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The Perfect Vehicle: What It is about Motorcycles |  | Author: Melissa Holbrook Pierson
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Rating:  64 reviews
Sales Rank: 31283
Media: Paperback
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 6.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 0393318095
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.75
EAN: 9780393318098
ASIN: 0393318095
Publication Date: May 17, 1998
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| Editorial Reviews:
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
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 64
 Worst Motorcyle Book I have Read So Far January 10, 2009
Robert Keeney
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I read the whole thing thinking there would be a point or conclusion somewhere. There isn't. The author rambles around like she can't make up her mind whether she wants to write about motorcycle history, psychological problems. love life, or travel. At no point is their any insight into why riders ride. If your looking for this go somewhere else. There is nothing useful here.
When reading about areas I am very familiar with I noted several gross errors. This makes me wonder what other things are in the book that are not factual.
Spend you money for another book.
No Gas October 11, 2008
Roy W. Zornow (New York, NY USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I was prepared to love this book: it's the story of an overthinking new motorcycle rider just like me, but unfortunately it reads like a combination of an extended airline magazine article and a series of diary entries with all the good bits cut out.
The influence of Pierson's husband, writer Luc Sante, is found in the many historical sidebars, but these lack the narrative flow and focus on personal interest that make Sante's writing so compelling. I found them to read like barrage of factoids.
Not enough facts are present when Pierson injects information about her personal life. I appreciate her writing honestly about heartbreaks, but there is little introspection on why things went wrong and what her role was in it, other than that her family was not affectionate . She meets Luc and a sentence later they are married.
Often the language she uses sounds overconstructed, phrases like "loath even though I am, to share my toilette with arachnids". Who talks like this? It's writing for effect, rather than writing honestly. Yet Pierson has an honest important story to tell: "I also worked on trying to make peace with a secret, not too conscious wish to find someone who would take care of my-bike-and-by-extension-me, because I discovered in this a dangerous futility that only served to keep alive in me a pervasive sense of incompetence."..."I began to sense that my motorcycle was again trying to tell me something, this time something ancient and wise....'Captain your own ship'. Ah thanks." (p. 182, paperback).
That's the emotional core of the book and it never gets developed. In it's place we get pages of reprinted letters from the Moto Guzzi National Owner's Club News. In the end "The Perfect Vehicle" takes a wrong turn.
 The best August 1, 2008
B. Bates (Santa Fe, NM USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
One of the best motorcycle books I have ever read. It puts into words my feelings of riding in a way that I cannot. Not that well known, but definately worth the money. You will enjoy this book if you enjoy riding motorcycles.
The Perfect Bike Book January 7, 2008
Chef Leo (Maryland, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I recently finished The Perfect Vehicle, and I am extremely impressed. Not only is it very well written; the author isn't afraid to talk about things that many people don't mention, such as fear, and the special problems that motorcycling women still face. She is equally lyrical about the joys of riding. I recommend it wholeheartedly, and I've already lent out my copy. After reading this book, I'm looking harder at Moto Guzzis, too (the author's bike).
Women rider? New Rider? Seasoned Rider? This works! December 4, 2007
Mark Webster (Tulsa)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Good book. As a seasoned rider who generally only reads technical moto books, I'm learly of the "this is what I think about the motorcycle" type books. Melissa did not just write about it, she lived it and you can tell by the way she writes about it. She took a personal journey that more and more women are taking these days and I hope they read her to see how she did it. New riders shoudl take a look and you seasonsed riders might get a kick out of seeing her develope into a real rider. I did but it was a long plane ride. The book and the plane ride were over before I knew it. Good job Melissa.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 64
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