Coach Fitz, Tom Lee, Giramondo Publishing.
Tom, the narrator of novel Coach Fitz, is a young man living in Sydney whose obsession with physical fitness in part makes up for feelings of inadequacy lingering from his youth. He is intelligent, self-reflective, at times too much, to the point of self-absorption, and independent, to the point of isolation. He hires a fitness and running coach, a former psychoanalyst, aptly named Coach Fitz, as she is both physically fit and also a good ‘fit’ for Tom, sharing his interest in self-improvement beyond just physical fitness, and in architecture, design, food and wine.
Although something of a foodie – another thread in his pursuit of living well – an aesthete as well as athlete, he is also an ascetic. In order to afford his fitness coaching he lives out of his car, a Honda Odyssey. Again, the name is not incidental, as, like Odysseus, Tom is on a quest, in his case for enlightenment through fitness.
His runs with Coach Fitz are tours of Sydney’s northern beaches and the suburbs around Botany Bay, and this allows author Tom Lee to indulge in his interest in the urban landscape. (Parts of the novel mirror Lee’s exploration of Sydney’s suburbs in an article recently published online in the Sydney Review of Books.) As they run, Coach Fitz takes a holistic approach, counselling Tom about the problems with modern young men and their prolonging of adolescence emotionally and sexually, and about the culture of alcohol and gambling affixed like a leech to Australian sport. She also alerts him to favourite architects, architectural features, such as the cast-iron fittings on hotels, and the aesthetic appeal of particular public amenities. They discuss changes in topography and flora, and the attributes of parks and reserves. She encourages the immersion in landscape, rather than the ‘self-insulation’ of running with earbuds connected to electronic devices.
But Tom begins to notice inconsistencies. Coach Fitz is obsessed with her phone, her restaurant choices are dubious, and she is something of a hypochondriac. Eventually a sexual near-miss with the drunken coach causes him to sever ties, but his interest in running only grows, and he feels the need to take on a pupil of his own. In this there is the notion of the pupil surpassing the master.
Running seems like a purely physical act, but of course it is also mental and emotional, and the impressive style of writing in this novel mimics the discipline but also philosophical introspection of self-improvement. Like the work of some European novelists and the Australian writer Gerald Murnane, it is deliberately formal and reflective, carefully clear but also verbose to the point of pedantry or even neurosis. It constantly shifts between the descriptive and the overly wordy, giving it a slyly comic edge. Coach Fitz’s tendency to choose the cafes they meet in is a ‘lopsided distribution of agency that informed our decisions about places of recreation’. After living in his car for some months Tom begins ‘to hanker for an increased quantity of flat surfaces […] and immobile foundations’.
There lives within Tom both the sportsman and the nerd. Tom admits an occasional ‘obliviousness to the distinction between what was and wasn’t appropriate in making social connections’. His narration conveys lucidity and sense, even if it is a little pedantic, but between the lines seeps the idea that others might think Tom a little odd. (Lee’s skill as a novelist is to make this largely implicit rather than explicit.) He is oblivious to the fact that reading his protégé’s diary that gets left behind in a café, in order to gain some insight and encouragement, might be an invasion of privacy. And in Tom’s interactions with people there is an anxiety and over-analysis that perhaps mirrors his obsession with exercise. Yet obsession is not quite the right word. He simply thinks about exercise a lot, and the novel is cleverly subtle in that it continually moves in a blurry field in-between interest and obsession.
One thread in the novel is Tom’s interest in restaurant reviews, which is woven into the overall pattern of improving himself. We live in a society keen on analysis. For Tom, most times, reading the review is enough. Although he plans to visit some of the restaurants, the possibility of visiting is enough, perhaps in the way that reading book reviews can be enjoyable even if one doesn’t read the book in question. We need to be in the know, aware of what is good or bad, or at least fashionable. To know is to participate in some way in the culture of self-improvement where improving one’s taste is part of it.
Writing about the origins of the novel, Lee says that he is not being wholly critical of Sydney’s craze for fitness. It would be too easy, in the manner of cynical culture critics, to dismiss it outright. Rather, the novel is an ‘expression of reverence’ for fitness, even if Lee shows a subtle understanding of how reverence can include doubt. ‘Reverence’ is a deliberately religious word, and physical exercise can be at the level of religious devotion, with its community of believers, rituals, feelings of transcendence and attempts to live consistently well. There is something joyous and spiritually rewarding about exercising, but like the cultivation of mind and spirit there is a danger that it can turn inward, encourage self-obsession, and become the arbiter of self-worth.
(Originally reviewed for Insights magazine.)
Coburg Review of Books 