Overview

In January 2012, creative writing professor and novelist Kyle Beachy published one of his first essays on skate culture, an exploration of how Nike's corporate strategy successfully gutted the once-mighty independent skate shoe market. Beachy has since established himself as skate culture's freshest, most illuminating, at times most controversial voice, writing candidly about the increasingly popular and fast-changing pastime he first picked up as a young boy and has continued to practice well into adulthood. What is skateboarding? What does it mean to continue skateboarding after the age of forty, four decades after the kickflip was invented? How does one live authentically as an adult while staying true to a passion cemented in childhood? How does skateboarding shape one's understanding of contemporary American life? Of growing old and getting married? Contemplating these questions and more, Beachy offers a deep exploration of a pastime-often overlooked, regularly maligned-whose seeming simplicity conceals universal truths. THE MOST FUN THING is both a rich account of a hobby and a collection of the lessons skateboarding has taught Beachy-and what it continues to teach him as he struggles to find space for it as an adult, a professor, and a husband.

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9781538754115

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Reviews

In THE MOST FUN THING, Kyle Beachy assembles critique, philosophy, anecdote, personal history and imagination, while being shrewd, witty, provocative and--above all--hugely engaging. This is new favorite book on skateboarding.--Iain Borden, author of Skateboarding and the City: A Complete History

A serious literary work about skateboarding might provoke a certain skepticism. I wondered. But as soon as I started reading, I saw that, as with fly-fishing, surfing and other 'pastimes, ' the surface action has its underlying personal metaphysics, and its access to past times. Kyle Beachy explores his obsession with sinuous and reflective prose and shows us just how it matters. --Sven Birkerts, author of The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again Reading The Most Fun Thing is the most fun thing that this reader has done in months. Kyle Beachy knows his skateboarding, but has even more to say about urban design, literary theory, marriage, the struggle for selfhood, the long-overdue exorcism of skate culture's misogyny and bigotry, and the eternal knife fight between capitalism and community. With an omnivorous and probing intelligence, Beachy views our tattered world through the scratched fish-eye lens of a skateboarder, and finds jewels of truth hidden everywhere he looks. --Michael Christie, author of Greenwood and If I Fall, If I Die In THE MOST FUN THING, Kyle Beachy assembles critique, philosophy, anecdote, personal history and imagination, while being shrewd, witty, provocative and--above all--hugely engaging. This is my new favorite book on skateboarding. --Iain Borden, author of Skateboarding and the City: A Complete History As readable as a skate mag and as complex as the best fiction, THE MOST FUN THING imbricates themes of meaning, community, and the soul, and will leave you marveling at skateboarding's mystery and hopeful for its future. A book as much for the skateboarder as the artist and the writer, the thinker, the feeler. --Mark Suciu, professional skateboarder Skateboarding is not only the most fun thing, it is also a way of seeing the world. In telling his own story, Beachy reflects on the history of this counter-culture-turned-mainstream-culture, and shows how it shapes the fundamental aspects of life, one's approach to work and relationships, even changes the feeling of being in one's own skin. No one has captured this better than Beachy. A great read. --Ocean Howell, author of Making the Mission: Planning and Ethnicity in San Francisco

As readable as a skate mag and as complex as the best fiction, THE MOST FUN THING imbricates themes of meaning, community, and the soul, and will leave you marveling at skateboarding's mystery and hopeful for its future. A book as much for the skateboarder as the artist and the writer, the thinker, the feeler. --Mark Suciu, professional skateboarder In THE MOST FUN THING, Kyle Beachy assembles critique, philosophy, anecdote, personal history and imagination, while being shrewd, witty, provocative and--above all--hugely engaging. This is my new favorite book on skateboarding.--Iain Borden, author of Skateboarding and the City: A Complete History

Author Information

Kyle Beachy's first novel, The Slide (Dial Press, 2009), won The Chicago Reader's Best Book by a Chicago Author reader's choice award for the year. His short fiction has appeared in journals including Fanzine, Pank, Hobart, Juked, The Collagist, 5 Chapters, and others. His writing on skateboarding has appeared in The Point, The American Reader, The Chicagoan, Free Skateboard Magazine (UK & Europe), The Skateboard Mag (US), Jenkem, Deadspin, and The Classical. He teaches at Roosevelt University in Chicago and is a co-host on the skateboarding podcast Vent City with pro skater Ryan Lay and others.

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