The Bittersweet Science: Fifteen Writers in the Gym, in the Corner, and at Ringside

by Carlo Rotella (Editor), Michael Ezra (Editor)

Weighing in with a balance of the visceral and the cerebral, boxing has attracted writers for millennia. Yet few of the writers drawn to it have truly known the sport—and most have never been in the ring. Moving beyond the typical sentimentality, romanticism, or cynicism common to writing on boxing, The Bittersweet Science is a collection of essays about boxing by contributors who are not only skilled writers but also have extensive firsthand experience at ringside and in the gym, the corner, and the ring itself. Editors Carlo Rotella and Michael Ezra have assembled a roster of fresh voices, ones that expand our understanding of the sport’s primal appeal. The contributors to The Bittersweet Science—journalists, fiction writers, fight people, and more—explore the fight world's many aspects, considering boxing as both craft and business, art form and subculture. From manager Charles Farrell’s unsentimental defense of fixing fights to former Golden Glover Sarah Deming’s complex profile of young Olympian Claressa Shields, this collection takes us right into the ring and makes us feel the stories of the people who are drawn to—or sometimes stuck in—the boxing world. We get close-up profiles of marquee attractions like Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr., as well as portraits of rising stars and compelling cornermen, along with first-person, hands-on accounts from fighters’ points of view. We are schooled in not only how to hit and be hit, but why and when to throw in the towel. We experience the intimate immediacy of ringside as well as the dim back rooms where the essentials come together. And we learn that for every champion there’s a regiment of journeymen, dabblers, and anglers for advantage, for every aspiring fighter, a veteran in painful decline. Collectively, the perspectives in The Bittersweet Science offer a powerful in-depth picture of boxing, bobbing and weaving through the desires, delusions, and dreams of boxers, fans, and the cast of managers, trainers, promoters, and hangers-on who make up life in and around the ring.Contributors: Robert Anasi, Brin-Jonathan Butler, Donovan Craig, Sarah Deming, Michael Ezra, Charles Farrell, Rafael Garcia, Gordon Marino, Louis Moore, Gary Lee Moser, Hamilton Nolan, Gabe Oppenheim, Carlo Rotella, Sam Sheridan, and Carl Weingarten.  

Genres: Nonfiction, Sports

300 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 28, 2017

Reviews

[Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastically varied collection that explores so many facets of boxing: from after-work exercisers to washouts to champions to managing and match-fixing to a lone woman-centred story that manages to be both a compelling portrait of an olympic champiom and a righteous takedown of Million Dollar Baby.

The bitter definitely dominates, with most of the pleasure coming with a rueful acknowledgement of the physical dangers and the monetary corruption and exploitation at the heart of the sport.

It's no accident that Roy Jones Jr. serves as the book's mascot. His career as a godlike superstar turned faintly comical striver still unable to give up the ghost serves as a central metaphor for the sport and for the book's closing essay.

It's almost aggressively anti-hagiographic amd anti-glamour, but the grittiness works well as a theme for a famously brutal sport. You're left with a depth of understanding of the many layers of the sport, its contradictions and ugly seduction.

This book feels true and battered.

[Eric Stinton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is excellent. Really more of a 4.5 than a 4. The best compilation of sportswriting I've ever read, and you don't need to know a ton about boxing in order to appreciate it. Every essay was interesting and well-written, but here are the ones that stood out to me:

Throwing in the Towel by Gordon Marino
The Real Million Dollar Baby by Sarah Deming
Why I Fixed Fights by Charles Farrell
Plaster of Torrance by Rafael Garcia
What Boxing is For by Sam Sheridan
My First Stripe by Robert Anasi
The Masters of Stylishness by Gabe Oppenheim
Roy Jones Jr.'s Long Goodbye by Brin-Jonathan Butler

[Jeremy Hornik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very solid set of essays. I was less interested in the historical stuff, but the essay on women boxers will stick with me, as will the first person accounts from writers in the ring. I kind of sort of want to go get hit now.

PS oh yeah, and the Bernard Hopkins essay. And the one on style. And the general theme of decaying strength.

[Niko05 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid collection of essays. One better than the other. A must read for boxing enthusiasts!

[Alvaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent essays collection.

[Ra’eese · Rating 5 out of 5]

This essay collection does an excellent job of peeling back the layers of the onion that is the boxing business; yes, it will make you cry. Recommended for boxing fans or any curious soul.

[Dublinia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books about boxing I've ever read, and I have read plenty. 15 essays from a varied selection of writers who each provide a unique perspective on the sport.

[Kevin Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

...I probably should have taken a class with Rotella at BC, huh.

[Rylo Hoss · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good 21st-century collection of essays on boxing, covering a wide range of facets of the sport. A very worthwhile read for anyone who wants to understand the current state of boxing.

[Carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book.

It's a pretty common criticism that essay collections are "uneven," and a rare treat to find a collection that is packed end-to-end with good writing. This is one of those unusual discoveries: a collection of original essays that probes the mysteries of a sport as an art, a business, and a spectacle, asking us to look again at one hundred years of history and to revise our mental categories, all in gorgeous, compelling prose.

It brings together essays by fighters, managers, and keen observers of boxing’s past and present, and in the process restores the qualitative weight of what appear to be quantitative measures–like a fighter’s win-loss record. The contributors peel back the layers of history and culture and life experience in events and careers in the fight industry.

I love the ways that the collection addresses the strange fate of boxing over the past half-century: a fall from cultural dominance simultaneous to a rise in payouts so enormous that top fighters are the most valuable athletes on the planet. When I watched the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight with friends I remember being stunned by how much money each fighter was making: more than the combined salaries of entire teams of athletes.

That question has puzzled me ever since, and it's this kind of conundrum that drives the book forward. Boxing expresses a variety of injustices and imbalances of power. It offers careful analysts the chance to look through the bloody spectacle to see into the lives of the people fighting their way through vast economic and cultural forces beyond their control.

While the contributors to Bittersweet Science engage the legacy of boxing's all-time greats, most of the writers here also explore the networks of amateur and Olympic fighters, trainers, managers, and administrators who make up the vast majority of those in the fight world. That was super interesting to me, all for being the more unusual in fight writing.

Often correcting for the force of the “invisible numbers” behind the record book page, this book’s perspectives from around the fight world reveal the ways in which national culture, race, gender, and social status open and close opportunities for a professional fighter, and influence current and future earning potential. Fitness, skill, speed, and style can lift a fighter to greatness, but it takes a different level of savvy to carve an opening in the industry in a fighter’s post-prime.

I had a chance to interview the editors for the New Books Network, and I loved the way they characterized what they were hoping to achieve with the book: for sports historians, fight fans, and observers of American writing, the idea is for The Bittersweet Science to provide a sampling of “either the glorious last stand or amazing comeback of boxing writing as a genre of literature.” It offers fans and scholars the analytical tools and historical perspective to make meaning of fighters climbing into the ring, at a time when we are paying them more than ever to do it, but paying less and less attention when they do.