Figure Skater Autobiography Lit Review- Part 1
When I heard that Johnny Weir had signed a book deal for an autobiography, I can’t lie: I got really, really excited. By the time the thing is published in January 2011, I’ll be lucky if my long-suffering coworkers haven’t killed me for talking about it non-stop. I even have a working title for it in my mind: Our House Had Electricity: Growing Up Weir in Pennsylvania Amish Country. (I know, I know, it’s too long, but it goes back to this fabulous interview he did on the Jay Leno show.)
But the more I daydreamed about it, the more I realized I might need to set my expectations in some way. I mean… what if it sucks? I’ll be heartbroken! Weir keeps promising that it’s the story of how he got where he is now, in his own words. While I want there to be a lot of dirt about figure skating stuff, I doubt there will be as long as he keeps saying he’s going to keep competing. With him taking this coming year off of competition, my hopes are raised that it’s actually early retirement and he’s going to dish about fellow skaters and judging politics, etc.
It finally occurred to me that perhaps the best way to know what to anticipate would be to read the autobiographies of some other figure skaters. A literature review, if you will. There’s a wealth of them to choose from, but these were the ones I got from the public libraries nearby:
The first thing you’ll likely notice is that none of these were solely authored by the skaters themselves. So far, a ghost author hasn’t been revealed for Weir’s book. I won’t be surprised if one shows up when I finally have the thing in my hands, but I might feel a little disappointed, since he keeps stressing how important it is to him that he be allowed to say… whatever he’s going to say so that it doesn’t get filtered through journalists the way everything in the press does. The second thing I have to say is: the first 3 on the list are meant for young adult audiences. Lipinski and Kwan were both teenagers when these books were written, and well… they read like it.(I also just noticed, the editions of the Kwan and Lipinski books belonging to Oakland Public Library are not the updated, post-1998 Olympic ones.)
I’ll pick these apart here, starting with Boitano’s Edge. The dust jacket of the book boldly proclaims: “Perfect for family sharing, this is the ultimate skating book.” This might have been true when it was published in 1997, but there are several dated elements about it. We’re in a new world post-2002 judging scandal, the result of which was the new Code of Points (COP) that did away with the old-style technical and presentation marks. That section is useless except as a historical footnote. This book comes across less as an autobiography than like a reference book for school reports, the kind of thing your average 5th grader might check out to write an essay about figure skating. It’s an oversized book with lots of glossy pictures and very little insightful content. Boitano’s feelings about skating come across a bit like the introduction of the characters at the beginning of Amélie:
This is Brian. Brian loves skating. He also loves food [he hosts his own cooking show, What Would Brian Boitano Make!], snow, his mother, and touring.
Brian hates literal choreography, the costume he wore for 1988 US Nationals, and Brian Orser [kidding!].
The narrative part of the book is fairly shallow. While there are some hints at what an elite athlete’s life might be like, it’s a bit difficult to guess. Boitano recognizes that he was an oddly driven kid who spent a lot of time practicing, but who went to normal high school because he didn’t want to “miss out” on that experience. Still, most of his friends were skaters. And then, he won a gold medal at the Olympics! That’s about the depth of it. There’s no sense of narrative, of building step by step up to that achievement in this.
There are all kinds of guest sidebars. Some of them are enlightening, like the one by the guy who sharpens Boitano’s skates. That’s pretty amazing stuff, if you ask me. Others are, well… Joan Gruber on Judging, for example, is all about the old judging standard-skippable. An hilarious sidebar titled “The Etiquette of Practice Sessions” is accompanied by a picture of Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan on the ice together. The chapter on costuming has another Boitano sidebar suggesting that Scott Hamilton, with his spandex unitard, and Elvis Stojko, with his “street clothes” costumes, are skaters to emulate. Yes, that’s my eyes you can hear rolling. You know what TLo would say about street clothes as skating costumes-DNW!
This book has a glossary of skating terms and slang, most of which seem like things you’d have picked up if you’d ever watched even one nationally televised skating event. For example, kiss and cry is defined: “the area where skaters sit after their programs and wait to see the judges’ marks; so-called because skaters usually kiss their coaches and often cry, either because they a) performed poorly; b) performed exceptionally well; or c) are simply overcome with emotion.” The definition is next to a picture of Oksana Baiul BAWLING in the kiss ‘n cry next to a much younger-looking Galina Zmievskaya and a person I don’t recognize. My guess is that the picture is from the 1994 Olympics. Other definitions of skating terms strike me as useless in that a textual description of physical movement is extremely hard to visualize. I’ve been watching skating for nearly 20 years and still can only recognize a couple of the jumps consistently. Only with the advent of YouTube, where you can watch something over and over and over to pick it apart, have I been able to start recognizing some of the elements with any regularity. I recently discovered the A-Z series, which breaks down common moves, then shows several different elite athletes performing them. This is been pretty helpful; for example, Biellmann Spin.
Overall, the book is disappointing. It’s packed with information but hardly tells me what I want to know. Boitano strikes me as a person who has a good sense of humor; he willing participated in the South Park “What Would Brian Boitano Do?” song, and the clips I’ve seen of his show are humorous enough. There’s no insight here about the tensions in the sport between athleticism and artistry, about international politics in the sport, or about how Boitano’s identity is shaped by the sport.
But the more I daydreamed about it, the more I realized I might need to set my expectations in some way. I mean… what if it sucks? I’ll be heartbroken! Weir keeps promising that it’s the story of how he got where he is now, in his own words. While I want there to be a lot of dirt about figure skating stuff, I doubt there will be as long as he keeps saying he’s going to keep competing. With him taking this coming year off of competition, my hopes are raised that it’s actually early retirement and he’s going to dish about fellow skaters and judging politics, etc.
It finally occurred to me that perhaps the best way to know what to anticipate would be to read the autobiographies of some other figure skaters. A literature review, if you will. There’s a wealth of them to choose from, but these were the ones I got from the public libraries nearby:
- Brian Boitano’s Edge: Inside the Real World of Figure Skating, by Brian Boitano with Suzanne Harper
- Heart of a Champion: an Autobiography, by Michelle Kwan as told to Laura James
- Triumph on Ice, by Tara Lipinski as told to Emily Costello
- A Skating Life, by Dorothy Hamill with Deborah Amelon
- My Sergei: A Love Story, by Ekaterina Gordeeva with E.M. Swift
The first thing you’ll likely notice is that none of these were solely authored by the skaters themselves. So far, a ghost author hasn’t been revealed for Weir’s book. I won’t be surprised if one shows up when I finally have the thing in my hands, but I might feel a little disappointed, since he keeps stressing how important it is to him that he be allowed to say… whatever he’s going to say so that it doesn’t get filtered through journalists the way everything in the press does. The second thing I have to say is: the first 3 on the list are meant for young adult audiences. Lipinski and Kwan were both teenagers when these books were written, and well… they read like it.(I also just noticed, the editions of the Kwan and Lipinski books belonging to Oakland Public Library are not the updated, post-1998 Olympic ones.)
I’ll pick these apart here, starting with Boitano’s Edge. The dust jacket of the book boldly proclaims: “Perfect for family sharing, this is the ultimate skating book.” This might have been true when it was published in 1997, but there are several dated elements about it. We’re in a new world post-2002 judging scandal, the result of which was the new Code of Points (COP) that did away with the old-style technical and presentation marks. That section is useless except as a historical footnote. This book comes across less as an autobiography than like a reference book for school reports, the kind of thing your average 5th grader might check out to write an essay about figure skating. It’s an oversized book with lots of glossy pictures and very little insightful content. Boitano’s feelings about skating come across a bit like the introduction of the characters at the beginning of Amélie:
This is Brian. Brian loves skating. He also loves food [he hosts his own cooking show, What Would Brian Boitano Make!], snow, his mother, and touring.
Brian hates literal choreography, the costume he wore for 1988 US Nationals, and Brian Orser [kidding!].
The narrative part of the book is fairly shallow. While there are some hints at what an elite athlete’s life might be like, it’s a bit difficult to guess. Boitano recognizes that he was an oddly driven kid who spent a lot of time practicing, but who went to normal high school because he didn’t want to “miss out” on that experience. Still, most of his friends were skaters. And then, he won a gold medal at the Olympics! That’s about the depth of it. There’s no sense of narrative, of building step by step up to that achievement in this.
There are all kinds of guest sidebars. Some of them are enlightening, like the one by the guy who sharpens Boitano’s skates. That’s pretty amazing stuff, if you ask me. Others are, well… Joan Gruber on Judging, for example, is all about the old judging standard-skippable. An hilarious sidebar titled “The Etiquette of Practice Sessions” is accompanied by a picture of Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan on the ice together. The chapter on costuming has another Boitano sidebar suggesting that Scott Hamilton, with his spandex unitard, and Elvis Stojko, with his “street clothes” costumes, are skaters to emulate. Yes, that’s my eyes you can hear rolling. You know what TLo would say about street clothes as skating costumes-DNW!
This book has a glossary of skating terms and slang, most of which seem like things you’d have picked up if you’d ever watched even one nationally televised skating event. For example, kiss and cry is defined: “the area where skaters sit after their programs and wait to see the judges’ marks; so-called because skaters usually kiss their coaches and often cry, either because they a) performed poorly; b) performed exceptionally well; or c) are simply overcome with emotion.” The definition is next to a picture of Oksana Baiul BAWLING in the kiss ‘n cry next to a much younger-looking Galina Zmievskaya and a person I don’t recognize. My guess is that the picture is from the 1994 Olympics. Other definitions of skating terms strike me as useless in that a textual description of physical movement is extremely hard to visualize. I’ve been watching skating for nearly 20 years and still can only recognize a couple of the jumps consistently. Only with the advent of YouTube, where you can watch something over and over and over to pick it apart, have I been able to start recognizing some of the elements with any regularity. I recently discovered the A-Z series, which breaks down common moves, then shows several different elite athletes performing them. This is been pretty helpful; for example, Biellmann Spin.
Overall, the book is disappointing. It’s packed with information but hardly tells me what I want to know. Boitano strikes me as a person who has a good sense of humor; he willing participated in the South Park “What Would Brian Boitano Do?” song, and the clips I’ve seen of his show are humorous enough. There’s no insight here about the tensions in the sport between athleticism and artistry, about international politics in the sport, or about how Boitano’s identity is shaped by the sport.