When it comes to fitness, I will cheerfully admit that I am far from the picture perfect image of it. In fact, I’m downright overweight. But as it happens, I’m perfectly content with it. I do realize the importance of staying healthy and I do several things to keep from being morbidly obese, like walking to and from the library. However, I cannot understand the obsession so many have with getting slimmer— the French singer Bénabar satirizes this in a song called À notre santé (To our health), where he declares having the perfect body is the new priesthood, mentioning such innovations as dealcoholized beer, decaffeinated coffee, and de-sugared sugar. (Oh, the horror…)
So, when in Alan Green’s What a Body!, fitness nut Merlin Broadstone was murdered in a locked room, I cheered along with the rest of 1948 America, which frankly got tired of the endless stretching, of being told to chew every mouthful of food exactly 30 times, of new exercises involving everything from medicine balls to swimming…
