At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing: A Library of America Special Publication

by George Kimball (Editor), Colum McCann (Foreword), George Kimball (Editor)

Named a best book of 2011 by the San Francisco Chronicle, At the Fights is a gritty and glittering anthology of the very best writing about boxing. Here are Jack London on the immortal Jack Johnson; Richard Wright on Joe Louis’s historic victory over Max Schmeling; A. J. Liebling’s brilliantly comic portrait of a manager who really identifies with his fighter; Jimmy Cannon on Archie Moore, the greatest fighter of the 1950s; James Baldwin and Gay Talese on Floyd Patterson’s epic fight with Sonny Liston; George Plimpton on Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X; Norman Mailer on the Rumble in the Jungle; Mark Kram on the Thrilla in Manila; Pete Hamill on legendary trainer and manager Cus D’Amato; Mark Kriegel on Oscar De La Hoya; and David Remnick and Joyce Carol Oates on Mike Tyson. National Book Award–winning novelist Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin) offers a foreword and, in a new preface, John Schulian pays tribute to his co-editor, George Kimball, who lost his battle with cancer in 2011.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, History, Literature

430 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 3, 2011

About the author

The 1986 recipient of the Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism, George Kimball spent a quarter-century as a sports columnist for the Boston Herald before retiring in 2005. A veteran of nearly title bouts, Kimball has covered boxing all over the world since the eras of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, and was the only journalist to cover every fight of Marvelous Marvin Hagler's middleweight reign from start to finish. For the past decade he has written a weekly 'America at Large' column for The Irish Times. Kimball has received numerous awards for his Boxing, Golf, Baseball, and Olympic coverage, and in retirement, in addition to his Irish Times column, he keeps his hand in the game as a featured columnist for ESPN.com and for the monthly publication Boxing Digest.

“FOUR KINGS: Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran and the Last Great Era of Boxing” was published, to widespread acclaim, by Mainstrean Press in the United Kingdom and by McBooks Press in the United States, and immediately became the best-selling boxing book in both countries.

He is also the author of “American at Large,” a collection of his Irish Times columns, and the co-author, with Eamonn Coghlan, of “Chairman of the Boards,” both published by Dublin’s Red Rock Press, and has traveled frequently to Ireland for the past four decades.

He has two children, Darcy (1984) and Teddy (1988). When he and his wife, Dr. Marge Marash Kimball, were married in 2004, the ceremony was performed by the Reverend George Foreman. The couple lives on the Upper West Side.

Reviews

[Sebastian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nostalgia is an alluring thing, perhaps never more in vogue than today (Mad Men; Instagram's instant feel of vintage without the pesky trouble of waiting years or decades to develop such yearning; authors, songwriters, filmmakers and others casting their minds back towards childhood; etc.). But it's a tricky sensation, this romanticization of the past. I adored At The Fights as a reading experience, as a document of boxing history, and as a reminder of sorts of when long form, literate, erudite, and sometimes even beautiful analysis was applied to this barbarous and undeniably intoxicating sport. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but question my own judgment of this book as I marveled at the power of great writers sent to describe the viciousness, the artistry, the depravity, and occasional transcendence of prize fighting. Do I long for the richness of that era or have I allowed the artistry of beautifying savagery to distract me? Was boxing truly a magnet for intelligent, probing writing, or was this a form of cultural tourism that ignored the sometimes literally fatal costs of the endeavor while seducing the willing with sharp style?

Online boxing analysis is fairly easy to come by, and there are some pretty good resources available for anyone who looks hard enough. Nevertheless, as the popularity of boxing has steadily dwindled from the time when heavyweight champion of the world was the most coveted title in sports to its current stature as a marginalized sport known more for its (ahem) administrative problems, deeply loved by only a narrow sliver of obsessives (from the Rumble in the Jungle to the Long Tail?), the quantity of meaningful, enduring prose dedicated to it has also diminished. Or maybe that's just my own view based on insufficient searches to date.

This is not to take anything way from the more contemporary pieces included in At The Fights, including then-Washington Post writer David Remnick on Mike Tyson, or a stories on Oscar De La Hoya and a star female boxer. But the glory here is in the 30, 40, 50, 60 year old stories and back. See, it happens to be that my own predilections place particularly shiny gold stars on high (or maybe high-middle) brow descriptions of two people fighting for glory and entertainment, especially when these descriptions (1) incorporate critical self-reflection as to why we seek such spectacles or (2) reflect the grimness or essential melancholy of the endeavor. And At The Fights might well be the ultimate greatest hits package for that precise description. Based on my tours of the world of internet journalism concerning boxing, one sensation a reader may experience when working his or her way through At The Fights is an acute realization that "they don't write 'em like that any more."

As one might expect from a compilation from the Library of America, the curation is top notch. The pieces are arranged chronologically and flow from the time of Jack Dempsey to encompass Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, Roberto Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard, Mike Tyson and James Toney, as well as many others whose names rarely appeared on a marquee. The writers represented are similarly venerable: London, Liebling, Plimpton, Baldwin, Mailer, Talese, etc.

This book is fundamentally a must-read for any boxing fan, and any fan of sports journalism as an art form. Giving 5 stars to a compilation might be cheesy or cheating, but a book like this represents a luxury to a reader as he or she is exposed to a flowing collection of great writers over time confronting a single topic from a variety of angles. The era of the man of letters (talk about a thing of the past!) sitting ringside and making art out of words about the brawl before him is clearly dead. Whether or not we should mourn that loss or instead congratulate ourselves for moving on and saying goodbye to all that remains, in my mind, an open question.

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb collection of 20th Century writing on American boxing. There are the big hitters here (Norman Mailer), and a host of lesser known but equally gifted journalists. The styles range from 50s noir, to reportage, to hard bitten gumshoe style - all very atmospheric. A fascinating portrait of the art of boxing, it's greatest proponents, forgotten heroes, and of America's social history. Recommended

[Gary Land · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I am not in any sense a boxing fan, I found this anthology highly interesting. Many of America's best writers, not just sportswriters, have been drawn to the fight game. The colorful characters, many of whom never show up in the ring, the courage of fighters who face possible death whenever they step over the ropes, and the ebb and flow of the fights themselves carry an inherent fascination that overcomes, at least for a time, the moral problems related to this sport. Although most of these writers--among them Jack London, Richard Wright, and Joyce Carol Oates--seem to like boxing, they do not try to sugarcoat its inherent violence and brutality. The writing is vigorous, as one would expect it to be, but also leaves one pondering why people seem to love seeing other people beat up on one another. As should be apparent, I found this volume to be an emotionally and intellectual disturbing but nonetheless fascinating read.

[Vaughn Arjavac · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would recommend this book because it doesn't only cover fights, it also covers story's on famous boxers and their careers. I honestly would recommend this book to anyone even if they don't like boxing because some of the story's on where the boxers come from is very interesting and the book tells you what the boxers are like out of the ring. The plot of the book is about boxing and how the sport went through corruption and how it got popular. The plot is also about how boxers and their careers both good and bad ones. "Wanna see it again, Joe?" This quote is significant to me because it's Ali although he has gone through hard times and had Parkinson he still could crack jokes and stay true to his character even after all the things he has been through to me it is really inspiring quote.

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated the book's focus on a wide range of eras and weight classes. It starts off with Jack London's coverage of Jack Johnson's fight with the Great White Hope and takes us all the way through to Tyson and de la Hoya. While enjoying the breadth of material, I felt that the essays/short stories that were selected could have been, on average, of much higher quality. Some are very good and others took forever to slog through, even though no piece probably extends beyond 20 pages or so. If you love boxing I would certainly recommend it. If you are interested in learning more about boxing I would recommend it. If you are looking for a quick read or well-written literature then leave it on the shelf. Three stars.

[The American Conservative]

'In his introduction to At the Fights, the Library of America’s new collection of boxing writing, novelist Colum McCann suggests that boxing and writing “become metaphors for each other—the ring, the page; the punch, the word; the choreography, the keyboard; the feint, the suggestion; the bucket, the wastebasket; the sweat, the edit; the pretender, the critic; the bell, the deadline.”

McCann should probably be ticketed for hyperbole, but he understands the sport’s central appeal for writers: “What’s most beautiful about boxing are the lives behind it. They’re so goddamn literary.”'

Read the full review, "Fighting Words," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...

[Matt Middlebrook · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays about boxing from the turn of the century to today. What is most striking is how much has been lost by the shrinkage of newspapers. The level or writing that existed in sports columns is remarkable and it has simply been lost in all but a few papers. But the greatness is captured in these pages and it brings the boxing and the characters, in all their glory, in to sharp focus. I loved this book. Highly recommend it for anyone who has the least interest in boxing.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! A lot if it very funny and extraordinary insights into the worlf of boxing.

[Cole Bellinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the Fights
Edited by George Kimball and John Schulian
Nonfiction
503 pages


For People Who Love Boxing by Cole Bellinger ⭐⭐⭐

At the Fights is a good book that covers a lot about boxing in the 1940’s through the 1970’s. Each chapter is broken down by a different fighter and what some had to deal with in their time period, for example, racism. This is a book containing true stories. Published in 2011, At the Fights is a collection of stories written by a variety of authors throughout history. It is edited by George Kimball and John Schulian.
I don’t think that people can relate to the fighters in this book because they don’t get to meet them enough. The reader mostly learns about their fighting. The readers only gets to learn about the fights, but not the fighters and who they are. There is no plot, but it talks about each fighter differently. For example, one fighter could highlight his childhood, but another could just highlight his training. The book would be better if we could to hear a little about each fighter’s background or his back story.
The target audience is people who love fighting, and the history of the sport and sports fans. This book targets teens and adult males. The cover illustration is helpful, because when you see the ring you know it's about boxing, and not any other fighting sport. The book is a little hard to follow, because if you don’t notice that the author switched the character you’ll get confused. The author's purpose was to show the change the sport has encountered over many years. This book definitely shows the growth of the sport over thirty years. This books greatest value is that it keeps the history of boxing alive. It does a very nice job of keeping the boxing factual. It didn’t hold my attention very well, because the book never gets in depth with the characters.
A theme I took way was that you can always get away from a bad situation and become good. For example, Stanley Ketchel grew up in a gang with his dad. He fought his entire life, and when he was nineteen somebody said he should become a boxer. He learned fighting in the streets and now he’s one of the greatest fighter of his era. This shows you can always turn your life around.
Overall I give this book a three star rating. The readers would enjoy learning about boxing and the growth, but they wouldn’t enjoy how the reader sometimes doesn’t know which character the author is talking about. I would recommend this to young males, so they can learn the history of the sport. This is one of the best factual boxing books out there. This book doesn’t trigger your emotions, because it's a book based on facts. I disliked how the author just threw down the facts. The author did his job by giving you the facts about the sport. I felt like the book was complete, because the author tells about different era’s and champions. This book is nothing like I have ever read, because it just throws facts at you and doesn’t build up to a big ending. I don’t recommend this book to people looking for a story.








































Works Cited

Kimball, George. Schulian, John. At the Fights. The Library of America, 2012. Print.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any book with contributions from more than forty writers is guaranteed to vary in quality (excepting the very rare and miraculous example). The question then becomes how wide the variance in quality is. Does the writing range from the subpar to the solid, the workmanlike to the exquisite?

"At the Fights" marshals most of the bright lights in the ill-starred firmament boxing scribes call home, as well as some accounts by "serious" and "literary" writers who do some slumming and manage to pen their accounts while using their non-dominant hand to keep their nostrils clamped closed. The essays range from the respectable to the truly spellbinding, though the majority probably hew closer to the former category than the latter. And the best pieces have been published, syndicated, serialized and recycled so many times that if you're a hardcore boxing fan, you've probably read the works in question more than once.

If I had to pick the best at gunpoint (or perhaps staring down a cocked fist wrapped in gladiator gauze) I'd say James Baldwin's piece on Sonny Liston probably penetrates deeper into the mystery of that ugly place where race and boxing intertwine than anything that's ever been written before or will be written in the future. Curiously enough, most of the other pieces that stand out in my mind were also written by reluctant scribes who eyed the fight game askance, and whose contribution to the genre may consist of a sole entry featured here. George Plimpton proves himself to be a good-humored, dead-game modern aristocrat always willing to shed a few drops of blue blood for the cause of New Journalism, while Norman Mailer sets out to prove yet again that Norman Mailer is the most formidable writer since the dawn of Norman Mailer. Other standouts are the offerings by latterday torchbearers Mark Kriegel and Carlo Rotella, both of whom are relatively young but prove that great boxing writing didn't go the way of the dodo when AJ Liebling or Jimmy Cannon, or a raft of other titans of the game passed on to that great Canastota in the sky. As usual, Mark Kram (senior) is head and shoulders above everyone else. The thing is a little overlong for my taste, clocking in at just a couple pages short of half-a-thousand, which is about the right length for an encyclopedia, the first book in an epic series, or a history tome, but wears out its welcome when it comes to essays on a single subject (as myriad and multifaceted as boxing can be). Still, a worthy and solid effort. Recommended.

[John Hood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bound: Fighting Words

SunPost Weekly May 12, 2011 | John Hood
http://bit.ly/inKfqs

The Black and White of the Black and Blue and Bloody

Boxing may not be the glory sport it once was back in its heyday — and if last weekend’s Manny Pacquiao/Shane Mosley bout was any indication, it’s not gonna be either. But at its best, and its brightest, there’s something brutally beautiful about the sweet science. No one knows this better than those who throw words around for a living, who find in the fistic not just the stuff of legend, but a veritable parallel to their own craft.

“What you have with a fight is what you have with writing, and they each become metaphors for each other — the ring, the page; the punch, the word; the choreograhy, the keyboard; the feint, the suggestion; the bucket, the wastebasket; the sweat, the edit; the pretender, the critic; the bell, the deadline. There’s the showoff shuffle, the mingled blood on your glove, the spitting your teeth up at the end of the day.”

That’s what Irish wordslinger Colum McCann claims in his Foreward to At the Fights (The Library of America $35). And it’s a cinch that each and every writer featured in this robust collection would wholeheartedly agree. What McCann didn’t mention though, was that, like fighters, many of writers featured here would boast their accounts to be the singlemost ass-kicking pieces ever put to print.

Okay, so maybe I exaggerate — a little. For every Norman Mailer and Jack London, there’s a good dozen like the late, great A.J. Liebling, whose prose was so forceful and fluid it stood toe-to-toe with even the most blow-hardiest of braggarts, and in many cases whipped their asses to boot. (It’s no wonder The Library of America also collected Liebling’s The Sweet Science and Other Writings.) But that didn’t stop the top scribblers of their time from trying to best the best, and with the likes of H.L. Mencken and Sherwood Anderson and James Baldwin in the ring, the writings make for one helluva championship season.

Admittedly, as renowned columnist Mike Downey pointed out in the LA Times, At the Fights doesn’t include anything from Damon Runyon, Grantland Rice, Ring Lardner or even Bat Masterson, let alone an account of the infamous 1919 bout when the four were among the “484 gentlemen (cough) of the working press [who] sat outdoors in the 100-degree heat of Toledo, Ohio, on the Fourth of July to watch 37-year-old Jess Willard, a 6-foot-6 former cowboy, be flattened in Round 1 seven times by Jack Dempsey, 24, who sat out World War I but was sufficiently fit to break Willard’s ribs, cheek and jaw.” But that’s a very minor quibble in a collection this vast. (For five years Downey wrote “In the Wake of the News,” a column which the great Ring Lardner started back in 1913, so he may be taking the exclusions a little personally anyway.) And with apologies to Downey, wouldn’t it be wiser to herald what At the Fights does include?

Of course it would. The problem with that is At the Fights includes far too much worthy of both merit and mention for a single column, unless perhaps one wanted to eliminate all the high caliber color, and what would be the fun of that?

Beginning with Jack London’s account of the 1910 championship bout between Jack Johnson and James Jeffries (for which the Call of the Wildman called for and coined the term “The Great White Hope”), and ending with Carlo Rotella’s 2002 homage to Larry Holmes (“Champion at Twilight”), At the Fights is a near century’s worth of rip-roaring reveal. Some of it comes ringside (Mailer et al); some of it comes from the gym (i.e. Pete Hamill’s “Up the Stairs with Cus D’Amato”); and some of it comes from so far behind the scenes you feel as if you’ve been eavesdropping (Thomas Hauser’s excerpt from The Black Lights).

Like in London’s account, race is a rather rampant factor, including the bout between Joe Louis and Jorge Brescia, though in this case it’s not sparked by the writer (Sherwood Anderson), but by a Nazi magazine which claimed Louis’s loss to Max Schmeling was a “Cultural Achievement” for the white race. Anderson, like Americans of every color, wanted Louis to get a second stab at Schmeling, and if he lost to this so-called “Bull of the Pampas,” that stab wouldn’t be coming. Thankfully, two stories later, Bob Considine, “the racehorse of the Hearst syndicate’s International News Service,” recounts the 1938 bout where our beloved Brown Bomber did just that, and he does so with the kinda befitting “rat-a-tat-tat” that sealed the lid on Schmeling’s race-baiting career.

Race also propels Richard Wright’s account of the Brown Bomber’s first round knockout of the Nazi Kraut (sorry, I couldn’t resist), just as it propelled nearly every word Wright ever wrote. Nevertheless, his “High Tide in Harlem” evokes a pride that was far too long in coming for a people who deserved it perhaps more than anyone.

The inimitable Joe Louis is the subject of equally inimitable Red Smith’s entry as well. This time it’s the Brown Bomber’s 1951 bout with Rocky Marciano, and it becomes a fitting, if sad, epitaph to a stellar career.

Of course Joe Louis isn’t the only legendary pugilist to be awed upon (though it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if he were); nor even the most praised (Ali here claims that title too). In fact, there’s nary a 20th century champion who doesn’t get his due by at least one of superlative-slingin’ scribe or another.

Why, you ask? Well, in the words of John Schulian, who (with George Kimball) co-edited this collection:

“The most quotable, accessible, big-hearted athletes I’ve ever covered are prizefighters. Doesn’t matter whether they’re choirboys or ex-cons. They all talk, they all share pieces of their lives that athletes in other sports would never reveal. The important thing to remember, though, is that this is life in microcosm. It’s beautiful, messy, profane, funny, sad, cutthroat, brutal — and yet heroes rise from it even if their hands aren’t always raised in victory. When I think of what I’ve written about boxing, so much of it feels like noir fiction, and yet I was there, I saw it happen. And if I hadn’t seen it, when I’d read somebody’s account of it, I’d want a taste the next time a big fight came along. Because, as every writer who’s been there will tell you, there’s nothing in all of sports that compares.”

And if that’s not enough to get you into this ringside seat, then you’re just not into the black and white of the black and blue and bloody sport of boxing.

[Jaydub · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of articles and excerpts from larger works on boxing in its many forms: the people, the history, specific fights, reflections from fighters and interviews with them.

There is a spectacular range of authors included, being James Baldwin and professional boxer Gene Tunney. Baldwin's observations and writing about Floyd Patterson and Tunney's reflection of his own fight, The Long Count, are some of my personal favorites.

For boxing enthusiasts and those that want to know more about its history. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spectular compilation of boxing journalism.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific history of the sport of boxing through the words of its very best sports writers! Well worth the read for fans of the sport!

[Leaburn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best compendium of boxing writing I’ve had the pleasure of picking up.

[David Silveyra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a treasure trove of great sportswriting on the "sweet science". There were many champions discussed like Tyson, Ali, and Frazer. It was fun learning the in's and out's of the boxing culture and sport. I particularly liked the article on Kid Dynamite(aka Mike Tyson). I remember seeing some of his pay-per-view fights and being very impressed. The articles were entertaining and lively. All in all, a great tome on boxing sportswriting in the 20th century.