Customer Reviews

Major: A Black Athlete, a White Era, and the Fight to Be the World's Fastest Human Being

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

There is nothing wrong with Balf's new book, and for someone not familiar with either Major Taylor or the history of American bicycle racing, it is an interesting, pleasant read. However, it simply is not as good, nor as in-depth, as Andrew Ritchie's previous (and still in print) "Major Taylor: The Extraordinary Life . . ." As good as Ritchie's book is, it, in turn, is still not as good as getting your hands on a copy of Taylor's own autobiography "The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World," either in the original edition at a mind-blowingly expensive cost, or in a current print-on-demand edition at a still irksome cost.

Taylor had an iron will and an unbreakable spirit; was a clean-liver in an era when the average professional was a brawler and a dissipate; he could be a world-class whiner; he was obsessive and paranoid. He called his most bitter rivals bigots and rubes; they shot back that he was a professional scab and a self-rightous sob sister. The truth, of course, was somewhere in the middle. It's hard for both Balf and Ritchie to discuss the less heroic parts of Taylor's personality, but these come out in his own writing. You can learn a lot about Taylor by reading Balf and Ritchie; on the other hand, you can learn OF Taylor only by reading his own words.

I was wandering through the bookstore when this intense yellow cover with a crouched black rider (Marshall "Major" Taylor) caught my eye. I had an idea who Major was -- an early black cyclist -- but had no idea how great and popular he was in his heyday.

The book succeeded for me on several levels. First, Todd Balf has done his historian's work, culling from many sources, including newspapers, period magazines, diaries, etc, to give the reader a deep, balanced view the lost work of 90th century track racing. He begins with the bicycle itself, from its mechanical evolution to its impressive impact on society. Then it is on to racing. I found this world utterly riveting, with such events as the 6 day races in Madison Square Garden, where racers battled one another as well as sleep deprivation over 6 days straight, ending with spectacular crashes, hallucinations, and death, or the match races set against huge grandstands in every major American city, or the speed record attempts where riders would draft behind locomotives or other large machines, often getting crushed in the process. It was a frenetic time, the nexus of Victorian sensibility, the rise of the machine, urbanization, racism, the rise of professional sports.

Out of all this emerges the character of Marshall "Major" Taylor, a black superstar who rises to the pinnacle of the sport. To me Taylor was less interesting than the milieux he was apart of. The author works hard to create a narrative structure of good vs evil, with Taylor on one side and McFarland (his nemesis) and the rest of white America on the other. Although the story is ostensibly true, the author spends too much time stoking this reality for dramatic effect - choosing to make the "Race" issue crackle on every page instead of the issue of the race itself. After a couple of hundred pages Race becomes a shoe the author is beating us over the head with. Also more material should have been drawn from Taylor's autobiography in order to give a richer portrait into the mind of the man. Along this line, after the climax race, the narrative is almost dropped. A gaping hole is left about what Taylor did with the rest of his life after racing.

Overall, the book's strength lies in its vivid depiction of a long-gone era. The climatic race is very cinematic and inspiring. Marshall Taylor emerges as a truly heroic athlete who rightly deserves more notoriety; this books should help remedy his place in the pantheon of sporting legends.

If my comments save at least one person from wasting money and time on this junk, they've been worth the effort. I'd also like to add that I have nothing personal against Todd Balf. I hope he lives to be one hundred and five years old, and is healthy and happy the whole time.

In 1988, Andrew Ritchie published an excellent biography of Marshall "Major" Taylor ("Major Taylor: The Extraordinary Career of a Champion Bicycle Racer"). Ritchie's book is greater than the current book by Todd Balf in every way. It is still in print, and you should buy it instead. It is researched more thoroughly and accurately and is an infinitely superior piece of writing. It also contains more than three times as many photographs than Balf's unnecessary lump of inked-up paper.

Todd Balf's successful career illustrates the depressing state of contemporary publishing. Being a professional writer no longer requires the ability to write, and publishing houses of today don't seem to employ editors. Balf appears to have attended all the social consciousness courses wherever it was he went to college, but he must have skipped out on the English grammar and composition classes (if they had any). His bad writing is so distracting, it makes enjoyment of the book nearly impossible.

Balf is not merely a lousy writer. He also is afflicted with a terrible case of White Man's Guilt. He is fixated on race to the point of repeatedly discussing the tone and texture of Taylor's skin (and the skin of Taylor's wife, Daisy). He imagines pathetic scenes such as Daisy brooding over the eradication of southwest Africans by German settlers in 1904, a tragic but irrelevant event of which we have no way of knowing she was even aware. Nearly every white person mentioned in the book is a loathsome racist, and even the "white picket fence" of suburbia is dragged out as an icon of Caucasian evil. In contrast, Andrew Ritchie, in his well-written 1988 book about Taylor, discusses racism almost as much as Balf, but reports it in a straightforward manner, without Balf's beard-and-glasses university-campus shrillness. Ritchie presents Taylor as a great athlete and a man of strong character who was a victor, while Balf must keep him a victim.

Balf also reaches deep into the fool's bag of specious psychoanalysis, attributing elaborate, unlikely motives to long-dead people he never met. Taylor's purportedly profound reasons for sprinting at the finish of races, the theoretical identity crisis that made him write his father's name as an emergency contact in his pocket notebook, and Floyd McFarland's apparently insidious motives for taking his pet dog along on a trip are among the subjects that are painstakingly dissected with in-depth psychobabble. Is it possible Taylor sprinted to go fast and win races, or that he just wanted a relative called if he had an accident, or that McFarland merely liked having his dog around? Balf can't abide any such simple notions; nothing resembling his pscho-hooey is to be found in Andrew Ritchie's biography of Taylor.

Then there are Balf's awkward similes: "...like the Holy Ghost rushing in to lay a revivalist out cold," (p. 112), and "Blood poured forth like the fountain at Rockefeller Center." (p. 199) are two examples of silly high school freshman-style writing that represent many. It might not be strictly incorrect, but it certainly feels ill-fitting to read a simile comparing a man's bleeding to death in 1902 to a structure that didn't exist until 1934.

Finally, there is Balf's ridiculous discussion of the 2002 Little 500 bicycle race at Indiana University as an illustration of contemporary racism comparable to what Taylor faced a century earlier. The 2002 protests were over two issues. The first was that Team Major Taylor (TMT) was included in the event without having to go through the same qualifying races as all of the other teams, while a team that had properly qualified was excluded to make room for them. The second was that it was believed one of TMT's riders had previously raced as a professional, which is against Little 500 rules. Balf ignores all of this, and states that the other teams protested because TMT was made up of black riders. The fact that there have been no protests in subsequent years, when TMT has gone through the proper qualifying procedures and has only had riders with unquestionable amateur credentials, proves that Balf has chosen an empty example.

There are those who will disagree with me about what I have discussed above. Many people today share Todd Balf's peculiar type of social and racial obsessions, and might even enjoy a dumb metaphor or simile (or ten or twenty). Well, that's all subjective. They're welcome to believe whatever they can swallow, and can hate me all they want; I'll manage without their love. But then there are his egregious errors of grammar, word usage, logic, and facts--bad writing that cannot be supported objectively and for which there is no excuse. I have listed several examples below for the entertainment of casual readers who haven't yet imploded with PC righteousness, and for the convenience of anyone at Crown Publishers who might want to make corrections for the unfortunately unavoidable paperback edition.

"J.K. Starling" [The 19th century bicycle innovator's name was Starley.] (p. 20)

"In 1860, oil was discovered in Wirt County. It was the same year Fort Sumter was occupied by Union troops..." [Fort Sumter was a Union fort. It was occupied by Confederate troops, in 1861.] (p. 35)

"But it was more than just his Amazonian size..." [The noun Amazon and adjective Amazonian refer to mythical females.] (p. 64)

"Harry Sanger" [The inventor of a shaft-driven bicycle was Sager.] (p. 107)

"Taylor had a 23-pound bike and a 108-gear inch sprocket" [This refers to the Sager, a shaft-driven bicycle. Shaft-driven bicycles do not have sprockets.] (p. 107)

"He dashed off a letter to the Stanley brothers in Boston and anxiously awaited their reply [in 1898]. The evolving appliance would run through a host of names, but motorcycle would eventually stick." [Motorcycles had existed since the 1860s. The first motorcycles available for purchase by the public were sold in 1894. The word "motorcycle" was in use at least as early as 1896.] (p. 110)

"At season's end, McFarland would have strode aboard a westbound train ... Out of the window, he would have seen sights hurdling toward him that only a few years earlier were the province of explorers--the Holy Cross Wilderness in Colorado, the rushing Yellowstone River, and the soaring big walls at Yosemite." [Hurtling, not "hurdling". And I don't know about Holy Cross or the Yellowstone, but "the soaring big walls at Yosemite" have never been seen from any train window.] (p. 131)

"Taylor's heroics at Philadelphia had whetted the appetite for more speed-busting efforts--people wanted to know where the barrier lie." [lay, not "lie"] (pp. 132-133)

"It was circular, not oval like other tracks ... `Now spurt,' cried Munger, as they approached the final turn." [If the track was a circle, there was no "final turn."] (pp. 139-140)

"He was proud of his star turn and seemed to enjoy the experience, sharing the stage with Parisian chartreuses..." [Chanteuses. Chartreuse is a color.] (p. 162)

"Daisy Morris' adult life..." [incorrect form of possessive] (p. 164)

"...Daisy Morris's home." [correct form of possessive--a gold star for Todd!] (p. 165)

"She grew up in a small rented wood frame with her widowed grandmother..." [They lived in a frame?] (p. 165)

"...the covetous camera lens fixing on his body..." [The lens was covetous? Since the photos show Taylor from head to foot, how can we know the (covetous) lens was fixed on his body?] (p. 173)

"In the second heat Taylor took a different tact and led on the final straightaway..." [Taylor was a polite fellow, but this should be tack, not "tact".] (p. 175)

"A French newspaperman noted that it had discovered that Taylor's mother..." [It? Was the reporter a robot?] (p. 179)

[Concerning a voyage from San Francisco to Sydney] "He had 15,000 nautical miles to wonder if he'd be welcomed or chased away." [The distance is about 6,400 nautical miles.] (p. 205)

"...the native Aborigines..." [redundant] (p. 206)

"...sank ships and blew homes into a boiling Tasmanian sea." [Tasman Sea] (p. 208)

"...Taylor was already on his short sprinting form and blasting by others as if standing still..." [Sounds like Taylor was standing still. Hard to do if he was "blasting by."] (pp. 208-209)

[In a discussion of sports events of 1903] "Basketball seeded itself [bizarre metaphor] in Springfield, Massachusetts, and found a home in hundreds of newly-built YMCA gymnasiums." [Basketball was invented at the YMCA gymnasium at Springfield in 1891.] (p. 218)

"In yet another fiery immolation, Elkes died instantly." [Fiery? The crash was caused by a flat tire.] (p. 218)

[Referring again to the distance between Australia and the United States] "Taylor and McFarland were some 15,000 miles from where it had started." [From San Francisco, their departure point in the U.S., it's less than half that far.] (p. 233)

"Taylor went straight to the track and prepared for the evening races ... Normally Daisy would've sat in the shade of the classically carved, arched grandstand, out of the brutal southern Australian sun..." [Brutal sun in the evening?] (pp. 236-237)

"Lance Armstrong, who was ushered into the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame the same year that Taylor was, in 1996..." [The USBHOF official website indicates Taylor was inducted in 1989, not 1996. As of June 2008 Armstrong had not yet been inducted. These facts were confirmed during a personal communication with Vincent Menci, curator of the USBHOF, on June 2, 2008.] (p. 249)

"Billy Brady didn't die, but became William A. Brady..." [He is now 145 years old.] (p. 250)

"The populous social movements that rose during the Gilded Age...[populist, not "populous"] (p. 277)

[In a discussion of races held in the year 1900] "The Madison Square Garden Six-Day that closed the millennium..." [Astoundingly, Balf demonstrates that he doesn't know the difference between a century and a millennium.] (p. 282)

"...and finally, thanks to my editor, Kristin Kiser, who in spite of all the things, personal and professional, that occupied her time, she managed to make me feel that this was a project she was going to see through and not let up on." [In this tormented sentence near the end, Balf reveals that he has an imaginary friend; after reading this mess of a book, I can't believe Ms. Kiser really exists. If she does, I'm available to show her how to edit the second printing, if there has to be one. My fee would be reasonable.] (p. 293)

I recently began riding with a Major Taylor bike club in Milwaukee. Like most people I had never heard of Major Taylor, and, indeed, had no clue about the brief period in the late 19th and early 20th century when bike racing ruled the world of professional sports.

I picked up this book hoping to be illuminated about the man Major Taylor and the period in which he lived and raced. Unfortunately, the book's sloppy writing severely detracted from the story it was aiming to tell. The job of an author is to tell a story in a convincing manner that draws the reader in. This book is full of awkward similes, bad grammer and questionable historical references. It is full of pop-psychology speculation and bold departures from established historical fact into the realm of what can only be described as fantasy.

Major Taylor died a forgotten man, but his legacy is being renewed 100 years after his departure from the world stage. His is a story that deserves to be retold. I would not recommend this book to those with an interest in Major Taylor due to the author's sloppy handling of the subject matter.

I read (and still own) the Andrew Ritchie book on Taylor and wondered what Todd Balf would have to add? I have to admit I've often not liked some of his magazine articles but whether I've changed since then or he's become a much better writer is open to question. I think he's become a better writer. I remember reading Ritchie's book like a textbook. I felt I needed to read it, but rarely was it enjoyable. Balf's on the other hand (even though I already knew the basic story) was hard to put down. I'm sure I'll read it again. If you want a definitive "textbook" on Major Taylor, Andrew Ritchie's your author. If you're looking for an enjoyable book about Major Taylor, it's Todd Balf's by a bike-length...or two!

I really enjoyed this book. Major Taylor was the first black sports superstar and he became one in the 1890s. He was admired by his contemporaries like Jack Johnson (first black heavyweight boxing champ). Unlike the other reviewer who apparently just wanted to read a ride report of one of Major's come from behind victories, I liked learning about the other great cyclists of the era, as well as the trainers and promoters.

I was amazed at how modern Major's training regimen was, and at how fast he could ride the bike (not far off today's records). It was also interesting to learn that cycling was perhaps the biggest sport in America for a decade, with 100,000 people seeing a race in New York, for example. Of course, he was riding at a time of unbelievable racism, a time when hundreds of African Americans were being lynched in the South.

Painstakingly researched, the author was able to give the reader a glimpse of life 100+ years ago, and was even able to interview Major's daughter Sydney, who died in 2005 at the age of 101.

Fantastic book of American history and early cycling lore.

Todd Balf's book is ostensibly a 'definitive biography', yet is laden with errors, and some things simply appear to be made up. Here are a few quick samples from just a few pages about his Australian tours, and I could list several times this many from the same pages.

Page 205. Re Taylor's 1902 trip from San Francisco to Sydney. Balf wrote that Taylor. `... had 15,000 nautical miles to wonder if he'd be welcomed or chased away.'
The great circle distance from San Francisco to Sydney is just under 6,500 nautical miles, not 15,000.

Page 233. In discussing Taylor and MacFarland facing off in Adelaide, and contrasting it to where their rivalry had begun (presumably the eastern U.S.), Balf writes: `Taylor and MacFarland were some 15,000 miles from where it had started.'
Not true. Adelaide to New York City is 10,600 miles.

Page 206. Re Sydney Harbour: Balf notes that although Capt James Cook saw the headlands at the entrance to Sydney Harbour in 1770, `... the Harbor would be discovered a few decades later...'
Not true. It was discovered just 18 years later. As plural, decades refers to at least two.

Page 208. `In McIntosh Taylor would eventually see an awful lot of Billy Brady--the orphan upbringing, the winning smile ...'
McIntosh was not an orphan. Though his father died when he was only four, his mother lived another 51 years.

Page 208. Balf refers to the `boiling Tasmanian sea'.
There is no Tasmanian sea. There is a Tasman Sea, commonly referred to by Australians and New Zealanders as `the Tasman', but not the Tasmanian sea. That would be like an American referring to the Pacifican Ocean.

Page 209. Balf refers to the New South Wales Baptist newspaper as having devoted `no less than five column inches' to an interview with Taylor.
It was actually five columns.

Page 211. He tells of Taylor's second race, held in Sydney, by quoting a writer describing Taylor's machine `moving as Victorians have never seen a bicycle traveling before.'
Not true. That quote was actually from several weeks later, when a writer was describing Taylor's win in a mile scratch race in Melbourne, Victoria. And as a direct quote, it should have spelled `travelling' as it was printed in Australia.

Page 214. Referring to the promoter Hugh McIntosh, and the period between the 1903 and 1904 Australian tours, Balf writes: `On the heels of his immense success with the Taylor tour he was now introducing himself as Hugh "Huge Deal" Macintosh.'
Not true. The moniker "Huge Deal" was not acquired by McIntosh until 1908, during the lead up to the Johnson-Burns boxing match.

Page 227. Referring to the Johnson-Burns fight, held on December 26th, 1908, Balf said of McIntosh, `He'd coordinate the timing adroitly, making sure the bout coincided with the arrival of a ready-made audience, the thousands of U.S. sailors who pull into Sydney Harbour with the Great White Fleet days before the title fight.'
Not true. The Great White Fleet, in Sydney from August 20-27, 1908, left four months before the fight.

Page 236. Balf states that Taylor `... hopped aboard the all-night Central Pacific for the 500- mile passage to Adelaide. Sometime in the early morning he passed within only a few miles of Peter Jackson's hometown of Sydney.'
* There has never been a Central Pacific in Australia.
* The distance from Melbourne to Adelaide is 450 miles.
* The train does not pass within 'a few miles' of Sydney. Australians know better. For Americans, it would be the mileage and relative directional equivalent of taking an overnight train directly southwest from Atlanta to New Orleans, but somehow passing within 'a few miles' of Pittsburgh on the way.

Pages 236 to 237. `Upon arriving in Adelaide, Saturday morning, Taylor went straight to the track and prepared for the evening races.' Next paragraph: `When Taylor walked into the oval ... there were 20,000 people packing the grandstand.' Next paragraph, re Daisy's thoughts: `... she imagined a weakened man pushed and prodded and outflanked to a blindingly well lit place.'
* There were no lights at the Adelaide Oval, hence no `evening races' at a `blindingly well lit place'.
* The grandstand at that time only held some 4000 people. The rest stood around the perimeter of the track.

Page 239. Describing the one-mile race: `The lap splits were dangerously fast: 30 seconds, 29, 28 ...' Then, in the next paragraph: `One lap to go.'
The race was over three laps, not four. The track at the Adelaide Oval was around the perimeter of the cricket ground, oval, and one-third of a mile around. Hence, mile races were three lap affairs.

Page 290. Balf writes: `Last year, McIntosh's Taylor-era creation, the Sydney 1,000, was resurrected at Dune Gray Olympic velodrome in Australia. The 1,000 in the title is an archaic reference to Guineas, then the common currency.'
* It is the Duncan Gray Olympic velodrome.
* The 1,000 in the title refers to pounds, not Guineas. And pounds were the common currency, not Guineas.

This is the first book I've read about Major Taylor, and it made me want to read more about this man. I enjoyed the details of the bike races when cycling was top dog in America. As the author points out at the end of the book, there was a chance for it to gain more widespread popularity, but the Landis scandal, among other things, worked against it. Taylor's story deserves to be told and known, given what he accomplished and experienced in his life. I hope someone gets ahold of this and makes a high quality biopic.

I picked this book by chance, because I'm a cyclist and wanted to know more about Major Taylor. It was a gripping tale of a cyclist who created his own destiny, overcoming incredible racial prejudice to establish himself as the best track cyclist in the world. From his boyhood in Indianapolis, and his move to Worcester, MA, the story chronicles every part of Taylor's cycling career. The chapter describing Taylor's match-up with Floyd McFarland in Australia is the most exciting climax of any book I've ever read. McFarland was the racist rival who opposed Taylor's attempts to race in the United States, and literally tried to run him off the track when they did meet. This book takes you back to an era before cars, where high speed cycling on banked velodromes drew huge crowds, and an African-American cyclist was one of the highest paid athletes in the world. Todd Balf is a phenomenal author who captures the feeling of an era, and he has thoroughly researched Taylor's life.

This book gives some new understanding to the history of the race and the amazing achievements that Major Taylor had in the race!