Deadlifting: The Great Antonio and Other Self-Inventions

By: Cox, Daniel Allen

A shapeshifting investigation into the enigmatic life of Antonio Barichievich, and a memoir of the paradoxes of masculinity and how they inform self-invention.

Antonio Barichievich, a.k.a. The Great Antonio, was a Montreal strongman famous for pulling busses and bench-pressing men, yet the heaviest things he carried were secrets about his whereabouts during WWII. In 1980, he patted the four-year-old author on the head, the starting point for Deadlifting, a shapeshifting work of literary nonfiction.

In the years since this auspicious first encounter, Cox has been interrogating the legacy of this self-proclaimed "strongest man in the world," which is as contradictory and unconventional as Antonio's place in history as an athlete, artist, immigrant, extra-terrestrial, storyteller, singer, and dreamer.

By way of Antonio, the author examines the lives of mysterious men in his own family, and outmoded models of masculinity with their paradoxes of care, vulnerability and performance. Deadlifting is ultimately a book of questions about writing and research processes, exploring the borderlands of self-invention and the lengths people go to survive systems that invalidate their authentic selves.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1459758498
• ISBN13: 9781459758490
• Release Date: November 2027
• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Length: 224 Pages