The Barnes & Noble Review
When David Byrne stops moving, does he fall over? And when stationary, is he liable to be found leaning carefully against a wall? Conversely, does his bicycle make unannounced domestic appearances -- by the fireside, perhaps, on a rainy day, or near the kitchen table when food is laid out? Fans of the great Flann O’Brien will know where I’m going with this: If Byrne, as recorded in Bicycle Diaries, has truly explored the world’s great cities en vélo, then according to the theory of “atomic interchange” propounded in O’Brien’s The Third Policeman he must by now be part bicycle, and his bicycle part Byrne.
Let us examine the case. Bicycle Diaries takes the form of a light travelogue or pedalodyssey, with Byrne -- ex-frontman of Talking Heads, current artistic all-rounder -- gliding on his fold-up two-wheeler through Istanbul or Berlin or Sydney, popping into galleries, playing music, talking to interesting people, thinking thoughts, reading books, and then recording his impressions as to the essential nature of the place and its degree of bicycleability (these last two quantities being not unrelated.) So with The Third Policeman in mind, we must ask: After all this international pedaling about, and so much hard atomic contact between rider and seat, exactly what percentage of David Byrne is still David Byrne? His prose style, certainly, would seem to suggest a preponderance of bicycle-atoms. “Most often when listening and not dancing,” he writes in the “London” chapter of Bicycle Diaries, “I choose music with singing as I find that the arc of a melody, combined with harmonies and a rhythmic pulse, can be incredibly emotionally involving. We call these songs.” Yes, I suppose we do. Elsewhere Byrne tellingly refers to humans as “poor little meat puppets” and offers the speculation that “while religions might indeed be a lot of superstition as well as being an unfortunate excuse for violence and countless horrors they might also serve a purpose.” Pure bicycle-speak.
But this is disrespectful, isn’t it. Byrne is a musical visionary, a great lyricist too, and as far as I’m concerned he can write whatever the hell kind of book he wants to write. Besides, the functional and mildly alienated tone of his prose actually works rather well in this context: his is a bicycling mind, with a point of view -- as he explains in the Introduction -- “faster than a walk, slower than a train, often slightly higher than a person.” And if, in this light swoon of two wheels whirring, some of the things that occur to him are a little banal, well, others are quite interesting. In Buenos Aires, for example, pondering the strange absence of bicycles from a city so temperate, flat, and cleanly laid out, he concludes that the answer is simply “cultural abhorrence”: “The cycling meme hasn’t been dropped into the mix here, or it never took hold,” he muses, before pedalling off into an excursus on the theories of Jared Diamond.
Also: The world is fascinating. Byrne in Bicycle Diaries is the complete postmodern tourist, open to everything, concepts at his fingertips, keenly -- but not too keenly -- interested in a certain hovering, numinous sensation that he gets around shrines and places of worship, and so he makes a very good guide. In the recession-bitten town of Millvale, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh, he finds a Croatian church containing tempera wall paintings by the midcentury artist Maxo Vanka. The imagery is explosive: factories belch infernal smoke; angels weep as a top-hatted industrialist peruses the stock quotes; the Virgin, her face a stark grimace of compassion, separates two struggling soldiers, while Jesus takes a bayonet to the side. Smutty with Allegheny Valley coal dust, the murals knock Byrne out: he dubs Vanka “the Diego Rivera of Pittsburgh.”
Byrne also spends some time in Manila, where in contrast to Vanka’s devotion he finds the relics of secular idolatry -- gauzy, soft-core homages to Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, painted dreamscapes designed to propel the blighted First Couple into the realm of national mythology. Not that we ourselves are immune to such things, Byrne is quick to note: “The desire to find a slot for oneself in the collective national psyche runs deep. George Bush and Ronald Reagan were often photographed wearing Western clothes despite one being a New England WASP and the other a Hollywood movie star.”
So much for neutral observer Byrne: there’s also plugged-in Byrne, international art scene Byrne, whose connections in each city tend to be deep in that city’s culture sector. (“My friend C and I have lunch with two youngish guys who run an art gallery here...”) And then, of course, there’s bicycling Byrne, threading his way with spindly, helmeted heroism past every bus-shaped Scylla and whirling Charybdis-like junction that the modern city can throw at him. Biking à la Byrne means ecology, geekiness, a way of piercing into the world: skateboarding for the cerebral, if you like. The bicycle, fundamentally, is a machine in two dimensions -- which is why we appreciate so heartily the sight of a fat man on a bicycle. Byrne is not fat: he is tall and pointy and possessed of a certain angelic remoteness. But he loves to ride, and look at things, and he thinks, moreover, that the hour of the bicycle may be upon us. He applauds the bike racks sensibly installed on San Francisco’s Muni buses; “New Yorkers,” he ventures, “are at the point where they might, given the chance and opportunity, consider a bicycle as a valid means of transportation.” He is very interested in a new prototype helmet that can be slipped inside various “skins”: “a warm woolen skin with earflaps for cold winters, a porous mesh skin for hot summer.” He feels the cold, and he feels the heat, and he thinks about his fellow beings. More man than bicycle after all. --James Parker
James Parker is the author of Turned On: A Biography of Henry Rollins (Cooper Square Press), and a correspondent for The Atlantic.
From the Publisher
A renowned musician and visual artist presents an idiosyncratic behind-thehandlebars view of the world's cities
Since the early 1980s, David Byrne has been riding a bike as his principal means of transportation in New York City. Two decades ago, he discovered folding bikes and started taking them on tour. Byrne's choice was made out of convenience rather than political motivation, but the more cities he saw from his bicycle, the more he became hooked on this mode of transport and the sense of liberation it provided. Convinced that urban biking opens one's eyes to the inner workings and rhythms of a city's geography and population, Byrne began keeping a journal of his observations and insights.
An account of what he sees and whom he meets as he pedals through metropoles from Berlin to Buenos Aires, Istanbul to San Francisco, Manila to New York, Bicycle Diaries also records Byrne's thoughts on world music, urban planning, fashion, architecture, cultural dislocation, and much more, all conveyed with a highly personal mixture of humor, curiosity, and humility. Part travelogue, part journal, part photo album, Bicycle Diaries is an eye-opening celebration of seeing the world from the seat of a bike.
The New York Times -
Geoff Nicholson
Inevitably the diary format gives the book a random, scattershot quality: Byrne is in no sense a "programmatic" bike rider, and he admits he's sometimes just skimming over the surface of the cultures he encounters. Even so, his interests and activities—cutting-edge art exhibitions, rock festivals, a subversive PowerPoint presentation about PowerPoint presentations, a belly dance party—and certainly his personality are singular enough to give the book consistency and coherence…The book, then, is partly about cycling but also about whatever Byrne happens to have on his mind at the time, and fortunately a lot of it is quite interesting.
The Washington Post -
Krista Walton
…despite the title, this is no travel diary. Byrne's reflections are as varied as the countries he visits: He muses on everything from urban planning to bike helmets to art criticism to Latin music, often on his bike (but not always). Even if you don't own a bike and have no plans to mount one, you'll pedal through the pages of Bicycle Diaries in no time; the book is full of musings by a compelling eccentric.
Publishers Weekly
Byrne is fascinated by cities, especially as visited on a trusty fold-up bicycle, and in these random musings over many years while cycling through such places as Sydney, Australia; Manila, Philippines; San Francisco; or his home of New York, the former Talking Head, artist and author (True Stories) offers his frank views on urban planning, art and postmodern civilization in general. For each city, he focuses on its germane issues, such as the still troublingly clear-cut class system in London, notions of justice and human migration that spring to mind while visiting the Stasi Museum in Berlin, religious iconography in Istanbul, gentrification in Buenos Aires and Imelda Marcos's legacy in Manila. In low-key prose, he describes his meetings with other artists and musicians where he played and set up installations, such as an ironic PowerPoint presentation to an IT audience in Berkeley, Calif. He notes that the condition of the roads reveals much about a city, like the impossibly civilized, pleasant pathways designed just for bikes in Berlin versus the fractured car-mad system of highways in some American cities, giving way to an eerie “post apocalyptic landscape” (e.g., Detroit). While “stupid planning decisions” have destroyed much that is good about cities, he is confident there is hope, in terms of mixed-use, diverse neighborhoods; riding a bike can aid in the survival of cities by easing congestion. Candid and self-deprecating, Byrne offers a work that is as engaging as it is cerebral and informative. (Sept.)
Library Journal
When he's in a city, Byrne's preferred form of transportation for 20-some years has been the bicycle. Here is a grab bag of his observations—always interesting, frequently original—caught on the fly as the much-traveled Byrne crisscrosses the globe, from London and New York to Manila and Buenos Aires. In London, Byrne, known of course as the cofounder and lead singer of Talking Heads, attends an exhibit by an award-winning cross-dressing potter, who shows up at the exhibit with loving wife and daughter. In Manila, he is invited to sing along at karaoke with the Heads' hit, "Burning Down the House," but declines. The clean, safe streets in Berlin impress him, but he is disturbed by the lack of concern for bikers and pedestrians in his own country. Preoccupations recur: how do genes and myths shape our behavior and attitudes? Is creativity just a sophisticated form of lying? Why do souks and shopping malls look the same everywhere (is there "some kind of meme for social shopping?")? VERDICT The man who emerges from these pages is the type of person we'd all like to meet, just more observant than most. Enthusiastically recommended for all readers of travel memoir or of just plain good writing.—David Keymer, Modesto, CA
Kirkus Reviews
Renowned pop artist shares snippets from his travels and thoughts. In recent years, Byrne (Arboretum, 2006, etc.) best known as the founder of the Talking Heads, has branched out into modern art, video and sound installation and writing, among other pursuits. Here he offers a compendium of brief travelogues colored by the unique perspective of an urban cyclist. From Manila and Sydney to Berlin and San Francisco, Byrne played shows, met with galleries and musicians and ate and drank in fine and humble restaurants, all the while finding ways to get from A to B using his folding bicycle. Not surprisingly, his preferred means of transportation worked beautifully in some cities and proved challenging in others, though he relished the edgy charms of even the grittiest routes. Byrne fans will enjoy this peek into the star's daily life, which seemed calm, ruminant and pleasantly simple, yet shot through with the privileges that his fame and reputation afford-specifically, the opportunity to travel regularly and well. The narrative drifts from subject to subject-architecture, urban planning, modern art, music, politics, food, philosophy-never lingering on any one for more than a paragraph or two. One of the few recurring themes is Byrne's notion that cities can be viewed as three-dimensional projections of people's hopes, dreams and fears, and that this tangible collective spirit shapes the lives of residents in a self-perpetuating interplay. Whether describing what he made for lunch during a blackout or puzzling over the thorniest problems of civilization, the author is undeniably an intelligent, sensitive citizen of the world. It's evident that he has thought deeply about many of the topics hepresents, but his well-intentioned reflections on complex issues could benefit from a gifted editor and a more sustained analysis. As the book progresses, Byrne emphasizes the diary aspect more than the bicycle, which appears occasionally in the midst of his desultory ramblings before reemerging as the main subject of the final chapter. Disjointed but diverting.
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