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The Man Who Loved Bicycles, Daniel Behrman (1973)
Harper's Magazine Press 0-060120350-5 Quarto130pp $6.95
A series of essays an recolections about life and the culture
of cycling as a form of transport by a perceptive US writer, living
in France in the early 1970s
 
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"The bicycle is a vehicle for revolution. It can destroy the tyranny
of the automobile as effectively as the printing press brought down despots
of flesh and blood. The revolution will be spontaneous, the sum total
of individual revolts like my own. It may have already begun." So
writes Behrman, an American scientific writer "existing in Paris
and living in Brittany" in the early 1970s. The book contains far
more than pro-cycling invective, however. It is a catalogue of intelligent
reflections and ruminations on France in that period. He is a fine writer
with moral fibre and an eclectic ear for scientific snippets. The treatise
is laced with personal stories and remissness.
Reading the book today, however, (I read it in around 2004) the book
does throw up some questions. Where did these pieces of writing come from
- they read as though they might have been magazine articles, and who
was Behrman?
That the book itself does not answer them however, does not make it
any less enjoyable a read.
PS May 08
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