Bruce Lee: A Life

FULL OF ERRORS - About 10% into this book ‘Bruce Lee, A Life’ by Matthew Polly, more than 50 errors were spotted, and such level of inaccuracy (averaging about 1 error per page) persisted throughout the book. But, judging from the much hyped praises on most bookseller sites, look like not too many readers have realized or be concerned with such high degree of defect. . . . . . . . . Thus far, only a few rather mild critiques have surfaced, such as Dublin based Irish Times, and Hong Kong based South China Morning Post. The former called the book a ‘Door Stopper’ while the latter, not only pointed out Polly idolizing Lee, but also called Polly’s claim about Lee died of a heatstroke bizarre. . . . . . . . . ‘Door Stopper’ refers to the book’s bloated size (656 pages). It appears that Polly just threw everything he found into the book, without much screening, and with very little fact checking, as evident in all those errors. He included way too many sidetrack stories of questionable relevancy, while most of the narratives were artificially stretched to fill pages. . . . . . . . . The book also incorporated an exorbitant amount of quoted dialogues (virtually every single page), but seldom provided follow-up discussion as to the truthfulness of those spoken words. Most of such dialogues are no better than just documented hearsay, unsubstantiated gossips, or biased opinions of the interviewees (e.g. Linda’s or Betty Ting’s). . . . . . . . . Polly’s heatstroke theory is utterly laughable. I grew up in Hong Kong and was in the city on that hot and humid summer day, and I found nothing unusual or deadly about such heat. Lee did not die outdoors on some football field, he died in Betty Ting’s air-conditioned apartment in Kowloon Tong, a notoriously wealthy neighborhood in Hong Kong (and there are online photos showing the bedroom with AC units). . . . . . . . . ‘Bruce Lee, A Life’ is an attempt to provide a comprehensive biography of Lee, but it fails miserably. As a fiction or docu-drama, maybe it’s an OK read, but as a biography, I found it unacceptable for such high degree of inaccuracy, misleading narratives, biases, and pretentious commentaries.

SUBSTANDARD BOOK – “Bruce Lee, A Life” by Matthew Polly contains a lot of errors, biased commentaries and ridiculous claims (Jewish ancestry, death by heatstroke, etc.). I do concur with some reviews that the occurrence of errors is as high as one per page. Also, I found it irritating and unbecoming that Mr. Polly included so many verbatim conversations (seems like every page), the book read more like a fiction than a biography. This is a perfect example of reputable publisher such as Simon & Schuster is capable of producing lousy books.

So many things I didn't know about Bruce, very interested perspective.