The Rider
by Tim Krabbe
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Book Reviews of The Rider
Book Review: It's A Ride To The Sun, And A Ride To Zen
Summary: 5 Stars
Tim Krabbe, from Holland, is a much beloved writer by his country men and women. His books "The Vanishing" and "The Cave" have become known world wide, and made into very successful movies. He started out in life knowing he had to be a winner. His first love was that of chess. He played chess, he wrote books on chess, he joined tournaments, and then he realized he would never be the winner he wanted to be. So, at the age of 29, he turned to bicycle racing.
Through out his life, Tim Krabbe,also realized he had to write. No matter what he was involved in, he had to write. In this book "De renner" or "The Rider', he has made literary history. The book was written in 1978 and has become a cult classic. This is a fascinating book, a half-day race, 150km, of the love of bicycle racing, and the love of relating the life of racing.
"It's a ride to the sun, and a ride to Zen-the definitive abc of sports, an encyclopedia, a literary masterpiece, an adventure novel and bicycling odyssey all rolled into one," one book critic wrote. Tim Krabbe tells of us his life as a cyclist all rolled up into a small book of 129 pages. The prose that rolls out of his mouth onto the paper of the book is memorable. This is a book that begs to be read again and again. He tells us of a fantasy of riding with bicycle's best and besting them all by winning the race. Throughout this half day race, we learn how to put the bicycle together and take it apart. We learn all about gears, and what to use, when. We learn what he eats before he starts the race, where to put his hands on the handle bars and how to choose the bicycle seat. The men he races with, the fans that turn out and scream encouragement for all of their favorites. The cafes, the bars,and the major developments of racing. And through out this race, instead of chapters the book is divided into kilometers of the race. We end at Kilometer 137, when he crosses the finish line. Was he the first, third, or tenth? Gotcha' you need to read this book, and you will love it.
This is not a book that is a metaphor for life. It is a book of the racing life and how this life takes over. I understand for the first time, how a racer's blood becomes attuned to the race, the speed, the climbs, the straights, the finish line, the Win!
"Whenever I hit absolute rock bottom I always think of those immortal words from De renner by Tim Krabbé-Batoowoo Creakcreak-and everything seems just fine again."
Maarten Ducrot, bicycle racer
Highly recommended. Prisrob "Batoowoo Creakcreak"
Book Review: Imaginative and Uncompromising
Summary: 5 Stars
I have yet to read any of Tim Krabbé's other books but after finishing The Rider I am forced to seek them out. After reading the six or so sample pages here on Amazon I immediately recognized Krabbé's playful and abrupt style. It is like listening to a jazz solo. He jumps around his point, using fluttering digressions of introspection and observation to represent cycling's personal effect on him. I was a little sad when I got to page 148 and the ride ended, but I understand that this style is suited more by the narrative poetic form and length. Read the sample pages and if you enjoy their quirkiness buy the book. If you are put off by the style or find it annoying then you will probably not enjoy the book, even if you get something out of it.
This story is valuable primarily for it's insight into road racing. There are plenty of well used references, antidotes about historic cycling figures, and general bike culture perspective to entice the already bike minded. However, these are not just off-hand comments, every reference is dealt with a philosophic tone and this is definitely a book worthy of re-reading, another likeness to a good poem.
Krabbé looks so astutely into the mind of a cyclist that any type of serious bike rider with be able to relate and form a dialogue. Before reading this book I was primarily a mountain biker and weary of road riding a boring an purely physical pursuit. Krabbé shows the inter-rider dynamics of road racing. I became genuinely excited about the next big climb or a break away. The story is quite suspenseful at times. Throughout the race several riders are profiled from Krabbé's past knowledge of them, he talks about what kind of riders they are and what he expects them to do in this race. When he is unaware of their place in the break or peloton so too is the reader left wondering. It is an involving perspective that protrudes a sense of yurning uneasiness and anticipation.
While his vantage point is subjective it is honest to the narrative style and does not relapse into the stereotypical characters many authors end up creating. Krabbé keeps his edge throughout the book and does not fall into a formulaic trap.
IT IS WORTH IT IF YOU LIKED THE SAMPLE AND ENJOY EITHER BIKES OR QUIRKY SHORT-STORY WRITING.
Book Review: masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
More than twenty years ago Australian classics specialist Allan Peiper reported for Winning magazine his experience in racing the Tour of Flanders. His writing captured my imagination, drilling into my consciousness the essential core of the bike racing experience at the highest level. His article has stood for me, to this day, as the paradigm of race writing.
Yet what Peiper did in his race reports, Krabbe, I now learn, had done 10 years before in his fiction. The race he describes was June 26, 1977: "Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafes. Non-racers. The emptiness of those lives shocks me." And so it begins. I was hooked.
In contrast to today, with so much attention paid to doping, so much emphasis on equipment, to the model of seeming effortless domination established by Indurain and perfected by Armstrong, the racing culture of 30 years ago, so well rendered by this book, offers an attraction which I could not resist. The focus is on the rider, his internal struggle against himself, his rivals, and the world around him. To not just resist suffering but to actively embrace it: "after the finish all the suffering turns to memories of pleasure, and the greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is Nature's payback for the homage they pay her by suffering.... That's why there are riders. Suffering you need; literature is baloney."
Each bike race I have done is like an epic. How to capture one in words? Yet Krabbe has done so. Nobody who has raced can possibly read this book without feeling a deep resonance, a connection of understanding which goes beyond the text. The protagonist consumes figs instead of gels, struggles with his limited, relatively poorly shifting gears, and must mathematically deduce his speed from his perceived cadence and gear, but his essential being is the same. Bike racing is as it has always been, about confronting ourselves, beating back our fears, and finally, reflecting. Krabbe captures this to perfection.
The map and route profile from the race is available here:
http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Ronde-van-de-Mont-Aigoual
Book Review: Brilliant Novella--Even for the Noncyclist
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm not a cyclist by any stretch of the imagination, and am only a moderate fan of the sport in general. But Krabbé's novella, originally published in the Netherlands 25 years ago, has got to best one of the best fictional treatments of any sport. The book follows an competitive amateur rider through a half-day, 150 kilometer race over the very real Mont Aigoual in France. Krabbé is himself an avid amateur cyclist, and his ability to capture both the mental and physical aspects of the sport is uncanny. Although I've never raced a bike, I did run cross-country competitively, and many of the elements carry over-mainly the twin battle each individual faces with their brain and their body (There's one excellent moment when the rider wills his bike to get a flat so he can withdraw with honor.).The stripped-down prose style (common to all Krabbé's work), works especially well in the context of a race where the long distances can lead to almost a trance-like state. The mind wanders all over the place, and that is captured brilliantly in the rider's musings-for example, one part describes how he tries to invent words to keep himself amused during long, boring training rides. At the same time, the race itself is very tense, and Krabbé does quite well at describing the various tactical gambits employed along the way. The main competitors emerge as distinct figures-allies and foes in both a psychological and physical sense (I especially liked the unknown in the blue Cycles Goff jersey). Interwoven with it all are tidbits of cycling history, which are intermittently interesting to the non-racer.
It's not a reach to call this a masterpiece of sports literature. The story does a remarkable job at conveying the tension and flow of a race to the outsider. At the same time, the insights into the psychology of the athlete are so acute as to be universally recognizable across cultures and sports.
Book Review: Go, Timmy, Go!
Summary: 5 Stars
An utterly engrossing book, "The Rider" by Tim Krabbé is a first-person account of a competitor in a French amateur cycling race. Kilometer by kilometer, the author describes, economically, but with plausible feeling, the range of emotions he goes through. It is clear that he rides for the love of cycling, but his writing reveals the mental calculations, often not very flattering, that go through the mind of a rider. A chess player, he is out on the road playing a form of chess with his opponents, considering their weaknesses, weighing their histories, examining his own position on the board, so to speak.In this short book about a 150 km long race, Tim Krabbé also travels back in his mind, recalling legends of bike racing as well as his own dreams of sporting success in Holland. These include some wonderful absurdist episodes, including a brief "Little ABC of Road Racing" where he fantasizes about riding with Merckx and Anquetil and the other greats in a series of bizarre circumstances. And all through this one is conscious of the race going on, the change of scenery and weather and how the cyclist must constantly monitor his situation-now trying to make up for his downhill lack of skills, now attacking as the others weaken, now preparing for a sprint. One is struck by the fundamental cruelty of the sport, how one must endure pain and inflict it as well.
Anyone who has ridden fairly seriously will love this book, as will those who admire strong, clean writing. The author has brilliantly portrayed a concentrated moment. This is a world of intense focus and narrow but exhilarating boundaries.