Bench Press (1988/rev. 2003)
By Sven Lindqvist
Translated by Sarah Death
122 pp. (Memoir)
Here's the question: how much pretentious nonsense are you willing to wade through? Because Bench Press contains some interesting philosophical discussions about bodybuilding—but they're buried in mounds of excruciatingly smug ramblings.
Bench Press is a series of 85 brief numbered passages, ranging from a few sentences to a few pages in length, inspired by author Sven Lindqvist's decision in middle age to begin working out. As Lindqvist trains, he finds that improving his body also expands his imagination and, most significantly, reawakens his long-dead dream to visit the Sahara desert. Bench Press bounces back and forth between bodybuilding philosophy, weight-training history, and personal imaginings to explore this transformation.
By Sven Lindqvist
Translated by Sarah Death
122 pp. (Memoir)
Here's the question: how much pretentious nonsense are you willing to wade through? Because Bench Press contains some interesting philosophical discussions about bodybuilding—but they're buried in mounds of excruciatingly smug ramblings.
Bench Press is a series of 85 brief numbered passages, ranging from a few sentences to a few pages in length, inspired by author Sven Lindqvist's decision in middle age to begin working out. As Lindqvist trains, he finds that improving his body also expands his imagination and, most significantly, reawakens his long-dead dream to visit the Sahara desert. Bench Press bounces back and forth between bodybuilding philosophy, weight-training history, and personal imaginings to explore this transformation.
Lindqvist is incisive when he actually focuses on bodybuilding, such as when he explores why society approves of the countless hours he spends revising his written work but condemns as vanity the hours he spends honing his body. Even so, traces of irritating affectation shine through: Lindqvist couches many of his observations as conversations between himself and a bodybuilder who he dubs "Virgil," simply to echo Dante's use of Virgil as a spiritual guide in the Divine Comedy.
But the bigger problem is how Lindqvist illustrates his central theme that pushing the body can also cause the subconscious to explode into life. Much of Bench Press does nothing more than spew forth a series of random, self-important images and reflections. Some are completely disconnected from anything surrounding them:
But the bigger problem is how Lindqvist illustrates his central theme that pushing the body can also cause the subconscious to explode into life. Much of Bench Press does nothing more than spew forth a series of random, self-important images and reflections. Some are completely disconnected from anything surrounding them:
50.
A fat white cotton rope with a big knot at the end. Water, sun, summer. The white rope is running into the water, soft and supple. But suddenly there's resistance, like when a fish bites, and the rope tightens. Summer vanishes. Darkness descends. The water freezes. Only the rope remains, quivering, taut.
Other times the reveries are at least tenuously linked to the themes of the book, but still veer off down strange paths in Lindqvist's head:
52.
I was forever performing the bench press. The weights increased over the years. In the end, love became an impossible lift. A weight I couldn't shift.
When you 'capture' someone, what you really capture is a position of eternal inferiority.
I imagine that these passages are supposed to illustrate the rebirth of Lindqvist's creative passions. To me, they're just dull. And because they take up a large percentage of Bench Press' short page count, they overwhelm the actual substance of the book. In the end, I was impressed with Lindqvist's insights about bodybuilding when he could be bothered to make them, but was left with tremendous frustration at a book that was essentially insufferable.
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