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Winds, rivers and rain
The Salon Interview: Arundhati Roy
Author of "The God of Small Things" (09/30/97)

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Jesus Saves
By Darcy Steinke
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Hand to Mouth
A Chronicle of Early Failure
By Paul Auster
Nonfiction
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Great Apes
By Will Self
Fiction
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The Hitler of History
By John Lukacs
Nonfiction
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All Around Atlantis
By Deborah Eisenberg
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gorilla suit

++++M Y+A D V E N T U R E S+I N+B O D Y B U I L D I N G

BY BOB PARIS

ST. MARTIN'S PRESS

NONFICTION

274 PAGES

BY MARK ATHITAKIS | bob Paris wants you to feel his pain. Or maybe just his bulging biceps; he never seems quite sure which. If his memoir reveals anything, it's that a bodybuilder's emotions are inextricably linked to the taut, chiseled body that he suffers to create: A dysfunctional family translates itself into a bench press, loneliness is reworked as a set of leg curls. Paris, a winner of the Mr. America and Mr. Universe contests in the mid-80s, earnestly catalogues his litany of sorrows to point out that beneath his rock-hard exterior lies a human being with the same concerns as those of your average girlie-man. But "Gorilla Suit" fails to give either him or his sport the kind of poetry or pathos he tries so hard to convey.

Paris' story is a rags-to-riches tale, which he rarely provides with any color beyond simple caricatures and clichés. Growing up in the Bible Belt, the dope-smoking Teenage Loser falls in love with bodybuilding, slowly rises up the Ladder of Fame until he moves to the sport's Mecca, Los Angeles, becomes a world champion, then disowns the muscle world altogether in disgust and frustration. Through that time, he struggles with his Abusive Father, Opportunistic Svengalis, coming out as a Gay Man and the prevalence of steroids in the sport. Paris loves bodybuilding so much that he hates it; he's full of righteous rage about how it could be a major, Olympic-class sport if only it cleaned up, got organized and taught the media that it's more than a circus sideshow of "freaky" bodies.

Paris' honesty and even-handedness are admirable, but that doesn't mean his tale is particularly fascinating. Having already covered the muscleman market in three fitness books and confessed his struggles as a gay man in "Straight From the Heart" (co-written with his lover, Rod Jackson), Paris intends "Gorilla Suit" for the general interest market, but it lacks the necessary depth. Its pages of invective aimed at guru Joe Weider -- who almost single-handedly created professional bodybuilding while tacitly allowing its corruption -- might cause a stir amongst "Muscle and Fitness" subscribers, but most will see him as merely a Crusty-but-Benign Entrepreneur. As for the pathos, it rarely gets more sophisticated than Paris' confession to a friend: "Even when I wear real clothes, I still bulge out of 'em like I'm Frankenstein's monster trying to disguise himself in a tuxedo."

By the book's end, the collision of past and present has all the impact of a 5-pound free-weight landing on a gym floor mat; we've learned a little about bodybuilding and a bit more about Paris himself, but if there's any drama or mystery in an incline dumbbell press, he doesn't expose it. For all those muscles, he's a nice, well-meaning guy, never one who'd kick sand in the face of some 98-pound weakling. So instead he just strolls along the beach by himself, Hallmark-card poetic, kicking sand around at nothing in particular.
SALON | Oct. 3, 1997

Mark Athitakis lives in San Francisco. He writes regularly for Salon.