Fast Company
Fast Company: A Memoir of Life, Love, and Motorcycles in Italy David M. Gross,
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374281335
DDC: 338.762922750945
Edition: Paperback; 2007-05-15
Summary:
It’s the thick of the mid-1990s boom, and David M. Gross is racking
up billable hours for a Manhattan corporate law firm and thinking
that there must be more to life. Out of the blue, a friend calls with
a tantalizing and risky proposal: How would he feel about moving to
Bologna to help turn around a legendary, down-on-its-luck Italian
motorcycle company, known for its dominance on the track and its
inability to turn a profit? After a brief soul-search and popping his
first (unintentional) wheelie during his maiden ride on the company’s
monstrous superbike, he signs on. And so Gross heads to Bologna,
fabled home of marbled meats, radical leftist politics, and bespoke
shoes, diving into his new life as the “corporate image consultant”
to gearheads and learning to navigate the giddy mores of Bolognese
society. He meets the CEO, who can relax only on planes between
meetings; the manic, bellicose bike designer, convinced that only his
genius can save the company; and the director of the museum, obsessed
by the factory’s role in World War II. Gross sparks the business’s
“spectacularization” with sexy ad campaigns starring factory workers
who, when not on strike, strut to the espresso machine clad in
Versace. Above all, he falls in love with motorcycles, seduced by
speed, and realizes that becoming a better rider means tapping into
dormant parts of his self that, as it turns out, were just waiting to
be unleashed. And when he picks up a handsome, young—and
closeted—skinhead, things really get interesting . .. In sensuous,
hilarious, and wildly entertaining prose, Gross pens a wry yet
ecstatic love letter to an uproarious city and its style-obsessed
denizens, and to the motorcycle that gave him the freedom to live
life at its very fastest.
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