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Reading the Fights: The Best Writing About the Most Controversial of Sports
The sport of boxing is celebrated and analyzed by such writers as A.J. Liebling, Norman Mailer, Gay Talese, Pete Hamill, Edward Hoagland, Joyce Carol Oates, and others
305 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1990
75 people want to read
About the author
Joyce Carol Oates
863 books9,737 followersJoyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel Them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).
Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught short fiction in the spring semesters. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Oates was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2016.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.
Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught short fiction in the spring semesters. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Oates was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2016.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 2, 2022
I read this book not because I’m a fan of boxing, but out of interest in Joyce Carol Oates’ perspective on it. My ambivalent-leaning-to-unfavorable perception of the sport probably made this collection of essays and articles more enjoyable than it would be for a boxing fan. While providing some sympathetic glimpses at the lives of the participants, it also provided plenty of evidence that my reservations about the sport and disgust with boxing as a super-hyped business are widely shared.
The most powerful pieces were: “I Only Like It Better When the Pain Comes” by Gerald Early; “King of the Hill” by Norman Mailer; “Three with Moore” by George Plimpton; and “On Boxing”, the concluding piece by Joyce Carol Oates, which so well summarized and amplified the impressions garnered from the previous 22 pieces.
The most powerful pieces were: “I Only Like It Better When the Pain Comes” by Gerald Early; “King of the Hill” by Norman Mailer; “Three with Moore” by George Plimpton; and “On Boxing”, the concluding piece by Joyce Carol Oates, which so well summarized and amplified the impressions garnered from the previous 22 pieces.
October 7, 2016
If you are a writer, or are a fan of great writing, this is the book for you. For some reason the "sweet science" elicits great prose. If you haven't read Joyce Carol Oates' "On Boxing," do so, as she and fellow editor, Daniel Halpern, select some of the best "fight-writers," Gerard Early, Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, the incomparable A. J. Liebling, and more, in this collection. Delicious to read, a few samples:
"Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects, but boxing is only like boxing." Joyce Carol Oates
"What, however, has taken the place of an angry God to encourage one man to read into and moralize against the inner life of another?" Ronald Levao
"There was Duran, whose style, like that of a jazz musician's, relies so much upon the inspiration of the moment that when he is uninterested in a fight he is worse than mediocre; and there was Leonard, so completely absorbed with the intricacies of his talents that with Joycean dispassion he seemed to watch the beautiful nuances his left jab made as it traveled its trajectory through the air." Gerard Early
"[Boxing is] the simplest pageant of all" Two men fight, rest a minute, and fight some more. Like the mile run, it's traditionalist and finite, humble in its claims." Ted Hoagland
"[At the weigh-in] When the principals shook hands, I could see Mr. [Archie] Moore's eyebrows rising like storm clouds over the Sea of Azov. His whiskers bristled and his eyes glowed like dark coals as he scrunched his eyebrows down again and enveloped the Whale [Marciano] with the Look, which was intended to dominate his willpower. Mr. Wilson and I were sitting behind Marciano's corner, and as the champion came back to it I observed his expression, to determine what effect the Look had had upon him. More than ever, he resembled a Great Dane who has heard the word "bone." A. J. Liebling
"But our reactions are bound to be complicated by the knowledge that it was boxing that gave Johnny Owen his one positive means of self-expression. Outside the ring he was an inaudible and almost invisible personality. Inside, he became astonishingly positive and self-assured. He seemed to be more at home there than anywhere else. It is his tragedy that he found himself articulate in such a dangerous language." Hugh McIlvanney
"Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects, but boxing is only like boxing." Joyce Carol Oates
"What, however, has taken the place of an angry God to encourage one man to read into and moralize against the inner life of another?" Ronald Levao
"There was Duran, whose style, like that of a jazz musician's, relies so much upon the inspiration of the moment that when he is uninterested in a fight he is worse than mediocre; and there was Leonard, so completely absorbed with the intricacies of his talents that with Joycean dispassion he seemed to watch the beautiful nuances his left jab made as it traveled its trajectory through the air." Gerard Early
"[Boxing is] the simplest pageant of all" Two men fight, rest a minute, and fight some more. Like the mile run, it's traditionalist and finite, humble in its claims." Ted Hoagland
"[At the weigh-in] When the principals shook hands, I could see Mr. [Archie] Moore's eyebrows rising like storm clouds over the Sea of Azov. His whiskers bristled and his eyes glowed like dark coals as he scrunched his eyebrows down again and enveloped the Whale [Marciano] with the Look, which was intended to dominate his willpower. Mr. Wilson and I were sitting behind Marciano's corner, and as the champion came back to it I observed his expression, to determine what effect the Look had had upon him. More than ever, he resembled a Great Dane who has heard the word "bone." A. J. Liebling
"But our reactions are bound to be complicated by the knowledge that it was boxing that gave Johnny Owen his one positive means of self-expression. Outside the ring he was an inaudible and almost invisible personality. Inside, he became astonishingly positive and self-assured. He seemed to be more at home there than anywhere else. It is his tragedy that he found himself articulate in such a dangerous language." Hugh McIlvanney
April 17, 2014
The essays on the fights, fighters, and history of the sport are excellent.
The essays that use boxing as a metaphor for the arts, less so.
The essays that are pseudo-academic explorations of the racial-socio-political impact of boxing are fairly embarrassing.
And Norman Mailer is the worst.
The essays that use boxing as a metaphor for the arts, less so.
The essays that are pseudo-academic explorations of the racial-socio-political impact of boxing are fairly embarrassing.
And Norman Mailer is the worst.
June 24, 2008
A solid anthology of boxing essays from a wide variety of writers.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews