The Body Shop: Parties, Pills, and Pumping Iron -- Or, My Life in the Age of Muscle - Hardcover

Solotaroff, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316011010 ISBN 13: 9780316011013

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2010

Synopsis

In a matter of months, he grew from a dorky beanpole into a hulking behemoth, showing off his rock hard muscles first on the streets of New York City and then alongside his colorful gym-rat friends in strip clubs and in the homes of the gotham elite. It was a swinging time, when "Would you like to dance?" turned into "Your place or mine?" and the guys with the muscles had all the ladies -- until their bodies, like Solotaroff''s, completely shut down.

But this isn't the gloom-and-doom addiction one might expect -- Solotaroff looks back at even his lowest points with a wicked sense of humor, and he sends up the disco era and its excess with all the kaleidoscopic detail of Boogie Nights or Saturday Night Fever.

Written with candor and sarcasm, The Body Shop is a memoir with all the elements of great fiction and dazzlingly displays Paul Solotaroff's celebrated writing talent.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Solotaroff is a contributing editor at Men's Journal and Rolling Stone. He has written features for Vanity Fair, GQ, Vogue, and the New York Times Magazine, and he was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2004. His work has been included in Best American Sports Writing. The author of two books, Group and The House of Purple Hearts, he lives in New York City.

Reviews

When he was a kid, Solotaroff was, by his own admission, not much to look at. In the mid-1970s, the unprepossessing college kid stumbled into, of all things, weight lifting. This was just before bodybuilding superstars like Schwarzenegger and Ferrigno catapulted weight training into pop-culture status. This was also, as Solotaroff makes abundantly clear, before your average Joe had any real idea of the destructive power of steroids. Journalist Solotaroff could have made this memoir another romp through the sex-and-drugs culture of the seventies. Instead, he tells a thoughtful story about a young man finding his own identity, set against the backdrop of that same sex-and-drugs culture. Solotaroff is quite a talented writer, and the book is as compelling as any coming-of-age novel. Fans of bodybuilding will enjoy it for the look at the early days of the sport, but the book should be highly recommended to anyone who enjoys the kind of introspective autobiography that reveals something about the author’s inner life. --David Pitt

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316011010
• ISBN 13: 9780316011013
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304