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The Body Shop: Parties, Pills, and Pumping Iron -- Or, My Life in the Age of Muscle

Description

As a scrawny college freshman in the mid-1970s, just before Arnold Schwarzenegger became a hero to boys everywhere and Pumping Iron became a cult hit, Paul Solotaroff discovered weights and steroids. In a matter of months, he grew from a dorky beanpole into a hulking behemoth, showing off his rock hard muscles first on the streets of New York City and then alongside his colorful gym-rat friends in strip clubs and in the homes of the gotham elite. It was a swinging time, when "Would you like to dance?" turned into "Your place or mine?" and the guys with the muscles had all the ladies--until their bodies, like Solotaroff''s, completely shut down.

But this isn't the gloom-and-doom addiction one might expect--Solotaroff looks back at even his lowest points with a wicked sense of humor, and he sends up the disco era and its excess with all the kaleidoscopic detail of Boogie Nights or Saturday Night Fever.

Written with candor and sarcasm, THE BODY SHOP is a memoir with all the elements of great fiction and dazzlingly displays Paul Solotaroff's celebrated writing talent.

Reviews

Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2010-08-24
Summary: "The Body Shop"

Paul Solotaroff's life in the seventies was no picnic and he describes what it was like weight lifting, taking steroids, hanging out in clubs and with famous people in his book, The Body Shop. With his witty sarcasm and honest writing, he lets the world in on how he went overboard and came crashing down and redeemed himself before it was too late. Too fast, too soon, but a life not lost. This memoir is a quick look into the weight-lifting world during the disco age.

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Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-08-20
Summary: "".....a memoir that often reads like a dramady""

Admittedly, I went into this book with some preconceived notions about it. One look at the over confirmed a few of them but I was also afraid that the book was going to be overly macho for me to enjoy it. Boy was I wrong! Ideally, The Body Shop can be described as a look into the male psyche in the late 1970's. Research (and also detailed analysis in the book) suggests that this was the age of the body builders; spawned by Arnold Schwarzenegger, when men strutted around with huge biceps and abs that you could watch water ripple off of. Image meant everything (and still does) and a thirst for recognition meant that you were covering up some hideous, unloved and most times neglected part of your childhood. It is under these circumstances that we are introduced to Paul and his years as a lifter and a juicer.

The Body Shop is a memoir that often reads like a dramady with colorful characters, complicated situations and some truly comedic dialogue. I guess you can hardly call it a laughing matter when one finds them self using illegal drugs and dancing for a living but Paul brings across these passages in his life without shame or regret. I could tell that they were stepping stones towards figuring out who he really was. Yet still, you can't help but laugh out loud or gasp at the kind of situations that Paul finds himself in or the people he meets along the way.

Interestingly enough, Paul is a literature major and this really showed in the book. Though at times he was a bit sarcastic (which probably is a Paul thing) he was able to vividly recreate the mood and the machismo culture that pervaded the late 1970's. His work in establishing the characters such as Angel, Tommy and Spiro is also commendable. I enjoyed getting to know them and watching their individual stories come to life.

Hinged to the story is Paul's strained relationship with his parents in particular his father (sadly this is the case with all of the main characters). Though there is still love between them I could tell that they had quite a few unresolved issues. Paul attempts to resolve this closer to the end of the book but after their experiences together; I couldn't help but wonder how their relationship is currently. On a lighter note it was pretty cool learning about Paul's dad being a professional reviewer and editor. I got a glimpse into the world that we book bloggers dabble in as a past time. The unpredictability of the job and the incessant writer's block that sometimes attacked him seemed all too familiar.

All and all, don't let the macho nature of this book put you off. You'd be missing a really good story if you do.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-08-18
Summary: "Pumping Iron mixed with Boogie Nights"

"I want muscles
I want all I can get
All over him, all over him
I want muscles, muscles, muscles."

Muscles written by Michael Jackson and sung by Diana Ross

Paul Solotaroff wanted muscles and lots of them, so he did what any self respecting lifter in the Seventies did: he hit the gym and the juice (steroids). In The Body Shop Solotaroff explains his reckless quest for bulk as follows:

"For a good year and a half after I started lifting, I never went two full days without benching and rarely went more than one. I knew nothing about rest periods or tissue synthesis or the dispersal of cellular waste, and I wouldn't have paid attention if someone had made the point while standing on my chest. Rules were for guys with the time and patience to get big strand by strand, duly marking progress in ten-pound plates and, steady, two-rep gains. Put differently, it was for men who'd gotten laid in adolescence and didn't have a string of dateless weekends tied around their rears like tin cans. When you're a twenty-year old male around thousands of girls, none of whom evince even the slightest interest in seeing what you look like with no shirt on, the only anatomy you have patience to study is your own in the weight-room mirror. And for that you'll make all the time in the world - even if it conflicts with your Physics for Poets class."

Soon Solotaroff's wish was granted: he no longer looked like the puny Charles Atlas, but the "after" pumped up Atlas. With his new found heft came a gig as a private party male stripper. And with the stripping came the holy trifecta of a young man's dreams: women, drugs, and money.The Body Shop follows Solotaroff's "lost years" stripping and juicing. The memoir works surprisingly well on two levels. First, as a dark comedy of Solotaroff's life in the mid-seventies as a juiced up Jewish male stripper with literary leanings (the author's father was a noted editor for literary icons such as Philip Roth and Norman Mailer). Second, the memoir unfolds as a compelling family drama centering on the author's fitful relationship with his loving, but distant father.

The Body Shop is a well written and comedic book that you will not want to put down!

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (July 26, 2010), 304 pages.
Advance review copy provided courtesy of the publisher.

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Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-08-15
Summary: "Bridget's Review"

I got this book because the description sounded like something I would enjoy. I was completely shocked by how interesting this memoir is. It almost reads like fiction in some parts and Paul is a master with words.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-08-05
Summary: "Harrowing, hilarious, haunting"

I finished this book a few days ago and can't get it out of my head. A lurid phantasmagoria of dark slapstick, it is also a haunting account of familial sorrow. Our hero, an erstwhile skinny, shy bookworm who longs for a sex life as much as for the attention of his distant father, discovers the transformative powers of body building and steroids as a 20-year-old college student. Turning girls' heads turns his head away from the high literary tradition of his dysfunctional family, or so he thinks. No matter how far he falls into the juice-pumped cesspool that was the New York sex-and-drug scene in the Seventies, his thoughts are never far from his deeply disapproving father. The writing is manic and brilliant. The descriptions of bad judgement, bad behavior, and bad clothes are priceless.