Boxing's Best Short Stories (Sports Short Stories (Paperback Chicago Review)) [Paperback]

Paul D. Staudohar (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2001 | Series: Sports Short Stories (Paperback Chicago Review)

The action of the ring comes brilliantly to life in these 22 tales representing every decade of the 20th century, from beloved writers including Nelson Algren, Paul Gallico, John O'Hara, O. Henry, Ring Lardner, Jack London, Ellery Queen, and P. G. Wodehouse. The fixed fight, courage under pressure, the crooked promoter, and death in the ring animate these stories and support deeper themes of love, life, and character.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With a stable of writers that includes P.G. Wodehouse, Damon Runyon, Nelson Algren, Irwin Shaw, and O. Henry, Boxing's Best Short Stories is a collection that comes out swinging from the opening bell.

Unlike other sports, boxing is not one you play at. It's a serious, dangerous, and complicated combination of business, art, brutality, and need, and the best boxing writing pulls no punches when it closes in on those themes. Not surprisingly, in going toe to toe with those ideas, these writers--heavyweights all--find ways to bring in even larger ones: hope, love, despair, triumph, courage, family, dreams. Boxing provides a powerful arena for examining them, not an end in itself; though the sweet science is present in each story, the real action takes place beyond the ring. In "The Croxley Master," Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle, an amateur fighter in his own youth, weaves a classic tale of boxing as a way up and out as a medical student finances his education with his fists. Ring Lardner's "Champion" spars with the bitter reality that a good fighter is not necessarily a good man. Paul Gallico's "Thicker Than Water" twists the tie that binds brothers. Jack London's "A Piece of Steak" uses hunger--and the way it eats at and eats up the hungry--as its powerful central metaphor.

As with his previous collections on baseball, football, and golf, Staudohar provides a context for each story, and if his overall introduction states the obvious--"For all its raw violence and scheduled destruction," he writes, "boxing combines grace with power"--his selections beautifully demonstrate the prose equivalent. --Jeff Silverman --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers 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.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press; illustrated edition edition (April 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556524242
• ISBN-13: 978-1556524240
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,838,109 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The classic writers span the entire 20th century, August 10, 2001

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Boxing's Best Short Stories (Hardcover)

Fans of boxing will relish this literary collection of short stories revolving around boxing experiences, contributed by such notables as A. Conan Doyle, O. Henry, Ring Lardner and more. The classic writers span the entire 20th century and the breadth of boxing experiences.