Bruce Lee was an extraordinary individual who seemed larger than life to his contemporaries and seems so to us. He had extraordinary abilities, an extraordinary will, and extraordinary drive. Inevitably, there are those who try and bring such an individual down to earth, so to speak. Heroes, whether real or created, are a target. And the question is to what extent Bruce Lee as we know him was real, and to what extent he has been created since his death. In addition, the motives of those wishing to dispel the myth need to be addressed. There is money to be made in sensationalist rumour-mongering and mud-slinging. But then, those with a vested interest in the Bruce Lee mythology have motive enough to wish to preserve the popular image of him.

I don't think that creating a mythology around a human being is necessarily a good thing. But it happens for a reason. There must be something about such a person to provide an impetus for such mythologisation. There must also be a need for such a person, such a myth. In the case of Bruce Lee, there was no Chinese (Asian) hero and no martial arts hero, at least in the West. He was the first to rise above racism and stereotyping - no matter that his personal progress was impeded by those factors - and emerge as an Asian hero to root for in film and in society, in the minds of the public. Of course, racism and stereotyping simply increased his determination to succeed and attain his goals.

Maybe much of it comes down to point of view.

• Bruce Lee was preternaturally gifted.
  vs.
• Bruce Lee used whatever means necessary (such as performance-enhancing drugs) to create himself in his own image.

• Bruce Lee was intensely focussed on attaining his goals.
  vs.
• Bruce Lee was obsessive.

The people who knew Bruce Lee fall into the category of those who liked and respected him, fueling the myth along the way, and those who thought him arrogant and self-obsessed. He has been dead for more than a quarter of a century. It has been my own experience that many people who are well-disposed towards the deceased tend to only remember or even exaggerate their good qualities. Even the memories of people who really knew Bruce well may by now be influenced by the mythologised version of his feats and of events in his life. Did he really kick people so hard that they flew back 20 feet? It has become next to impossible to separate Bruce Lee myth from Bruce Lee history.

The Bruce Lee mythology in itself may not be as disturbing as the charge that certain individuals are actively promoting it for financial gain. The more so when the finger is pointed at Bruce's widow Linda Lee Cadwell - as Tom Bleecker does in his book, Unsettled Matters. She is surely in the best position to dispel any myths or fabrications. Yet she is also uniquely in a position to gain from the continued existence of Bruce Lee the superman, Bruce Lee the mythical hero, aided and abetted by the Lee estate attorney Adrian Marshall. Bruce Lee's most famous book, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, consists mostly of quotes from other sources. Bleecker says that it was never meant for publication but rather served the purpose of containing material which made an impression on Bruce and which he therefore jotted down.

The waters around Bruce Lee are very murky. I suppose, in the end, what matters is whatever one wants to believe.

Before going on to a more detailed consideration of the book, let me list those points about his life and death that have always bothered me. It may be argued that we should let him rest in peace, but the fact is that Bruce Lee's death fascinates us as much as his life does, if not more. This would not be so if the facts surrounding his death were indisputable and understandable - which they are not. And not only because the death of someone larger than life is hard to comprehend.

It is well-known by now that the investigation into his death determined that Bruce Lee died on 20 July 1973 of cerebral edema which was caused by hypersensitivity to ingredients of the medication Equagesic. One pill was given to him by actress Betty Ting Pei in her apartment, after he complained of a headache. The autopsy found traces of cannabis in his body. (Ten weeks earlier, on 10 May, he suffered a cerebral edema from which doctors managed to save him.)

Here's the list:

• The Equagesic verdict meant that it was decided that the incidents of May 10 and July 20 were entirely unrelated, though he suffered from cerebral edema both times - and had ingested cannabis both times. This seems like an unacceptable coincidence to me.
• Several people who saw Bruce during the final weeks before his death have since commented that he looked unhealthy. They noted the following: he was extremely thin, he seemed in a daze, he seemed to suffer from amnesia, he flew into rages, he was paranoid and anxious, he was depressed, he was insomniac. The verdict ignores all of this.
• He took the pill to combat a headache - which is one of the symptoms announcing a cerebral edema. Yet it was decided that the pill killed him, as opposed to the cause of the headache.
• Betty apparently did not realise right away that Bruce's condition was life-threatening, or at least extremely serious. Yet the morgue photo of Bruce shows that his face is heavily swollen, and it looks as though his hair may have been soaked with perspiration. On top of that, his hands and feet were clenched. In spite of this Betty tried to wake him up for quite a while before calling Raymond Chow!
• There was such a long delay between Betty Ting Pei discovering him unconscious on her bed and the eventual summoning of an ambulance. Betty Ting Pei and Raymond Chow, head of Golden Harvest studio, phoned each other several times, before Chow came over and phoned her physician. All this while he was involved in calling for medical help during Bruce's collapse on May 10. Are we to suppose that both these individuals are monumentally stupid? That Betty and Raymond would take a very long time before calling her doctor - rather than her calling an ambulance right away? Are they lying about what really happened in her flat? I am not suggesting foul play, but that all this is part of a decidedly shaky story concocted after his death.
• When the ambulance finally arrived, Bruce was not taken to the closest or best-equipped hospital. Well, if he were dead already as he seems to have been, it would not have mattered.
• Bruce's life insurance policies stipulated that he did not use or abuse illegal drugs. If he did, it would be a motive to lie and concoct stories to allow these policies to be paid out. And his use of cannabis is undisputed.