He isn't doing too well so far at this year's Winter Olympics but, boy oh boy, does this Bode Miller guy know how to hold a crowd in the palm of his hand, or what?
The top-rated American skier, sliding into Italy this week has more potential media weight than any Olympic athlete since the oh-so-cute Mary Lou Retton back in the Reagan years. Bode is a breakneck skier; he either wins each race or else crashes spectacularly. He is the big draw (in skiing, at least) in the Olympic games which begin this week. His biography, recently released, is no work of art but it is an entertaining read.
Miller (whose first name is pronounced bow-dee just like that of the extreme sports enthusiast and bank robber "Bodi" -- short for bodhishaatva -- in Penelope Spheeris' "Point Break") is as colorful a character as the Olympics (or the publishing business, for that matter) has seen in decades. He parties hard. Wyhen Ed Bradley asked him on "60 Minutes" a few weeks ago whether his days of hard drinking and drugging were finally over, Bode replied, "No, I don't think so." when Bradley asked him to clarify, Bode explained that the times he skied in an impaired condition were the results of him still being drunk from the night before.
His bio is much the same: fierce insistence on individuality and an absolute refusal to conform to what the public considers an "appropriate" demeanor for an Olympic athlete. "I don't master the mountain," Miller writes proudly, "I master speed." And thst is indeed what he does. His talents will be widely on display this week and, even if he takes no medals, he will easily be the most entertaining athlete at this year's winter games.
As for the book? Well, it's about what one expects: funny, stuttering, outrageous at times, and not too well written. The bio, in other words, is no match for the guy himself.
What the book does provide is the full Bode background. His hippy parents and grandparents raised and home-schooled Bode from a tyke in the New England wilderness. The boy could ski almost before he could walk.
The picture he paints of his "off the grid before there was such a thing as being off the grid" upbringing is lovingly, almost idyllicly rendered. And he resents the hell out of journalists who describe him as growing up in "Dogpatch." His endless resourcefulness and entirely original athletic style are all due to this unconventional childhood he says repeatedly throughout the book. It is in the early pages, speaking about childhood and overall life philosophy, that this book shines more than the average athelete's bio. As the talk increasingly turns to technical questions about skiing methods and equipment, the book gets bogged down and continues on for what seems like about 50 unnecessary pages. Still, a better than average sports memoir way off the beaten track.
Bode: Go Fast, Do Good, Have Fun by Bode Miller with Jack McEnany
pub. by Villard
218 pp., $24.95
Leave a comment