Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by UV Metal Arts - Powder Coating on July 14, 2009 at 3:50pm

Travis Culley's book The Immortal Class is a good book, but it's Important to mention the controversy regarding how the book came to be. I believe John Greenfeild wrote an article about it. I seem to remember it was on the front page of the Chicago Reader. It detailed plagiarism in Culley's book. Will somebody post it? I couldn't find it. In the book Culley threw my name around a little bit. He quoted me saying something that I did not say. For awhile many bike racks around town sported stickers that read "Travis Culley The Immortal Ass".

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Permalink Reply by Julie Aberman (Hochstadter) on July 14, 2009 at 5:02pm

i bought the book today on amazon. excitd to start it.

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Permalink Reply by Juan 2-3 or more mi. on July 15, 2009 at 12:23am

I read the book several times and found it to be very moving and personal. I feel myself in the book basically because I used to be a bike messenger, but still am a daily bicycle commuter. I know Travis, and had never known of any controversy until today. Screw it all I say, it is a very good read. One of the images stuck in my mind is the incident of the bicycle messenger getting killed by road rage. This is a daily struggle american cyclists face on the road.

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Permalink Reply by vxla on July 15, 2009 at 4:58am

h3 said:

*sigh* so few heroes for today's youth . . .
If you're going to dredge all that up-- it's "immoral ass."
The gist of the controversy was that, allegedly, the book was originally supposed to be an anthology, so THC solicited and collected submissions for the book; then at some point the pub apparently nixed the anthology idea, and content of people's submissions ended up, um, accidentally being incorporated into THC's first person narrative, uncredited. And in all the hullabaloo the poor lad forgot to communicate anything at all back to the folks who'd submitted work. But that ended up not being such a big deal, as all they had to do was buy the book to see which of their work ended up being used.
All this =alleged=, of course- this was before I knew or cared who he was.
In the end John probably got more $$ from his Reader article than he would have from the book?

UV Metal Arts - Powder Coating said:

Travis Culley's book The Immortal Class is a good book, but it's Important to mention the controversy regarding how the book came to be. I believe John Greenfeild wrote an article about it. I seem to remember it was on the front page of the Chicago Reader. It detailed plagiarism in Culley's book. Will somebody post it? I couldn't find it. In the book Culley threw my name around a little bit. He quoted me saying something that I did not say. For awhile many bike racks around town sported stickers that read "Travis Culley The Immortal Ass".

Hopefully the author sees this forum and can clear the matter up for the public here.

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Permalink Reply by UV Metal Arts - Powder Coating on July 15, 2009 at 5:33am

All I remember from that time was a lot of my friends in the messenger community were very angry at Culley.
During that time Travis kept telling me about how important it was for him to be truthful and honest.
I defended him when others talked badly of him because I knew nothing about the controversy. I really liked the guy. But my opinion of him changed when I read the book and the Reader article.
The most damming thing about the article was the original text printed in a column next to the text from his book.
Travis miss quoting of me really hurt my feelings and my pride. I took it as slander. He didn't have to use my name.
If you do a track stand without tires, your wheels will not fold. I don't understand why he had me saying this in his book.


vxla said:

h3 said:

*sigh* so few heroes for today's youth . . .
If you're going to dredge all that up-- it's "immoral ass."
The gist of the controversy was that, allegedly, the book was originally supposed to be an anthology, so THC solicited and collected submissions for the book; then at some point the pub apparently nixed the anthology idea, and content of people's submissions ended up, um, accidentally being incorporated into THC's first person narrative, uncredited. And in all the hullabaloo the poor lad forgot to communicate anything at all back to the folks who'd submitted work. But that ended up not being such a big deal, as all they had to do was buy the book to see which of their work ended up being used.
All this =alleged=, of course- this was before I knew or cared who he was.
In the end John probably got more $$ from his Reader article than he would have from the book?

UV Metal Arts - Powder Coating said:

Travis Culley's book The Immortal Class is a good book, but it's Important to mention the controversy regarding how the book came to be. I believe John Greenfeild wrote an article about it. I seem to remember it was on the front page of the Chicago Reader. It detailed plagiarism in Culley's book. Will somebody post it? I couldn't find it. In the book Culley threw my name around a little bit. He quoted me saying something that I did not say. For awhile many bike racks around town sported stickers that read "Travis Culley The Immortal Ass".

Hopefully the author sees this forum and can clear the matter up for the public here.

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Permalink Reply by Michael on July 15, 2009 at 9:07pm

The book is a good read. THC's style is engaging, if a little unrefined. I was a messenger at about the same time (92-98) and the book seems to me to be a reasonably accurate impression of what it was like to be a messenger at the time.

A more experienced writer may have made some different choices in publishing. After reading Greenfield's article in the reader, I was a little disappointed that Travis did not credit his sources as well as he should have. I was also a little disappointed that the book was presented as a memoir, since some of the passages are fictional.

Despite these disappointments, I feel that it is worth reading. File under historical fiction.

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Permalink Reply by Travis Hugh Culley on July 15, 2009 at 10:28pm

Hey Folks,

I’d better clear this up, because I have been silent.

Firstly, it is nice to hear that readers are still out there, and that there are riders who are willing to see my book from more than one point of view. I will leave a little response here in the hope that all questions and concerns can be put aside about my memoir The Immortal Class and to give you a sense of my experience about how “the controversy” came to be.

The author of the article was quite a contrarian, to me, and an effective one. That is true. But the truth is that he had no business writing about my book in the Reader because he was far too close to the production of it to provide an objective analysis. What I found to be most damning about his article was only that he summarized it in such detail that I worried people would not feel that they needed to read the book themselves, and that was his intention.

The reader article was written dishonestly. Greenfield, a former courier, was not only part of the original anthology idea, but he had a hand in editing my book before it went to print! He checked every fact before he had the opportunity, and took the opportunity to write about the book you read. This fact, having editted the book he criticises, he conveniently leaves out of his 22,000 word article (I’m guessing). Oops! John edited my book, and then took aim at it in the Reader. He should never have gotten away with that! And I should never have opened up my process to this person. I learned hard lessons here about what it meant to be betrayed by friend. I thought he was a friend, and I thought he was a writer, and that is why he was part of those early conversations about an anthology back in 1999. His contribution was unreadable, by the way, and his intentions throughout and eagerness to participate were murky. I should have been warned.

He was making jogging dates with my girlfriend, Hye Won, at the time that I was bringing together these voices and ideas, and he was never honest with me. Therefore, he was never honest with you. That is why I have never had any kind of amicably with him since. He might have felt diss’d because his contribution was not included in my book, but no one’s was. That’s a fact. The Immortal Class is a record of my rookie year as a courier in Chicago. It is a truthful reflection of my experience. It is no Million Little Pieces, and I have never been asked to apologize for fictionalizing or falsifying its content, regardless of what rumors have come out or how.

In the article, JG misunderstands what a non-fiction book is. As an author who writes from the standpoint of investigative journalism, and writes a memoir, I make a few, brief, mentions of experiences that other couriers, who were also a part of the original anthology notion (Jeff Benjamin & Donny Perry), but I neither claim their experiences to be mine, nor do I steal them. I tell these stories because they are real experiences of real messengers in the courier scene c.1997/8. In the sections that JG tries make a case out of (these accidents, those angry drivers, etc.) I tell only what happened to these couriers. None of this is untoward in any way because they are documented facts. JG wrote about them. You can write about them yourselves.

In fact, these summaries are some of the more factual aspects of my book because the couriers had written them, but I am not a thief, nor am I so uncreative that I need their language. I summarized these experience,s careful not to broach on their writing. My hope, while writing, was that their contributions could find publication in another forum. Other stories came from people who had told me what had happened to them, and legally, there is no difference. I recounted what had happened to these people as accurately and honestly as I could. So it is wrong to think, as the article suggests, that I took their language (which is plagiarism) or that I ascribed their experiences upon myself (which Donny says but does not defend).

So the accusations that were published in the Reader dishonored the Reader, myself, and all of you. I admitted that I should have informed them about what was happening but their legal claims are unsubstantiated, and come from mistaken ideas of the rights of authorship. Those other couriers can write their own books about how I wrote about them. You can write a reply to my comments, summarizing what I am writing, and none of this would suffer such scrutiny (unless it was a mistaken scrutiny, of course). Reporting what happened to someone is not plagiarism, and the facts that I describe were published because of the broader themes of my book. What actually happened to these couriers while making deliveries is separate from “their stories.” I did not publish their stories, in their words. I summarized, in my own languag what happened to who and when. This is why there hasn’t been more controversy about it. JG’s accusations fall dead right here.

While in the process of writing the book, I thought deeply about this, about how I needed to tell what happened in the lives of these couriers (Jeff & Donny) , just as I did with Tommy McBride or Matt and his brother Max, or with the other riders who I raced with one Sunday morning. Regardless of these efforts at clarity, the Reader article says “plagiarism,” but doesn’t understand the word. The article was a way of raising your distrust in me, and obscurring what subjects the book raises, and all the backtalk has done enough damage. Then he elicits comments from every person that he could find who seemed to find any disagreement about what I had written (and he had edited) to furhter substantiate his “story.” Bear witness.

Anyone who “Shoots the Messenger” is obviously getting something wrong about who was the author of what message, and the article that you bring up, UV, amounts only to a assassination attempt. The only real story behind it, if told, would bring a shameful light upon a deep strain of jealousy, vindictiveness, and vanity that makes the struggles couriers and cyclists live with seem trite and shallow to the rest of the world.

So, I can apologize about missed quotes, inaccuracies, etc., but the accusations are empty and there have been no attempts by the people he cites to establish as fact what he makes a loose rumor of, nor did he ever tell me (even after he’d edited my book) about what kind of angle his article would take. The last day that I spoke to JG kindly was the day he asked if he could speak to my mother. So, now all the dirt has been dug up, but where his article is concerned, people need to understand that it is just dirt being thrown, and it will pass.

I have been a courier for 14 years now. I am work full-time at Denver/Boulder Couriers. I am the guy doing the twitter feeds, opening up restaurant delivery service, and thinking up new ways to grow the company. I love being a courier, I love cycling, but I have basically consigned myself (where it comes to the readers of this article) to being vastly misunderstood.

So, thanks for hearing me out. Look over the materials again, and decide for yourself whether what I wrote was mine, or whether I really needed these other writers to have a voice of my own. I hope this helps to clear up this controversy.

Velo & Pais, THC

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Permalink Reply by Michael on July 15, 2009 at 11:13pm

Thanks for the clarifications, Travis, and welcome to The Chainlink!

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Permalink Reply by UV Metal Arts - Powder Coating on July 16, 2009 at 3:10am

Thanks for the apology of about the miss quote Travis. It really was a huge blow to my inflated 21 year old rock-star courier ego at the time. Everything else about that day was so accurate. I took it real personally.
I did enjoy reading most of the book though and the monologue that you did at the critical mass bike art show is something I'll never forget. Too bad it all ended so badly.

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Permalink Reply by kathleen on July 16, 2009 at 5:37am

Travis moved to Boulder a while back, tho he's on Facebook and swings through town periodically.

I read the book in one long night. I still love it. I quoted part of it in my Yoga for Cyclists manual:

"When riding I do not concentrate on what my hands and feet are doing. I focus on the space at hand, what is there, what is not there, and what is coming into being. I rarely dodge. It's more like I swim toward emptiness, analyzing what is in front of me by the speed with which it comes at me. I am not moving through the space as much as I am expanding space where, in speed, it seems to fall away."

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Permalink Reply by kathleen on July 16, 2009 at 5:38am

Oh whoops - I didn't see the whole thread after this post. :)

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Permalink Reply by John Greenfield on July 16, 2009 at 5:40am

Folks,

Here's the text of "Shoot the Messenger," the Reader article I wrote about
Travis' book: http://collegeofcycling.org/media/greenfieldtravis.html

Just to clarify, I didn't edit the book but he did give me a bound advance
copy to read. At the time I noticed a handful of factual errors and pointed
them out to Travis. Theses errors were corrected in the first published edition
of the book.

After I read the advance copy, I started working on the Reader article,
with Travis' cooperation. I also spoke to about 20 other people for the piece,
including all the early contributors and a bunch of other messengers who appear
in the book.

That's when I heard about the additional examples of factual errors and
misquotes that appeared in the first published edition, as well as the issues of
borrowed material from the contributors, that I discussed in the article.

Thanks,

John Greenfield

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