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Several stacks of Lee’s books are contained within a nifty cutout of his leaping form. Some reveal his relentless pursuit of physical fitness: books on jogging, weightlifting, judo, Tae Kwon Do, Chinese weapons, The Secrets of Shaolin Temple Boxing, yoga, wrestling, The Art of the Foil (a 1932 book on fencing) and a primer on the 1960s exercise craze Slimnastics.
Other titles reveal his quest to focus his mind and elevate his spirit: books on Carl Jung and Hermann Hesse; the ancient Chinese text Tao Te Ching, central to Taoism; Kahlil Gibran’s Spirits Rebellious; The Key to Your Personality; and even How Showmanship Sells.
The exhibit text (written by Shannon Lee) tells us Bruce Lee — a movement artist and actor — considered himself an “artist of life.” He also read art books: The History of the Nude in Photography, Dance and Its Creators; Stanislavsky: The Art of the Stage; and several books of classic poetry.
As a bibliophile, the insight his book collection provides is more fascinating to me than the high-tech room in which you can step on circular “launch pads” that activate screens featuring vintage photos combined with quotes he found meaningful. But that part is cool too, and emphasizes Lee’s interest in being authentic in mind, spirit and body. “To him, the goal of being ‘real’ was the highest personal achievement possible,” the exhibit text reads.
His pursuit of realness is also reflected in the books that are propped open for us to see what he underlined and annotated. Lee was an active reader — and his underlines are the straightest I’ve seen, achieved either with a ruler or a remarkably steady hand — writing his thoughts in neat cursive directly onto book pages. On one he writes a comment that seems tailored for the internet age: “We should devote ourselves to being self-sufficient, and must not depend upon the external rating by others for our happiness.”
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