Mutluluk Kenti

by Leonard Gardner, Mert Doğruer (Translator)

Mutluluk Kenti meydan okumanın ve mücadelenin canlı bir tasvirini sunan bir roman, iyi bir hayat vaadinin ve umutsuzluğun anlatısı. İnsan hayatının hüznü ve güzelliğinin derinliklerinde görece benzer hayatlar yaşayan iki boksörün -yaşça büyük Billy Tully ile acemi Ernie Munger- hayatlarının kısa süreliğine kesişmesini ve bu insanların varoluşlarının sınırlarından kurtulmaya çalışmalarını anlatan roman, 1969’da yayımlandığından bu yana ilgi çekmeye devam ediyor. Dekor boks olsa da kitap umut, hayal ve aşk ve bunları yok eden yozlaşma ve kendini aldatma üzerine. İnce, güçlü ve fazladan tek bir kelimenin yer almadığı roman Joan Didion, Denis Johnson ve Raymond Carver gibi isimlerin de aralarında bulunduğu birçok kişi tarafından bir şaheser olarak değerlendiriliyor.

Genres: Fiction, Sports, Classics, Novels, Noir, Literature, American

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Leonard Gardner is an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. His writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Esquire, The Southwest Review, and other publications, and he has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Gardner was born in Stockton, and went to San Francisco State University.

Gardner's 1969 novel Fat City is an American classic whose stature has increased over the years. His screen adaptation of Fat City was made into an acclaimed 1972 film of the same title, directed by John Huston. The book and movie are set in and around Stockton and concern the struggles of third-rate pro boxers who only dimly comprehend that none of them will ever make the big time. Devoid of the usual "sweet science" cliches, the book roils with dark pessimism as the characters eke out a gritty existence. It is considered an underappreciated classic of early 1970s cinema.

Gardner adapted his short story "Jesus Christ Has Returned to Earth and Appears Here Nightly" into the screenplay for the low-budget 1989 film Valentino Returns.

He has written a number of screenplays for television, including several for NYPD Blue, for which he was a writer and producer for a few seasons.

He currently lives in Larkspur, California.

Reviews

[Jayakrishnan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fat City is a small book. But it is a tough read. I had seen the John Huston-Stacey Keach-Jeff Bridges movie six months ago and liked it a lot. I read the novel over the weekend. Its about the boxing scene in Stockton, California - described through the lives of two boxers, their lovers and their common trainer. It is a sad novel about the ups and downs (mostly downs) in the boxers lives as they grapple with all the bad luck, the women, ennui and sloth. The characters were extremely fatalistic, seemingly unable to conquer the devil inside their minds or conquering it for a short while before it starts working on them again.

"..... they succumbed to whatever in them was the weakest, and often it was nothing he could even define", Ruben the trainer tells himself about the boxers he has trained.

Sex is an important part of the novel. One of the boxers, Billy Tully cannot seem to get over his wife leaving him. A succession of relationships with other women (including one spiritually wounding affair with an alcoholic woman) does not allow him to forget his wife whom he loved dearly. Even when he tries to revive his flagging boxing career, it is in the hope that he can win his wife back. The other boxer, Ernie Munger is deeply insecure about his new wife after the arrival of her former lover in the small town. Maybe the writer was trying to describe the boxers psyche in that the possession of a woman was very important for these guys. It was something that helped them define their masculinity. Any doubt regarding their ability to keep their women, derailed them and would lead to alcoholism, bar fights and indiscipline.

Another important aspect of the novel is the description of the landscapes. I love American novels like these with descriptions of gas stations, small town bars, long empty roads, side streets, orchards, barren fields and levees. There is something very idyllic and romantic yet bleak about these landscapes.

[Fabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

One solid American Tale. More about the men's personal life (wives, remedial jobs, prejudice) than the sport of boxing. (Why o why am I so attracted to these little books about athletes? I read "The Natural" a while ago & right now the Olympics ARE where its all about. But perhaps I'm kinda trying to find that novel that debunks "Art of Fielding" as the best sports novel of all time. Which is a real toughie.)

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

California is a story of two states. Norcal and Socal, for all of their rivalries and proclamations of differences are really two sides of a coin. It’s moving inland - where the politics shift right, home values decrease and employment outside of the agriculture sector becomes more scarce – this is where you’ll find the other California, the second state, the place that looks and feels so different from the coastal cities it may as well be in the Midwest.

Stockton is one of these inner California towns, and it’s almost not fair to the rest of the world that takes up a pen to write fiction that Leonard Gardner can write such a perfect first novel using this city as his setting. Yes, this is boxing fiction, but boxing is simply the clay Gardner uses to cast his dual protagonists, the young Ernie Munger and the fading Billy Tully. They meet in the opening pages of the book and then their stories depart for a time, Munger’s new life in the ring presenting subtle echoes of Tully’s same experiences a decade before. There is an uncomfortable intimacy in the writing concerning poverty, a day-to-day hardscrabble finding a meal and a roof. Gardner must have pulled from firsthand experience in writing these scenes. They are too perfect.

My copy of this book comes with a Denis Johnson penned Introduction, one of the most beautiful homages of the form. Johnson credits this author, this book, as his northstar when he was beginning as a full time writer. I love learning about how authors are touched by those that came before. If only Fat City had the readership of Johnson; it certainly deserves it.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fairly well-known novel, this one. At the time I am writing this (July 2025) there are 627 existing reviews, so plenty of others to choose from. The author explained that the book’s title was taken from black American slang, and relates to an imaginary place of wealth and leisure. The novel was published in 1969 but is set in the 1950s.

Fat City is a novel about two boxers, the sort of fighters who appear low down on the bill. In a wider sense it’s about life’s also-rans. As the novel opens Billy Tully is 29 years old and a former pro. He made a name for himself at regional level but was then matched against fighters of national importance and was outclassed. He dreams of getting his career back on track, but in reality his life is spiralling downwards. Ernie Munger is 18 and has promise, but he also is not in control of his life outside of the ring.

The novel is quite dialogue-heavy, and in conversation people behave irrationally and say stupid things. That’s real-life though isn’t it?

The boxing scenes are dramatic, and I had the impression Leonard Gardener knew what he was talking about. I went online to find out more, and read an interview with him where he said he had done some training and sparring in the very gym that features in the novel. He had one actual bout, in which his nose was broken, and quit boxing after that.

The novel was apparently adapted into a 1972 film of the same name, which is well-regarded. Another one I will have to add to my list.

A novel that falls into the “gritty” category, but a really good read if that’s the kind that appeals.

[Jordan West · Rating 4 out of 5]

I shied away from this for years because of my complete lack of interest in boxing, but in the end I was pulled in by Gardner's mastery at capturing the insanity of that sport and the inherent sadness of most everything else.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We Had Our Bitter Cheer
And Sweet Sorrow
We Lost A Lot Today
We Get It Back Tomorrow
I Hear The Sound Of Wheels
I Know The Rainbow's End
I See Lights In A Fat City
I Feel Love Again”--Round of Blues, Shawn Colvin

Fat City: “a place or condition of prosperity, comfort, success, etc.
With a new house and a better-paying job, she's in Fat City”--Collins

I’m not particularly into boxing, though I recall times when I watched live on tv several fights such as the Sonny Liston-Cassius Clay (Muhammed Ali) bouts of the sixties (see below for some film highlights). I turned to this because I knew it was seen as a “writer’s” book (a clinic on a certain kind of writing), and so enjoyed listening to this book and its preface by Denis Johnson, who claims it was his biggest influence. Fat City, by Leonard Gardner, was published to critical acclaim in 1969 and was his only published novel, though he was also able to write the screenplay for the film John Huston directed, starring Stacy Keach, Jeff Bridges and Susan Tyrrell, so that’s more than most writers accomplish in a lifetime.

The story follows a couple boxers and a manager and some women (kind of) attached to them in the sixties in Stockton, California, where Gardner grew up, but it’s really more about being “down and out in Stockton” (i.e., poor; see Orwell on London and Paris about this subject) than boxing.

“He felt the guilt of inaction, of simply waiting while his life went to waste. No one was worth the gift of his life, no one could possibly be worth that. It belonged to him alone, and he did not deserve it either, because he was letting it waste. It was getting away from him and he made no effort to stop it. He did not know how.”

Boxers barely surviving a brutal life for little money, picking onions during the day, breaking relationships with alcohol at night.

“. . . they succumbed to whatever in them was the weakest, and often it was nothing he could even define."

Think John Fante, Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver territory. Working class struggles to survive, desperation, inertia, mistakes, bleak realism or noir with spare powerful lean prose. A short novel, with sentences like muscular jabs at times.

Sex/relationships are central. Billy Tully’s wife left him and nothing gets better for him with multiple serial loveless encounters. He misses her and cant get over it; maybe she'll take him back if he just works a little harder and becomes a successful boxer?

“All I need's a fight and a woman. Then I'm set. I get the fight I'll get the money. I get the money I'll get the woman. There's some women that love you for yourself, but that don't last long.”

The other boxer, Ernie Munger, suddenly gets jealous of his new wife’s former lover. Insecurity, anything that undermines his sense of masculinity, and everything goes to hell, meaning: Booze. These guys do need love but the women can't see how to give it to them as they are. The men can't accept that love for what it is.

Sound too bleak for you? Okay, I said it was a book for writers more than mainstream readers, probably. But that writing is often gorgeous:

“The sky darkened, the liquid singing of the blackbirds diminished and ceased, mud hens swam back to shore, climbed up the banks and huddled in the willows. The lights of a farm came on in the brown distance where patches of tule fog lay on the barren muddy fields. A wind came with the darkness, rattling the license plate, and a low, honking flight of geese passed.”

Ultimately Gardner cares for these men and doesn't judge them too harshly, without also excusing them. It's a humane book, about endless hope in the face of despair.

Liston-Clay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXYwb...

[Tony]

The obligatory Introductions in the nyrb-classics series are often scholarly analysis by well-known authors. Don't tell, but I often skip them, or cherry-pick an important date or two therein. But Denis Johnson, in two pages (I like that), didn't try and tell me how smart he is, or how his writer's insight is more important than my mere reader's view. No. Instead, he wrote about what it is to be a fan of an author or a book. He told this story:

My friend across the road saw Gardner in a drugstore in California once, recognized him from his jacket photo. He was looking at a boxing magazine. "Are you Leonard Gardner?" my friend asked. "You must be a writer," Gardner said, and went back to his magazine. I made my friend tell the story a thousand times.

I loved that. And told the story already in a bar last night. And will again, to friends who love a special book, and talk about every paragraph ... one by one and over and over, the way couples sometimes reminisce about each moment of their falling in love.

I tried, after that, to make Fat City be that book for me. But it wasn't. And I fall in love easily. But, ah there were moments:

"All I need's a fight and a woman. Then I'm set. I get the fight I'll get the money. I get the money I'll get the woman. There's some women that love you for yourself, but that don't last long. Ernie?"

Not a boxer, I can still feel that. Ernie? Take this outside the ring:

As if in rebellion against his influence, they had succumbed to whatever in them was weakest, and often it was nothing he could even define. They lost when they should have won and they drifted away. Over the years he would see one around town. A few he read about in the newspapers--some fighting in other towns for other managers, one killed on a motorcycle, one murdered in New Orleans. They were all so vulnerable, their duration so desperately brief, that all he could do was go on from one to the other in quest of that youth who had all that the others lacked.

It's the American Dream. Dropped in the desert in the middle of the night. No cut man. Best to break your nose in your first fight, so there's one less thing to worry yourself about the rest of your life. Ernie?

[Bonnie G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the most stunning prose I have ever read. Some of it is truly stunning, like being punched in the head repeatedly, and hard. This tale of the boxer's life is really a story about masculinity and race, and about the desperate search for ways to feel special when simply being White and male are no longer enough. The threats of pain and harm and even death are insufficient to keep these men on the margins from the one thing that makes them feel powerful for a moment. There is a forward by Denis Johnson where he says basically that everything he has written is him trying to write something as good as this. I can see the link to Johnson's work quite clearly, though Johnson's voice is still his own. I won't read a better book this year. The perfect iteration of what this set out to be.

ETA a few quotes

After his first sexual experience: “Still he was uncertain. He wondered if everything had gone as it should. Was that all there was to it? Perhaps it had been celebrated out of proportion because there was nothing else to live for.”

About that same woman whom he ends up with: “Profoundly moved, he kissed the lax waiting mouth with exquisite unhappiness.”

From a sad alcoholic Tully hooks up with talking about her history with men of different races: “The white race is in its decline. We started downhill in 1492 when Columbus discovered syphilis."

The best quotes for me are those about Stockton and about being in the ring. I will leave everyone to find those on their own.

[Paul Ataua · Rating 3 out of 5]

The careers of two boxers intersect, one at the beginning of his career and the other close to the end, but ‘Fat City’ is not really a boxing novel. The title comes from a saying that when you say you want to go to Fat City, it means you want the good life, and the novel is about their lives, lives that are far from good. Bloodied in the ring, trapped in relationships that crush, working in the fields for a pittance to make ends meet, and battling with the demon drink; these are the real core of the novel. I loved the content, loved a lot of the descriptions, but it didn’t really come together as a story. It did, however, do enough to make me promise myself to watch the movie in the near future.

[Kansas · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2025...

“Un libro escrito con tanta precisión y dando tal valor a sus palabras que sentí que casi podía leerlo con mis dedos, como Braille.”
(Denis Johnson)


Tenía que rescatar esta cita de Denis Johnson para el prólogo que escribió para Fat City porque no puede describir mejor lo que es la escritura de Gardner. A veces pienso que estas crónicas no funcionan independientemente unas de otras porque la mayoría están entrelazadas con la última lectura, con el libro del que vengo, cada crónica podría ser un capítulo/libro pero vistos con perspectiva formarían un conjunto en el que están todas las lecturas relacionadas. Ya he explicado por aquí que no suelo planear lo que leo a pesar de la pila de libros sino que me dejo llevar por las conexiones mientras voy leyendo. En un principio no tenía pensado leer a Denis Johnson y sin embargo se me coló Sueño de Trenes debido a la adaptación al cine que se ha hecho este año que despertó mi curiosidad por leer la novela original. Y una vez sumergida en Sueño de Trenes esto me ha llevado hasta Leonard Gardner y esa obra total que ha resultado ser Fat City, y llegué hasta esta novela que me ocupa por la la enorme admiración de Denis Johnson por Gardner, a quién prácticamente consideraba un dios en la tierra. Escribió un prólogo para una de las ediciones de Fat City y aquí reconoce que quería escribir como Gardner. Mientras leía Sueño de Trenes me impactó de alguna forma la precisión con la que escribía Denis Johnson y lo comentaba en mi crónica, y ahora cuando me encuentro con Fat City entiendo la enorme influencia que tuvo Gardner en su escritura. Cuenta Johnson en el Prólogo que en la época en que salió publicada Fat City, todos querían escribir como Leonard Gardner:


“Mi vecino del otro lado de la calle, también un joven aspirante a escritor, sentía lo mismo. Hablamos de cada párrafo de Fat City, uno por uno, una y otra vez, de la forma en que las parejas a veces recuerdan cada momento de su enamoramiento.

Y como la mayoría de los jóvenes en pleno enamoramiento, asumí que era de los pocos humanos que alguna vez se habían sentido así. Pero durante los años siguientes, mientras estudiaba en el Taller de Escritores de Iowa City, me asombraba cada vez que conocía a un joven escritor capaz de citar con éxtasis línea tras línea de diálogos de las almas desfavorecidas de Fat City, hombres y mujeres que buscaban amor, un poco de consuelo, incluso gloria, pero nunca perdón, en el calor y el polvo del centro de California. Sus admiradores estaban por todas partes.
[...]
Aprendí a escribir al estilo Gardner, aunque no tan bien. Y ahora, muchos años después, sigue siendo cierto: Leonard Gardner tiene algo que decir en cada palabra que escribo.”
(Denis Johnson para el prólogo de Fat city)


De esta forma Denis Johnson me condujo hasta Leonard Gardner y ahora puedo entender esa sed agónica que sintieron sus admiradores después de la publicación de Fat City, una sed por una nueva novela que nunca llegó desde que se publicara en 1969. Es cierto que para valorar debidamente un texto habría que dejar pasar el tiempo y que repose para analizarlo con perspectiva pero en el caso de Fat City no tengo ninguna duda de que es una de las grandes novelas de la literatura americana, quizás incluso la pondría ahora mismo entre las cinco primeras de las que he leído. Y no solo por el estilo de Leonard Gardner, directo, de diálogos secos y descripciones perfectamente medidas sino por lo que significa como metáfora irónica del sueño americano: un lugar imaginario de éxito y prosperidad que se promete, pero que los personajes nunca podrán tocar siquiera. Al darle este titulo (fat city es una expresión asociada al éxito, a las vacas gordas, a la gallina de los huevos de oro), Gardner está enfatizando la distancia entre la ilusión de este sueño y la realidad que para muchos ciudadanos es el estancamiento y la derrota. En este titulo se está destacando que el éxito es una ilusión, y que no todos pueden acceder a la meta. Los dos personajes protagonistas, Billy Tully y Ernie Munger vivirán estancados en una especie de bucle de fracaso y resignación.


"Podría llegar a arrastrar multitudes. Y tal vez sería capaz si escuchase lo que se le dice. Si pudiese meterle en la cabeza todo lo que sé. Pero yo tampoco lo aprendí de un día para otro."


Billy Tully se puede decir que es el personaje guía de Fat City, ex-boxeador profesional, se ha quedado estancado tras el fracaso de su matrimonio. De alguna forma esa nostalgia por el pasado es lo que le impide avanzar y al mismo tiempo lo que le hace imposible construir un futuro medianamente decente. Permanentemente autoengañándose a la hora de planear nuevos comienzos en el boxeo, realmente, ya ha tirado la toalla y encarna la derrota silenciosa y recurrente que define el tono de toda la novela. Tully sobrevive haciendo de temporero y trabajando en lo que le sale, mientras planea volver al gimnasio y rehacer su futuro como boxeador, aunque él sea perfectamente consciente de que es un sueño inviable. Está desgastado, medio alcoholizado y emocionalmente zombie cuando se encuentra en su camino con Ernie Munger, el otro personaje casi protagonista de una novela que me parece también muy coral. Ernie Munger tiene apenas dieciocho años y Tully reconoce en él a alguien que podría tener futuro en el mundo del boxeo. A partir de aquí lo introduce en el mundillo. La novela aunque sea lineal en el tiempo se construye sobre 24 capitulos en los que vamos recorriendo momentos en la vida de estos personajes. De alguna forma Tully reconoce en Ernie Munger al mismo hombre que era él con dieciocho años, una posible promesa del boxeo, pero esto también funcionará como un espejo para analizar el futuro porque si Ernie no se mantiene firme, acabará como él. Los avatares de la vida, el amor, el fracaso, la melancolía, el agarrarse a un pasado como huida de un presente insoportable, todo esto está aquí perfectamente reflejado por Gardner a través de sus personajes, no solo las vidas de Tully y de Ernie, sino que prácticamente cada uno de los personajes que asomará la nariz en esta novela estarán perfectamente perfilados y se podría construir otra novela con ellos.


"Esperar no sirve de nada. Lo que sirve de algo es querer. Tienes que querer con tantas ganas que casi puedes saborearlo ya. Si quieres ganar de verdad, ganas.”


Tully y Ernie serán casi el mismo hombre, la diferencia es que Tully ya es consciente de su fracaso, de la derrota de su vida, y de alguna forma tendrá la esperanza de que Ernie tome otro camino, pero la novela está repleta de momentos de introspección en los que sus personajes reconocen que la vida no ha resultado lo que habían esperado que fuera. A través de estos personajes tan existencialistas, Gardner sugiere que comprender y ser conscientes de su situación de desesperanza no equivale a que estén en situación de transformarla. Resisten a pesar de la derrota del día a día, una resistencia que se convierte en pura resignación. A través de ellos, Gardner muestra cómo el sueño de éxito en el boxeo, y en la vida, se repite sin aprender de sus fracasos.


“A medianoche sorteó los escalones hasta llegar a su habitación, las paredes empapeladas de motivos florales desteñidos, de una tonalidad semejante a viejos ramos de novias.
(...)
¿Y aquí era donde iba a envejecer? ¿En una habitación como aquella terminaría todo? "


Leí en algún momento que cuando Leonard Gardner escribió esta novela tenía 400 páginas, pero que la fue puliendo hasta llegar a lo que acabó siendo, una novela corta de apenas 200 páginas. Entiendo ahora de donde le viene a Denis Johnson ese llevarlo todo a la esencia porque ya estaba aquí, en Fat City. Leonard Gardner evita el sentimentalismo, a pesar de la dureza del entorno de los personajes de su novela, y al evitar el sentimentalismo se queda justo en el límite al reflejar la derrota de sus personajes dotándolos siempre de dignidad. Gardner además no está retratando las grandes ciudades sino la ciudad en la que él mismo nació, Stockton, una ciudad en el centro de California, polvorienta y sin una pizca de glamour, una elección que está definiendo que hay una gran parte de Estados Unidos que vive muy alejada de este sueño americano de luz y color. El boxeo simboliza esa promesa: se vende como una vía de escape de la pobreza, de hacer dinero sin necesidad de formación académica, pero en la práctica reproduce la explotación y el fracaso. En Fat City se ofrece la imagen de un país derrotado en el que la ilusión por alcanzar el éxito y el dinero no deja de ser una trampa que nublará la vista a la hora de poder vivir con un mínimo de dignidad. Quizás este país no proporcione las condiciones para vivir con dignidad, sin embargo Gardner está concediéndoles esta dignidad a sus personajes y el medio será este texto mayúsculo.


"El desgaste sin sentido del que era víctima y que ya no estaba en su mano detener había comenzado imperceptiblemente hacia mucho tiempo en nombre de un amor que ya no era capaz de sentir. Cuánto más emocionados estaban sus hijos, más oprimido se sentía, hasta que fue como si estos y su mujer y la ciudad entera con sus porches iluminados bajo un cielo de nubes pasajeras conspirasen contra su vida."

♫♫♫ Help Me Make It Through The Night - Kris Kristofferson ♫♫♫

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why haven't you heard of this book?

I'm one to talk, owing my knowledge of Leonard Gardner to having recenty had the pleasure of watching John Huston's forgotten cinematic masterpiece that was adapted from it. So that's a forgotten movie and a forgotten book. And Gardner never published another novel. The novel becoming the perfect allegory for its own life in hindsight?

Ernie Munger and Billy Tully are two amateur boxers, Ruben is their trainer. All three men have dreams of making it big, of a happy life, none of them get it. There's not much more to the actual plot to add to a synopsis. There are a few ups but mostly downs, it's a largely depressing novel and beautifully written. Much like a kitchen sink drama there is not so much a completed journey feel to the story just a documentation of life and Gardner allows you to tag along for a while.

Place Gardner alongside John Steinbeck, Nathanael West et al as a superb chronicler of the misery of the American people, the death of the American dream. Through a series of vignettes a portrait of emptiness and despair, of loss and desperation is completed with a bleak outlook and brutal honesty.

The characters may well exist as boxers, that's their surface designation but there's no glamour in what they do, Gardner does not drift in to eulogising the pugilistic arts as many have done before and since; Ernie and Billy are all men and boxing is the metaphor for the toll life can take on you.

"..... they succumbed to whatever in them was the weakest, and often it was nothing he could even define"

Sometimes there's so much beauty in a book that could be missed, the content is depressing but the choice of words and the framing of them in this case make the experience of reading so much more than its content.

[Rod · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a writer, and if you're going to write just one novel over the course of your career, please try to make it as good as this one.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Denis Johnson rosetta stone, shifting mosaic of stunted lives, and tone poem about boxing, among other things.

[Algernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

“All I need is a fight and a woman. Then I’m set. I get the fight I’ll get the money. I get the money I’ll get the woman. There’s some women that love you for yourself, but that don’t last long.”

Billy Tully is an old man, a has been, a human wreck. He is only 29 years old. Small time boxers on the California circuit in the 1950s’ had a very short shelf life, and Billy Tully did his best to sink his own career after a bitter divorce from his hot wife and after losing a fight he was supposed to win easily in Mexico. Billy is now pub crawling in Stockton, bragging about his former fame, drinking heavily and dreaming of making a comeback.

Yearning for struggle and release, he felt he had to fight, as he had felt years before when he had come home from the army to begin his life and confronted the fact that there was nothing he wanted to do.

Ashamed of his out of shape body and general health, Billy goes to a local gym to train and offers to spar with a young enthusiast there named Ernie Munger. Nineteen years old Ernie has never boxed before, but he easily trashes Billy, who praises his instinctive talent and sends him to his old trainer, Ruben Luna.

The novel follows the parallel paths taken by Billy and Ernie on the local boxing circuit. One of them is on the way down, one on the way up, but it is hard to decide the outcome when both stories are equally bleak and futile.
This is the only novel published by Leonard Gardner, beside several short stories in magazines and a couple of film scripts. Yet the readers feels he says here all he had to say and that it is somehow enough to put him firmly on the map. Gardner is grim and depressing, a most bitter commentary on the corruption of the American Dream, but he is also a natural storyteller with an uncanny flair for dialogue and scene setting. His words are simple and direct, but somehow they glue together into a sort of dismal poetry of the gutter. The story and the characters fit like a [boxing] glove with the ethos of the dark and gritty realism in the seventies cinema. It made me remember things like 'Midnight Cowboy', 'Klute' or 'The Deer Hunter'.

Before he had reached the hotel a ghastly depression came over him, a buzzing wave of confusion and despair, and he knew absolutely that he was lost.

Billy and Ernie are both on the way down, but they are not following Oscar Wilde’s advice to look at the stars. They gaze instead into the abyss. A place populated by small time trainers, cocky upstarts, dubious promoters, dirty fighting and pervasive poverty.
Even love turns bitter in the hands of Billy and Ernie, offering as little chance of escape from their plight as the fights and the money they dream of winning.
Billy shacks up with a bar fly named Oma, a foul mouthed harridan who takes out her frustrations on her men. Ernie struggles to convince his girlfriend to go all the way, only to be told she is pregnant, so he does the right thing and marries before his twentieth birthday.

I picked up the book for its boxing theme, trying to recapture some of my childhood fascination with the stories of Jack London [The Mexican] and Ernest Hemingway [ 50 Grand]. There is enough action in the arena for Billy and Ernie to satisfy the sport fan, but the novel turned out to have a larger scope by placing the two boxers in the context of a dying city and an existence lacking in any sort of purpose. Gardner looks at the whole picture, as much inside the ring as outside the sporting venues.
Probably the most memorable scenes for me were the unemployment lines in the mornings in Stockton, where people of colour, Mexicans and the homeless gather up, hoping to be picked up for back breaking field work in vegetable rows or orchards. Then they drink all their earnings in the local bars. Next day they are back in line.
I think Gardner is as good in these scenes as Steinbeck in his most socially aware and depressing stories.

While finding no mention of Arcadio Lucero, he noted with dismay the number of knockouts suffered in Mexico in a month’s time. There had been such a quantity the correspondent had amused himself with an array of synonyms: dumped, demolished, iced, polished off, put to sleep, embalmed, disposed of. And these unknown defeated Mexicans so depressed Tully that he knew, with terrible lucidity, that the sport was for madmen.

For a novel almost completely lacking in plot progression [a deliberate choice I think, underlining the lack of prospects for the boxers] , this book is a fast and gripping read, exerting the same fascination for me as a slow motion train wreck. The old and disillusioned local trainer, Ruben Luna, has of course the last word. For him, the show must go on, no matter how many times he has seen it end in failure:

They were all so vulnerable, their duration so desperately brief, that all he could do was go on from one to another in quest of that youth who had all that the others lacked. There was always someone who wanted to fight.

I now plan to see the movie adaptation, recommended by the fact that the author also worked on the script and that the famous director, John Huston, was well pleased with the result.

As a final bit of trivia, one that I discovered as I tried to read online about Gardner, he explained in an interview how he came up with the title for his novel:

The title is ironic: Fat City is a crazy goal no one is ever going to reach."

[Marta Demianiuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Za to lubię wydawnictwo ArtRage - nawet jak nie rozumiem książki i nie wiem, co właściwie czytam i czemu mam czuć zachwyt, ostatecznie i tak kończy się myślą „to było ciekawe, niebanalne, może nie moje, ale jednak ciekawe i cieszę się, że to przeczytałam”.

Cieszę się, że książka na posłowie, bo pozwoliło mi ono zrozumieć, że to nie tak, że autor nie lubi kobiet albo ma z nimi złe doświadczenia i dlatego bohaterki tej książki są takie. I że to tyleż książka o boksie, co o konkretnym czasie i miejscu z boksem, jako jedna z postaci głównych.

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fat City

Leonard Gardner's short novel, "Fat City", set in Stockton, California in the mid-1950's, appeared in 1969. Gardner wrote the screenplay for the movie, directed by John Huston, in 1972. The book remains in print in a series of novels based in California called "California fiction". I came upon this book by chance. It is little-known but a treasure.

The book explores boxing and low life, faded dreams, lack of prospects, booze, rooming houses, failed relationships in a small California town. The two primary characters are Billy Tully and Ernie Munger. Billy at age 29 is a washed-up fighter who has lost his wife and several jobs and is sinking deeply into alcohol and oblivion. Ernie is 19 years old and a boxer who may have potential. He marries a young women named Faye, after getting her pregnant, and takes up the ring as a professional in order to support his wife and child.

The paths of the two men cross in the gym at the beginning of the book and their careers take parallel courses. Billy had lost an important fight in Panama some years earlier when his manager, Ruben Luna, forced him to travel alone to Panama in order to save on expenses. He makes an attempted comeback at the age of 30 and actually wins a decision in a brutal match with an aging Mexican fighter. He returns to fighting to try to save himself from depression over the loss of his wife, his lack of prospects, and his loneliness.

Ernie Munger is young and works at a gas station. Although he has some boxing potential, his skills appear limited. As had been the case with Tully years earlier, Ruben Luna sends Munger out of town, (to Las Vegas) for a fight to save on the expenses. This is Munger's first professional fight which proves more successful for him than did Tully's fight in Panama.

The book ends darkly, but with a hint of the possibility of personal growth and true independence for Munger.

"Fat City" describes compellingly bars, women, cheap hotels, training for fights, and fights themselves. It offers a picture of boxing at its seamiest which yet captures the fascination that this sport holds for many -- myself included. There are also many scenes in the book of the life of seasonal, agricultural workers in northern California. One of the most memorable portions of the book occurs when Tully and Munger sign on for day work in picking nuts. Tully climbs upon a ladder on a tractor and beats the nuts from a tree with a stick where they fall on Munger's head as he gathers them into a bag. The rage and the frustration of both men is palpable.

Gardner writes with a spare understated style which does not moralize. The characters and their experiences speak for themselves. It is highly effective.

The novel offers a picture of despairing men with small visions but also a real sense of underlying humanity, of hope, and of valuable, if fallen ideals. "Fat City" will be a rewarding novel for the reader who wants to go slightly off the routine path.

Robin Friedman

[Darwin8u · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Still he was uncertain. He wondered if everything had gone as it should. Was that all there was to it? Perhaps it had been celebrated out of proportion because there was nothing else to live for.”
― Leonard Gardner, Fat City



God this was a beautiful and raw book. Nearly perfect in every way. I'd put it up there with Faulkner, Steinbeck, McCarthy. I'm still wrecked by its open-eyed and poetic look at the human condition, focused on two fighters. The dialogue is gritty and real. There is sweat dripping down dried sweat in this little book. This isn't a razzle dazzle, banners and bunting, boxing trope book. It is about failure, pain, love, insecurity, and how strength does not always equate to success. The setting of Stockton, CA, with its migrant farm work, trashy hotels, and bar scenes evokes Steinbeck's Monterey during the depression.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

FAT CITY by Leonard Gardner is the story of Tully, a washed up fighter who lost his career as a result of sinking into the bottle after his wife left him.

Tully meets up with a young man named Ernie training in a gym and invites him to go a few rounds of sparring, after which Tully gives him words of encouragement and tells him to get in touch with his old handler Ruben.

Oma is a drunk Tully finds sitting at a bar, and they strike up a relationship that evolves into a situation where they live together in a dysfunctional relationship with alcohol being the glue that keeps them together, that is until Tully decides to clean up and resume his boxing career.

Superb story in this book written by author Gardener, and the 1972 movie starring Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges directed by John Huston is also excellent and does as well as a film can be expected to at condensing the story from the book while still staying true to the majority of what takes place in it.

5 stars.

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a sorrowful, bleak little gem that wears its broken and defeated heart on its sleeve!

Reminiscent of Don Carpenter's "Hard Rain Falling", it's the story of two down on their luck boxers: Aging (but only 29!) Tully; and Ernie, a teenager looking to make it into the big time. Their chance meeting boxing at the beginning of the novel sets in motion a downward spiral for both- living hand to mouth, cheap motels, boozy and sex-crazed nights with two very blowsy and needy women: Ona for Tully- a sad sack, and married; and Faye for Ernie, young, horny and very, very needy.

The novel is a character study of loneliness, a lack of true friends, and the corrupt nature of boxing for sport set in a bleak California reminiscent of Steinbeck and Kerouac.

Note: There is a fantastic John Huston directed film adaptation starring Stacy Keach that is fabulous and true to this stark little book.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

If fists are your thing, and if their connecting points with both bone and soul is a concomitant obsession, then go buy some new pants and prepare to enter "Fat City".
No, this isn't about the running battle against morbid obesity. Instead it's the terse, supple and yet streamlined story of two boxers, one a washout mixed up in alcoholism, whoring, and fruitpicking, and an up-and-comer who likes sex, hitting people, and sex. Despite sounding like a fun, if desperate, hoot, this novel is also about the crushing, inexorable bleakness of life. Noses are broken, but so are spirits.
Sort of the Tony Danza of boxing novels: personable, but harboring a heart of darkness.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writing, the dialogue, the plot, the down-and-out characters with their demons--Leonard Gardner's Fat City is a total knockout.

[Boris Farías Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Viejos curaos viviendo en total decadencia se agarran a combos durante 180 páginas. Excelente libro.

[David Hefesto · Rating 5 out of 5]

elyunquedehefesto.blogspot.com/2020/0...

La vida es más dura que cualquier combate. No hay una campana que indique el inicio o el final de los asaltos. Tampoco un árbitro que te haga una cuenta de protección cuando estas en apuros. Puedes caer a causa de golpes que nunca viste venir y pensar que debes levantarte, que eres capaz de hacerlo. Pero fuera del ring ese desafío al dolor y a los propios límites requiere demasiado coraje, mucho más del que se puede pagar con sangre. Posiblemente, esos diez segundos de esfuerzo desesperado en los que depositas tu fe intentando alzarte, terminaron hace tiempo.

Cuando Billy Tully mira a su alrededor en una sórdida habitación de hotel, ve su maleta aún cerrada y hace balance de una vida en la que perdió las únicas cosas que le importaban (su mujer y su carrera como boxeador). Decide entonces que, tal vez, aún pueda alcanzar su último tren; no es demasiado viejo y tiene talento. En un tímido intento de auto-convencerse de sus posibilidades se cruza en el gimnasio con Ernie Munger, un joven amateur en el que sabe ver la chispa que venía buscando en sí mismo y, como pasándole el testigo de una vida en la que se siente incapaz de triunfar, le recomienda que vaya a ver a Rubén, su antiguo entrenador.

Esta es una novela que habla de perdedores que no saben que lo son, o que se niegan a asumirlo. Sobre promesas de gloria rotas, oportunidades fallidas y heridas que nunca cierran. Pero también nos muestra la fuerza que da la esperanza, como la que el paciente entrenador mexicano deposita en cada uno de sus pupilos, esperando que alguno le ayude a alcanzar el éxito que él mismo no pudo lograr. O como la que se enciende en Tully cada vez que se dice a sí mismo que sólo está atravesando un bache y que pronto llegará su momento.

Fat City es la única obra que publicó Leonard Gardner. Un clásico norteamericano por derecho propio que otorga a la ciudad de Stockton tanto peso como a los personajes que por ella discurren. Es retratada como una urbe deprimida, llena de mendigos, suciedad y buscavidas que se dejan la salud en fábricas y campos de cultivo para, por las noches, buscar refugio consumiendo alcohol en tugurios malolientes o abrazándose a cualquiera que palíe su soledad. Su prosa austera y directa va calando inadvertidamente en el lector, sumergiéndole en un ambiente marginal y desolador. Sus diálogos son precisos y esclarecedores.

El boxeo juega un papel extraño en esta historia. No es una novela deportiva y cualquiera que llegue a ella esperando encontrar un desenlace épico, se llevará una decepción. Sin embargo, el mundillo profesional de base con sus gimnasios y combates igualados, con todo su dolor, sudor, incertidumbre y agonía, queda retratado a la perfección. Es imposible leer estas páginas sin amar a estos hombres que se niegan a rendirse y que derraman su sangre a la espera de un golpe de suerte o de justicia. Pero también lo es no sentir lástima o desesperación.

Stockton debe ser la ciudad más horrible del mundo.

[Dax · Rating 3 out of 5]

Billed as a boxing novel, “Fat City” is really a book about the hopeless; about men who have utterly lost their direction in life. Gardner’s strong pose is perfect for a story of this nature and his characters are fully developed. The overwhelming sense of gloom is almost too abundant, however, and there isn’t a single likeable character. Gardner’s writing is great, but the story is just okay. Meet in the middle and we’ll call it good.

[Julian Worker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book as it's really well written.

It's not enjoyable at times as the characters have difficult circumstances and seem doomed to be stuck with what they have in their lives forever. There are dreams here but no one appears to be improving themselves and there seems no hope for them improving themselves either. All the characters seem doomed and this is encapsulated in this line.

He rode, sleeping, to peach orchards, where he spent the sweltering days on ladders among leaves filmed with insecticide.

The two main characters, Billy Tully and Ernie Munger, both have boxing careers of sorts which could promise much, but this promise of riches eludes them both. The reasons why are clear, however all they really need is a break, something to go their way, and things would turn out so much better. Is this 'break' something they can generate? Perhaps it is, perhaps not. Is it down to luck or personal choices and attitudes?

[Maćkowy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solidna literatura: szczera, dobrze napisana i przetłumaczona. Tylko tyle i aż tyle.

[Trin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh, it's so hard to be a man! Poverty, yes, that's a problem, and your own weakness...but isn't more of the problem women? They're all nags and harpies, and some might be lesbians, and the ones you fuck or marry don't always stay exactly the same looking as when you first fucked or married them: they age and get fat and have human bodies, which are gross. Also, they just don't understand you -- a man with an internal life, which as we all know, women do not have.

:\

There are some lovely, stark sentences that convey the bleak, sun-baked atmosphere, the sweat and desperation. There are also some unlovely sentences -- not because of what they express, though see above, but just on a technical level: Gardner has never met a modifier he wasn't at least tempted to let dangle. Overall: this is an okay example of a kind of thing I just have very little patience for these days.

[Vendedor de rápida · Rating 4 out of 5]

El boxeo en 'Fat City' no es metáfora de la lucha por la vida sino de su desesperanza. La novela de Gardner es realismo sucio en el que los auténticos golpes los da la soledad y el alcohol. Son magistrales el capítulo de la llegada de aparcado Lucero a Stockton y el de la pelea de éste con Tully.

[Steve]

Ruben Luna manages boxers in Stockton, California, as a second job. He is a union dock worker by day. Fat City follows the lives of Ernie Munger and Billy Tully, who both box for Ruben. Ernie is a young entrant to the ring; Billy is near the end of his run, age twenty-nine. Ernie has some promise; Billy had some promise. Ernie marries, his wife pregnant; Billy is divorced, works as a day laborer at scattered jobs, finds company with the bottle, and appears an untethered soul. Ordinarily, the bookends of a career might span a lifetime, here they measure a mere decade. We’re left to wonder if Ernie will follow Billy or will his “potent allegiance of fate” lead him in a healthier direction. I imagine this question of fate is familiar to many, maybe every, athlete.

[Maciej Sz. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gardner napisał rzeczy przyzwoitą (tyle i aż tyle), która z nie do końca jasnych mi powodów zyskała aż takie uznanie. Fundamenty tego sukcesu są bodaj cztery: boks, pejzaż Stockton, kontrast pokoleniowych szans, ambicji i losów bohaterów oraz precyzyjny i realistyczny sposób opisu.

Najlepiej w tym rozrachunku wypada właśnie język, bo konstrukcyjnie i stylistycznie jest to powieść zwarta, dynamiczna, o dobrym rytmie. Szczególnie jeśli spojrzymy na dialogi, zauważymy że miał Gardner do nich rękę – płynność, kontrapunkty, esencja, naturalność frazy, to wszystko tu jest.

A reszta?

Paradoksalnie, ta powieść Wam wiele o boksie nie powie. I nie odmawiam autorowi doświadczenia w tym temacie, kwestionuję natomiast sposób przeniesienia go na papier i późniejsze zachwyty nad nim. Ciężko też zgodzić się z tłumaczem, który w posłowiu pisze: “powieść Gardnera ma ten rodzaj siły, taki ładunek realizmu, który powala niczym dobrze wprowadzony sierpowy”. Jeśli ktoś z boksem lub sportami walki się zetknął, ten “Fat city” odbierze raczej jako dość amatorski portret. Gardner prześlizguje się po temacie. Sygnalizuje pewne rzeczy, ale po prawdzie, pływa po powierzchni – tak treningu, walk, stresu z nimi związanego, techniki, taktyki, atmosfery. Dostajemy strzępki, okruchy, namiastkę piękna i trudu tego sportu. Dodatkowo warto zaznaczyć o jakim boksie w ogóle powieść będzie traktowała, a mianowicie o tzw. journeymanach, czyli bokserach bez potencjału na większy niż lokalny sukces, którzy własnym rekordem i porażkami zbytnio się nie przejmują. Wyglądają walk co kilka tygodni, a ambicje sportowe niżej cenią, niż te kilka groszy, które mogą zarobić i które na krótką metę poprawią ich sytuację finansową.

Są takie utwory, które odtwarzają na kartach literatury jakieś sceny bądź atmosferę, niezależnie czy jest to boks czy cokolwiek innego, które podziwiamy i pamiętamy przez resztę życia. Czytamy “Imię róży” Eco i po kilkunastu stronach darzymy autora uznaniem za ilość wiedzy o filozofii średniowiecznej, którą nam zaserwował. Pamiętamy starcie na zamarzniętym jeziorze odmalowane przez Sapkowskiego. Wracamy wspomnieniami do marginalnych, ale jakże ciekawie odmalowanych perypetii Luigiego Vampy z “Hrabiego Monte Christo”. W “Na południe od Brazos” McMurtry’ego nikt chyba nie zapomni walki byka z niedźwiedziem. Żeby to wszystko osiągnęło swoją formę trzeba było wejść w detal. Trzeba było precyzji, pozwalającej nadbudować określoną aurę. W “Fat city”, w przypadku boksu, tego nie znajdziemy.

Nie oczekiwałem od Gardnera opisu jakiegoś epickiego boju, bo nie o tym jest ta powieść. Natomiast razi mnie kontrast tego z jaką intensywnością mówi się o “Fat city” jak o powieści bokserskiej, z tym, jak w istocie ona pięściarstwo przedstawia.

Po drugie, temat przyziemnego marazmu ówczesnych prekariuszy, związanego z sytuacją bytową ludzi zamieszkujących pewne części USA wypada tu chyba zbyt dosłownie. Brak u Gardnera potencjału metaforycznego, co de facto oznacza, że czytając blurba wiecie już o tej książce niemal wszystko. Boks wam tego nie wynagrodzi. Relacje między bohaterami i ich historie tym bardziej, bo są dość przyziemne. Realistyczne? Owszem. Intrygujące? Raczej nie. A na tym przecież polega siła sztuki, że banalną sytuację (z perspektywy narracji) potrafi zamienić w niebanalną z perspektywy odbiorcy. Tywin dokonujący żywota w wychodku jest banalny, a jednocześnie scena z perspektywy odbiorcy banalna już nie jest. Gardner na ten poziom niebanalności się nie wznosi. Miejscami jest to na tyle realistyczne, że aż nudne.

Jeśli chcecie przeczytać naprawdę dobrą powieść pokazującą kontrast pokoleniowy, między tymi, którzy myślą, że mają przed sobą jakieś perspektywy, a ich starszymi znajomymi, którzy nie chcą przyznać, jak dalece rozczarowani są życiem, to zachęcam do sięgnięcia po wydany 3 lata wcześniej niż “Fat city”, “Ostatni seans filmowy” Larrego McMurtry’ego. Chociaż nie ma tam boksu, to uważam, że właśnie w tych literackich niuansach McMurtry góruje nad Gardnerem.