The Hero's Body: A Memoir

by William Giraldi

At just forty-seven years old, William Giraldi’s father was killed in a horrific motorcycle crash while racing on a country road. This tragedy, which forever altered the young Giraldi and devastated his family, provides the pulse for The Hero’s Body. In the tradition of Andre Dubus III’s Townie, this is a deep-seeing investigation into two generations of men from the working-class town of Manville, New Jersey, including Giraldi’s own forays into obsessive bodybuilding as a teenager desperate to be worthy of his family’s pitiless, exacting codes of manhood.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography

288 pages, Hardcover

First published August 8, 2016

About the author

William Giraldi is author of the novels Busy Monsters, Hold the Dark (now a Netflix film), and About Face, the memoir The Hero's Body, and a collection of literary criticism, American Audacity (all published by W.W. Norton). He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and is Master Lecturer in the Writing Program at Boston University.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting book. As others have noted, it is essentially two different books-- one about the author's amateur bodybuilding career, and the other about his father's death while racing motorcycles in the streets-- and they're tied together by thematic elements about masculinity, risk, obsession, etc. But it's not just the content that is different in the two books, it's the style and tone. In book 1, which I preferred, you have pretty traditional memoir, the author himself telling his own story and frequently in action on the page. In book 2, the author is essentially a disembodied voice, ruminating on his father's death, the meanings of loss and grief, of parenthood and what it means to be a son. I don't mean to suggest that the author of a memoir needs to constantly be in action on the page, but he recedes so fully in the second half of this book that it's easy to forget the speaker is even the same person as the anxious boy in the first half. So much time is spent circling back over the same ideas, ruminating on minor language choices in coroner's reports & police reports (I found some of these sections really interesting, and some very skimmable). Tonally, it feels like a different book.

All that said, Giraldi is a really skilled and smart writer, and he seamlessly moves in some spots between references to classic literature and his grueling workout regimen. He writes in clear, crisp prose that carried me along very quickly. I just lost a lot of momentum about 2/3 of the way through.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had many facets -- it is the story of a young man growing up, raised by a single dad trying to do the best he could with 3 kids, the influence of grandparents, the obligation to live up to each generation's standards, the value of education, the pull and drive of body building, the struggle of a father trying to be like his father. The book held my interest and I thank the author for introducing us to his father, a hero in his son's eyes.

[Rural Soul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I brought this book for my work recess as I didn't have anything else in Urdu to read. I had enjoyed movie based on his novel, 'Hold The Dark'. Though it stayed behind in depth from original novel of William Giraldi. I saw His autobiography and I wanted to read it rather than his novels.
This book is a bit similar to Andre Dubus autobiography 'Townie'. Just like Dubus, Giraldi was son of a aspiring writer. Both of them were raised by partially single parents, both were third Dubus, Giraldi of their generation. both were hooked on bodybuilding, both wanted to be writer and both belonged to small towns from where escaping is a success itself.

The book mainly focuses two essential aspects of His life. First the bodybuilding and second His father's motorcycle accident. His family had tradition of Bodybuilding and Bike riding since his grandfather returned from Korean War. However His love for literature won this contest and He was first to denounce his family occupation as Builder/Carpenter.
The book sometimes feels dull because of subject being dragged longer than it should had been. However the silent and distant love He had for his father certainly will wet your eyes as it did mine. This man has a talent for quoting exact pieces of literature as philosophy of debunking life. The way age gathers small memories to highlight how our parents mould us into what we eventually become.
He remembers the day when His mother left them and His father had reminded him in kitchen that "Your mother left us but I will always be your father". The way they both had burnt the love letters of the women whom they loved separately to remind him that "These were just words". This book will remain in my memories more than I had anticipated.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

My take: http://artsfuse.org/152054/book-revie...

[Gunnar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Re-reviewing since I put a review on the wrong edition.

We used this book in college as a way to study “Masculinity in literature” and how it plays into writing. Yep, defiantly chose the right book for it…

For the first quarter of the book, it’s pretty much just the narrator going through his workout routine. How much he lifts, how heavy he lifts, etc. I’m not sure if the mention of this is ego-driven, or just to set the tone for the book, but either way I had no interest in continuing as I found it very dull. I’m sure the narrative likely changes…eventually, but honestly it wasn’t worth sticking around for.

I just found the book dull and boring.

This isn’t a jab at the author, it’s a jab at the book.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dual memoir

The first half of the book is about the author's experience of bodybuilding. Knowing several, abet a generation younger, it rings true to the stories I've been told. Especially the sections on competing. The second half deals with the death of his father in an accident. It's a compelling narrative as he works with his grief and what it means to be a man a father and a friend. I'm not so sure the two sections will have the same audience but I found them interesting.

[Michael Hoffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hero's Body

Journey into bodybuilding as a teen and experiencing the death of his father some years later? Where are the heros? Bodybuilders have muscles; Superman has muscles; Superman is a her so bodybuilders are heros. I get that .

But your father dying at an early age in a motorcycle accident, where is the hero? It becomes very apparent in this literary disection of the machismo culture in which Giraldi was raised.

A touching and moving homage to coming of age and if a father' love and love of a father. All done in an excellent literary style.

[Joie Liu · Rating 1 out of 5]

"My dorm that summer turned into a sexual UN that was as fulfilling, as loving, as anything I'd experienced at the Edge: Japanese and Koreans, Germans and Danes, Brazilians and Turks, most of them dazzling talkers and virtuoso smokers who sated my lungs with Lucky Strikes, all of them gloriously unlike anyone I'd known in Jersey or Carolina"

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essentially two stories in one: life as a young bodybuilder and the experience of losing the single father who raised you. The writing is very good.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thinking about reading. Motorcycles on the cover got me interested, but ehhhh. The book is about weightlifting I think.

[Michael Snyder · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is distinctly set in two parts. They may as well be two separate books. Giraldi is a fantastic writer, and you can tell he chooses he words with surgical precision, especially in the first book. I liked the first part much more than the second. Unfortunately, the second became less and less crisp as it went on. I don't agree with some people saying it seemed like streams of consciousness, but I see where they are coming from. Either way, Giraldi is a talented writer, and I will pick up his next book without hesitation.

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Giraldi is a great writer, a great moralist. His first novel blew me away a few years ago, but I soon learned that there was much more to him than the outlandish comedy found there. I always look forward to his essays, articles, and reviews. All year I have been eagerly anticipating this book, so it is with a slight sadness that I find it to be his least significant work. He tells the deeply felt personal story of his family and its machismo dynamic through his teenaged obssesion with bodybuilding, and his father's recklessness on motorcycles that led to his death. Perhaps a better account of the sort of obsessive compulsive behaviour Giraldi seems no stranger to can be found in an article he wrote recounting his fanatiscm for pop musical group The White Stripes. This book is so personal, with few universal "life lessons." In fact Giraldi seems conflicted about what can be learned from the experiences he recounts: he is willing to hold his father to account for causing his own death by partaking in a dangerous sport, yet dismisses concern for, and fetishizes, the life threatening anabolic steroid drug habit he had as a teen bodybuilder. Anyways, we all do stupid sh*t when we're young - the hope being that we learn not to repeat it and/or teach the younger generation how to avoid our mistakes. But in the bodybuilding sections it really feels like perhaps Giraldi is writing for that audience and doesn't want them to think he wasn't hot stuff then & hasn't wimped out and gone totally straight now. Giraldi is usually a very concise writer and throughout the book it gets bagged down with just too much extraneous material - pages 85 through 90 are particularly bad.
It is interesting to read about how Giraldi began to be moved to take up writing. He mentions writing two early novels during that time that got shelved. I can see that this book, and dealing with the grief for his father, was something he had to get out; but perhaps that shelf is also where this belonged - something to be found later by his sons when they are older and not put out for general consumption. I think Giraldi has better books in him, and I look forward to reading them in the future.

[Marge · Rating 1 out of 5]

I keep getting sucked in by these memoirs but I just read the review in the paper and there this one was in the library, all shiny and new - not my fault. Skipped a lot as it felt like he was just trying to prove he got an education somewhere along the line and wasn't a total loser like the rest of the family.

[Sanjiv · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a very well written, thoughtful memoir. I enjoyed the body building content and the motorcycle passion. The story was more about the family dynamic, but that was a little lost on me.