Million Dollar Baby: Stories from the Corner [Paperback]

F. X. Toole (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 5, 2005

This hard-hitting collection of powerful and moving tales based on the experiences of the late, great fight manager and cut man Jerry Boyd, who wrote under the pen name F.X. Toole, is the basis for the Oscar-winning motion picture starring Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman. Breathing life into vivid, compelling characters who radiate the fierce intensity of the worlds they inhabit, Million Dollar Baby "is not just fight fiction at its finest, it is excellent fiction, period" (Dan Rather).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The story of the 69-year-old author of this astonishing first fiction collection is a salutary one; he wrote between gigs tending boxers in their corners as a "cut man" (who stanches the blood flow and allows fights to continue), finally got a story published by a small literary magazine, was spotted by a keen-eyed agent and achieved book publication. It's amazing it took so long, because Irish-born Toole, now living and working in Los Angeles, is a natural. His knowledge of the bizarre world of professional boxing is encyclopedic and utterly persuasive, his prose is as tight as a well-laced pair of gloves and his protagonists, in this collection of five stories and a novella, are mythically heroic (and occasionally evil) but convincing archetypes. "The Money Look" is an exquisite turning-the-tables yarn at the expense of a cynical crook of a fighter; "Black Jew" is a telling tale of humble ambition woven with the lure of big money. A lacerating account of a courageous, deeply endearing hillbilly woman fighter and her sad fate, "Million $$$ Baby," is arguably the best story in the book. "Fightin' in Philly" is an almost equally moving tale of the toll the ambition to be a title fighter takes on a man. Another innocent torn up by the fight game is portrayed in "Frozen Water." Only the title novella, "Rope Burns," falls somewhat behind the sterling standard set by the other stories, with their firm authority and dead-on dialogue. It is more ambitious, even operatic, in its pitting of an almost superhumanly noble Olympic contender against a low-life East Los Angeles gang member at the time of the Rodney King riots. Like all of Toole's stories, it's breathlessly readable, even though the climactic bloodshed feels forced, as if Toole's cool narrative style cannot bear so much melodramatic freight. But make no mistake, the man is a heavyweight fiction contender. Agent, Nat Sobel. 6-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

A boxing cut man uses swabs, pressure, ice, and home-mixed salve to stop his fighter's bleeding between rounds. Toole, 70, whose experience as a cut man inspired this hard-boiled debut collection of contemporary fight stories, writes with blunt authority about this world. His strongest tales feature old trainers or cut men like himself, wisely noble holdovers from boxing's Hibernian age. Toole's old-fashioned modern stories often deal in broad ethnic typesDhillbillies and homeboys, "4-dollar whores," Irish trainers exclaiming "Jaysus!"Dbut the real fight world is littered with such contrasts. His coldly plotted novella "Million $$$ Baby" begins like the most familiar old pulp story of the grumpy veteran trainer and the eager would-be student; then Toole freshens the clich by making the boxer an innocent young woman from the Ozarks. Here and there, though, Toole's authenticity breaks down, as in the unconvincing stories that lean heavily on black street dialog, "Frozen Water" and "Black Jew." Overall, his tales distinguish themselves by staying in the heartbreaking thick of it, never using boxing na vely as a savage metaphor for life (some life!). As a storyteller, Toole is both sentimental as a bar song and as cruelly precise as the sport he chronicles. Recommended for large fiction collections.DNathan Ward, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (January 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006081926X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060819262
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #97,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars On-target, January 13, 2002

By 

Christopher A. Smith (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner (Paperback)

The prose in Rope Burns is so accurate, so precise and so "right" that it's difficult to believe that this collection of shot stories is Toole's debut. What is clear, however, is that Toole is writing about a subject that he knows intimately and about which he has a real passion. As a former amateur-level boxer I recognized the characters and scenes in this book as realistic and insightful.

Toole gets it right. He slips effortly from ghetto dialect to Irish brogue to South California Spanglish, and perfectly captures the sights, sounds and smells of the gym. The stories here are all anchored in the ring, but vary somewhat in scope. There are dramatic elements of tragedy, death, gunfights - but in my opinion the most effective of the stories is "Fightin in Philly", in which Toole focuses the action entirely in the ring.

As an author Toole has a fighter's timing. His to-the-point delivery and almost complete lack of foreshadowing will take many reader's off-guard; these stories take tragic twists on a dime. Like a good fighter Toole keeps the reader off-balance. He's less effective when the storylines stray into social issues, and I found his handling of the Rodney King riots as a backdrop to one of the stories to be a bit ham-fisted, but when he sticks to what he knows these stories couldn't be better.

This is a great collections for boxing aficionados and for those who have no interest in the sport. Toole captures the "sweet science" as being far more than a contest of force. He does this through his ability to quickly and effectively develop the characters who compete in the ring, and those who shape them into fighters. Interestingly, he at one point quotes the Spanish existentialist philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, saying:

"To make a point about believing in God with one's whole being, Unamuno described fighters as being capable of throwing punches with such economy of effort that they are able to focus the force they unleash and thereby knock out their opponent by suing only those muscles necessary...that a blow delivered by a nonprofessional may not have as much effect on an opponent...but that it would have more effect on the nonpro who threw the punch, since it caused him to bring into play almost his entire body and energy....Unanumo's point was that one blow was that of a professional, the other of a man of flesh and bone - and that when a man of flesh and bone believed, he did so with his whole being."

So Toole, a first time author in his sixties, takes us from the details of being a ringside cutman to Spanish existentialist philosophy in one short volume of short stories. And it all works - this guy can write! Highly recommended.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An astonishing performance!, October 11, 2000

By 

Edward J. Quigley (Lansdale, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: ROPE BURNS: Stories from the Corner (Hardcover)

The story for which the book is titled, Rope Burns, is, indeed, an astonishing performance. And in all the stories every nuance is correct, authentic. Every piece of dialog frightenly accurate. Chillingly real. Toole has obviously heard these voices and altho like many Irish writers his stories are, well, not uplifting, they are incredible -- and moving -- slices of life. If you want to see, hear and feel what's it's like to hang out at the gym (not the spa or health club)and if you want to experience really good writing of this genre; read this book. Then take a shower.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A knockout, June 1, 2006

By 

Scott Sakatch (Lethbridge, AB CAN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Million Dollar Baby: Stories from the Corner (Paperback)

Let's get this out of the way right of the bat: To say Million Dollar Baby: Stories From The Corner is a book about boxing is akin to saying Moby Dick is a book about fishing. It touches on the truth but misses the point entirely.

Sure, all the "stories from the corner" involve boxing. And they feature people involved in fighting. And yes, they take place in seedy gyms and boxing arenas. OK, OK, I admit, they really are about boxing. But there's so much more to them than that. If you saw the Million Dollar Baby movie, you'll get what I'm talking about.

Boxing is the springboard for these stories because they were written by a man who was immersed in the boxing culture for decades. Jerry Boyd (aka F.X. Toole) was a fighter himself before moving on to "cut man," someone whose job is to stanch the flow of blood from wounds inflicted during a fight. He knew the fight game inside and out.

But if that's all there was to him, these stories wouldn't be as wonderful as they are. Like Ernest Hemingway, Boyd followed that most essential rule: Write what you know. Hemingway wrote about bullfighting and hunting and chasing girls, but that's hardly what made his stories resonate with millions of readers over three generations. Likewise, Boyd writes about boxing but only as a means of delving into the hearts and souls of some unforgettable characters.

On the surface, the six short stories are interchangeable. Each features fighters, trainers and cut men. Each takes place in the gym and in the ring. But once you dig in, you'll see each has its own unique flavour. Sometimes it's sweet, sometimes it's bitter, but it's always hearty.

In The Monkey Look, a cut man takes what he's owed from a fast-talking deadbeat fighter in a classic revenge tale. Black Jew looks at money's role in the fight game, how it's used and misused, and how it's often more a symbol of honour than currency.

Willie "Scrap Iron" Dupree (played by Morgan Freeman in the movie, which actually fused elements from three stories) is the narrator of Frozen Water. Scrap Iron tells us the story of a young fighter who bullies a mentally challenged man and, in turn, is taught a lesson in the true spirit of boxing by a more seasoned pugilist. And Fightin In Philly introduces us to a cut man whose unplumbed depths come to the fore when he sees works by Michaelangelo.

The two powerhouses in the collection are Million Dollar Baby, obviously, and Rope Burns. MDB is about an aging trainer who all but adopts a fierce but gentle woman boxer as the two climb to the top level of the sport. Rope Burns, which was the original title when the book was first released in 2000, may be the most touching and compelling of the lot. In it, Boyd weaves a complex tale of love, friendship and loyalty, and how the spectre of racism and violence threatens them all.

Stephen King, in his book On Writing, says great writers are born, not made, and I believe that. Boyd is a great writer. His punchy (sorry, couldn't resist) prose appears natural and effortless and his dialogue is the best I've read, period. Even Harper Lee couldn't beat Boyd's mastery of the evocative southern black speech patterns: "Hymn... hit Shawrelle with a left hook yip! to the liver that made him gut sick and spread yellow all through him and he know what be next on the way. Shawrelle new trainer with his mouth all open go for ice water in a bottle he dump on Sharelle."

Emotion is never overt in these stories and yet they are steeped in it. Honour, love, hate, fear, joy - they're all here in these scant 230 pages. To distill so much story into so few pages is beyond many so-called "literary" writers - heck, even the undeniably great Jonathan Franzen needed almost 700 pages for The Corrections. Boyd serves up gourmet meals, presented on tiny plates, rather than the all-you-can-eat buffet of other authors. And I savoured every bite.

Just a footnote: Jerry Boyd's stories were rejected by publishers for 40 years before he finally sold The Monkey Look to a small literary magazine. Luckily for us, he managed to collect this handful of stories before he died in 2002. Tragically for us, we will never again hear from this wonderful author who, in the words of Terry Malloy, coulda been a contender.