandfather William Litt, but it is also an exploration of his relationship with his own father, his sons, and representations of masculinity.
I was lucky enough to receive this from Galley Beggar Press to read and I really appreciate the chance as Toby’s writing is clear and impelling.
William Litt was a champion Cumberland and Westmoreland Wrestling athlete and writer and this book follows his life around the wrestling circuit and further abroad.
It is the joining of these two modern day extremes, ‘Jock’ and ‘Nerd’ that Toby explores, both in William’s life and his own.
Positing that William’s era was possibly the beginning of separation of body and mind as distinct social personas, body and mind was commonly combined. But with the rise of educational specialism and professional sports they became irrevocably sundered.
A really great read written with understanding and passion.
I was lucky enough to receive this from Galley Beggar Press to read and I really appreciate the chance as Toby’s writing is clear and impelling.
William Litt was a champion Cumberland and Westmoreland Wrestling athlete and writer and this book follows his life around the wrestling circuit and further abroad.
It is the joining of these two modern day extremes, ‘Jock’ and ‘Nerd’ that Toby explores, both in William’s life and his own.
Positing that William’s era was possibly the beginning of separation of body and mind as distinct social personas, body and mind was commonly combined. But with the rise of educational specialism and professional sports they became irrevocably sundered.
A really great read written with understanding and passion.
The problem with a book about wrestling albeit the Cumberland and Westmorland type and you call the book Wrestliana you can't help thinking of Wrestlemania. That aside this is an excellent book by Toby Litt about his research into his Great Great Great Grandfather William Litt, a writer and champion wrestler. Toby Litt always questions what it is to be a man in a modern age and questions the relationship between himself and his father and his own sons.
I have to confess this is not a book I would have normally bought but I was a participant on a Residential Writing course at the Arvon Foundation Centre, Lumb Bank in West Yorkshire, the former home of Ted Hughes. Toby Litt was one of the tutors and he said 'you'll like this Michael.' He was right. The reason I mention this is because I found a glaring error on page 100 of Wrestliana,
'The Totleigh Barton centre in Devon is a medium-sized white farm-house that once belonged to poet Ted Hughes.'
Obviously Litt has got mixed up here and is a small error,but as a reader it can detract. The rest of the book is well researched and his sources are listed at the bottom of the relevant pages. These included some amusing asides which made me laugh.
I have to confess this is not a book I would have normally bought but I was a participant on a Residential Writing course at the Arvon Foundation Centre, Lumb Bank in West Yorkshire, the former home of Ted Hughes. Toby Litt was one of the tutors and he said 'you'll like this Michael.' He was right. The reason I mention this is because I found a glaring error on page 100 of Wrestliana,
'The Totleigh Barton centre in Devon is a medium-sized white farm-house that once belonged to poet Ted Hughes.'
Obviously Litt has got mixed up here and is a small error,but as a reader it can detract. The rest of the book is well researched and his sources are listed at the bottom of the relevant pages. These included some amusing asides which made me laugh.
It's 2020. I'm grumpy. I did not finish this book. I got about 2/3 through. I wanted to like this book. But I did not, I am sad to say. I think that Toby Litt is a good writer. I like his sentences. I will probably pick up one of his novels at some point. And I think this is a good project: a literary man wrestling (yep, sorry) with his insecurities about his masculinity through the lens of his family history, in particular his great-great grandfather, who we learn is an impressive man of letters AND one of the great wrestlers of his time. Body and mind! Unheard of! Like I said, a seemingly cool project. It falls short though. It never really takes off. The literary greatness of Litt's muse isn't as self evident or substantial as the author seems to think. The analyses of masculinity—what I was really after here—are few and far between, and the good ones don't stick around long enough to generate any real depth or provoke any beyond-the-obvious thought. And sadly, the history of wrestling, the other main thrust of this thing, however well wrought (and it is, I think!), just doesn't work for me without investment in what I took to be the bigger, broader theme of this book. I do love books like this. Books that take a niche topic and use it to explore larger cultural concerns. Jazmina Barrera's On Lighthouses does this well. So does Eula Biss's On Immunity. And Rivka Galchen's Little Labors. I want to read about masculinity. Someone give me a really good book about masculinity that's also about coal mining or driving a Diesel F-250 or barbecue culture.
Edgar Linton is wild Cathy’s fake husband – a disgusting, sickly milksop who likes reading poetry; Heathcliff, you probably don’t need me to tell you, is a dark, virile destroyer who likes causing pain. In the mid 1840s Emily Bronte was dividing men into two types: mental and physical. For her, the physically weak are worthless.
I still though I was more like Heathcliff than Edgar Linton.
Toby Litt is known as an author of fiction, and was one of the 2003 Granta list of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists.' He is also a graduate of the UEA's famous Creative Writing program (alumni include a Nobel prize winner in Ishiguro as well as many other famous writers - http://www.uea.ac.uk/literature/creative-writing/alumni) and now teaches creative writing himself at Birbeck College.
His great-great-great grandfather was William Litt, a champion Cumberland wrestler, one of Britain's most popular sports in the early 19th century, and also author of the definitive history of the sport, [b:Wrestliana: An Historical Account of Ancient and Modern Wrestling / By W. Litt|32535188|Wrestliana An Historical Account of Ancient and Modern Wrestling / By W. Litt|William Litt|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1480194898s/32535188.jpg|53122994], as well as a, less successful, novel William and Mary.
Toby Litt had been urged by his father to write a novel based on William's life, but was struggling to do so until:
In the Autumn of 2014, I sat down and read William’s book Wrestliana for the first time – and I suddenly saw a way in.
Through William.
Even during his lifetime, a friend referred to him as ‘a kind of anomaly in nature’ – an unprecedented combination of athletic superiority and literary talent.
William was like a combination of my father and I. Here was a man who was both a wrestler and a writer – who was both physical and intellectual.
This both is absolutely not me, and it’s not many other men – men who work at desks. It seems that this – balanced – is something we’re not able to be.
Perhaps because the two tribes, Jocks and Nerds, have become so far apart – their rituals and sacrifices; perhaps because we each of us have to hyperspecialize in order to become halfway good at any skill.
If you’re an athlete, you train so many hours of the day that you never have time to read a book; if you’re a writer or a programmer or an administrator, you spend so many years at the desk that your muscles go slack, your belly grows and your spine gets crocked. And if you’re well-balanced, you’re a well-balanced mediocrity.
But because William, somehow, was able – if only for a few years – to exist successfully in both worlds, physical and mental, he seemed to me an ideal figure: someone from whom I could learn things I needed to learn.
I decided to write a new book and to call it Wrestliana – to take William on, on his home ground. Because all of this being a man stuff was something I needed to wrestle with.
To be a better son and to be a better father. To be a better man.
And from this inspiration was born Toby Litt's Wrestliana, published by the wonderful Galley Beggar Press (https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19272135-galley-beggar-press), of whom I am proud to be a Galley Buddy, helping sponsor their high quality literary output.
Wrestliana is a non-fictional account of William Litt's life and sporting career, but, more than that, an evocative account of an historical era and a fascinating sport (a sport which still continues to the present day, and the present-day sections are particularly interesting), as well as a meditation on masculinity and fatherhood, sport and competition, and also a discussion of creative writing. Litt proclaims I was starting to think of everything in terms of wrestling, and the concept of his treatment works very well.
But Toby Litt is, as I said, both a graduate and teacher of creative writing, and so not surprisingly, Wrestliana almost writes its own critical review.
Early on he muses that research uses stifles his novelistic creativity (For me to be say something alive about a subject, I need to be energentially ignorant and still enthusiastic rather than exhaustedly well-informed.) but that here he felt that he would have to do proper research. I am not in general a fan of family memoir as the author typically has more interest in their subject that the reader and at times I found myself indeed exhaustedly over-informed, in particular as to the methods of Litt's research in addition to the results.
At another point, Litt suggests he found himself becoming overinfluenced by the florid prose of his ancestor - it was as if ... he was taking control of my pen. The rhythms I fell into were his. When I tried to produce simple, direct sentences, he started to add asides and sub-clauses. - and he includes an example of such a first draft of one section, that he subsequently simplified. To this reader, as someone who loves the circular prose of writers like Javier Marias and Javier Cercas - I actually rather preferred this sample of William-Littesque digressive prose to Toby's 'simple, direct' sentences.
However the most striking aspect of the book is that, again in the author's words: I am aware that this is a very Male book, and that it seems to take masculinity very much on its own terms. At times this did seem a rather male public boarding school version of masculinity - particularly the desire to be both Nerd and Jock. I am a father of three daughters so it may be that I simply haven't had the experience of a father-son relationship from the parental side, but I struggled to sympathise with Litt's seeming pressure, as someone more from the sedentary side of working life, to also prove himself on the sporting side. To me the Nerds and Geeks have won and that is a good thing. Interestingly in the world of writing, Toby Litt pinpoints the consciously macho male writer as a peculiarly American thing (eg an oddly common fetish with sharpening a certain number of pencils before starting work), which may also explain my lack of love for the Great American Novel(list).
The book also comes with a rather ill-timed choice of epigraph - ‘You wrestle with your family your entire life.’ - from Junot Diaz, a point Litt addresses on his website: https://tobylitt.wordpress.com/2018/05/05/junot-diaz-my-full-account-of-cruelties-towards-people/
So overall, a fascinating story and presented via an excellent concept, but not entirely to my personal taste.
I still though I was more like Heathcliff than Edgar Linton.
Toby Litt is known as an author of fiction, and was one of the 2003 Granta list of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists.' He is also a graduate of the UEA's famous Creative Writing program (alumni include a Nobel prize winner in Ishiguro as well as many other famous writers - http://www.uea.ac.uk/literature/creative-writing/alumni) and now teaches creative writing himself at Birbeck College.
His great-great-great grandfather was William Litt, a champion Cumberland wrestler, one of Britain's most popular sports in the early 19th century, and also author of the definitive history of the sport, [b:Wrestliana: An Historical Account of Ancient and Modern Wrestling / By W. Litt|32535188|Wrestliana An Historical Account of Ancient and Modern Wrestling / By W. Litt|William Litt|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1480194898s/32535188.jpg|53122994], as well as a, less successful, novel William and Mary.
Toby Litt had been urged by his father to write a novel based on William's life, but was struggling to do so until:
In the Autumn of 2014, I sat down and read William’s book Wrestliana for the first time – and I suddenly saw a way in.
Through William.
Even during his lifetime, a friend referred to him as ‘a kind of anomaly in nature’ – an unprecedented combination of athletic superiority and literary talent.
William was like a combination of my father and I. Here was a man who was both a wrestler and a writer – who was both physical and intellectual.
This both is absolutely not me, and it’s not many other men – men who work at desks. It seems that this – balanced – is something we’re not able to be.
Perhaps because the two tribes, Jocks and Nerds, have become so far apart – their rituals and sacrifices; perhaps because we each of us have to hyperspecialize in order to become halfway good at any skill.
If you’re an athlete, you train so many hours of the day that you never have time to read a book; if you’re a writer or a programmer or an administrator, you spend so many years at the desk that your muscles go slack, your belly grows and your spine gets crocked. And if you’re well-balanced, you’re a well-balanced mediocrity.
But because William, somehow, was able – if only for a few years – to exist successfully in both worlds, physical and mental, he seemed to me an ideal figure: someone from whom I could learn things I needed to learn.
I decided to write a new book and to call it Wrestliana – to take William on, on his home ground. Because all of this being a man stuff was something I needed to wrestle with.
To be a better son and to be a better father. To be a better man.
And from this inspiration was born Toby Litt's Wrestliana, published by the wonderful Galley Beggar Press (https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19272135-galley-beggar-press), of whom I am proud to be a Galley Buddy, helping sponsor their high quality literary output.
Wrestliana is a non-fictional account of William Litt's life and sporting career, but, more than that, an evocative account of an historical era and a fascinating sport (a sport which still continues to the present day, and the present-day sections are particularly interesting), as well as a meditation on masculinity and fatherhood, sport and competition, and also a discussion of creative writing. Litt proclaims I was starting to think of everything in terms of wrestling, and the concept of his treatment works very well.
But Toby Litt is, as I said, both a graduate and teacher of creative writing, and so not surprisingly, Wrestliana almost writes its own critical review.
Early on he muses that research uses stifles his novelistic creativity (For me to be say something alive about a subject, I need to be energentially ignorant and still enthusiastic rather than exhaustedly well-informed.) but that here he felt that he would have to do proper research. I am not in general a fan of family memoir as the author typically has more interest in their subject that the reader and at times I found myself indeed exhaustedly over-informed, in particular as to the methods of Litt's research in addition to the results.
At another point, Litt suggests he found himself becoming overinfluenced by the florid prose of his ancestor - it was as if ... he was taking control of my pen. The rhythms I fell into were his. When I tried to produce simple, direct sentences, he started to add asides and sub-clauses. - and he includes an example of such a first draft of one section, that he subsequently simplified. To this reader, as someone who loves the circular prose of writers like Javier Marias and Javier Cercas - I actually rather preferred this sample of William-Littesque digressive prose to Toby's 'simple, direct' sentences.
However the most striking aspect of the book is that, again in the author's words: I am aware that this is a very Male book, and that it seems to take masculinity very much on its own terms. At times this did seem a rather male public boarding school version of masculinity - particularly the desire to be both Nerd and Jock. I am a father of three daughters so it may be that I simply haven't had the experience of a father-son relationship from the parental side, but I struggled to sympathise with Litt's seeming pressure, as someone more from the sedentary side of working life, to also prove himself on the sporting side. To me the Nerds and Geeks have won and that is a good thing. Interestingly in the world of writing, Toby Litt pinpoints the consciously macho male writer as a peculiarly American thing (eg an oddly common fetish with sharpening a certain number of pencils before starting work), which may also explain my lack of love for the Great American Novel(list).
The book also comes with a rather ill-timed choice of epigraph - ‘You wrestle with your family your entire life.’ - from Junot Diaz, a point Litt addresses on his website: https://tobylitt.wordpress.com/2018/05/05/junot-diaz-my-full-account-of-cruelties-towards-people/
So overall, a fascinating story and presented via an excellent concept, but not entirely to my personal taste.
Wrestliana, by Toby Litt, is part memoir, part biography. It is an exploration of fathers and sons, and what it means to be a man, particularly in our modern world. I wondered whilst reading if I could be amongst its audience, if I could understand. Certain elements of the narrative made me uncomfortable. I found myself wanting to point out that girls play football and mothers stand on touchlines. Despite it being an intensely personal story I needed to step back from the author and focus on the writing.
Toby Litt’s forebears lived in Cumberland in the eighteenth century. One of them, William Litt, was, for a time, a local wrestling champion. He was also a writer and published the original Wrestliana – ‘a history of wrestling from its origins’. Toby grew up hearing his father talk of his great-great-grandfather: the wrestling; his time as a smuggler; the loss of a small fortune; his escape to Canada where he died. When Toby decided that he wanted to be a writer the only story his father wanted him to tell was that of William.
This is also, however, the story of Toby. As well as exploring the lives of his wider family, he shares: how he was bullied at school; his time living in Prague; his hopes for his own two sons; how he teaches Creative Writing. When teaching dialogue he tells his class:
“When two men say Hello in the street, one of them loses.”
Toby describes himself as competitive and many of his musings are around whether, in any given situation, he has won or lost. This attitude overflows into his writing life, his thoughts on other writers and their work. I baulked at the apparently disparaging comments about John Boyne whose books I enjoy. I understood better when I read an interview Toby gave to The Word Factory from which I quote:
“For other writers, the job is to entertain, to tell fulfilling stories. The writers you mention – you could also have included Henry James – are Modernists, Make-it-new-ists. They were the writers who got to me. I suppose I thought they were trying to do something more difficult and worthwhile. An entertainment doesn’t attempt to change its audience – it reassures them that, going in, they have all they need to understand and enjoy it. As a reader, I wanted to be changed by what I read. I didn’t want to be myself. Books were a way for me of moving gradually away from who I started as. I think that’s what books have done for me.”
Following the John Boyne encounter, Toby mentions his reaction when a book he believed was amongst his best work was entered for the Booker Prize, and the crushing disappointment he felt when it was not longlisted. The pages on writers and literary prizes are enlightening.
Toby has long eschewed sport but, once immersed in his extensive research about William, found himself considering the importance placed on a man’s physical size, strength and prowess. William’s politics, his beliefs, are described as
“manly, patriotic, straightforward”
Toby considers: his own life as a family man and writer, those moments when he ‘won’; if this is all that matters and if, in aging, the best times are gone. There is an undercurrent, a fear of, inferiority, or being seen as such. Perhaps a more competitive person than I will empathise.
Everything that William wrote, of which there is still a record, is dissected and examined in forensic detail to provide a picture of the man, the life he led, and why. This includes gaining an understanding of the style of wrestling at which he excelled and which is still practised in the north of England. Toby visits to observe and talk to those involved. I found the sections describing in detail the sport the least interesting. The history on the other hand proved engaging, as did the comparisons and attitudes across the generations.
Toby deploys the analogy of wrestling to life and this spills over into his relationships with his father and his sons. There appears to be a need to prove oneself different yet better, to escape from under the family shadow yet still be deemed worthy. Near the end of the book he regrets that his sons cannot compete in the traditional wrestling bouts he has been learning of. I wonder what they would think of this idea.
Despite my inability to empathise with the author’s attitude to being a man in the modern world, the book offers an interesting history and perspective. I would have preferred the impact of the women involved to be taken more into account but understand it is intended to be only about the men. A need to feel macho may be beyond my comprehension but in presenting his thoughts and feelings so honestly the author offers insight into what can prove toxic concerns. It is an alluring read.
Toby Litt’s forebears lived in Cumberland in the eighteenth century. One of them, William Litt, was, for a time, a local wrestling champion. He was also a writer and published the original Wrestliana – ‘a history of wrestling from its origins’. Toby grew up hearing his father talk of his great-great-grandfather: the wrestling; his time as a smuggler; the loss of a small fortune; his escape to Canada where he died. When Toby decided that he wanted to be a writer the only story his father wanted him to tell was that of William.
This is also, however, the story of Toby. As well as exploring the lives of his wider family, he shares: how he was bullied at school; his time living in Prague; his hopes for his own two sons; how he teaches Creative Writing. When teaching dialogue he tells his class:
“When two men say Hello in the street, one of them loses.”
Toby describes himself as competitive and many of his musings are around whether, in any given situation, he has won or lost. This attitude overflows into his writing life, his thoughts on other writers and their work. I baulked at the apparently disparaging comments about John Boyne whose books I enjoy. I understood better when I read an interview Toby gave to The Word Factory from which I quote:
“For other writers, the job is to entertain, to tell fulfilling stories. The writers you mention – you could also have included Henry James – are Modernists, Make-it-new-ists. They were the writers who got to me. I suppose I thought they were trying to do something more difficult and worthwhile. An entertainment doesn’t attempt to change its audience – it reassures them that, going in, they have all they need to understand and enjoy it. As a reader, I wanted to be changed by what I read. I didn’t want to be myself. Books were a way for me of moving gradually away from who I started as. I think that’s what books have done for me.”
Following the John Boyne encounter, Toby mentions his reaction when a book he believed was amongst his best work was entered for the Booker Prize, and the crushing disappointment he felt when it was not longlisted. The pages on writers and literary prizes are enlightening.
Toby has long eschewed sport but, once immersed in his extensive research about William, found himself considering the importance placed on a man’s physical size, strength and prowess. William’s politics, his beliefs, are described as
“manly, patriotic, straightforward”
Toby considers: his own life as a family man and writer, those moments when he ‘won’; if this is all that matters and if, in aging, the best times are gone. There is an undercurrent, a fear of, inferiority, or being seen as such. Perhaps a more competitive person than I will empathise.
Everything that William wrote, of which there is still a record, is dissected and examined in forensic detail to provide a picture of the man, the life he led, and why. This includes gaining an understanding of the style of wrestling at which he excelled and which is still practised in the north of England. Toby visits to observe and talk to those involved. I found the sections describing in detail the sport the least interesting. The history on the other hand proved engaging, as did the comparisons and attitudes across the generations.
Toby deploys the analogy of wrestling to life and this spills over into his relationships with his father and his sons. There appears to be a need to prove oneself different yet better, to escape from under the family shadow yet still be deemed worthy. Near the end of the book he regrets that his sons cannot compete in the traditional wrestling bouts he has been learning of. I wonder what they would think of this idea.
Despite my inability to empathise with the author’s attitude to being a man in the modern world, the book offers an interesting history and perspective. I would have preferred the impact of the women involved to be taken more into account but understand it is intended to be only about the men. A need to feel macho may be beyond my comprehension but in presenting his thoughts and feelings so honestly the author offers insight into what can prove toxic concerns. It is an alluring read.