Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by kylegarvey
Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle by Jody Rosen
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
3.0
Jody Rosen's Two Wheels Good, his capsule of bicycle life, is most powerful to me when it's embracing big philosophy rather than persisting in small-scale journalism. Wouldn't you agree? I guess I kind of appreciate when he's remembering with nostalgia being a teen bike messenger: "I’m sure that bike riding made me more confident in these misapprehensions, a more self-possessed dolt. It definitely calmed me down and bucked me up. I could get on my bike in a fog of neurosis and dismount a while later feeling all right -- brave enough, at least, to pick up a phone and call a girl" (384). But often I personally don't relate. Lmao, ya goof!
I appreciate, but I'm not thrilled by, new terms Rosen takes -- like 'equilibrium' when he's meeting the Scottish guy Danny MacAskill early on or 'cycleur' (a combo of cycle and flaneur) when he's recalling Mexican-born writer Valeria Luiselli, now a New Yorker like him, later. And I like it when the author takes it upon himself to begin trying out some musing: "The connection we make between cycling and flying is metaphorical. You might even call it spiritual: an expression of the powerful feelings of freedom and exhilaration we experience when we ride bikes. But it is also a response to a physical fact. If cyclists imagine themselves to be flying, it is because, in a sense, they are. / When you ride a bicycle, you’re airborne. The wheels that spin beneath you slip a continuous band of compressed air between the bike and the road, holding you aloft" (24). At the end, though, we can turn again to what is less sympathetic: "City officials ascribe the problem, vaguely, to vandalism and theft. Alcohol surely plays a role, and there could well be a kind of ecosystem at work: a bicycle is pulled from the canal and recycled into a beer can, whose contents are guzzled by an Amsterdammer, who, weaving home at the end of a dissipated night, spots a bicycle and is seized by an impulse to hurl the thing" (424).
Digestible history we have sometimes. "As decades passed and successive bicycle crazes gripped Europe and the United States, momentous transformations were ascribed to bikes. The bicycle was praised as a class leveler, a cleanser of bodies, a liberator of spirits, a freer of minds" (27). We get some odd digressions, like Frank Sinatra had a brother Ray who did some bike stuff. "Ray Sinatra—the elder second cousin of Frank—led a 'cycling orchestra' whose sixteen members performed while straddling gleaming Silver King cruisers. In the mid-1930s, Sinatra and his band landed a radio show, Cycling the Kilocycles, broadcast weekly on NBC—not the ideal medium, perhaps, for a bicycle orchestra. Presumably listeners took the whole bike thing on faith" (188). Lol.
But really I suppose, comforting snatches of quotes seem like what we read things like this for! Hypothetically. In general. "To see that wheel turning was very soothing, very comforting,' Duchamp said. 'I enjoyed looking at it, just as I enjoy looking at the flames dancing in a fireplace" (95); or "In 1896, H. G. Wells wrote about the way a cyclist keeps biking through the night: 'A memory of motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and round they seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream bicycles that change and grow'" (412). We might see in these pessimism or optimism really: "enormous agglomerations. These places have been called 'bicycle graveyards,' but in overhead photos and videos captured by drone, they often look more like fields of flowers: the bright yellow and orange and pink hues of the bike frames stretch out for acres, like a lurid carpet laid over the land" (429); and "On a 2010 episode of a popular TV dating show, If You Are the One, a twenty-year-old contestant was asked by a suitor to go for a bicycle ride on a date. Her response became a much-memed viral catchphrase. 'I’d rather cry in a BMW,' she said, 'than smile on a bicycle'" (458). Lol again!
For tourism? It can be a little dreary honestly. "Longyearbyen is known as the world’s northernmost town, the only settlement at its latitude with a permanent population of over one thousand. The place is also a tourist destination. Visitors come to soak up the stark Arctic beauty, to hike, to go snowmobiling, to take dogsled rides, to view the northern lights. Hardier eco-tourists camp overnight in ice caves. I stayed on Spitsbergen for a week several winters ago. I arrived in mid-February, the waning period of the polar night, when the sun was beginning to appear above the horizon for the first time in months" (234); and then "Bhutan’s national animal, a stocky ungulate called the takin, which looks a bit like a goat that’s been doing a lot of barbell work at the gym" (249); and much later, in a totally different setting, "In fact, it’s inaccurate to speak of “China’s bicycle culture,” as if it’s monolithic, or even comprehensible. There are only bicycle cultures, plural—too many of them to inventory or to wrestle into a grand unified theory. For some young people in Beijing, the appeal of the bicycle is that it is subcultural: something they’re into that’s a little bit weird and niche" (487).
And to Dhaka we can go. "Dhaka’s drivers may be the most aggressive on earth. They may also be some of the best, if your idea of skillful driving is expansive enough to include the lawlessness that Dhaka demands" (336); "To the extent that Dhaka can be said to function at all, it is propelled by pedal power. When people or things travel from point A to point B in Dhaka—when a university student or a dozen two-hundred-pound sacks of rice make it through the gridlock and arrive at their destinations—you will usually find a man bent over the handlebars of a cycle rickshaw, hauling the load" (339) [tempting racism a tiny bit, no?]; "Today it is a maze of roads and alleyways that wend along the northern banks of the Buriganga River. The area retains a medieval flavor: bustling marketplaces, wafting scents of chilies and fish and raw meat, pedestrians everywhere darting and yelling, clanging sounds from storefront workshops" (353). Yeah?
And even "His bursts of aggression are tactical and professional. Once, in central Dhaka, we found ourselves in a frustrating jam, marooned for several minutes in an unmoving column on a side street called Garden Road. At last, the jam dissolved and wheels began to roll, but the rickshaw directly in front of us remained motionless. This would not do. So Badshah bulldozed forward, ramming his front wheel" (355). But then, we visit a prof and Rosen can quote him: "Islam said: 'I think this also explains the images of planes. That’s the highest level of transport, isn’t it? In the mind of the rickshaw puller, maybe, that represents a different kind of fantasy. It is an aspiration, a dream of the future. If I do this backbreaking work—if I pull this rickshaw in this unyielding, insane city—perhaps then someday my children will fly in that plane" (377). The most meaningful bit a quote that goes un-analyzed? No, won't do.