I finally followed Phil’s advice and read The Rider, the 1978 cult classic by Tim Krabbé. It lived up to the hype. The book is the story of a minor-league bicycle race, as told by one of its participants, a journalist and amateur road racer. It’s pretty much a perfect book in form and content.
I want to say that The Rider belongs on a shelf of classic short nonfiction books, along with A Little Book About a Big Memory by A. R. Luria, How Animals Work by Knut Schmidt-Nielsen, The Origins of the Second World War by A. J. P. Taylor, Total Poker by David Spanier, and . . . hmmm, there aren’t really so many classic short nonfiction books really, are there?
In this interview, Krabbé characterizes The Rider as “a novel” but also as “90 to 95 percent real.” I wonder if he went back over the course while writing the book so as to jog his memory and help him get the details right.
I kinda wish Krabbé had gone to the trouble to make the book 100% real. It’s not clear to me what’s the missing 5 to 10%. Is he just saying his recollection is imperfect so there will be inevitable mistakes? Or did he change the names or combine some racers into composite characters? Did he reorder some events to make a better story? Did he just make up some stories entirely? The book is great, so I’m in no position to question Krabbé’s judgment in introducing fiction to his story. But if it’s 90 to 95% real, couldn’t he have written a short appendix telling us where the made-up stuff was? I feel that would increase my appreciation of the book. Krabbé has no obligation to do anything like that; I just think it would make this great book even better.
I highly recommend his novella The Vanishing (1984). The 1988 movie is a Dutch classic. As a statistician, I think you will really appreciate the story, also from an “N = 1” perspective.
Wow, this book seems to be quite unavailable. $60 cheapest version I found lol
You could try reading the original in Dutch!
Haha — learning Dutch is even less available. There was a version on internet archive. Read it in one sitting at dinner yesterday. Creepy!
It’s been made into two movies. The Dutch movie is excellent and captures most all of the novel.
The American movie is . . . Hollywood, and I cannot recommend it, despite the presence of Jeff Bridges. A very different ending which, I think, eviscerates all of the power of the novel/Dutch version.
Adding a link to the trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8PrhDPU-VU
I thought of a few books to nominate as classic short nonfiction, but then looked them up and realized they are not short (just condensed in memory I guess). Interesting category.
Kyle:
It’s funny. The Origins of the Second World War is 300 pages in my paperback edition, but it’s a little book and it seems short somehow. But lots and lots of classic nonfiction books are less than 300 pages. Just for example, all three of Orwell’s classics—Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier, and Homage to Catalonia—are short, by that measure.
I think that books in general used to be shorter than they are now, maybe because now they are so expensive that publishers puff them out so that readers will feel they are getting more value for their money. One reason The Rider feels short is that it is short, but also it’s relatively recent and it’s published in a format where the publisher would usually make it larger in some way.
Andrew:
I suppose Orwell is his own category.
If 300 pages fits, Eclipse by Alan Moorehead comes to mind.
As well as being a competitive cyclist and a writer he’s also a very strong chess player – 2290 at his peak.
I would propose that any list of classic short nonfiction books must include John Hersey’s Hiroshima.
(Perhaps it gets classified as a magazine story rather than a book, but these days readers are far more likely to encounter it in book form. And we call Dickens’ serialized stories books these days, too!)
You were asking for blog suggestions/recommendations before. Strangely, while these types of posts are not the reason I come to the blog, I find them really useful. I will probably buy this book for my father and brother, who are keen cyclists, and the other book recommendations will go on my list. Because of knowing some of the ways you think from the blog, the recommendations of things that you like are very informative!
I haven’t read it in a long time, but I remember it being pretty realistic (though a bit outdated for modern racing). I need to read it again. Actually, it is probably more interesting since it was written in the 70s, because if I remember correctly, he provides a lot of descriptions of the sensations of racing, which were very important for guiding pacing and strategy back then, particularly on long climbs. Now days, it is much more clinical because everyone has a power meter on the bike that provides real-time power output in watts, so each rider shoots for a particular output (or at least not above a certain number because they know they will crack). The head units even have GPS maps so that riders can see the corners ahead on twisty descents. So it’s less romantic and more data driven, today. Although obviously one still has to suffer through everything as before. (ps I have ridden many an elite amateur (Category 1) road bicycle race)
This looks pretty good — page 1 “You can tell god riders by their faces, bad riders by their faces too — but that only goes for riders you already know”
Thanks for the recommendation of “The Rider.” Have you read anything by John McPhee? Most of what he writes is short nonfiction, and it’s great. The first book of his that I read was “Oranges,” and I was hooked.
I have often said that everything short by McPhee is good, and everything long by McPhee is far, far too long.
It’s a wonderful book, glad you liked it, and kind of random for a non-cyclist to read it (though maybe you are a cyclist and just never blog about it). I think you might be making a genre error in wanting him to identify which parts of the story are “real” and which are “made up.” It just always seemed to me part of that class of book that intentionally messes with our assumption that such a distinction is easy to make. (I’m thinking also of a lot of WG Sebald’s books.)
A lot of the book is stories he’s thinking about as he rides his bike, but we’re not even sure which of those stories are true, like the one about the racer who seduced a spectator by looking at her each lap.
Oops, I must have hit the wrong key and accidentally posted the first paragraph of my comment – but didn’t realize anything had posted so went on to rewrite it (below).
Oh wow, a wonderful book and glad you enjoyed it – it’s surprising to hear anyone but a cyclist talk about it (though maybe you are a cyclist, and just never blog about it). Though I think you’re making a category error by asking Krabbe to clarify which parts are “real” and which are “made up.” It’s one of many books that play with the idea that we can divide things so clearly – I’m thinking of WG Sebald especially.
So much of it is about the main character’s internal mental state; that’s just something that’s inherently averse to characterizing along a real/made-up axis. A long distance bicycle race puts you in a weird place: you’re trying to stay focused, but your mind is wandering. The book captures this so well. When he’s thinking of stories of past races, we’re not even sure which of those are true and which are legends. Take the one where a criterium racer seduces a spectator by giving her the eyes each lap. It’s a great story but also ridiculous; could that really happen? And in the dramatic moments of tense racing, is he really keeping track of every movement, every attack, every gear change? It’s hard enough to cognize what’s happening at the time in a bike race, let alone remember and chronicle it afterwards.
There’s no record of when he ate which figs or orange slices. It’s not like a memoir in which an author has his diary to hand, with contemporaneous records of what happened and what he thought (and even those aren’t “really” what happened either). And it’s definitely a better story for him coming in second to that kid.
Krabbé has said that he altered several elements to make the story better. He said in real life there were “two Reilhans”, not meaning two people named Reilhan but meaning there were two guys with good sprints who wouldn’t do their share of the work in a breakaway. I don’t recall whether they both beat Krabbé. In a quick search, I can’t find the piece by Krabbé where he mentions that, plus several other things that didn’t quite go the same way. Indeed, I’m not even sure the route that is described in the book is the route of the race that he fictionalized. I had no doubts about that until I read this piece that says there’s no such race as the Tour du Mont Aigoual! https://www.445cyclingtours.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/The-Rider_final.pdf
In any event, I think of this book as being something like Tony Randall’s excellent book “Which Reminds Me”: it contains elements that are mostly true, elements that are mostly fiction, and elements that are a mixture of both, and in most cases there’s no way to tell which is which.
Phil:
Yeah, when writing the above post I was thinking about the Tony Randall book, in particular our wish that he’d improved the book by putting an asterisk in the margin to flag the stories that were true. My favorite was the story of David Niven’s fair-mindedness.
I have told that Niven story many times.
David:
Of course I’m a cyclist! Just for example, see here. Biking does come up on the blog from time to time.
I read The Rider in 2010, a few months before a planned trip to visit Andrew, who was on sabbatical in Paris. I loooved the book and thought the course and scenery sounded interesting, so I decided that after visiting Andrew I would go south to the Massif Central, rent a bike, and ride the route of the race.
Unfortunately, two months before my trip I hurt my Achilles tendon and could neither run nor bike for weeks. I had been in pretty decent shape but lost fitness rapidly and was far below peak condition when I left for Paris, having only been able to do a couple of rides in the Berkeley hills to confirm that my Achilles was healed enough and, unfortunately, to confirm that I really had lost a lot of fitness. Even though it was too late to really make a difference, while I was in Paris I borrowed Andrew’s folding bike a couple of times and went out for training rides. I rode to Bois de Vincennes and rode around for a while trying to find a good route to do some fast laps, and came across a group of riders doing lap after lap on some straight roads that had no car traffic. Being on a folding bike with relatively fat tires put me at a significant disadvantage, but I found that I could just hang on at the back of the pack, so I rode with them for five or six laps. At one point on the course, every lap, a crow would fly out of the trees and match our speed, soaring along a half meter over our heads, until one of the riders reached into the pocket of his jersey, pulled out a fragment of bread, and held it out for the crow to snatch. You can see a photo at https://www.creekcats.com/pnprice/Images/crow_bike.jpeg
After leaving that group (still riding laps), I started back to Andrew’s place, but then noticed a sign pointing to Vélodrome Jacques Anquetil. Irresistible. I rode over to the velodrome. Here’s a photo of me giving it all I had on Andrew’s folding bike: https://www.creekcats.com/pnprice/Images/phil_velodrome.jpeg (Huh, quite a coincidence: I am wearing that shirt right now, as I write this!).
A few days later I took the TGV to Avignon, rented a bike and a car, and drove to the start town. I ended up writing up my experience, trying to mimic the style of The Rider (which was written by Tim Krabbé, but I read it in a translation by Sam Garrett, so they both contributed to the style). My write-up is about 1/10 the length of The Rider, and I like to think I attained 1/8 the quality, so by some measure you are coming out ahead.
Just kidding. Everyone should read The Rider. My writeup…maybe read it if you are thinking of doing the ride like I did.
Phil:
Wow on the velodrome photo. I’ve been in that neighborhood many times and saw the sign for the velodrome, but I had no idea it was still in operation and that you could just go by and bike on it.
Also, for anyone who’s following this deep into the thread, here’s your report of your ride. I think you did a good job of writing it in the style of Krabbé’s book. I wish he’s update his chess diary more often. Or make it into a book! But that would be more work.
Eh, you can’t just go by and bike on it, you’re supposed to have some sort of membership. I wasn’t even allowed to do a lap. But the guy did agree that I could just ride a bit of the straightaway, and he took the picture of me.
That photo of the crow is really remarkable. Thanks for sharing all this. And the riders without helmets, which I suppose French riders might still do but nobody in the US does, makes it look a little more vintage than even 2010.
By the way here is the craziest thing happening on bikes right now: https://www.bbc.com/sport/articles/c4ngydm1x55o
I think from was someone commenting on this blog (Phil?) that I learned about The Rider, which I agree is excellent; thank you!
Semi-related: Chris Horner’s YouTube channel, especially daily recaps during the Grand Tours, is a lot of fun.
I was trying to think of other classic short non-fiction, but I realized that my memory of how long or short books are is not very good. I liked Dennet’s “Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting” quite a lot, perhaps enough suggest it be considered “classic,” and according to Goodreads it’s 248 pages.
The Ghost Map
Shadow Divers
The Emerald Mile
A Shot To Save the World
Rocket Men