Overview

In the late eighties, Sven Lindqvist fell into conversation with an evangelical bodybuilder while relaxing in the sauna after his weekly swim. Their conversation challenged Lindqvist's view of the sport as macho, vain and individualistic, and led to his first attendance at the local gym. In Bench Press, Lindqvist takes us through his own journey in the gym, but in the process also recounts the entertaining and bizarre history of bodybuilding. He meditates on what its increased popularity tells us about contemporary society, quoting from Arnold Schwarzenegger and other illuminating sources. The book is classic Lindqvist - written in a pared-down, poetic style, it is an intoxicating blend of philosophical and political insight, emotion and strange, forgotten corners of history.

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9781862075726

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Reviews

Sven Lindqvist is one of the most original and imaginative authors working today.

Robert Morley used to say that his idea of hell consisted of a vast gymnasium in which he was destined to exercise for all eternity, but in this unusual autobiographical essay Swedish writer Sven Lindqvist expresses the idea of the gymnasium as heaven. Rather than revealing a gymnasium as a body-building mecca for sweaty, grunting, vain and individualistic young men, his first experience, in middle age, launched an odyssey of discovery, not only of the muscles and sinews buried deep within his then flabby flesh, but of the history of body-building itself. Having researched numerous books about the subject, from the ancient Greeks and Romans, through the Taoists of China, to Yukio Mishima and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lindqvist provides a wealth of quotes and anecdotes, as well as a variety of recipes for achieving the aesthetic goal of a perfect body. He refers, for example, to the novelist Charles Kingsley, who preached a form of 'Muscular Christianity', claiming that an intimate relationship exists between muscles and morality. The book also includes a history of weights, with drawn illustrations of simple bar-bells and dumb-bells, and more sophisticated gymnastic contraptions used throughout the ages, some of which would surely have instilled terror into Robert Morley. Furthermore he reveals that body-building enables him to recall personal childhood dreams both of deep-sea diving and travelling in the Sahara. Above all, Lindqvist beautifully conveys the sheer exhilaration he derives from lifting weights - the 'pump', feeling blood coursing through the veins while the skin becomes tautly stretched over muscles expanding to new dimensions, is claimed by many body-builders to be more pleasurable than orgasm. Although the book failed to send this reader scurrying down the road to his local gym, it's a highly enjoyable read, particularly the philosophical musings and poetic reveries of adventure that punctuate Lindqvist's factual and personal information. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Sven Lindqvist was born in 1932 in Stockholm, where he still lives. He has travelled extensively throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, and is the author of some thirty books, including the highly acclaimed Desert Divers, which was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph 2001 Travel Book Award, 'Exterminate All The Brutes' and A History of Bombing.

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