Boxing's Best Short Stories

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

As this excellent collection of 22 stories makes clear, pugilism has inspired some of the best writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Following a tepidly written history of the sport, the book kicks off with strong pieces by two lesser-known authors, Mel Matison and Octavus Roy Cohen, whose tales of triumph-against-the-odds are inspiring and heartrending. The pace picks up quickly with solidly written entries by Arthur Conan Doyle, O. Henry and James T. Farrell, about boxers who find themselves trapped by life's ironies and pummeled unmercifully in the ring. Damon Runyon's "Bred for Battle" meets its match in "The Chickasha Bone Crusher," a marvelously funny story by the near-forgotten H.C. Witwer, one of America's wittiest idiomatic stylists. Perhaps the best entry is the sensational "Champion" by Ring Lardner, which was made into the 1949 film starring Kirk Douglas. Other impressive selections include classic tales by Jack London and P.G. Wodehouse. While they are each beautifully conceived, "Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine" by Thom Jones and "The Legend of Pig-Eye" by Rick Bass seem pale in comparison to harder-hitting entries by older writers. The fourth in a series of collections devoted to sports (baseball, 1995; golf, 1997; football, 1998), this newest volume is as good as the first and in many ways superior to the rest. An ideal compendium of boxing fiction, it is also valuable as a sampling of the best of popular short stories in this century. It will make some readers nostalgic for a time when "men were men" (an expression representative of the tone established here), and when quality magazines published engaging fiction. Six line drawings. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

YA-Among the oldest of sports, dating at least as far back as the ancient Egyptians, boxing has long been both praised and condemned. At once brutish and artistic, primitive and spellbinding, prizefighting provides rich material for talented writers. And this volume is undeniable proof of that. As with his previous anthologies on baseball, golf, and football, Staudohar has set for himself the goal of selecting the "very best short fiction." For the most part he succeeds. Readers will find a wealth of pugilistic detail and atmosphere (countless broken noses and cauliflower ears), but also universal themes of great fiction: courage, hope, desire, love, loss. Some of the world's best-known authors, Jack London, O. Henry, P. G. Wodehouse, A. Conan Doyle, share these pages with less-famous but almost as talented writers-Rick Bass, Mel Matison, and Harry Sylvester. As with all anthologies, one could quibble about the selection. What about Hemingway? And Jack London's "A Piece of Steak" seems heavy-handed, as if he doesn't trust readers to get the message. Nonetheless, this collection will delight fight fans, as well as those who just love a good story. And since many of these selections are really about the struggle of young men to find their place in the world, to find something they can do better than the next guy, teenagers will discover a number of characters and scenarios that relate to their lives.-Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Muhammad Ali called it "just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up." Now, any boxing anthology that calls Hemingway's "Fifty Grand" not one of his best stories and doesn't include it must keep its guard up. As it happens, Staudohar (Business Administration/Cal. State, Hayward; The Sports Industry and Collective Bargaining, 1996), editor of "best of" books on baseball, golf, and football, has wrapped up as nifty a sheaf of stories about the sweet science, a sport admired even by Keats and Byron, as is likely to be gathered. These authors are stylists of the deft stab and jab, not of the long looping John Updike or William Gass roundhouse sentence, and their stories move. Even so, several are more about life, love, and character than about knocking people senseless. Authors include John O'Hara, Jack London, James T. Farrell, Damon Runyon, Irwin Shaw, Nelson Algren, Ring Lardner (represented by the marvelously bitter "Champion"), and even P. G. Wodehouse at his most irresistible, telling of a would-be manager who finds a diamond in the rough—Battling Billson—who lacks only the killer instinct. Strong themes about men with heart, though none about violinists with a killer hook in the ring.