Samuel Wilson Fussell: Muscle

Whatever the intended audience for this book was, I am not among their number.

The most charitable interpretation I can offer is that it's a cautionary tale, one that successfully deglamourizes the world of competitive bodybuilding.  As though bodybuilders were not already unappealing enough, the detailed observations on cystic acne, prolapsed rectums, incontinence, and other side effects should more than serve to dissuade the reader from ever setting foot in that world.

A more cynical interpretation is that the book is written as a mea culpa, an apology to his parents and others whom he left behind to pursue his ridiculous task.  Each chapter is filled with self-deprecating explanations of why he did what he did, why he jettisoned his effete, academic life, and why he was sorry.  This is the literary equivalent of the fellow in your office who wants so badly to be thought of as intelligent that you can't bring yourself to give it to him.  It is the guy who says things like "What unspeakable hubris!" unironically, and "My clothes took on increasingly Brobdingnagian proportions" with a smirk that dares you to ask him what it means (201, 180).  The last chapter may well have been titled, "Can I Come Back Yet?"

But my personal interpretation is that the book was written for an audience of one.  I have certainly had those moments where I look back on my life from the emotional dumpster fire in which I stand and think, "How did I even get here?"  It is as though another took hold of my strings and shook me wildly across the stage, and then left me in a heap, draped across the lip of the bandshell.  What have I done?  Why did I throw all of that away, and for what?  It must not have been me; I was clearly possessed by a malevolent puppeteer, or an insane djinn.  At those moments, the only way to preserve one's sanity and move forward is to write a book, to spin a narrative out of the frayed threads, and then tell oneself, "This is what it meant."