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The Escape Artist : Life from the Saddle
Matt Seaton's critically acclaimed memoir about his obsession for cycling and how that obsession was tamed. For a time there were four bikes in Matt Seaton's life. His evenings were spent 'doing the miles' on the roads out of south London and into the hills of the North Downs and Kent Weald. Weekends were taken up with track meets, time trials and road races -- rides that took him from cold village halls at dawn and onto the empty bypasses of southern England. With its rituals, its code of honour and its comradeship, cycling became a passion that bordered on possession. It was at once a world apart, private to its initiates and, through the races he rode in Belgium, Mallorca and Ireland, a passport to an international fraternity. But then marriage, children and his wife's illness forced a reckoning with real life and, ultimately, a reappraisal of why cycling had become so compelling in the first place. Today, those bikes are scattered, sold, or gathering dust in an attic. Wry, frank and elegiac, 'The Escape Artist' is a celebration of an amateur sport and the simple beauty of cycling. It is also a story about the passage from youth to adulthood, about what it means to give up something fiercely loved in return for a kind of wisdom.
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First published January 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
March 12, 2023
Brilliant, heartfelt, beautiful. For everyone, not just cyclists.
September 30, 2019
Let me be honest about this. Before reading what amounts to the personal memoir of a racing cyclist, I knew next to nothing about cycling—except, that is, how I once knew it as a child. Back then, we all rode bicycles for fun…or to get from point A to point B for some grander purpose…or, in my case, as a means to execute a pre-dawn paper route.
Now I grant you: Matt Seaton provided me with a bit of education when he mentions, on p. 152, “…the great gladiatorial contests that once graced … Madison Square Gardens in New York.” I knew nothing about them growing up. I suspect that Matt was (and is?) just as ignorant about American football. And we’re both fairly helpless when it comes to something “…as weird and exotic as sumo wrestling” (p. 111).
But I’m getting somewhat ahead of myself in this review. The truth is that The Escape Artist (subtitle: Life from the Saddle) is about much more than being a racing cyclist. It’s about being a full human being, a husband and a father—even if his wife dies at a young age and within the 182 pages of this memoir. I’d like to think that the following citation (on p. 69) might provide you with some evidence of what I’m saying here: “(i)t dawned on me that Andy knew his vocation as a teacher after all. He had a natural authority; no one would dare mess around at the back of his classes. He would be the sort of tough-but-fair teacher who, as a kid, you would have looked up to and striven to please because you’d have wanted his approval more than anything in the world. He would command respect because he possessed a notion of decency, loyalty and fair play, and a sense of comradeship and its responsibilities. And he believed in these passionately enough to be willing to enforce them, even to fight for them. These values seemed to stem from cycling, as though that were their source, and spread to the rest of his life. I took the lesson.”
Additionally, on pp. 74 – 75, we find the following: “I was someone who had never really got beyond an adolescent resentment of all form-filling as a bureaucratic trespass on my personal autonomy and right to waste time as I saw fit. This arrested development may have had something to do with the fact that my father was methodical in such matters almost to a fault. Perhaps, who knows, my revolt against punctiliousness, my elevation of being flakey to political statement, had an Oedipal character? If this was the case, it was peculiarly self-defeating: there was not much triumph to be had in a life harassed by final demands; still I always waited until the red notice before paying a bill simply because it seemed too tedious and taxing actually to have to find my dog-eared cheque-book and a working biro and fill in the giro slip and write the cheque and steal a stamp from Ruth because I never had any and post the damn thing. For this person, then, the protocols of entering a race held under BCF rules were a serious re-education. From that unexpected quarter I finally learned that, given the motivation, there was actually a sense of accomplishment and virtue to be gained by timely, efficient form-filling.”
What does this same full-throttled human have to say about cycle racing? Page 110 gives us a clue. “The game you had to learn in all racing was that your resources were finite; you had to save your effort for when it was vital and for them alone.” Or further on (on p. 121): “(t)he tactical paradox was that the circumstances of a race might turn opponents into temporary teammates. At the moment when the lead car sped off signaling the end of the race’s neutralized zone, and again at the moment when each rider sprinted for the line, the race would become a pure competitive war of all against all. But in the intervening 30, 60, 80 or more miles all kinds of alliance might form: truces would be called, often simple on the strength of unspoken assumption, only to be broken further down the road. If you found yourself in a break, then every rider willing to work in that break became your ally. Only if the break was threatened, either by the gaining bunch or by the lack of its own cohesion, did it become permissible to attack the other riders and try to force a new selection or make a solo escape. In these situations a strange, unpredictable mixture of ruthless pragmatism and comradely solidarity would operate. Competition constantly mutated into cooperation and back again. A rider who ignored or traduced the rules of the game rode as a privateer who could expect no favours and no quarter from those who recognized him.”
Perhaps most appropriate to conclude these citations is one about Ruth, his wife (on pp. 142 – 143), who is, at this point, suffering from cancer and only months away from an early death: “I struggled to imagine what it must be like for her, but my imagination stumbled. The challenges I set for myself in cycling were circumscribed and artificial; this was real. I liked to think that I had learned things worth knowing about myself and about life from bike-racing—a cluster of values with loyalty at its heart, a self-confidence and self-reliance that in some ways I lacked before, and the sense of having a place in the world—but this was where the metaphor broke down. Cycling was just cycling; this was life. There were things that did not translate. I felt reluctant about giving up something as trivial as shaving my legs, yet Ruth was about to experience an alteration to her sense of physical integrity, a loss of personal autonomy, more absolute than I could even bring myself fully to comprehend. The idea of sacrificing my precious fitness was almost unbearable to me; she was committing her whole self, body and soul, to the process of creating a new, and other, person.”
If it’s not already quite evident from these citations, Matt Seaton knows how to write English—and write it exceedingly well. The truth is, whatever infatuation with cycling he might once have had, he’s now a full-time journalist. From what I know the demands of journalism, Matt doesn’t have a lot of spare time for bicycles.
RRB
Brooklyn, NY
29 September 2019
Now I grant you: Matt Seaton provided me with a bit of education when he mentions, on p. 152, “…the great gladiatorial contests that once graced … Madison Square Gardens in New York.” I knew nothing about them growing up. I suspect that Matt was (and is?) just as ignorant about American football. And we’re both fairly helpless when it comes to something “…as weird and exotic as sumo wrestling” (p. 111).
But I’m getting somewhat ahead of myself in this review. The truth is that The Escape Artist (subtitle: Life from the Saddle) is about much more than being a racing cyclist. It’s about being a full human being, a husband and a father—even if his wife dies at a young age and within the 182 pages of this memoir. I’d like to think that the following citation (on p. 69) might provide you with some evidence of what I’m saying here: “(i)t dawned on me that Andy knew his vocation as a teacher after all. He had a natural authority; no one would dare mess around at the back of his classes. He would be the sort of tough-but-fair teacher who, as a kid, you would have looked up to and striven to please because you’d have wanted his approval more than anything in the world. He would command respect because he possessed a notion of decency, loyalty and fair play, and a sense of comradeship and its responsibilities. And he believed in these passionately enough to be willing to enforce them, even to fight for them. These values seemed to stem from cycling, as though that were their source, and spread to the rest of his life. I took the lesson.”
Additionally, on pp. 74 – 75, we find the following: “I was someone who had never really got beyond an adolescent resentment of all form-filling as a bureaucratic trespass on my personal autonomy and right to waste time as I saw fit. This arrested development may have had something to do with the fact that my father was methodical in such matters almost to a fault. Perhaps, who knows, my revolt against punctiliousness, my elevation of being flakey to political statement, had an Oedipal character? If this was the case, it was peculiarly self-defeating: there was not much triumph to be had in a life harassed by final demands; still I always waited until the red notice before paying a bill simply because it seemed too tedious and taxing actually to have to find my dog-eared cheque-book and a working biro and fill in the giro slip and write the cheque and steal a stamp from Ruth because I never had any and post the damn thing. For this person, then, the protocols of entering a race held under BCF rules were a serious re-education. From that unexpected quarter I finally learned that, given the motivation, there was actually a sense of accomplishment and virtue to be gained by timely, efficient form-filling.”
What does this same full-throttled human have to say about cycle racing? Page 110 gives us a clue. “The game you had to learn in all racing was that your resources were finite; you had to save your effort for when it was vital and for them alone.” Or further on (on p. 121): “(t)he tactical paradox was that the circumstances of a race might turn opponents into temporary teammates. At the moment when the lead car sped off signaling the end of the race’s neutralized zone, and again at the moment when each rider sprinted for the line, the race would become a pure competitive war of all against all. But in the intervening 30, 60, 80 or more miles all kinds of alliance might form: truces would be called, often simple on the strength of unspoken assumption, only to be broken further down the road. If you found yourself in a break, then every rider willing to work in that break became your ally. Only if the break was threatened, either by the gaining bunch or by the lack of its own cohesion, did it become permissible to attack the other riders and try to force a new selection or make a solo escape. In these situations a strange, unpredictable mixture of ruthless pragmatism and comradely solidarity would operate. Competition constantly mutated into cooperation and back again. A rider who ignored or traduced the rules of the game rode as a privateer who could expect no favours and no quarter from those who recognized him.”
Perhaps most appropriate to conclude these citations is one about Ruth, his wife (on pp. 142 – 143), who is, at this point, suffering from cancer and only months away from an early death: “I struggled to imagine what it must be like for her, but my imagination stumbled. The challenges I set for myself in cycling were circumscribed and artificial; this was real. I liked to think that I had learned things worth knowing about myself and about life from bike-racing—a cluster of values with loyalty at its heart, a self-confidence and self-reliance that in some ways I lacked before, and the sense of having a place in the world—but this was where the metaphor broke down. Cycling was just cycling; this was life. There were things that did not translate. I felt reluctant about giving up something as trivial as shaving my legs, yet Ruth was about to experience an alteration to her sense of physical integrity, a loss of personal autonomy, more absolute than I could even bring myself fully to comprehend. The idea of sacrificing my precious fitness was almost unbearable to me; she was committing her whole self, body and soul, to the process of creating a new, and other, person.”
If it’s not already quite evident from these citations, Matt Seaton knows how to write English—and write it exceedingly well. The truth is, whatever infatuation with cycling he might once have had, he’s now a full-time journalist. From what I know the demands of journalism, Matt doesn’t have a lot of spare time for bicycles.
RRB
Brooklyn, NY
29 September 2019
March 23, 2022
"All my journeys by bike seemed, at the outset, to offer the promise of liberty and discovery and each venturing-out suggested new possibility and choice (...) What began with limitless options became a narrowing number of available routes, until I found myself once again back at my own front door." (p. 181)
Cycling as a sport/pasttime is imo one of the best metaphors for life TT__TT
I wish it snagged the opportunity to go emotionally deeper though instead of sticking with the journalistic tone. I didn't feel as connected to the story as I thought I would be.
Cycling as a sport/pasttime is imo one of the best metaphors for life TT__TT
I wish it snagged the opportunity to go emotionally deeper though instead of sticking with the journalistic tone. I didn't feel as connected to the story as I thought I would be.
January 20, 2018
being a cyclist, i enjoyed very detailed descriptions of club cycling life, practicalities of cycling (including the usually not mentioned "boring" stuff like cleaning, difficulties with storing etc) and specifics of living in the suburbs (i live in an area where woods are abundant and choices of cycling routes are endless). However, the descriptions of the book made me feel that it would focus more on the writer's family, his wife's illness and difficulties of decision making process while going through life's changes, therefore i was somewhat surprised that this aspect was almost missing - all these changes were described as some isolated events in his life and I just couldn't connect the dots, leading to his decisions. Lately books seem to get longer and longer without any real story to tell, but maybe this one could use a page of two more ...
October 9, 2018
If you don't know what road rash or Campy components are, I'm not sure this memoir is for you. It's mostly about the author's love affair with cycling and racing at a pretty high level as an amateur, with increasingly long sections about the relationship with his girlfriend, then wife and young family. In spite of the title, the author veers close but never lets the sport become a cliche for his life. In the end, the story of his family was as poignant as his description of cycling.
September 7, 2017
If you love cycling, you'll love this book. One criticism: it's too short.
April 4, 2018
I found this a very interesting read. part family life memoir and part book about cycling.
This is one of the finest books I've read on cycling
This is one of the finest books I've read on cycling
April 15, 2019
There are bikes in this but it’s not really about bikes. It’s about families and life and tragedy. And it’s incredibly good.
July 2, 2019
poignant recounting of author’s relationship with cycling through life’s adversity.
July 13, 2020
I get you bro
July 8, 2014
Matt Seaton's excellent book is about life, death and cycling.
It describes the arc of his early adult life; discovering politics and love at university, moving to London to live with his girlfriend, finding work in the media, marriage, fertility treatment and the birth of his children. Overshadowing all of this is the description of how his wife, the journalist Ruth Picardie, died of cancer soon after their children were born. Through this tale of a young man's life he weaves an account of his love affair with cycling. Initially he rode bikes for recreation and for commuting but from these casual beginnings developed into a committed racing cyclist. His descriptions of the joys and hardships of competitive cycling are memorable but even more impressive are the understated accounts of his relationships; with his girlfriend, his closest cycling friends and even with his bikes. His solid friendship with Mick, a fellow bikie, was initially based on little more than a shared love of cycling and the fact that they rode along together at roughly the same speed.
After Ruth died, his responsibilities as a single parent of infant twins meant that his commitment to cycling died with her. The realisation that his life had changed for ever, that he had to give up something he cherished in order to sustain other, more important loves is one of the reasons why this book is so poignant. To become adults we must put away childish things, but in our hearts we may remain forever young, seeking freedom on a bicycle.
This is one of my favourite books, not just about cycling but about life. I can't recommend it enough.
It describes the arc of his early adult life; discovering politics and love at university, moving to London to live with his girlfriend, finding work in the media, marriage, fertility treatment and the birth of his children. Overshadowing all of this is the description of how his wife, the journalist Ruth Picardie, died of cancer soon after their children were born. Through this tale of a young man's life he weaves an account of his love affair with cycling. Initially he rode bikes for recreation and for commuting but from these casual beginnings developed into a committed racing cyclist. His descriptions of the joys and hardships of competitive cycling are memorable but even more impressive are the understated accounts of his relationships; with his girlfriend, his closest cycling friends and even with his bikes. His solid friendship with Mick, a fellow bikie, was initially based on little more than a shared love of cycling and the fact that they rode along together at roughly the same speed.
After Ruth died, his responsibilities as a single parent of infant twins meant that his commitment to cycling died with her. The realisation that his life had changed for ever, that he had to give up something he cherished in order to sustain other, more important loves is one of the reasons why this book is so poignant. To become adults we must put away childish things, but in our hearts we may remain forever young, seeking freedom on a bicycle.
This is one of my favourite books, not just about cycling but about life. I can't recommend it enough.
April 21, 2013
It's pretty difficult to symphatize with someone who is as much into cycling as Matt. He describes every single part of his bike and cycling in general with so much love and melancholy, so much he doesn't get to talk about the other part of his life. It probably was his goal to write a book solely about his cycling enthusiasm, but by doing it this way he comes out like a fleeing-from-reality boy, who is stuck with a girlfriend and a job, struggling with the awareness that deep down he knows he likes cycling more than the other two. He also admits this, but if he'd only spent some more effort in describing his other side, apart from cycling he'd be a protagist I'd like to empathize with.
Apart from that I must admit he has a great way of describing things. I guess that everyone who is a little bit into cycling recognizes alot in his way of describing his cycling adventures. His language isn't quite low-entry level, but that is more because this must be the first book I read in English, combined with the niche vocubalary, specific to cycling.
2 stars!
Apart from that I must admit he has a great way of describing things. I guess that everyone who is a little bit into cycling recognizes alot in his way of describing his cycling adventures. His language isn't quite low-entry level, but that is more because this must be the first book I read in English, combined with the niche vocubalary, specific to cycling.
2 stars!
April 16, 2010
Now I enjoy cycling, not the same degree as Matt, but nevertheless I can empathise with his enthusiasm.Consequently I very much enjoyed his cycling geek rambles. ( I did read a previous recommendation of Matt's= French Revolutions- Tim Moore ; so must be a bit of a geek myself> )
This very much brought to mind something a clinical psychologist once said to me. That men live in a practical world, and as such ,in their darkest moments, would rather do than sit and ponder. This may be a generalisation but experience and Matt Seaton suggest otherwise.
A poignant and moving book, of love, escape and loss, and the art of growing up. What amazes me is how three such close people, Ruth Picardie, Justine Picardie and Matt Seaton could all be so talented.
For those who are not fortunate enough to understand the link, see " Before I say Goodbye"- Ruth Picardie and " If the Spirit Moves you"- Justine Picardie.
This very much brought to mind something a clinical psychologist once said to me. That men live in a practical world, and as such ,in their darkest moments, would rather do than sit and ponder. This may be a generalisation but experience and Matt Seaton suggest otherwise.
A poignant and moving book, of love, escape and loss, and the art of growing up. What amazes me is how three such close people, Ruth Picardie, Justine Picardie and Matt Seaton could all be so talented.
For those who are not fortunate enough to understand the link, see " Before I say Goodbye"- Ruth Picardie and " If the Spirit Moves you"- Justine Picardie.
March 16, 2014
The book begins by examining the life of the keen, amateur, racing cyclist. Seaton is no fanatic, but holds his own with his club mates while wondering at the level of the professionals and what they must do to attain their levels of fitness and endurance.
I don't know why it happened, but the book just failed to engage me. I put it down one day and never picked it back up. Unfinished, hence the once star review.
I don't know why it happened, but the book just failed to engage me. I put it down one day and never picked it back up. Unfinished, hence the once star review.
October 23, 2008
Matt Seaton writes & edits for the Guardian.
This reads a bit like a collection of clippings or columns; a little bit of Matt Seaton's life here and a little bit there. But it tells a cohesive story about amateur bicycle racing, Matt Seaton's relationships, and his wife's struggle against cancer. It goes from frank to fierce to wry, all well-written.
This reads a bit like a collection of clippings or columns; a little bit of Matt Seaton's life here and a little bit there. But it tells a cohesive story about amateur bicycle racing, Matt Seaton's relationships, and his wife's struggle against cancer. It goes from frank to fierce to wry, all well-written.
March 17, 2013
I read this book quite a long time ago when I was doing a lot of bike riding. The author was a young man who loved racing. He talks about how he prepared and what the races were like. However, the core of the book was how his love of bike racing had come to take second place to the reality of his life when his wife got sick and then died, leaving him with a young child. I enjoyed it a lot.
May 1, 2014
This heart breaking book really made me reflect on my life. It's about an everyday man, husband, father who is forced to face a terrible situation and how cycling in some way helps him through. It's not what I expected and although sometimes it's a tough read I would encourage anybody to read it. In fact this is the only cycling book I have ever recommended to my wife.
March 27, 2009
I thought the book was ok, in that it covers a mans decent into the madness of cycling at a late age (something I am going through myself) - And as a backdrop is his life and his marriage.
My expectations were higher I think and for that I shouldn't blame Mr. Seaton or his memoir.
My expectations were higher I think and for that I shouldn't blame Mr. Seaton or his memoir.
July 21, 2010
9/10. Starts off as an excellent view of club cycling. However, half way through real life takes over and the author's perspective on cycling and life is turned upside down. Author wrote a great cycling column in The Guardian. Recommended.
March 21, 2012
Fabulous. I thought I was reading about myself and my cycling buddies. A must read for anyone who's ever ridden a bicycle for more than transportation. Matt Seaton describes something that is indescribable unless you've been there and felt that.
October 5, 2014
Enjoyed this a lot. Several strands to the book. In depth detail of cycling at a local/club level. Dealing with obsession, and the difficulties of balancing life and death in the family. Will look after Seaton's book Two Wheels sometime, I expect.
October 24, 2010
If you are a bike racer seek out this book. It is a well written autobiographical account of the arc of being a bike racer as life begins to encroach on the singular passion that defines bike racing.
October 25, 2012
A moving and inspiring story that goes a long way to explaining why I ride a bicycle.
March 29, 2013
Brilliant, touching book. So much more than a cycling book.
March 30, 2013
A must read for anyone who enjoys cycling.
August 29, 2012
Read next to the pool, on the plane, in bed. Its a cracker
August 4, 2014
A very moving, concise memoir.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews