The Sublime Weight Of Our Obsessions 

Especially moving is the weight of heritage and history in the memoir of English professor and grease monkey/craftsman, Matthew Biberman. The father ate bitter fruit in his youth and the son is made to wince from the unsettling memory. 

Matthew Biberman's passion and obsession to lift his father, Big Sid from rapid decline, prompts him to promise the latter they would build the motorcycle of his father's dreams. The promise segues into passion to obsession at the sacrifice of Biberman's marriage. 

Big Sid Biberman built fast machines, on which he took the young Mathew Biberman for Sunday rides, far out into the liberating landscape. Matthew Biberman has crafted a book like the Vincati, the amalgamation of beauty and power, to carry his declining father back into the world.   -- Belle Yang

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Thanks Belle for the review: I am honored and relieved to read a review that sees what was really at stake in this book about a motorcycle.

 As a response, I want to do another influences blog--one about Flaubert's Sentimental Education.