Science fiction author Neal Stephenson on Bartitsu
Popular science fiction author Neal Stephenson’s comments on Bartitsu, from a recent interview with the UK Daily Telegraph:
“So we’d mostly been doing longsword, in my little group,” says Stephenson. Ropes of muscle on his forearms attest to this, as do the pictures online of a Stephenson-designed spring-loaded practice sword that flexes on impact to soften a blow. “But we became interested in cane-fighting, which was taught in London a hundred years ago or so as part of this school of Bartitsu, founded by EW Barton-Wright, a railway engineer who’d picked up ju-jitsu in Japan. And he brought in a Swiss guy called Vigny who’d taken informal methods of walking-stick-fu and codified them into a system called la canne: he taught the part of the curriculum which involved fighting with walking sticks.”
No way, I say.
“Yeah. There’s a whole curriculum over fighting with bicycles. Pictures of an Edwardian lady in a floor-length dress and a huge hat with flowers, riding primly down a country lane, and when a ruffian comes out she uses some trick with the bicycle to flatten him and rides off. It’s great stuff. The bicycles we’re not sure how to approach, but we’ve created a little assembly line to make rattan canes, with a knob on the end. But there’s, you know, how to use a bicycle pump as a weapon. How to defend yourself with a parasol. Crazy.”
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By Mild Colonial Boy, Esq., Wednesday, 5th November 2008 @ 7:14 pm
The bicycle self defence sounds something like this article at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jimmy_fatwing/SelfProtection/cycle.htm
By Tony Wolf, Thursday, 13th November 2008 @ 2:41 am
One and the same, unless I miss my guess.
Mr. Tindal’s article may actually have been an elaborate parody of Barton-Wright’s walking stick defence articles. It’s included as an appendix to the first volume of the Bartitsu Compendium, though, because it was too good to leave out!