The Most Fun Thing

Dispatches from a Skateboard Life

Kyle Beachy

$55

Paperback

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English

Grand Central Publishing
25 January 2022

Phenomenology & Existentialism; Dating, relationships, living together & marriage; Sports & outdoor recreation; Rollerblading, skateboarding, etc

In January 2012, creative writing professor and novelist Kyle Beachy published one of his first essays on skate culture, an exploration of how Nike's corporate strategy successfully gutted the once-mighty independent skate shoe market. Beachy has since established himself as skate culture's freshest, most illuminating, at times most controversial voice, writing candidly about the increasingly popular and fast-changing pastime he first picked up as a young boy and has continued to practice well into adulthood.

What is skateboarding? What does it mean to continue skateboarding after the age of forty, four decades after the kickflip was invented? How does one live authentically as an adult while staying true to a passion cemented in childhood? How does skateboarding shape one's understanding of contemporary American life? Of growing old and getting married?

Contemplating these questions and more, Beachy offers a deep exploration of a pastime-often overlooked, regularly maligned-whose seeming simplicity conceals universal truths. THE MOST FUN THING is both a rich account of a hobby and a collection of the lessons skateboarding has taught Beachy-and what it continues to teach him as he struggles to find space for it as an adult, a professor, and a husband.

By: Kyle Beachy
Imprint: Grand Central Publishing
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 206mm, Width: 136mm, Spine: 32mm
Weight: 400g
ISBN: 9781538754115
ISBN 10: 1538754118
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 25 January 2022
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Kyle Beachy's first novel, The Slide (Dial Press, 2009), won The Chicago Reader's Best Book by a Chicago Author reader's choice award for the year. His short fiction has appeared in journals including Fanzine, Pank, Hobart, Juked, The Collagist, 5 Chapters, and others. His writing on skateboarding has appeared in The Point, The American Reader, The Chicagoan, Free Skateboard Magazine (UK & Europe), The Skateboard Mag (US), Jenkem, Deadspin, and The Classical. He teaches at Roosevelt University in Chicago and is a co-host on the skateboarding podcast Vent City with pro skater Ryan Lay and others.

Reviews for The Most Fun Thing: Dispatches from a Skateboard Life

As readable as a skate mag and as complex as the best fiction, THE MOST FUN THING imbricates themes of meaning, community, and the soul, and will leave you marveling at skateboarding's mystery and hopeful for its future. A book as much for the skateboarder as the artist and the writer, the thinker, the feeler. --Mark Suciu, professional skateboarder In THE MOST FUN THING, Kyle Beachy assembles critique, philosophy, anecdote, personal history and imagination, while being shrewd, witty, provocative and--above all--hugely engaging. This is my new favorite book on skateboarding.--Iain Borden, author of Skateboarding and the City: A Complete History