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The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles, by Melissa Holbrook Pierson
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"This book, a polished, winding meditation on the theory and fractiousness of motorcycles, celebrates both their eccentric history and the wary pleasures of touring."―The New Yorker
In a book that is "a must for anyone who has loved a motorcycle" (Oliver Sacks), Melissa Pierson captures in vivid, writerly prose the mysterious attractions of motorcycling. She sifts through myth and hyperbole: misrepresentations about danger, about the type of people who ride and why they do so. The Perfect Vehicle is not a mere recitation of facts, nor is it a polemic or apologia. Its vivid historical accounts-the beginnings of the machine, the often hidden tradition of women who ride, the tale of the defiant ones who taunt death on the racetrack-are intertwined with Pierson's own story, which, in itself, shows that although you may think you know what kind of person rides a motorcycle, you probably don't.
- Sales Rank: #530141 in Books
- Color: Multicolor
- Published on: 1998-05-17
- Released on: 2013-01-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.30" h x .60" w x 6.10" l, .67 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 240 pages
Amazon.com Review
"From my mother I learned to write prompt thank-you notes for a variety of occasions," Melissa Holbrook Pierson writes. "From Mrs. King's ballroom dancing school I learned a proper curtsy and, believe it or not, what to do if presented with nine eating utensils at the same place setting.... From motorcycles I learned practically everything else." Pierson, an intellectual New Yorker, is open to her own contradictions--she is bold and fearful, a motorcycle-crazed poet with a Ph.D., and these seeming incompatibilities are what make this book so good. She can write equally well about the visceral pleasures of riding and about the pains of heartbreak or her own displeasure with her fears.
This is the motorcycle memoir for those who are sick of memoirs--or motorcycles. It is a book for people who don't know what the big deal is about riding, or why the Guggenheim Museum in New York, in a swirl of controversy, would exhibit motorcycles as works of modern art. "Riding on a motorcycle can make you feel joyous, powerful, peaceful, frightened, vulnerable, and back out to happy again," Pierson writes, "perhaps in the same ten miles. It is life compressed, its own answer to the question, 'Why?'" --Maria Dolan
From Booklist
It's too bad that people with little interest in motorcycles will generally not be the ones picking up this book to read. Although motorcycle diehards will find their convictions confirmed here, motorcycle know-nothings perhaps could benefit the most from its unabashed pages, gaining the inspiration to try their hand at motorcycling down the open road. The author's 10-year love affair with motorcycles informs this extended homage to the thrills and chills of this exciting vehicle. Only 7 million Americans ride, Pierson cites; but they are a dedicated few, who seek no greater pleasure than being ensconced on a motorcycle, head down, wind roaring in their ears, "the road, constantly turning, constantly offer[ing] up the possibility of something unexpected around the bend." The author appreciates its dangers, but she hopes her reader appreciates the feeling of freedom that time spent on a motorcycle can provide. Discussions of motorcycle history and racing round out this buoyant book. Brad Hooper
From Kirkus Reviews
An entertaining vade mecum for the aspiring Dennis Hopper, Evel Knievel, or Malcolm Forbes of the family. Magazine journalist Pierson sets out to explore the motorcycle mystique, her account ranging from peeks at by now tired icons like the Marlon Brando of The Wild Ones to fresher elements like the nascent French biker culture. (The French, of course, have an elaborate classification system to distinguish true bikers from les sportifs, the sham articles.) She calls the fixation with bikes ``motolust,'' and she admits to being a victim herself, one of the growing number of women who reject the phallic-substitute imagery long associated with ``chicks on bikes'' for what is, all in all, a fun ride in the open air. Pierson takes the reader on wild spins, hitting cross-country races and motocross tournaments up and down the East coast, cataloging the thrills and, especially, the manifold dangers that await, all the little things that can quickly send a biker to the grave: ``wet leaves, gravel, sand, decreasing-radius turns, painted lines, tar patches liquefying in the sun, antifreeze, oil deposits at gas stations or toll booths, metal plates and manhole covers made deadly by rain . . .'' Pierson is often funny, frequently deep, occasionally sharp-edged, and almost always right on the money. She is also fully aware of her minority status within a minority culture--as she notes, only 7 million Americans ride motorcycles, as against 20 million who call themselves bird-watchers--and she does her best to convey the spirit of motorcycling to the countless uninitiated. You don't have to be a two-wheel devotee to appreciate Pierson's work, but it probably helps. Still, even if you don't much care for motorcycles--or your mother wouldn't let you ride one--this engaging treatise (part of which appeared in Harper's) is worth a look. (photos, not seen) -- Copyright �1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
122 of 135 people found the following review helpful.
Read it, but look between the lines.
By D. L. Bratland
This book will further your insight into why motorcyclists ride and why they think what they do about their bikes, motorcycling, and each other. But by the time Pierson is on to her second bike mechanic boyfriend, you will realize that you're going to have to see the truth for yourself, because the author has her hands so full with her own issues -- anxiety, delusion, hypocrisy -- that she can hardly help herself or her endlessly sick bike, let alone help you, the questing reader.
She does give you all the clues you will need, so don't despair. It's just that you're on your own in figuring out what the clues mean.
The Fallen Bike Incident is a good example of Pierson's lack of self-knowledge, and why this book is accused of male-bashing.
In the rain, Pierson's bike has fallen over due to the soft, wet surface she has planted her side stand in. This is a classic blunder. It's in the curriculum of the motorcycle safety course (of which Pierson is a graduate) and she even mentions elsewhere in the book how, for this very reason, wooden blocks were passed out in the dirt parking lot of a motorcycle rally. You can easily conclude that it is her own damn fault her bike fell over, but you won't read her admitting it in so many words, and this lack of personal accountability is everywhere in The Perfect Vehicle.
In her motorcycle class she has been taught how even a grandmother can lift up even a fallen Honda GoldWing (800+ pounds of bike), but for reasons unexplained, she is unable to lift her sub-400 pound Moto Guzzi. Again, no admission that she failed to learn the very thing she was specifically taught to do; you just read that it didn't work out and draw your own conclusion. So she asks a driver in an idling van for help, and he stares at her blankly, as she frantically begs "Quickly!" Finally the nice man gets out of his dry van, into the rain, and helps her right her fallen bike, to her eternal non-gratitude.
Reflecting later, Pierson intuits, and apparently comes to believe, that the reason her benefactor didn't instantly leap into the downpour to assist her was because he was thinking that since she is a woman, she wanted help lifting a bicycle, not a motorcycle, and so she was once again the victim of rampant sexism. She will shortly use this incident as a springboard to launch into one of many catalogs of undeniably valid examples of cruel and unfair treatment women have suffered in the history of motorcycling. This stuff is good to know and you'll be glad you read about it, but keep in mind, these terrible things happened to other women, not Pierson.
In several place we read explanations of her attraction to the woefully unreliable Moto Guzzi bikes, namely that they're stylish, sexy, and that fixing your bike all the time gives you a deep sense of self-sufficiency and personal identification with your machine.
It's a fair characterization of the series of Moto Guzzi enthusiasts Pierson repeatedly enlists to fix her broken-down bike for her, gratis, but this admirable, self-reliant, hands-on individualist ain't Melissa Pierson. She apparently never begins to master bike mechanics in her 35,000 miles of riding. She's more the damsel in distress with delusions of rugged independence. You would feel some pity if she had left out all the haughty, off-hand dismissals of Japanese motorcycles for the crime of providing exactly what Pierson and millions just like her really need: an affordable and reliable bike, albeit one that lacks "character."
She at least respects BMW and Harley-Davidson enough to give us fully-cardboard-cutout stereotypes of those riders, but those bland, bloodless Japanese aren't even worth the time. Oh, and in case you didn't know, "rice burner" is not really an epithet of derision. I bet "broad" is, though.
It's an all-purpose snobbery. When in France she finds herself at a hotel that dares offer exactly what Pierson and millions like her really need (it's affordable and they've got a room), she sniffs "Holiday Inn, of all places!"
So while the author only grows a little in the course of this book, you the reader will have the opportunity to learn much more in the ugly truth behind Pierson's inadvertent revelations, as well as benefit from the several places where she is actually on to something real and manages to convey it without getting hung up on her own issues. The florid descriptions of what it feels like to ride are quite fine if you accept them outside the context of the neurotic author's world of prejudice and denial.
UPDATE: January 12, 2011
In the 6 years since I first read this book and wrote this review, I've read a great many other motorcycling books that cover much of the same ground, and I've found none better than The Perfect Vehicle. The book's flaws are still its flaws: I think the author's attitudes are often unfair and tone deaf, but in spite of that, Melissa Pierson's scholarship is first rate and highly readable. So while I once again suggest you read between the lines, I still recommend nonetheless that you do read it.
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
Very Insightful and Enjoyable
By Erik Olson
As a motorcycle newbie, I've been reading a number of technique-oriented books in order to become a better rider. But I wanted to find something about the actual experience with a more autobiographical slant. I spotted "The Perfect Vehicle" on Amazon.com, and it immediately caught my interest. The reader reviews were quite interesting, ranging from exuberant identification to scathing dismissal. Any book that generates feedback of such jarring disparity must have something to say, so I went ahead and took a chance on it.
Ms. Pierson has pretty much bared her soul in this book, and my attention never wandered from start to finish. She's a strong, yet vulnerable woman who embarked on a quest to reconcile her desire to find a man worthy of her love with a need for independence and adventure. Motorcycling was the medium that allowed her to explore both of these (apparently) conflicting dictates of the heart. After much relational and highway mileage, Ms. Pierson seems to have made peace with herself, and this book is a well-written chronicle of that journey.
"The Perfect Vehicle" does contain some interesting facts about motorcycle history, rallies, and so on. However, it's Ms. Pierson's relationships and riding experiences combined with the resulting insights that really make this book shine. Some reviewers have slammed her for being a man-hater, too introspective, or a Moto Guzzi snob, but I disagree (well, the Moto Guzzi bias might have some merit, but I have a similar affection for Harleys, so I won't cast stones). If I grow half as much as she did via motorcycling, I'll consider the money invested into my H-D Fat Boy well spent. "The Perfect Vehicle" is a great addition to the motorcyclist's library, and anyone who has a passion for adventure and self-discovery will enjoy it as well.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Starts & ends w/5 Stars, but it's 2-3 stars everywhere else
By D. S. Greene
The first writing in this book (the Forward) is worth the price of admission. If it stayed at that level, it'd be "off the charts great" ... up there with "Eat, Pray, Love".
Unfortunately, this is not the case.
In the Forward (and the Postscript, for that matter), her writing is concise, poetic, wonderous ... it is art. And it's about the motorcycle - exactly what the title promises it will be. It is simply awesome.
But from there on, she takes more twists and turns than her favorite ride. And they don't really live up to the title or its subtitle. Instead of addressing "the Perfect Vehicle" or "What it is about Motorcycles", it addresses Melissa's own journey.
And in this, I feel like she cheated us. She might have more aptly entitled it "Motorcycles, Men, and Me". And - even with that - it could be a good story. But that tight, crisp, clean writing in the Forward is not present throughout much of the rest of the book. It is more flowery, rambling, unfocused, and off-point from the title. This is where it dips to 2 Stars.
She also tends to spend a lot of time grinding an axe about her experience of being a FEMALE rider in what she perceives to be a Man's realm. But then again, maybe that points out to a dated book (she's relating experiences from the mid 90s). This is maybe 3-star writing.
I've been motorcycling for only 4 years. I got started in Thailand when a woman from German talked me into motorcycling with her through the Golden Triangle area along the Burma-Thai border. Now, when I bike in Idaho, often as not at least 1/3 of the riders I'm with are women. They are on Beemers, Harleys, Yamahas, Suzukis ... and this is IDAHO. Not exactly what you'd call a liberal state.
The history section is relatively interesting. But and that's where it stays at a relatively modest "3 Stars".
Ultimately, I found this book to be a major disappointment - mostly because it started off GREAT. If you want to get the best this book has to offer, simply read the Forward and the Postscript.
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