I've been a Bruce Lee scholar as far back as I can remember. At various points in my life, he's played different roles: Childhood Hero, Martial Guru, Zen Mystic, Punk Rock Non Conformist, American Icon. As a child of the 70's/80's whose sole interests were Comic Books, Star Wars, Rocky Balboa and Bruce Lee, I have a deep reverence for mythology. As a martial practitioner of 33 years who's studied a fair amount of combative sciences, I have an equal need to rationalize and demythologize. These two approaches have governed my philosophy and views on nearly everything that grabs my attention.
My initial introduction to Lee at the tender age of 6, was through a movie still. Captivated by his image, I sought out as many photos and stories as I could, getting my fix mostly through magazines and campfire lore. I would not actually see him in action til' a year later, in Game of Death 1978 (the opening 4 minutes and final 11 minutes of this film's effect on me is comparable to Saul's conversion to Paul). My lack of access to his movies at that time ( this was pre home cinema and smart phones), to me, reinforced his mythical status. Looking back, I'm inclined to believe that this was the genesis of my obsessive life long search for him. In the ensuing years, in addition to viewing his adult filmography repeatedly (with near religious fervor), I read every biography, watched every documentary and meticulously dissected whatever I could find on the man. Initially, I took pride in the 'facts' I'd gleaned, content in the basic beats of his story as well as what I discovered 'off script'. But following the honeymoon period(admittedly, a long one), stagnation set in, and I grew a bit disillusioned. What bothered me in particular was this: Bruce Lee's story, to me, had become, to quote Tarantino, "a game of show and tell. You're showing me everything, but telling me nothing". Paradoxically, the more I discovered, the less I felt I knew.
One of the residual benefits of being a seeker, is the compulsive need to fill in gaps. To that end, I made the beat between the beats the focus of my Lee studies. Who was the man? What kept him up at night? What drove his insatiable need to be regarded as the best? Who were his heroes? How did he handle embarrassing moments in his life? Etc., etc. Some of those questions I found answers to. Some I'll never know. Upon reflection though, this quest to understand my idol was equally driven by the need to understand aspects of myself and, ultimately, liberate me from the grips of hero worship. Essentially, it was a gateway for me to come into my own. In my heart of hearts, my need to understand Bruce Lee was transformative. That's how much of an impact he had on me. I often mused about writing and producing a 'definitive' bio that presented him as a three dimensional human being - not the superhuman comic book character resurrected from the ashes, ipso facto. To be fair, I had spent a helluva lot of time with that dude, and, while I was grateful for his inspiration and indebted to him for starting me on my martial path, I needed time with the other guy (or the dude pretending to be the other dude). Enter Matthew Polly.
Full disclosure: I had reached out to Matt a couple of years prior to the release of his book. My intent, at the time, was to qualify him as a biographer. What was his focus going to be? What was the tone was he going for? How granular was he going to get? Was it going to be a regurgitation of the same ol', same ol'? Ever the gentleman, he replied back and stated his intention in no unclear terms: his goal was to write the most complete biography on Bruce Lee, and hoped to present the man, as is, warts and all. I had heard this kind o' stuff before. And I was skeptical.
Two years and 650 pages (actually 2,000+ which he whittled down) later, I'm thrilled to say that Matthew Polly has done the impossible. That is, he's chronicled and captured the intricacies of a complex man who's been deified in all things martial and worshipped by many as a superhuman force that's beyond understanding. It's difficult to overstate how difficult Matt's journey must have been wading through 45 years of mist and mire to reach the man behind the curtain. In doing so, he doesn't just write the definitive Bruce Lee biography, rather, he creates a work of intimate beauty truly worthy of it's subject matter. Equal parts character study, adventure story and forensic dissection, Polly's tome is a meditation on our very own 20th century Dorian Gray. With that, he succeeds in demythologizing the god, and celebrating the legend.
Where to begin? The sheer wealth of information this opus has to offer (most of which I'm completely comfortable saying will be unknown to even the most die hard of fans) is only half of what truly makes it the monumental achievement it is. Equally as important are the revelations gleaned from the connective tissue that Polly seamlessly weaves into stories and anecdotes that most fans are familiar with, providing a broader perspective to those tales and giving them their proper context. Indeed, many folks will be surprised by the pieces missing from the stories they thought they knew. Additionally, the first 80 pages spend a significant amount of time tracing Lee's lineage and exploring his adolescent film career and life in Hong Kong (the first piece of writing to accurately do so) prior to coming back to the US in 1959. Moreover, we're given a historical overview of Hong Kong itself and the social environment that the young Bruce Lee came up in (the information here is paramount to understanding his 'origin'). For those who've heard the Frank Sinatra/Vic Damone rumor of Lee's impromptu Gung Fu demonstration on their bodyguards --the true story is finally revealed. Later, Polly gives us the first real information on Lee's little known "Northern Leg, Southern Fist" script treatment. Most fans know that Lee was a pretty good pencil artist, but are they aware of what specific art he admired and may have harbored a desire to pursue himself? Yet another: what was the timeline of July 20th, 1973 and what were the contributing factors that led to Lee's death? The answers are all laid out, hour by hour, and supported by those involved in distinctly quantifiable ways. All this and much more is relayed to the reader in a deeply resonant and visceral way that defies category. Indeed, the emotional connection is so riveting that, when reading each page, one feels they are there, alongside Lee, in his head, experiencing his very thoughts and emotions. It's a level of intimacy rarely achieved in writing, let alone a bio.
There's a distinct difference between a subject matter expert and a substance matter expert. Subject matter experts memorize other people's information, while substance matter experts understand the skeleton and mechanics of the subject and impart what they learned, not what they memorized. With this work of art, Matt Polly proves himself to be a true substance matter expert whose keen attention to detail reveals exactly how much of a labor of love this project was to him. Like many of us, Matt's life was forever changed by Bruce Lee. On more than one occasion, he's intimated that writing this book was his way of paying back that debt to his childhood idol.
He succeeded. Boy, did he.
Thank you Matt, for giving us this much needed, long overdue gift. In a very real way, you've produced the book I wish I'd written.
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Llegué a este libro después de haber leído "American Shaolin", del mismo autor, un libro excelente y muy divertido. Tengo grandes expectativas para éste.
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Ryuto
You won’t want to be his friend
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 8, 2020
Joe public
A rehash of other books ..not much new
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 17, 2018Summerluvva
A look at Bruce Lee the man, the martial artist and the legend.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 7, 2020
