Riding with Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books [Hardcover]

Ted Bishop (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 11, 2006

A motorcycle odyssey that combines the sensory seduction of the road with the intellectual rewards of archival research.

Ted Bishop took one last ride before the fall term. When he tried to pass a tractor-trailer at 80 miles per hour, his motorcycle began to vibrate out of control. Bishop was flung into a ditch, breaking his back in two places, shattering a wrist and ankle, and collapsing his lungs. Left with time to write and reflect, Bishop produced Riding with Rilke, an account of the epic motorcycle trip he had completed just before the crash. Here, Bishop takes readers from Edmonton to Austin, through the classic landscapes of the American West, and to a few of America and Europe's most famous cities as he reconciles what it means to be both a road dog and a researcher. Whether describing the shock of holding Virginia Woolf's suicide note in the British Library or the outlaw thrill of cruising small American towns on his Ducati, Bishop meditates with wit and honesty on the tangled interplay of life, work, and art.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

English professor Bishop trades "tweed for leather" and hurtles away from the University of Alberta (Canada) on his Ducati, which he rides south through the Western U.S. all the way to the University of Texas at Austin. His professional objective was research on Virginia Woolf's novel Jacob's Room at the UT archives of British modernist writers, but his pledge along the way was "To seek out the smallest roads possible, to avoid the direct route, to eat in mom-and-pop diners." For Bishop, riding "is an inward experience. Like reading," a parallel that loosely links the elements of this discursive but engaging account—part travelogue, part ode to his bike and part literary criticism. He temporarily abandons his Woolf scholarship for a project on Joyce's Ulysses, a venture that sidetracks him to New York City and Europe before he heads back to Austin to pick up his Ducati. The ride home ends in disaster when he wipes out at 105 mph, breaks his back in two places, but survives to walk again—and write this easygoing, romantic memoir infused with joie de vivre. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Written while the author was recovering from a spectacular motorcycle crash, this unusual memoir chronicles Bishop's road trip from Edmonton, Alberta, to Austin, Texas. While this trek offered a chance for Bishop to get his prized Ducati motorcycle out on the open road--to really see what she could do--it was also a business trip: when not astride the Ducati, Bishop is a university professor and Virginia Woolf scholar, and he was going to Austin to view a collection of Woolf manuscripts. This is a story of a man seduced by twin passions, travel and scholarship, and it tracks twin adventures, into the literary past and the uncharted present. It's a joyful book, a celebration of intellectual pursuit and carefree exploration. If you can name another book about motorcycling that tells you about the tortured life of Virginia Woolf, or another book about the Bloomsbury Group that describes the rush you get from pulling a slow U-turn on a small-town Main Street in full biker regalia, then you probably don't need this one. For the rest of us, Riding with Rilke is a one-of-a-kind treat. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton; First Edition edition (September 11, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393062619
• ISBN-13: 978-0393062618
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #518,128 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #68 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Miscellaneous > Motorcycle Racing

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A literate book about motorcycling and a rider's outlook on books, September 20, 2005

By 

Glen Worley (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Riding with Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books (Hardcover)

Though the publisher's blurb makes the inevitable comparison to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, this book has none of the dour and depressing self introspection of Pirsig's work. Author Ted Bishop is an enthusiastic, if somewhat inexperienced, rider. I say inexperienced as no one in their right mind would ride a Ducati Monster from Edmonton, Canada to Austin, Texas and back. However, this is what makes him a real motorcyclist. He gets the whole riding experience and compares it with the wonders of wandering through various library archives. While this might sound a bit boring, it is not. His description of holding Virginia Woolf's suicide note in his hand is
stirring. His account of a tour of the Ducati factory is equally moving. The rider will learn about the wonders of rare books and the rare, and sometimes eccentric creatures that care for them. The reader will experience motorcycling through an enthusiast's eyes and other senses. This book belongs on all riders' bookshelves, right next to The Perfect Vehicle and Rebuilding the Indian.
Disclaimer: My motorcycle, and myself, are mentioned in this book. I'm not sure whether I should be upset that my bike gets more text than me. Typical motorcyclist!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable Ride and Read All At Once, June 19, 2007

By 

Stewart Salowitz (Normal, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Riding with Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books (Hardcover)

As a reader and rider, I enjoyed this book as a motorcycle travelogue with all its arcane bits of literary data strewn throughout.
If I have a small complaint it is that Bishop spends too much time in Austin and not exploring more of the places he is terrific at writing about. When we were traveling with him, he made some of those stops come alive and gave the book some fun and substance. When he halted (as he had to in order to do the archive research), so did the cycle action.
However, with that being said, some of the book's best and most poignant passages are his ruminations on reading and riding - his description on p. 112 about the "readiness of books" has been accurate in my reading life. And the couple of pages (p. 124-6) about silence and listening were memorable.
So is the line: "I wrote on the bike and I rode in the reading room. I'm sure it's the same in offices everywhere." He's right, of course, as I work while I ride and ride while I work in the form of a quick daydream. Nice to know others have the same feelings.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars for the dual addicted: literature and motorcycles, July 8, 2007

By 

B. Singer "S&W Winger" (South Florida) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Riding with Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books (Hardcover)

Not a mere travelogue or another bike adventure...Bishop escorts the reader through the very essense of riding in the most spiritual, thoughtful and surprisingly, visceral treat of a book...yes, this little book travels well: I took a ride to New Mexico and there it sat patiently on my nightstands in all the different hotels, motels and inns along the way...then, upon opening the book's pages, it (the book) merrily displayed its well-crafted prose to bring together this joy of riding a motorcycle and the sheer bliss at reading the power and majesty of word after word, woven together into images and concepts of both of these Life-sustaining activities...OK, so it is not for everyone, it is for me and that's what we're talking about here...if you Love either, read it, if you Love both, devour it...if you Love neither, God help you, 'cause you are missing out on Life at its finest and the "Now," the moments...love of riding, love of words, love of Life...another tapestry to bring form and content to our Loves...live on that edge and slip back to write about it...darn, I'm going for a ride now: "four wheel move the body, two wheels move the soul" and I feel the call of the wind...