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A CULTURAL HI ST

KASIABCDDf

BOXING

A CULTURAL HISTORY

KASIA BODDY

REAKTION BOOKS

For David

Published by Reaktion Books Ltd

33 Great Sutton Street

London eciv odx

www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

First published 2008

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in

any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

without the prior permission of the publishers.

Printed and bound in China

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Boddy, Kasia

Boxing : a cultural history

1. Boxing - Social aspects - History

2. Boxing - History

I. Title

796.8'3'o9

ISBN 978 1 86189 369 7

Contents

Introduction 7

1 The Classical Golden Age 9

2 The English Golden Age 26

3 Pugilism and Style 55

4 'Fighting, Rightly Understood' 76

5 'Like Any Other Profession' 110

6 Fresh Hopes 166

7 Sport of the Future 209

8 Save Me, Jack Dempsey; Save Me, Joe Louis 257

9 King of the Hill, and Further Raging Bulls 316

Conclusion 367

References 392

Select Bibliography 456

Acknowledgements 470

Photo Acknowledgements 471

Index 472

Introduction

William Roberts,
The Boxing Match,
Novices, 1914.

The symbolism of boxing does not allow for ambiguity; it is, as amateur mid-
dleweight Albert Camus put it, 'utterly Manichean'. The rites of boxing 'simplify
everything. Good and evil, the winner and the loser.' 1 More than anything, the
boxing match has served as a metaphor for opposition - the struggle between two
bodies before an audience, usually for money, representing struggles between
opposing qualities, ideas and values. In the modern works that this book
considers, those struggles involve nationality, class, race, ethnicity, religion,
politics, and different versions of masculinity. As light heavyweight Roy Jones, Jr.
once said, 'if it made money, it made sense.' 2 But the conflicts dramatized in
modern boxing also rework the fundamental oppositions set up in the very
earliest texts: brawn versus brain; boastfulness versus modesty; youth versus
experience. In literary and artistic terms, the clash is also often one of voices and
styles. In the Protagoras, Plato even likens the moves and countermoves of Socratic
debate to a boxing match. 3

Boxing, it seems, has been around forever. The first evidence of the sport
can be found in Mesopotamian stone reliefs from the end of the fourth millen-
nium bc. Since then there has hardly been a time in which young men, and
sometimes women, did not raise their gloved or ungloved fists to one other.
William Roberts's 1914 watercolour The Boxing Match, Novices conveys the
relentless succession of contenders, champions and palookas that makes up
the history of boxing. Throughout this history, potters, painters, poets, novel-
ists, cartoonists, song-writers, photographers and film-makers have been there
to record and make sense of the bruising, bloody confrontation. 'For some
reason,' sportswriter Gary Wills remarked, 'people don't want fighters just
to be fighters.' 4

Writing about boxing is often nostalgic, evoking a golden age long since
departed. Today the period most keenly remembered is that of the late 1960s
and early '70s, a time dominated by Muhammad Ali, a time, as a recent docu-
mentary would have it, 'when we were kings'. 5 Not long before, however, many
were sure that the 1930s and '40s represented the peak of excellence, and
lamented the arrival of televised sport as the end of a 'heroic cycle'. 6 Further

back still, early twentieth-century commentators considered the Regency as the
time when pugilism flourished as never since; while for Regency writers, true
glory and prowess resided in the sport's original manifestations in classical
Greece. In the third century ad, Philostratus looked back to the good old days
before 'the energetic became sluggards, the hardened became weak, and Sicil-
ian gluttony gained the upper hand'. 7

Although this book is about boxing in its modern form, myths about the
golden ages of classical and Regency boxing have had such a lasting impact on
ways of thinking about the sport that I begin with them. The first two chapters
chart the early history of boxing and the establishment of ideas about courage
and honour, ritual and spectatorship, beauty and the grotesque that are still in
use today. The third chapter explores what pugilistic style meant to Regency
painters and writers.

The golden age of English boxing was over by 1830. Nevertheless, the sport
continued to hold sway over the popular imagination throughout the nineteenth
century. Chapter Four considers the divide between (dangerous, illegal) prize
fighting and (honourable, muscular Christian) sparring in the Victorian era,
and the appeal of each to writers as different as George Eliot and Arthur Conan
Doyle. The fin de stick rise of professional boxing (and its association with the
development of mass media such as journalism and cinema in America) is the
subject of Chapter Five. Women (welcome participants in the eighteenth cent-
ury) now re-entered the arenas as spectators. Chapter Six shifts the focus to
questions of race and ethnicity, investigating the ways in which boxing was
associated with assimilation for young Jewish immigrants and the ways in which
black American boxers struggled against the early twentieth-century colour
line. The career and enormous cultural impact of Jack Johnson, the first of the
twentieth-century's great black heavyweights, is explored in some detail.
Another iconic presence, Jack Dempsey, dominates Chapter Seven. The chapter
considers the sports-mad twenties and argues that many of modernism's styles
were self-consciously pugilistic.

The final two chapters take us to the end of the twentieth century. Chapter
Eight discusses mid-century representations of boxing and the ways in which the
sport now featured largely as a metaphor for corruption and endurance - that
is, until a young fighter called Joe Louis emerged on the scene. Finally, Chapter
Nine examines the era of Muhammad Ali, television, Black Power, and further
compensatory white hopes. The conclusion brings the story up to date, taking
into account, among other matters, Mike Tyson and hip hop, conceptual art's
glove fetishism and the enduring appeal of sweaty gyms.

The Classical Golden Age

Looking back nostalgically from the third century ad to the glorious athletic past
of Classical Greece, Philostratus claimed that the Spartans invented boxing. 1 In
fact, activities resembling boxing and wrestling were recorded much earlier, in
third millennium bc Egypt and Mesopotamia. By the late Bronze Age (1600-1200
bc) images of pugilists could be found across the Eastern Mediterranean - some,
like the figures on a Mycenean pot from Cyprus, are fairly sketchy (illus. 2); oth-
ers, like the fresco of the young Boxing Boys from Thera (illus. 43), are striking
and detailed. 2 In both cases, the boxers adopt an attitude similar to that found
in Greek vase paintings 1,000 years later. The earliest of Greek literary works,
the Iliad and the Odyssey, written in the eighth century bc, describe athletic games
held at the time of the Trojan war, traditionally dated around 1200 bc.

The funeral games for Patroclus in the Iliad (c. 750 bc) include the 'first re-
port of a prize fight' in literature. 3 The games come late in the war, and in the
penultimate book of the poem. Anthropologists and classical scholars have long
debated the role of sports on such occasions. While some suggest that the fun-
eral games simply served to celebrate the courage of the dead warrior, others
argue that they were religious festivals and that sport was linked to ritual
sacrifice. 4 Discussions of the symbolic role of boxing and other forms of violent
combat sport often draw on Clifford Geertz's essay on Balinese cockfighting,
and Rene Girard's Violence and the Sacred. Geertz argues that the cockfight
should not be seen merely as a form of popular entertainment, but as a blood
sacrifice to the forces threatening social order. 'Deep play', a term that Geertz
adopts from Bentham, is a game whose stakes are so high that, from a utilitar-
ian point of view, it is irrational to play; this does not make the game unplayable,
however, but elevates it. Instead of merely demanding the calculation of odds,
the game works symbolically to represent the uncertain gamble that is life itself. 5
The competitors involved in such contests are simultaneously derided and
honoured, acting, as Girard put it, as 'substitutes for all the members of the
community', while 'offered up by the community itself.' 6 'The winner symbol-
ically "lives" by winning the ritual contest, the losers "die"', and the spectators are
vaccinated 'with the evil of violence against the evil of violence'. 7

Two boxers on
a fragment of a
Mycenaean pot
from Cyprus,
c. 1300-1200 BC.

The games described in the penultimate book of the Iliad certainly do more
than simply provide more entertaining fight scenes. Most commentators read
the funeral games for Patroclus as one of the poem's 'representative moments';
that is, they encapsulate the issues of honour and reward that the poem usually
dramatizes on the battlefield. 8 For some commentators, their function is to 'pu-
rify' combat - that is, to imitate it but conceal its true deadly character. 9 For
others, though, the real point is that, to the watching gods, the horrors of war
(involving such dramatic moments as Achilles' pursuit of Hector) is itself like an
athletic spectacle. 10 Prize-giving - the nature and function of reward - forms
the topic of much debate. The boxing contest is preceded by Achilles giving
Nestor a two-handled bowl 'simply as a gift', for now 'old age has its cruel hold'
upon him. He accepts it, acknowledging that 'now it is for younger men to face
these trials'. The prizes for the boxing match are then set forth: the winner will
receive 'a hard-working mule', signifying endurance, the loser a two-handled
cup. Prefiguring the boasts of Muhammad Ali, Epeios claims the prize before
any competitor has even stepped forward:

I say I am the greatest ... It will certainly be done as I say - 1 will smash
right through the man's skin and shatter his bones. And his friends had
better gather here ready for his funeral, to carry him away when my
fists have broken him. 11

Finally someone steps forward, Euryalos, another 'godlike man' of noble lineage,
though we hear little about him. It seems to be an even match, but Homer

presents it in very general terms - a 'flurry of heavy hands meeting', a 'fearful
crunching of jaws', followed by a knockout blow to Euryalos's collarbone. All
that matters is that Epeios's boasts are justified - he is the greatest (after all, he
is also the man who designed the wooden horse). 'Godlike', he is also described
as 'great-hearted' because, despite his threats, he does not kill his opponent, but
lifts him to his feet. Symbolic conflict acts as the transition between combat
with consequences and combat with none, between narrative complication and
closure. It quarantines real violence (the crunching of jaws) by enfolding it be-
tween two layers of symbolic violence (the bloodthirsty boast, the raising of the
vanquished). Boxing, here, is the ultimate deep play.

Justified boastfulness also features in the Odyssey (c. 725 bc). In book eight,
the Phaeacians seek to impress the travel-weary Odysseus with a display of their
athletic prowess. All goes well until Laodamas, son of the prince and a champion
boxer, urges their guest to participate, telling him, 'there is no greater glory that
can befall a man living than what he achieves by speed of his feet or strength of
his hands'. When Odysseus declines, arguing that home is all he can think of,
Laodamas rashly counters, 'You do not resemble an athlete.' Such a challenge
does not go unanswered by the 'darkly resourceful Odysseus'. He grabs a heavy
discus, and then offers to take on anyone at boxing, wrestling or running, 'ex-
cept Laodamas / himself, for he is my host; who would fight with his friend?' 12
The crisis is averted when the prince intervenes with music and dancing.
Odysseus is less successful in avoiding a fight when, ten books later, disguised
again, he returns home to Ithaca. There, Iros, a large and greedy beggar, insults
him gratuitously. Egged on by Penelope's suitors, Iros rejects Odysseus's claim
of solidarity between beggars and demands a 'battle of hands'. 13 The suitors
enjoy this tremendously and offer prizes. Here we find the first instance of spec-
tators as villains in a boxing story: unwilling to fight themselves, but vicariously
enjoying the risks someone else will run, and gambling on the outcome. 14 Al-
though Odysseus is outweighed and does not fight at full capacity (he is still
anxious to conceal his identity), he manages to break some bones in Iros's neck,
and as a final humiliation drags his opponent's prostrate body to the foot of the
courtyard wall. Survival is the issue here, not prize-winning. The contest is 'a
street fight that happens to involve a very skilful athlete in disguise'. 15 If the Iliad
reminds us of Ali's theatrical boasting, the Odyssey anticipates his resilience.

Such pragmatism was of no use to subsequent idealizations of pugilism's
golden age. As Tom Winnifrith points out, 'there is not in Homer the belief that
behaving well somehow wins matches and battles'. 16 However reluctant Odysseus
is to fight, when persuaded he does not hold back. Honour and restraint,
however, were central to the Virgilian ethos of the Roman Empire. It was Virgil,
not Homer, who was evoked by the nineteenth-century muscular Christians,
and the founding of the modern Olympics in 1896 was 'fired by Virgilian en-
thusiasm'. 17 Greater honour, paradoxically, was accompanied by even greater
brutality. This is apparent if we compare the gloves used in Greek and Roman
times. 18 Today, boxers tend to use eight- to ten-ounce gloves in competition and

anything up to eighteen-ounce gloves for sparring. Heavier gloves give greater
protection both to the hands of the person striking the blow, and to the face
and body of the blow's recipient. Until around the end of the fifth century bc,
strips of leather of between ten and twelve feet long were used as 'soft gloves'
(himantes). These protected the knuckles rather than the opponent's face. They
were replaced by caestus, 'sharp gloves', lined with metal, which could maim
and even kill an opponent (illus. 3). Dryden translated Virgil's caestus as:

The Gloves of Death, with sev'n distinguish'd folds,
Of tough Bull Hides; the space within is spread
With Iron, or with loads of heavy Lead. 19

This sounds like the kind of excessive violence, much more than sufficient to
its purpose, that Odysseus tried hard to avoid.

The fact that boxing gloves were made of bull hide may have been the rea-
son that boxers and bulls were often compared with each other. In theArgonau-
tica, Apollonius likens Amycus and Polydeuces to 'a pair of bulls angrily disput-
ing for a grazing heifer', while Virgil, in the Georgics, describes a young heifer as
he trains for a fight, learn [ing] to put / Fury into his horns' and 'sparring with
the air'. 20 The link between boxers and bulls continued into the twentieth cen-
tury with men fighting under names like 'El Toro' and 'Bronx Bull', and their op-
ponents figured as matadors. Hemingway admired the way a particular animal
used his left and right horn, 'just like a boxer', while for Mailer, it was George
Foreman's ability to use his gloves like horns' that made him so dangerous. 21

The funeral games for Anchises staged in the Aeneid (19 bc) recall, and to
some extent imitate, those of the Iliad. But Virgil's structure is more intricate
and his tone is quite different from Homer's easy exuberance. 22 The boat and
foot races over, Aeneas sets out prizes for the boxing - a bullock for the victor,
and a sword and helmet for the loser. As in the Iliad, one man comes forward
immediately. Here is it Dares, the Trojan, 'who stood there with his head held
high to begin the battle, flexing his shoulders, throwing lefts and rights and
thrashing the air. They looked around for an opponent, but no one in all that
company dared go near him or put on the gloves'. Thinking there is to be no
contest, Dares goes to collect the bullock as his prize. Only then does Entellus,
spurred on by Acestes, come forward.

Dares is obviously modelled on the brash and youthful Epeios, but while
Homer simply confirms that Epeios is 'godlike' with a straightforward victory, Vir-
gil makes both character and action more complicated. Entellus is not presented
as just any opponent (as Euryalos had been in the Iliad); he is motivated less by a
desire for prizes or boastfulness than by a complex mixture of emotions. Acestes'
words have roused his sense of honour; he feels indebted to his teacher, the god
Eryx; he does not want to be thought a liar, or a coward; he feels himself a repre-
sentative of Sicily against Troy. In all things Entellus is the antithesis of Dares:

Three types of early
boxing glove.

Dares had youth on his side and speed of foot. Entellus had the reach
and the weight, but his knees were going. He was slow and shaky and his
whole huge body heaved with the agony of breathing. Blow upon blow
they threw at each other and missed. Blow upon blow drummed on the
hollow rib cage, boomed on the chest and showered round the head and
ears, and the cheekbones rattled with the weight of the punches.

Dares begins well, knocking Entellus down; the giant man falls 'as a hollow pine
tree falls, torn up by the roots on great Mount Ida' - a common simile in clas-
sical, and subsequent, depictions of fights. But, as we might expect, this only
spurs on Entellus:

He returned to the fray with his ferocity renewed and anger rousing
him to new heights of violence. His strength was kindled by shame at
his fall and pride in his prowess, and in a white heat of fury he drove
Dares before him all over the arena, hammering him with rights and
lefts and allowing him no rest or respite. Like hailstones from a dark
cloud rattling down on roofs, Entellus battered Dares with a shower of
blows from both hands and sent him spinning. 23

Dares may have the strength, youth and confidence of a young animal, but
Entellus, armed with psychological demons as well as mere muscles, is a true
force of nature - falling like a pine tree and retaliating with blows like hailstones.
Nature, or 'savage passion', must, however, be controlled, and so 'Father Aeneas'
intervenes and ends the fight. This is one of the first fight stories in which the
restraining referee is the hero. 24 Aeneas tells Dares to acknowledge that 'the

divine will has turned against you', while Entellus ritually slaughters the bull he
has won in honour of Eryx, and retires from boxing. The two men play no further
part in the poem: boxing itself seems like a relic from some long-gone mythic age.
The values of Augustan Rome have been made clear: piety is the basis for power
and success; temperance and restraint the mark of a military leader. 25

In years to come, the fights described by Homer and Virgil would provide
models for many writers. Both tell stories of drama and suspense, but each has
a different emphasis. In Homer, fighting may come as a last resort but when it
does, no punches are pulled, and there is no need to be modest about one's
prowess. Virgil's fighters are equipped with lethal gloves, but checked by the
need to govern their anger, and by vanity.

BOXING BY ANALOGY

Homer and Virgil both compare conduct in games to that in war. It is not always
the case that the same man is good at both activities, merely that they are anal-
ogous. In the Iliad, Epeios's boast begins, 'Is it not enough that I am less good in
battle? ... a man cannot be expert in all things'. 26 Less expert at boxing, but more
so at battle, is Achilles, yet he shares with Epeios a firm belief in his own ability.
He boasts that no one is a match for him, and we soon see that no one can chal-
lenge his 'invincible hands'. 27 And in theAeneid, we are reminded of Dares and
Enthellus when later we come to compare the behaviour of Turnus and Aeneas
in a real fight to the death. 28 The relationship between pugilism and war is also
at the forefront of many of Plato's references to boxing (three of his dialogues are
set in the gymnasium and palaestra). In the Laws, he argues for the necessity of
training soldiers to be prepared for war by comparing them with boxers training
for fight ('if we were training boxers . . . would we go straight into the ring unpre-
pared by a daily work-out against an opponent?'); in the Republic the analogy is
extended further - as 'one boxer in perfect training is easily a match for two men
who are not boxers, but rich and fat', so a well-prepared Athens could go to war
against wealthier and more powerful enemies. 29

Boxing similes were not only used in discussions of war and its attendant
virtues and risks. They can also be found, for example, in debates about the
qualities needed for successful political debating (Plutarch) and ways of dealing
with the dishonest in everyday life (Marcus Aurelius). 30 Aristotle evokes boxing
in the Nicomachean Ethics (c. 330 bc) when he wants to explain the nature of
pain and pleasure in courage. Men who withstand painful things, he writes, are
brave, while those spurred on by passions such as revenge are 'pugnacious but
not brave'. Sometimes, however, there is a gap between the pleasant end 'which
courage sets before itself and the painful 'attending circumstances'. This is the
case in athletic contests:

the end at which boxers aim is pleasant - the crown and the honours -
but the blows they take are distressing to flesh and blood, and painful,

and so is their whole exertion; and because the blows and the exertions
are many the end, which is but small, appears to have nothing in it. 31

Boxers are brave because, in the heat of the fight, it is not prizes but virtue
(courage) that motivates them. Courage, like all Aristotelian virtues, operates as
a mediating strategy between other qualities; here, confidence and fear. Too
much confidence, or too little fear, and no courage is needed; too much fear or
too little confidence, and one is paralyzed.

The use of boxing analogies to discuss virtue was not restricted to class-
ical philosophy. The nature of courage required for religious struggle (and
the importance of keeping your eyes on the prize) was one of the subjects of
the First Letter to the Corinthians (c. 48 ad). There Paul insists that he is a
genuine fighter rather than a shadow boxer ('one that beateth the air', in the
King James version). Moreover, he goes on, in a phrase that would prove res-
onant for muscular Christianity, 'I keep under my own body, and bring it
into subjection.' 32

AT THE GAMES

Boxing played an important part in the games of ancient Greece; both in the
four great Panhellenic festivals - the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian
- and in the numerous local games held in individual cities. The most presti-
gious Games, the Olympic, began in 776 bc, and boxing was introduced in 688
bc. 33 The festival spanned five days; the first and last were reserved for cere-
monies and celebrations; boxing tookplace on the fourth day at midday so that
neither competitor had the sun in his eyes. The sport was similar to modern
boxing to the extent that each competitor attempted to injure or exhaust his
opponent by punching him. There were, however, no rounds, rest periods,
weight classes or points systems. There was no rule against hitting an opponent
when down and no confined ring. Boxers were paired by lot; a single elimination
format was used. A winner was declared when one boxer was no longer physi-
cally able to continue (illus. 4). Although the Olympic ideal has long been
evoked as a model of fairness and sportsmanship, often in contrast to modern
corruption, Pausanias's Guide to Greece (170 ad) reveals that fight fixing actu-
ally began at the 98th Olympics:

Eulopos of Thessaly bribed the boxers who entered, Agetor of Arkadia
and Prytanis of Kyzikos, and also Phormion of Halikarnassos, who won
the boxing at the previous Olympics. This is said to have been the first
crime ever committed in the games, and Eulopos and the men he
bribed were the first to be fined . . . 34

The Romans were generally disdainful of the Greek love of the gymnasium,
but boxing also played a part in the Ludi Romani. According to Suetonius, 'none

Boxers with prize
tripod in back-
ground, fragment
of Black-figure
vase, mid-sixth
century bc.

of Augustus's predecessors had ever provided so many, so different, or such splen-
did public shows'. He goes on to detail wild-beast hunts, mock sea-battles and
gladiatorial shows of all kinds, but says that Augustus's 'chief delight was to watch
boxing, particularly when the fighters were Italians - and not merely professional
bouts, in which he often used to pit Italians against Greeks or Africans against
each other, but slogging matches between untrained roughs in narrow city alleys'
(illus. 5). 35 The boxers in these contests used the oxhide caestus, and injuries were
severe. This perhaps accounts for Augustus's introduction of a series of regula-
tions as to who could take part (a senatorial decree banned persons 'of good
family' from events such as boxing) and who could watch such contests. 36
Suetonius notes that whereas 'men and women had hitherto always sat together,
Augustus confined women to the back rows even at gladiatorial shows':

No women at all were allowed to witness the athletic contests; indeed,
when the audience clamoured at the Games for a special boxing match
to celebrate his appointment as Chief Pontiff, Augustus postponed this
until early the next morning, and issued a proclamation to the effect
that it was the Chief Pontiff 's desire that women should not attend the
Theatre before ten o'clock. 37

In a reassessment of Plato's Laws, Cicero argued that the theatre should be kept
free from the bloody sport of the Games, but it is clear that some infiltration
took place. 38 Horace complained of crowds calling out for boxers or bears in
the middle of a play, while Terence attributed the failure of one his plays to the
rival attraction of boxing. 39 A couple of millennia later, Bertolt Brecht was to
make a new theatre out of such infiltrations. While Brecht felt that boxing fans
viewed the sport with cool objectivity and rationally judged the performance

African boxers;
terracotta, second
or first century bo

of each participant, the more common view (exemplified in every Hollywood
fight film and first expressed in another classic work of the late Roman Empire,
St Augustine's Confessions) was that boxing degrades its audience as much as
its participants. St Augustine tells the story of a reluctant visit to the gladiator-
ial arena by his pupil, Alypius. At first Alypius closes his eyes, but he cannot
close his ears. When the crowd roars, he is unable to contain his curiosity and
so opens his eyes. Immediately, and dramatically, he is corrupted by what he
sees: 'he fell, and fell more pitifully than the man whose fall had drawn that roar
of excitement from the crowd'. 40

ODES TO VICTORY

The funeral games of Homer's and Virgil's epics provide one enduring model for
depicting sporting events. Another can be found in the odes, known as epinicians
(epi-Nike-ans), written by the fifth-century bc poets Pindar and Bacchylides, in
celebration of the victors in the athletic games.

To the lyre the Muse granted tales of gods and children of gods, of the victor
in boxing, of the horse first in the race, of the loves of swains, and of freedom
over wine. 41

Pierian Muses, daughters

of Zeus who rules

on high, you are famed for your

skill with the lyre: strum

and weave for us then intricate

songs for Argeius, the junior boxer,

the Isthmian games' victor. 42

If epic poetry memorialized battles that spanned decades and had national
significance, the epinician celebrated the fleeting triumphs of sport, giving last-
ing form to the deed of the moment.' 43

I look for help to the Muses

with their blue-black hair,

to bless my song of how, in this life,

contingent, ephemeral,

a few things somehow endure. 44

The victories of the athletes were often represented as imitative of the bat-
tle victories of epic heroes such as Achilles and Odysseus, whose triumphs in
turn were compared to those of the gods.

Let Hagesidamos

Who has won in the boxing at Olympia,

Thank Illas as Patroklos thanked Achilles.

One born to prowess

May be whetted and stirred

To win huge glory

If a God be his helper. 45

Also located within this hierarchy of kinds of victory was the poet himself, with-
out whom all heroes would be forgotten, and whose memorializing skill was
itself worthy of praise (and medals). 46 A different notion of honour emerges,

one less directly attached to the virtues necessary for combat and having more
to do with those essential to art. According to Richmond Lattimore, it was the
'very uselessness of . . . [the athletic] triumphs which attracted Pindar': 'A victory
meant that time, expense, and hard work had been lavished on an achievement
that brought no calculable advantage, only honour and beauty.' 47

Father Zeus, ruler on Atabyrion's ridges,
Honour the rite of Olympian victory,

And a man who has found prowess in boxing.

Grant him favour and joy

From citizens and strangers.

For he goes straight on a road that hates pride,

And knows well what a true heart

From noble fathers has revealed to him. 48

The odes of Bacchylides and Pindar, which firmly connect the activities of the
poet with those of the athlete, were echoed in Roman times by Horace and by
neo-classical poets in the eighteenth century. 49 It might be argued that epinician
tradition also lies behind some of the more extravagant claims made by sports-
writers in modern times.

THE BODY, BEAUTIFUL AND VULNERABLE

Today classical Greek athletics continues to fascinate us, not simply because of
the sporting principles it initiated, but because of the language it provides for
talking about the human body, and, particularly, its glories. Training, and the
culture of the gymnasium, are treated widely in Greek literature, and much writ-
ing about that culture focuses on the beauties of the naked bodies displayed
there. Disapproving of the violence of the Roman gladiatorial contests, Dio
Chrysostom sets up an alternative in the gentler, more philosophical, world of
the Greek gymnasium where his ideal boxer Melancomas 'did not consider it
courage to strike his opponent or to receive an injury himself, but thought this
indicated a lack of stamina and a desire to have done with the contest'. Melan-
comas's unblemished beauty is directly linked to his moral virtues - his disci-
pline, courage, modesty and self-control. Dio compares Melancomas to his
closest rival, Iatrocles, whom he remembers in training.

He was a very tall and beautiful young man; and besides, the exercises
he was taking made his body seem, quite naturally, still taller and
more beautiful. He was giving a most brilliant performance, and in so
spirited a way that he seemed more like a man in an actual contest.
Then, when he stopped exercising and the crowd began to draw away,
we studied him more closely. He was just like one of the most care-

fully wrought statues, and also he had a colour like well blended

If Melancomas's beauty reveals his inner virtue, that of Iatrocles exists on the
surface only. 51

The comparison of (stationary) athletes with statues would prove endur-
ing and later commentators were less inclined to worry about the gap between
outer and inner beauty. Boxing's revival in the eighteenth century coincided
with a revival of interest in the classics, and much writing about the male boxer,
then and later, drew on notions of statuesque perfection as exemplified by Greek
athletes. In 1755, for example, the German Hellenist, Winckelmann, famously
argued that the excellence of Greek art was, in some part, due to the availabil-
ity of fine models:

The gymnasia, where, sheltered by public modesty, the youths exer-
cised themselves naked, were the schools of art. These the philosopher
frequented, as well as the artist. Socrates for the instruction of a
Charmides, Autolycus, Lysis; Phidias for the improvement of his art by
their beauty. Here he studied the elasticity of the muscles, the ever vary-
ing motions of the frame, the outlines of fair forms, or the contour left
by the young wrestler in the sand. Here beautiful nakedness appeared
with such liveliness of expression, such truth and variety of situations,
such a noble air of the body, as it would be ridiculous to look for in any
hired model of our academies. 52

Gymnasia were, of course, also places of seduction and athletic statues often
highly eroticized, but Winckelmann insisted that 'ideal beauty' was about estab-
lishing a connection to 'something superior to nature; ideal beauties, brain-
born images' - what James Davidson defines as 'the sculptural complement to
the idealism of Platonic philosophy'. 'The ideal body is not at all earthly or
earthy: it provides an accurate material reflection of the heavenly, the insub-
stantial and the divine.' 53

There was, however, one undeniable difference between artistic and real
life bodies. Whereas art is long, the real bodies exemplifying physical perfec-
tion, were, of course, perishable. Pindar's odes capture the fleeting moments of
an ideal physical state as well as those of victory. The very transience of the ideal
body is made all the more poignant by the less than perfect bodies that sur-
round it. This phenomenon is foregrounded in boxing - and not in other
Olympic sports such as the discus or running - by the fact that while the
processes of training are all about perfecting the body, and while at the moment
of triumph, the body may move beautifully, the sport itself is all about damag-
ing (and making ugly) the body. 54 Apollonian form could only temporarily con-
tain Dionysian energy. The odd exception only serves to prove the rule. Dio
Chrysostom praises Melancomas - 'although boxing was his speciality, he

Etruscan engraved
bronze; probably
Polydeuces training
with a punch bag,
with Amycus to his
right; late fourth
century bc.

remained as free from marks as any of the
runners' - while, much later, the thought of
'pretty boy' Janiro's unmarked face fuels
Jake La Motta's paranoia in Martin Scors-
ese's Raging Bull. 55

The damaged body of the boxer appeared
in literature and art as early as its beautiful
counterpart. A popular model for later writ-
ers, Theocritus's version of the mythical
fight between Polydeuces and Amycus in
the Idylls (third century bc) was based on
real fights he had seen in the stadium. His
account is alert to technical detail and strat-
egy, but perhaps even more memorable are
his graphic descriptions of the wounds that
fighters carry and inflict. 56 While searching
for the legendary golden fleece, Castor and
Polydeuces - sons of Leda and Zeus, and
brothers of Helen of Troy- are shipwrecked
on Bebrycia. There, in a grove, Polydeuces,

an Olympic champion, encounters Amycus, the King of the Bebryces, brother

of the Cyclops and 'a giant of a man' (illus. 6):

He was an awesome spectacle: His ears were thickened

By blows from leather mitts, and his huge chest and broad back swelled

Like the iron flesh of a hammered statue. Where his shoulders and hard arms

Met, the muscles jutted out like rounded boulders, polished smooth

By the whirling onrush of a winter torrent.

One thing leads to another and soon the 'son of Zeus' has challenged the
aggressive and inhospitable 'son of Poseidon' to a fight, the loser agreeing to
become the winner's slave. The description that follows relishes the damage
done to 'this huge / Mound of a man':

A loud cheer rose from the heroes, when they saw the ugly wounds
Around Amycus' mouth and jaw, and his eyes narrowed to slits in his
Swollen face. . .

Another punch and Amycus's nose is skinned; a few more and his face is
'smashed' into 'a dreadful pulp. / His sweating flesh collapsed, and his colossal
form shrank in on itself. Finally, Polydeuces finishes off the fight with a blow
to his opponent's mouth, head and left temple ('The bone cracked open, and the
dark blood spurted out'). With Amycus lying 'near to death', Polydeuces, clear-
skinned and with limbs enlarged', walks away. 57 He lets his opponent live. 58

The contest between modern Greek speed, skill and 'guile', and mythic bulk has
proved unsatisfyingly one-sided. 59 The main purpose of Theocritus's description
seems to be to dwell on the damage done, a purpose not unheard-of in sub-
sequent representations of pugilism.

Not all depictions of a boxer's injuries are marked by such gruesome relish.
Many are simply documentary; vase paintings often depict blood streaming
from the boxer's nose as well as from cuts on his cheeks. A more sophisticated
realism can be found in the fourth-century statue of a battered boxer, some-
times known as 'The Pugilist at Rest' (illus. 7). 61 In a 1993 short story of that
title, the American writer Thorn Jones describes it:

The statue depicts a muscular athlete approaching his middle age. He
has a thick beard and a full head of curly hair. In addition to the telltale
broken nose and cauliflower ears of a boxer, the pugilist has the slanted,
drooping brows that bespeak broken nerves. Also, the forehead is piled
with scar tissue . . .

The pugilist is sitting on a rock with his forearms balanced on his
thighs. That he is seated and not pacing implies that he has been
through all this many times before. It appears that he is conserving his
strength. His head is turned as if he were looking over his shoulder - as
if someone had just whispered something to him. It is in this that the
'art' of the sculpture is conveyed to the viewer. Could it be that some-
one has just summoned him to the arena? There is a slight look of
befuddlement on his face, but there is no trace of fear . . . Beside the
deformities on his noble face, there is also the suggestion of weariness
and philosophical resignation. 62

The sculpture is notable for the acute detail in its rendering of wounds both
long-accumulated and from the immediate fight. Scars are visible all over the
body but especially on the face, the nose is broken, the right eye swollen. More-
over, the bronze statue has red copper inlaid in order to indicate fresh facial
wounds and blood that has dripped down on to the right arm and thigh.
Attention is also drawn to the athlete's tangled hair, his finger and toenails,
weary face and sagging muscle. 'No other work of art from antiquity,' writes
Harris 'takes us into the stadium with such intimacy as this statue.' 63

The destruction of the boxer's body, and in particular his face, also provides
the basis of much gruesome humour in Lucilius's debunking epigrams:

Your head, Apollophanes, has become a sieve, or the lower edge of a
worm-eaten book, all exactly like ant-holes, crooked and straight . . .
But go on boxing without fear, for even if you are struck on the head you
will have the marks you have - you can't have more. 64

With loss of face comes loss of identity:

The Pugilist at Rest,
also known as the
Terme Boxer, bronze
copy, 1st century
ad, of a signed
4th-century
sculpture by
Apollonius.

■

When Ulysses after twenty years came safe to his home, Argos the dog
recognized his appearance when he saw him, but you, Stratophon, after
boxing for four hours, have become not only unrecognizable to dogs
but to the city. If you will trouble to look at your face in a glass, you will
say on your oath, 'I am not Stratophon. 5

Narcissus died because he fell in love his own reflected image. By this reckoning,
however, the vanity of boxers is likely to prove short-lived:

Having such a mug, Olympicus, go not to a fountain nor look in any
transparent water, for you, like Narcissus, seeing your face clearly, will
die, hating yourself to the death. 66

While ancient literature and art have provided models for subsequent depic-
tions of the boxer as an exemplar of either statuesque beauty or grotesque injury
(often contrasted as the ideal and the real), it is worth remembering that the
figure that most appealed to aficionados was neither. Philostratus notes that
while the best fighters have small bellies, 'such people are light and have good
respiration', a big-bellied boxer also has a certain advantage, 'for such a belly
hinders blows at the face.' 67

BOXING AGAINST EROS

The body was never, of course, merely a sign of temporal vulnerability and meta-
physical dissolution. The palaestra was also the setting for homoerotic admir-
ation and seduction, where the vulnerable as well as the statuesque body proved
attractive:

When Menecharmus, Anticles's son, won the boxing match, I crowned
him with ten soft fillets, and thrice I kissed him all dabbled with blood
as he was, but the blood was sweeter to me than myrrh. 68

Although most writing about exercise focuses on men, women also used gym-
nasia and, in Greece, participated in women's games. 69 This fuelled heterosex-
ual fantasies, particularly among nostalgic Romans. One of Ovid's Heroides, a
series of imaginary letters from mythical figures to their lovers, is a letter from
Paris to Helen. In it he describes the power of her beauty and imagines Theseus
coming upon her competing in ihepalaestra, 'a naked maiden with naked men'.
'I revere his act, I can only wonder / why he ever let you be returned.' 70 Another
Augustan love poet, Propertius, also evokes Helen in recalling the glory days of
Spartan athletics. Particularly commendable was the Spartan practice of having
naked men and women competing together. Propertius waxes lyrical about
naked women 'covered in dust' at the finishing-post, and with swords strapped
to 'snow-white thighs'. Even the binding of 'arms with thongs for boxing'
excites him, and he imagines two bare-breasted Amazons resembling Pollux
and Castor '(One soon to be prize boxer, the other horseman)/ Between whom
Helen with bare nipples took up arms.' Roman women, in contrast, pay 'boring
attention to perfumed hair'. 71

If pugilism had its erotic qualities, erotic love could also be seen as a poten-
tially pugilistic activity:

Bring water, bring wine, O boy, and bring me the flowery
Crowns. Bring them, since I am indeed boxing against Eros!
(Anacreon)

Whoever challenges Eros to a match

Like a boxer fist-to-fist, he is out of his wits.

(Sophocles) 72

Multiple contests are possible: the lover struggles against the conventional re-
sistance of the beloved; rival lovers compete; the lover's desire struggles for ex-
pression. Boxing might even be easier than love. In another epigram by Lucilius,
sexual yielding is more devastating than any acknowledgment of defeat in the
stadium:

Cleombrotos ceased to be a pugilist, but afterwards married and now
has at home all the blows of the Isthmian and Nemean games, a pug-
nacious old woman hitting as hard as in the Olympian fights, and he
dreads his own house more than he ever dreaded the ring. Whenever
he gets his wind, he is beaten with all the strokes known in every match
to make him pay her his debt; and if he pays it, he is beaten again. 73

But love and pugilism are not only comparable as amateur sports; in some ways
the analogy works better on the professional level. Thomas F. Scanlon notes
that athletes and courtesans are paired in many poems, and describes a fifth-
century bc column-krater which places on opposite sides, and in near-identical
poses, an athlete and a courtesan. 'The pun may be interpreted on several
levels,' he writes: 'she is "athletic"; he is a "courtesan" whose prizes are her
payment; both place a premium on the beauty of the body; both possess
erotic attraction.' 74

In the classical era, then, boxing was the literal or metaphoric subject of a
great variety of representations, many of which will recur in the chapters which
follow. More often than not, whether it is Homer describing the contest be-
tween Epeios and Euryalos, or Aristotle defining courage, or Pindar the function
of poetry, or Lucilius marriage, the representations turn on a violence which is
at once actual and symbolic. It is the inextricable mixture in pugilism of high
decorum and low cunning, of beauty and damage, of rhetoric and bodily fluids,
which has made it for so long and so productively a way to imagine conflict.

The English Golden Age

There is some evidence, from thirteenth-century legal records and fourteenth-
century psalters, that sports resembling wrestling, cudgelling and boxing existed
in Britain in the Middle Ages (illus. 8). 1 These references, however, are fleeting;
fighting with hands and sticks was a plebeian rather than an aristocratic activity,
and as such did not feature in medieval art and literature to the same extent as
sports such as jousting, archery or hunting. By the sixteenth century, British box-
ing's Greek origins had been largely forgotten and if the sport was considered at
all, it was grouped with other rowdy rural pastimes such as cock-fighting and bear-
baiting; all were outlawed under the Puritan government of Cromwell. 2 When
the Restoration brought a relaxation of public morality, many traditional rural
sports became popular in the expanding cities, 'supported by city nobles, local
squires migrating to the commercial centers, and growing numbers of working-
class men.' 3 In the cities these sports began to change. Between 1500 and 1800,
Peter Burke notes, 'there was a gradual shift taking place from the more sponta-
neous and participatory forms of entertainment towards the more formally-organ-
ised and commercialised spectator sports, a shift which was, of course, to go much
further after 1800'. 4 Samuel Pepys's diary for 5 August 1660 notes (in one short
paragraph) a trip to the doctor to fetch an ointment for his sick wife, dinner at
Westminster, attending Common Prayer at St Margaret's church, and, undoubt-
edly the highlight of his day, 'a fray' at Westminster stairs between 'Mynheer
Clinke, a Dutchman, that was at Hartlib's wedding, and a waterman, which made
good sport'. 5

The first boxing-match recorded in a newspaper, The Protestant Mercury ,
took place in 1681 in the presence of the Duke of Albemarle, with the winner, a
butcher, already recognized 'the best at that exercise in England'. 6 The trades-
men who most depended on upper-body strength - watermen, butchers and
blacksmiths - were the ones most frequently associated with pugilism in the days
before the sport became 'scientific'.

In 1719, James Figg opened an indoor arena, or, as he called it, Amphi-
theatre', and school near Adam and Eve Court off London's Oxford Road (now
Oxford Street), where he taught boxing along with quarterstaff, backsword and

MM*

ittittujgimf

Two men wrestling,
flanked by
spectators, one
of whom holds a
pole surmounted
by a cockerel,
a prize for the
winner; Bas-de-page
scene, detail from
the Queen Mary
Psalter, c. 1310-20.

Anonymous
printmaker, Figg's
Card, c. 1794.

cudgelling. A promotional card (once attributed to Hogarth) was distributed at
Figg's booth at Southwark Fair, and his advertisements promised that the booth
was 'fitted up in a most commodious manner for the better reception of gentle-
men' (illus. 9). Samuel Johnson's uncle, Andrew, ran a similar booth at Smithfield
meat market. 7

Although boxing matches were frequently advertised as 'trials of manhood',
women as well as men could often be found fighting at the booths and bear-
garden (illus. 10). 8 In August 1723, The London Journal noted that 'scarce a week
passes but we have a Boxing-Match at the Bear-Garden between women'. 9 It
would not have been unusual, while browsing the newspaper, to come upon a
challenge and reply such as this (from 1722):

CHALLENGE

I, Elizabeth Wilkinson of Clerkenwell, having had some words with
Hannah Hyfield, and requiring satisfaction, do invite her to meet me
upon the stage, and box me for three guineas, each woman holding half
a crown in each hand, and the first woman that drops the money to
lose the battle.

ANSWER

I, Hannah Hyfield, of Newgate-market, hearing of the resoluteness of
Elizabeth Wilkinson, will not fail, God willing, to give her more blows
than words - desiring home blows, and from her no favour; she may
expect a good thumping! 10

Most reports of women's fighting (all are written by men) focused on the scanty
dress rather than the skill of the participants. Foreign visitors to London were
particularly intrigued. Recalling his visit to London in 1710, von Uffenbach
described a fight between two women 'without stays and in nothing but a shift',
while Martin Nogiie's Voyages etAventures (1728) reported matches between girls
and women 'stripped to the waist'; William Hickey, meanwhile, described com-
ing upon two women boxing near Drury Lane in 1749, 'their faces entirely cov-
ered in blood, bosoms bare, and the clothes nearly torn from their bodies'. 11
Pierre Jean Grosley was particularly outraged to see a fight between a man and
a woman in Holborn: 'I was witness to five or six bouts of the combat; which sur-
prised me the more, as the woman had, upon her left arm, an infant a year or
two old, which was so far from crying out, as is natural for children to do even
in circumstances of less danger, that it did not so much as seem to knit its brow,
but appeared to attend to a lesson of what it was one day to practice itself.' 12

The quality of English fighting women received patriotic endorsement in
the anonymous Sal Dab Giving Monsieur a Receipt in Full of 1766 (illus. 11). Sal
bloodies the nose of a dandyish Frenchman who, despite his general hopeless-
ness, has managed to lay bare her bosoms; another woman, meanwhile, applies
a lobster to his naked bottom. A pub-sign above advertises 'The Good Woman'. 13

Butler Clowes (after
JohnCollett), The
Female Bruisers, 1770,
mezzotint.

Boxing began to flourish in the early eighteenth century, at the expense of
other sports such as quart erstaff and backsword, by attracting the support of the
wealthy and powerful. In 1723 a ring was erected in Hyde Park 'by order of his
Majesty' George I, and the next champion of note, a former Thames waterman
called John Broughton, secured the patronage of the Duke of Cumberland. The
early patrons supported their fighters in training and wagered huge sums on their
fights; The Gentleman's Magazine reported in one instance that 'many thousands
depended' on the outcome of a fight. 14 Without the eighteenth-century love of
gambling, argues Dennis Brailsford, 'pugilism . . . would have been unthinkable',
and with large bets came a need for rules to limit disputes. 15 The great Enlighten-
ment project of systemization and law-making thus extended to pugilism, with the
first written rules of prize-fighting published under Broughton's name in 1743. l6
Although the rules were intended simply to regulate his own establishment, they
were soon widely adopted. 'No one sport', claims Brailsford, 'owed more for its be-
ginnings to one man than boxing owed to him' (illus. 12). ly

The rules specified how a round would begin and end; how the seconds and
umpires should conduct themselves; how the money should be divided; and
that a fight was over when one man could not be brought back to the scratch line
in the centre of the ring. After 1746, English gamblers adapted the notion of

Sal Dab Giving
Monsieur a Receipt in
Full, 1766,
mezzotint.

horse handicapping and began dividing boxers into light, middle, and heavy-
weight classes (there was, however, only one 'champion' who tended to be the
heaviest). By 1838, these rules had developed into the 29 English Prize Ring
Rules. Wrestling holds, such as the cross-buttocks, remained a part of boxing
until the Queensberry rules abolished them in the 1860s.

Champion from 1734 to 1750, Broughton promoted bareknuckle bouts at
his Amphitheatre near Marylebone Fields, including Battles Royal in which a
champion took on up to seven challengers at a time. The fights took place on an
unfenced stage with several rows of seating for gentlemen; these rows were sep-
arated from the platform by a gap where the other spectators stood, their eyes
level with the pugilists' feet.

Broughton's Rules,
16 August 1743.

RULES

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Broughton capitalized on the popularity of prize-fighting with the upper
classes by offering tuition for 'persons of quality and distinction' at his school
in the Haymarket. What was offered differed from prize-fighting in many
respects: the exclusion of women, the absence of gambling, and the lack of
police intervention. The most important difference, however, was the style
of fighting involved, and in particular the introduction of large padded
gloves, or mufflers. Broughton's advertisement promised, in order that
'persons of quality and distinction may not be debarred from entering a
course of those lectures':

they will be given the utmost tenderness, for which reason mufflers are
provided that will effectively secure them for the inconveniency of black
eyes, broken jaws and bloody noses. 18

Sparring with mufflers was different enough from bareknuckle prize-fighting
to be deemed a separate sport, albeit one that was parasitic on the rough glam-
our of its ancestor. The journalist Pierce Egan described sparring as 'a mock
encounter; but, at the same time, a representation, and, in most cases an exact
one, of real fighting' (which of course remained the Platonic Form). 19 Whether
or not he attended prize-fights, a modern urban gentleman who exercised
gently with his padded gloves could believe himself in touch with an older, and
somehow more authentic, England.

'fists AND THE MAN I sing' 20

Broughton advertised his academy with a quotation from the Aeneid, urging
that Britons who 'boast themselves inheritors of the Greek and Roman virtues,
should follow their example and [encourage] conflicts of this magnanimous
kind'. James Faber's classically styled portrait of the fighter was accompanied
by a verse comparing him to the 'athletic heroes' celebrated by Pindar. 21 Such
connections were not unusual. For over a hundred years classical precedent
had been used to describe, and justify, British pugilism. In 1612, Robert Dover
reinvented the annual Cotswolds sports as 'Olimpick Games' in an anti-Puri-
tan gesture and an attempt to marry English country and classical traditions. 22
In 1636 a group of Dover's friends, including Ben Jonson and Michael Dray-
ton, produced the Annalia Dubrensia, a collection of poems celebrating the
games as a revival of the 'Golden Age's Glories', and defending their 'harm-
lesse merriment' from Puritan censure. John Stratford's poem lists many class-
ical sports including boxing (he alludes to Virgil's Eutellus, who 'at Caestus,
had the best / In mighty strength surpassing all the rest') before noting that
'the old world's sports' are 'now transferred over / Into our Cotswold by thee,
worthy Dover.' 23

Poetry itself is understood as a kind of sport, and sport as a rival to poetry, in
another poem of this period, John Suckling's 'A Session of the Poets' (1646). Apollo
must decide which poet deserves to be Laureate. Each comes forward to compete
until it is the turn of Suckling himself. Apollo is told that he is not present:

That of all men living he cared not for't,
He loved not the Muses as well as his sport;

And prized black eyes, or a lucky hit

At bowls, above all the Trophies of wit . . . 24

Apollo is not amused, and issues a fine.

A desire to evoke classical boxing led Figg, and Broughton after him, to de-
scribe their schools as 'amphitheatres', and Jonathan Richardson to depict Figg
in a 1714 portrait as 'the Gladiator ad Vivum'. Travellers on the Grand Tour
began to collect classical and Renaissance sculptures of boxers, and these were
carefully studied by modern artists. 25 But emulation soon led to (mock heroic)
competition and to frequent claims that English sport was best. In Moses
Browne's 'A Survey of the Amhitheatre' (1736), the mild English version comes
out ahead of the 'dread' Roman. In Rome, fighters 'met to kill, or be killed, /
But ours to have their pockets filled.' 26 John Byrom's 1725 'Extempore Verses
Upon a Tryal of Skill between the Two Great Masters of the Noble Science of
Defence, Messrs. Figg and Sutton' develops, at some length, the contention that
modern English boxers (and books) have surpassed their ancient models:

Now, after such Men, who can bear to be told

Of your Roman and Greek puny Heroes of Old?

To compare such poor Dogs as Alcides, and Theseus

To Sutton and Figg would be very facetious.

Were Hector himself, with Apollo to back him,

To encounter with Sutton - zooks, how he would thwack him!

Or Achilles, tho' old Mother Thetis had dipt him,

With Figg - odds my Life, how he would have unript him!

By the mid-eighteenth century battles of boxers and books such as this had be-
come commonplace (although sadly not all rhymed 'Theseus' with 'facetious',
or asked whether Figg should 'be pair'd with a Cap-a pee Roman, / Who scorn'd
any Fence but a jolly Abdomen?). 27

Christopher Anstey's The Patriot (1767) - A Pindaric Address to Lord Buck-
horse', the nom de guerre of Broughton's sparring partner, John Smith - burlesqued
the tendency to describe prize-fighters in such elevated terms. Something of a
classical hodge-podge, it intersperses quotations from Homer, Theocritus, Virgil,
Lucian and others with calls for aid from the muses:

Bid coo quit her blest Abode,

And speed her Flight to Oxford-Road,

Adore the Theatre of broughton,

And kiss the Stage his Lordship fought on . . .

Buckhorse's 'Patriotic Virtues' are celebrated at a time when 'Albas warlike Sons
of Yore' have been displaced by 'Meek Cardinals' wielding undue influence upon
the 'Tender Minds of Youth'. Buckhorse is called upon to found a Cambridge col-
lege, and thus 'form a Plan of Education / To mend the Morals of the Nation.' 28
Eleven years previously, in 1756, Anstey had (anonymously) published a little-
known work entitled Memoirs of the Noted Buckhorse, a picaresque satire of the
metropolitan world of 'Bucks, Bloods and Jemmys' into which, he imagines, the

boxer is initiated. 'He learned to swear very prettily, lie with a good Grace, flatter
and deceive, promise anything, and perform, - as great People generally do.' 29
Much of the humour here, as in The Patriot, comes from imagining the working-
class prize-fighter as a Lord, a society figure who wields influence as well as his
fists. After two volumes of adventures, the Memoirs end with Buckhorse, tired
of waiting for his friends to secure him a position in the Army, resolving to 'turn
patriot'. This allows an extended joke on a version of patriotism that entails
'rail[ing] against the Ministry' and 'seasoning] his Discourses with Bribery,
Corruption, and Hanover.^

'no weapons but what nature had furnished him with'

Henry Fielding began Tom Jones in 1747, the year that Broughton opened his
academy, and the novel reflects contemporary interest in the sport and its clas-
sical origins. 31 Broughton's advertisement is even quoted in a footnote. 32 Field-
ing's take on the subject is characteristically 'prosai-comi-epic'. 33 Chapter Eight
of Book One, for example, is entitled A battle sung by the muses in the Home-
rican style, and which none but the classical reader can taste'. The battle sung
features 'our Amazonian heroine', Molly Seagrim, against many opponents,
most notably Goody Brown. Fielding's exploitation of the comic potential of
women's boxing had begun in 1741, when, in Shamela, he has Henrietta Maria
Honora Andrews end a letter to her daughter with the apology, 'You will excuse
the shortness of this scroll; for I have sprained my right hand, with boxing three
new made officers. - Tho' to my comfort, I beat them all.' 34

In the case of Molly Seagrim and Goody Brown, we are treated to a full
description of women at 'fisticuff-war'. The women begin, cautiously, by merely
tearing at each other's hair, but soon move onto each other's clothes so that 'in
a very few minutes they were both naked to the middle.' 35 Goody has the advan-
tage of having no bosom; her breasts are 'an ancient parchment, upon which
one might have drummed a considerable while without doing her any damage'.
Molly is 'differently formed in those parts' and therefore susceptible to 'a fatal
blow had not the lucky arrival of Tom Jones at this point put an immediate end
to the bloody scene'. Tom now fights Goody (perhaps, Fielding suggests, he for-
got she was a woman; perhaps he couldn't tell) and the surrounding mob.

For Fielding, the language of boxing was as open to mockery as the lan-
guage of classical poetry. In Joseph Andrews (1742), we are momentarily anxious
for Parson Adams when his opponent concludes '(to use the Language of fight-
ing) that he had done his Business; or, in the Language of Poetry, that he had sent
him to the Shades below; in plain English, that he was dead'} 6 Plain English is of
course the language of the narrator, and the novel - Fielding's 'new province of
writing' 37 - which may include, and absorb, the mock-heroic and the colloquial,
but whose character is, above all, democratic, excluding no reader by resort to
the language of the coterie. Plain, and reasonable, English would have prevented
yet another altercation in Tom Jones: when the classically educated school-

teacher, Partridge, uses the phrase 'non sequitur', the sergeant mistakes it for an
insult - 'None of your outlandish linguo ... I will not sit still and hear the cloth
abused' - and he formally challenges Partridge to fight. 38

As the novel progresses, Tom has many opportunities to display his boxing
skill, and employs all the latest techniques including 'one of those punches in the
guts which, though the spectators at Broughton's Ampitheatre have such ex-
quisite delight in seeing them, convey little pleasure in the feeling'. 39 One oppo-
nent is even convinced he must be a professional prize-fighter: 'I'll have nothing

more to do with you; you have been upon the stage, or I'm d nably mistaken',

to which the narrator adds: 'such was the agility and strength of our hero that
he was perhaps a match for one of the first-rate boxers, and could with great
ease have beaten all the muffled graduates of Mr. Broughton's school'. 40

Tom is superior to the 'muffled graduates' because of his willingness to fight
bare-fisted; Bonnell Thornton and George Colman later mocked that 'most of
our young fellows gave up the gauntlet for scented gloves; and loathing the mut-
ton fists of vulgar carmen and porters, they rather chose to hang their hands in
a sling, to make them white and delicate as a lady's'. 41 More fundamentally, fight-
ing for Tom is a matter of 'appetite' rather than education. Tom has many
appetites - for fighting, for food, for drink, but mainly for sex. These are seen to
be equally natural, and often one appetite leads to another. Broughton promised
that learning to box would bring his pupils success with women, evoking his
exhibition sparring partner, the famously ugly Buckhorse, whose 'ruling passions'
were said to be 'love and boxing, in both of which he was equally formidable;
. . . neither nymph nor bruiser could withstand the violence of his attack, for it
was generally allowed he conquered both by the strength of his members, and the
rigour of his parts'. 42 Christopher Anstey's novel Memoirs of the Noted Buckhorse
also gets much mileage out of its hero's reputation as a ladies' man. Many women
praise his 'manly Beauties' and three marry him. 43 But Tom needs no lessons in
either love or boxing. Consider, to take only one of many examples, the 'Battle of
Upton', which takes place at the inn where Tom and a 'fair companion' are lodg-
ing. In this case, the key intervention is that of the chambermaid, Susan, 'as two-
handed a wench (according to the phrase) as any in the country'. 44

Fights in Fielding's novels are often the means by which moral worth is re-
vealed. He disagreed strongly with Samuel Richardson's view that virtue is a state
of mind, arguing that the Actions of Men seem to be the justest Interpreters of
their Thoughts, and the truest Standards by which we may judge them'. 45 Many
fights begin with the excuse of defending feminine honour. Parson Adams, in
Joseph Andrews, for example, refutes an argument about the nature of courage in
a single blow by instinctively leaping to the defence of a young woman in trou-
ble. Adams, the first muscled if not muscular Christian, proceeds with 'no
weapons but what Nature had furnished him with', and, it seems, some surrep-
titiously acquired technical knowledge. 46 But given that the women are often as
adept as the men with their fists - Mr Partridge is certainly no match for Mrs
Partridge - many of the situations presented seem primarily to furnish excuses

for a good punch-up. Fighting (like sex) is ubiquitous in Fielding's novels; some-
thing that English men and women just like to do. It is an activity natural to all
classes and all professions - chambermaids, squires, landladies, schoolteachers,
army officers and the aptly named Reverend Mr. Thwackum all pitch in. 47 The
very ubiquity of fights throughout the novels is comically conservative, as if Field-
ing is asking, 'what else can you expect from human nature?' 48 There may be lots
of bleeding, and preferably some female nudity, but the conclusion of a boxing
match, for Fielding, is also comic, and conservative in its effect (a jovial hand-
shake with the balance of power unchanged), rather than tragic and radical (epit-
omized by the deadly Jacobite duel). 49 After knocking out Blifil, for example,
Jones immediately reaches over to see if he is alright, and soon Blifil is back on
his feet. Fielding interrupts his narrative to talk about the significance of this
incident with a seriousness that is evident from his plain English:

Here we cannot suppress a pious wish that all quarrels were to be de-
cided by those weapons only, with which Nature, knowing what is
proper for us, hath supplied us; and that cold iron was to be used in
digging no bowels, but those of the earth. Then would war, the pastime
of monarchs, be almost inoffensive, and battles between great armies
might be fought at the particular desire of several ladies of quality, who,
together, with the kings themselves, might be actual spectators of the
conflict. Then might the field be this moment well strewn with human
carcasses, and the next, the dead men, or infinitely the greatest part of
them, might get up . . . 5 °

Some years later the prize-fighter Daniel Mendoza approvingly cited this pas-
sage, and used it to justify his profession. 51

Broughton advertised boxing as a 'truly British Art', claiming that its study
would prove an antidote to 'foreign Effeminacy ', as well as, of course, enabling
practitioners to be able 'to boast themselves Inheritors of the Greek and Roman
Virtues'. Broughton, and his followers, seemed to find no contradiction in these
two claims. 'Britishness' was, however, as Christopher Johnson notes, a 'highly
contentious' notion in 1747, only a year after the bloody Battle of Culloden which
had ended the Jacobite Rebellion; French troops had supported the Young Pre-
tender, Bonnie Prince Charlie, against the Hanoverian King George 11 (for whom
both Tom Jones, and Broughton's patron, the Duke of Cumberland, fought).
Exactly contemporary with Tom Jones, William Hogarth's The March toFinchley
(1749) memorializes the soldiers who had travelled north to meet the Jacobites
three years earlier. The exuberant crowd that Hogarth depicts seems, as Jenny
Uglow puts it, to be celebrating a public holiday rather than facing a national
emergency. On the left of the scene, a crowd has gathered outside the boxing
booth of Broughton's rival, George Taylor, to watch a fight. Uglow interprets
this as representing either 'the murderous rivalry of Cain and Abel now trans-
lated into civil war' or 'the natural fighting spirit of the people, cheered on by an

excited crowd'. 52 To define Britishness, as Broughton did, in the pseudo-military
vocabulary of 'championism' (a concoction of pugnacious Protestanism, egali-
tarianism, national pride and moral righteousness) would, presumably, not
have found favour with many northern and Catholic Britons. Championism
represented a quite particular form of Englishness.

Throughout the eighteenth century, French visitors to England had
observed the 'well-known taste of the English for combats of men and animals,
and for those horrible scenes of slaughter and blood, which other nations have
banished from their theatres.' 'Any Thing that Looks like Fighting, is delicious
to an Englishman,' concluded Misson in 1719. 53 After a visit to London in 1766,
during which he seemed to trip over 'street-scufflers' at every corner, Pierre Jean
Grosley recorded that boxing was a 'species of combat' not merely 'congenial to
the character of the English' but 'inherent in English blood'. 54

While Grosley was appalled by the ubiquity of street-fighting, and the
casualness with which it was undertaken, James Boswell relished a scuffle. His
diary entry for 13 June 1763 describes a trip to Vauxhall Gardens as 'quite deli-
cious' not despite, but because of, a 'quarrel between a gentleman and a waiter':

A great crowd gathered round and roared out, A ring-a ring,' which is
the signal for making room for the parties to box it out. My spirits rose,
and I was exerting myself with much vehemence. At last the constable
came to quell the riot. I seized his baton in a good-humoured way which
made him laugh, and I rapped upon the people's heads, bawling out,
'Who will resist the Peace? A ring, a ring.' 55

Boswell's enthusiasm recalls that displayed by Samuel Pepys a hundred years
earlier. He obviously had a fondness for critical, and social, pugilists as well.
Boswell's portrait of Samuel Johnson depicts a man who, while hot-tempered,
is quick to reconcile and apologize. Pierce Egan relates the tale of Johnson's hav-
ing a 'regular set-to with an athletic brewer's servant, who had insulted him in
Fleet-street' - he 'gave the fellow a complete milling in a few minutes' - and con-
cludes that Johnson was 'striking proof of pugilism being a national trait'. Mrs
Thrale describes him as 'very conversant in the art of attack and defense by box-
ing, which science he learned from his uncle Andrew'. 56 More importantly,
Johnson included definitions (illustrated by literary quotations) of 'box' and
'boxer' and 'to box' in The Dictionary of the English Language (1755). 57

In 1750, an ill-prepared Broughton was finally defeated and blinded by a
Norfolk butcher, Jack Slack. His patron, the Duke of Cumberland, who lost a
£10,000 bet, accused Broughton of throwing the fight and angrily withdrew his
support. Within months, Broughton's Amphitheatre closed and prize-fighting
was officially, if not effectively, outlawed. A more striking demonstration of the
dependence of the sport on aristocratic patronage can hardly be imagined. Con-
tests continued to be staged, but gradually moved away from the metropolitan
centres. 58 Ten years earlier, as Paul Whitehead had observed in 'The Gymnasiad',

anti-boxing legislation had been 'dormant'. Now bailiffs woke up to its existence
and fighters were increasingly likely to be arrested. 59

In 1754, 'Mr Town' (Bonnell Thornton and George Colman, members of the
satirical Nonsense Club) joshed that Broughton's defeat was a 'public calamity'.
They imagined the 'professors of the noble art of Boxing' forming a 'kind of dis-
banded army' and inevitably turning to crime. 'Some have been forced to exercise
their art in knocking down passengers in dark alleys and corners; while others have
learned to open their fists and ply their fingers in picking pockets.' 60 But not every-
one was unhappy at the prospect of the boxing academies closing. An apprecia-
tion of boxing was, for some, less the classless mark of an honest man, as Fielding
had suggested, than yet another empty indulgence practised by wealthy London-
ers. In The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), for example, Oliver Goldsmith presents the
rakish young squire Thornhill as a corrupting influence on the innocent country
vicar and his family. Thornhill visits his tenants frequently and 'amuses them by de-
scribing the town, with every part of which he was particularly acquainted'. He
even sets the vicar's two little boys to box, 'to make them sharp, as he called it'.
Thornhill's cowardice is later revealed when he sends another brother to fight duels
on his behalf, and he is finally declared 'as complete a villain as ever disgraced
humanity'. 61 In 1751, Hogarth published a series of prints entitled The Four Stages
of Cruelty, 'in the hopes of preventing in some degree the cruel treatment of poor An-
imals' on the streets of London. The Second Stage includes a man whipping a horse
and a sheep being beaten, and, on the wall, notices advertise cock-fighting and an
up-coming match between George Taylor and James Field at Broughton's
Amphitheatre. Field is also named in the last print of the series, 'The Reward of
Cruelty' - his name is engraved above a skeleton which overlooks the dissec-
tion of an executed criminal. Field had recently been hanged for robbery and his
life-story was circulated in a pamphlet that ran to several editions, The Bruiser
knock'd down. 62 Boxing had changed its meaning for Hogarth. Whereas previously
he had presented the sport as one of many manifestations of exuberant Englishness,
in 1751 he aligns it with the cruelties of cock-fighting, execution and dissection.

A NOBLE ART AND A SCIENCE

English pugilism's revival (and, for many, the beginning of its golden age) began
in the 1780s, when once again the highest echelons of the aristocracy, including
the Prince of Wales, became interested in the sport. As war with France loomed,
this was due partly to boxing's reputed association with a particularly English
form of courage, and partly to a highly publicized series of fights between
Richard Humphries and Daniel Mendoza.

Daniel Mendoza's Memoirs (1816) may have been the first ghost-written
sports autobiography. Whoever wrote it, the book provides a vivid picture not
only of the prize-fighting world but of late eighteenth-century London life more
generally. The story is of a man who tries to make a living in various respectable
trades - as a greengrocer, tobacconist or glazier - but whom circumstance,

usually involving the honour of women or Judaism, continually compels to
resort to his fists.

The names of Mendoza's first opponents - Harry the Coal-heaver, and Sam
Martin, 'The Bath Butcher' - suggest their weighty force. Relatively small at 5ft
7in and 160 pounds (he would now be classified as a middleweight), Mendoza,
often known simply as 'the Jew', defeated them with a combination of speed,
agility and technique. One of his 'prominent traits', noted Pierce Egan, was to
exhaust the strength of an opponent who 'depended upon that particular cir-
cumstance to stamp him a formidable boxer', by 'acting on the defensive till the
assault in turn could be practised with success'. Previously, pugilistic fighting
was somewhat static as opponents stood toe to toe and exchanged blows. It was
considered unmanly to move, so blows were blocked rather than avoided by
footwork. John Godfrey, for example, described Broughton's style:

broughton steps bold and firmly in, bids a Welcome to the coming
Blow, receives it with the guardian Arm; then with a general Summons
of his swelling Muscles and his firm Body, seconding his Arm, and sup-
plying it with all its Weight, pours the Pile-driving Force upon his Man. 63

Mendoza introduced a style of fighting which relied on footwork, jabs, and
defence rather than simply pure brute force. Although most commentators
(including the Prince of Wales) praised his style as elegant, sophisticated and,
perhaps most important, wonderful to watch, some complained that 'there was
something cowardly about a fighter who frequently retreated and relied on
superior agility and speed to win rather than standing up in true British bulldog
style and hammering away doggedly until he or his opponent dropped'. 64 'The
Jew', the anti-Semites said, was 'cunning'. 65

In 1788, Mendoza embarked on a highly publicized series of contests with
Richard Humphries, 'The Gentleman Fighter' (illus. 44). Tapping into late eight-
eenth-century English anxieties about its burgeoning Jewish population, the
fights attracted large crowds. Mendoza and Humphries were the first boxers
whose careers were successfully marketed in terms of ethnic hostility. 66 Men-
doza lost the first fight and immediately wrote to a popular newspaper com-
plaining about his opponent's deviousness and lack of courage. Thus began a
prolonged battle of words between the two fighters, which boosted sales of The
World considerably, and which is reprinted in full in the Memoirs. Letter fol-
lowed letter like punch and counterpunch, with the result that the inevitable
rematch between the two men was a guaranteed sell-out, with both men
profiting. Mendoza decisively won the second and third fights and became a
celebrity; his face was reproduced on commemorative coins and beer mugs and
his name was incorporated into the texts of contemporary plays. 67 He claimed
the title of champion when Big Ben Brain retired in 1791 and confirmed it with
victories over Bill Ward in 1792 and 1794. The following year, he lost the cham-
pionship (in dubious circumstances) to John Jackson.

One of the most interesting aspects of Mendoza's memoirs is the light it sheds
on the commercial side of pugilism. 68 Like most prize-fighters then (and since),
Mendoza used his high-profile victories as a springboard to other, more lucra-
tive, enterprises - exhibitions at London's Lyceum theatre, tours of Britain and
Ireland, and a successful boxing academy. He eventually became a publican. 69

By 1795, according to G. M. Trevelyan, 'scientific pugilism' had become the
'chief national interest'. 70 This is overstating things, but, in certain quarters,
boxing had become very fashionable. Spoken of as both a 'science' and a 'noble
art of self-defence', pugilism could be studied from books such as Mendoza's
1787 The Art of Boxing, and numerous 'sixpenny teachers', as well as at the more
expensive and exclusive academies in London, and beyond. Mendoza's school
was in the City, Humphries catered particularly for the pupils of Westminster
School, and, on gaining the title, John Jackson retired immediately to set up
rooms in Bond Street. In 1807, the fictional narrator of Robert Southey's Letters
from England, Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella, observed, in a letter on the 'Fash-
ionables', that 'the Amateurs of Boxing . . . attend the academies of the two
great professors Jackson and Mendoza, the Aristotle and Plato of pugilism'. 71

A typical amateur was Joseph Moser's 1794 creation, Timothy Twig. Twig's
adventures in modish London (related back to Wales in comic verse letters) in-
clude the study of 'matter and motion': 'I'm deep in philosophy at the Lyceum'.
Twig praises Mendoza, Humphries and others 'for shewing the town, / The gen-
teel method to knock a man down.' 72 A 1788 advertisement for Humphries's
school promised that 'Such gentlemen as are prevented by weak constitution
from taking a lesson may be qualified for polite Assemblies with artificial Bloody
Noses and Black Eyes' (illus. 13). Another drawing, by Rowlandson, detailed the
'six stages of marring a face' (illus. 14).

Wm*' >V %_'^*' *-»**t J-h* F**"* «""vtH-* tL «* «!.*-». i f-uT- n

kl an »l*^i 1 fevJ* H- ■&] ^»J*Jl 1 Uj"J»»W U • • AH. V*. >■ M 4 h fci£ itlla)

r.V

# _

School for Boxing,

1788.

Thomas Rowland-
son, Six Stages of
Marring a Face,
May 1792, etching.

SIX S&SES <if iM.WUttG A EICE .

The ars pugnandi had much to recommend it to the young gentleman about
town. For a start it was an art that would 'promote health', 'give courage to the
timid', and 'repress insolence'. But more importantly, Mendoza promised, it
would enable 'men to stand in their own defence' (and that of their property) on
the streets of the growing metropolis. It would provide them with the means to
resist 'the assaults they are daily exposed to'. 73 Furthermore, it would enable
them to defend their honour without resorting to the potentially more deadly
practice of duelling which was, in any case, considered French. In one of the ear-
liest published references to boxing in 1709, Richard Steele had advocated the
use of 'wrathful Hands' as an alternative to 'that unchristian-like and bloody
Custom of Duelling', and Fielding, as we have already seen, preferred the comic-
conservative boxing match to the tragic and radical duel. 74 In the introduction
to his 1816 Memoirs, Mendoza argued that if boxing were abolished, men would
not forget their injuries but instead 'adopt other modes of revenging their
wrongs, either by resorting to the dreadful practice of duelling, or by schemes
of secret machinations against each other'. 75

Finally, because it was based on natural strength and the mastery of tech-
nique rather than the ownership of weaponry, boxing, it was claimed, would
allow men of all classes to fight on equal terms. 'Fair play' was much spoken of
and admired, and again considered a particularly English and democratic
virtue. 76 In 1698 a French visitor, Henri Misson, had noted, with some surprise,
the sight of the Duke of Grafton and his coachman 'at Fisticuffs, in the open
street', 'the very widest Part of the Strand'. The coachman, he reports, was
'lamb'd most horribly'.

In France, we punish such Rascals with our Cane, and sometimes with
the flat of our sword: but in England this is never practis'd; they use
neither Sword nor Stick against a Man that is unarm'd: and if an unfor-
tunate stranger (for an Englishman would never take it into his head)
should draw his Sword upon one that had none, he'd have a hundred
People upon him in a Moment that would perhaps lay him so flat that
he would hardly get up again until the Resurrection. 77

Misson notes that, 'If the Coachman is soundly drubb'd, which happens almost
always, that goes for Payment; but if he is the Beator, the Beatee must pay the
Money about which they quarreled.' Should his readers worry about the impli-
cations of such seeming democracy, he adds, in a footnote, 'A Gentleman seldom
exposes himself to such a Battel, without he is sure he's strongest.'

Fair play was also much admired in professional contests. In 1790, during
their final fight, Mendoza had Humphries in such a helpless state that he could
have injured him at will, but he famously 'laid down' his opponent on the
ground. (Egan reports this 'truth' in the face of anti-Semitic 'prejudice' which al-
lows 'good actions' to be 'passed over'. 78 ) In an 1805 fight Hen Pearce (the Game
Chicken) forced Jem Belcher against the ropes. At this stage of his career Belcher
only had the use of one eye, and the crowd feared that Pearce would deliber-
ately blind him. Instead, Pearce is supposed to have pulled back out of a punch,
saying, 'I'll take no advantage of thee, Jem; I'll not hit thee, no, lest I hurt the
other eye.' He repeated this behaviour in a later round, and the audience was
lost in admiration'. 79

'the pugilistic honour of the country was at stake'

William Windham, a friend of Samuel Johnson and a protege of Edmund Burke,
was elected to Parliament in 1784 and by 1792 became one of the most ardent sup-
porters of the government's fearful and repressive legislation against 'aliens' and
'seditious' meetings; in 1801, he opposed preliminary moves to peace with France;
in 1806, his career peaked when he served as Secretary for War and Colonies. Wind-
ham was also a vocal supporter of pugilism, recording attendance at more than
twenty fights in his diary, along with regret on one occasion at letting himself 'be
drawn by Boswell to explore . . . Wapping, instead of going when everything was
prepared, to see the battle between Ward and Stanyard, which turned out a very
good one'. 80 That was in 1792. Six years earlier, 'Fighting Windham' (his Eton nick-
name) noted his first 'excursion' to a fight, between Sam Martin and Humphries,
('Richard I think'), after a journey on which the talk was much of 'foreign wars and
foreign politics'. 81 By the end of the century, evangelical reformers increasingly con-
demned pugilism as a 'detestable traffic in human flesh', on par with the slave trade,
but Windham retorted that it was only such 'cruel sports' that protected the 'Old
English character' from the threat of Jacobinism. 82 By 1809 he was making the
connection between war and sport explicit, writing indignantly to a friend:

A smart contest this between Maddox and Richmond! Why are we to
boast so much of the native valour of our troops at Talavera, at Vimeira,
and at Maida, yet to discourage all the practices and habits which tend
to keep alive the same sentiments and feelings? The sentiments that
filled the minds of the three thousand people who attended the two
pugilists, were just the same in kind as those which inspired the higher
combatants on the occasions before enumerated. It is the circum-
stances only in which they are displayed, that makes the difference . . .
But when I get on these topics, I never know how to stop. 83

If sparring was, in Egan's terms, 'a representation' of prize-fighting, prize-fight-
ing in turn had become a representation of war.

'The cult of heroic endeavour and aggressive maleness that was so pro-
nounced in patrician art and literature at this time', notes Linda Colley, 'was
just as prominent in popular ballads and songs.' 84 Pierce Egan's Boxiana is cer-
tainly full of songs and poems about 'Boney' and what will be done to the 'little
upstart King'. 'A Boxing We Will Go', for example, was often 'sung at the con-
vivial meetings of the Fancy':

Italians stab their friends behind,
In darkest shades of night;
But Britons they are bold and kind,
And box their friends by light.

The sons of France their pistols use,
Pop, pop, and they have done;
But Britons with their hands will bruise,
And scorn away to run.

Since boxing is a manly game,

And Briton's recreation;

By boxing we will raise our fame,

'Bove any other nation.

A fig for Boney - let's have done
With that ungracious name;
We'll drink and pass our days in fun,
And box to raise our fame. 85

'It seems probable,' writes Colley, 'that some Britons at least volunteered [for the
army] not so much because they were anxious to fight for anything in particu-
lar, but simply because they wanted to fight - period.' 86

Unfortunately for British fight fans, there was no possibility of a French
fighter coming forward to allow a symbolic 'flooring' of Boney. Although

matches were frequently organized to enact and illustrate anxieties about new
immigrant populations (Jewish and Irish), no foreigner had challenged an
English champion since 1733. 8y Since then, as Egan put it, the champion cap
had passed from 'the nob of one native to another'. 88 By 1810, however, the
desire was strong for a foreign opponent against whom British courage and valour
could be expressed. If France was not willing, perhaps a surrogate battle could
pitch Britain against another very recent enemy, the United States (illus. 45).

A peace treaty had been formally signed between Great Britain and the United
States in 1783, but relations between the two countries remained strained in the
years that followed. Finally the British policy of intercepting merchant ships on
the high seas, in order to prevent neutral trade with France, provoked the United
States into declaring war in 1812. Two years later, what some have termed the
Second Revolutionary War ended after the British suffered substantial losses. It is
in the context of these events that the championship fights between Tom Cribb
and Tom Molineaux in 1810 and 1811 should be understood. 89 Rounds one and
two of Britain versus the United States were complicated only by the fact that
Molineaux was black, a former slave from Virginia.

Throughout the eighteenth century, young Virginians were frequently sent
to England to complete their education. There, some witnessed prize-fights and
attended boxing academies. In a 1785 letter Thomas Jefferson complained that
in learning 'drinking, horse racing and boxing' ('the peculiarities of English
education') young Americans might also acquire 'a fondness for European
luxury and dissipation, and a contempt for the simplicity of [their] own country'. 90
Boxing may have been un-republican, but it was certainly popular among slave-
owners, many of whom, in search of gambling opportunities, trained their
slaves to compete with those from other plantations, sometimes rewarding
those who earned them money with their freedom. 91

Whether or not some slaves did obtain manumission, it is certainly true
that the first professional boxers in America were free blacks. Some ended up
in England. Before Molineaux, the most famous was Bill Richmond. Brought
to England in 1777 at the age of fourteen as a servant to the Duke of Northum-
berland, Richmond first trained as a cabinet maker and, after a reasonably
successful career as a pugilist, continued to promote fights and train fighters
while managing a tavern next door to the Fives Court. In 1805 Richmond had
been defeated by a young Tom Cribb and, according to legend, he wanted a
protege to exact revenge.

Thought to have been born a slave in Virginia, Tom Molineaux arrived in
New York at the age of twenty as a freeman and began to fight at the Catherine
Street market. Four years later, he set sail to England with the plan of challeng-
ing Cribb, by then champion of England (which at that time also meant cham-
pion of the world). The fight that took place between the two men on 18
December 1810, at Capthall Common, Sussex, is one of the most mythologized
events of the Regency (illus. 15 and illus. 16). Pierce Egan recalled the fever-
ish atmosphere of the day:

^^k ^

Staffordshire
portrait figure
of Tom Cribb,
c. 1810-15.

Staffordshire
portrait figure of
Tom Molineaux,
c. 1810-15.

The pugilistic honour of the country was at stake . . . the national laurels
to be borne away by a foreigner - the mere idea to an English breast
was afflicting, and the reality could not be endured - that it should
seem, the spectators were ready to exclaim -

Forbid it heaven, forbid it man! 92

After nineteen rounds in driving icy rain those spectators did more than exclaim;
they rushed into the ring and broke one of Molineaux's fingers in the scrimmage.
Nevertheless, the American continued to dominate and at the beginning of the
28th round, Cribb seemed unable to rise. At that point his second leapt up and
accused Molineaux of hiding lead bullets in his fists. By the time this charge had
been refuted, Cribb had recovered enough to continue. Molineaux's bad luck
continued when he hit his head on one of the stakes at the corner of the ring, and
in the 39th round he conceded the fight. Egan's report is equivocal. He is careful
not to claim a breach of fair play, but concedes that it was Molineaux's 'colour
alone' which 'prevented him from becoming the hero of that fight'.

A few days later Molineaux published an open letter to Cribb: 'Sir, - My friends
think, that had the weather on last Tuesday, the day upon which I contended
with you, not been so unfavourable, I should have won the battle'. He challenged

4 r >

Cribb to a second meeting, 'expressing the confident hope, that the circumstance
of my being a different colour to that of a people amongst whom I have sought
protection will not in any way operate to my prejudice.' 93

The following year (before a crowd estimated at 15-20,000) Cribb, who had
spent eleven weeks with the noted trainer, Captain Barclay, defeated an ill-
prepared Molineaux in what the Times described as a 'most obstinate and san-
guinary combat'. 94 Once Cribb was safely champion, the fans could once more
become magnanimous, and soon songs were sung about Molineaux's bravery
- Tho' beat, he proved a man my boys, what more could a man do' - and he
too was co-opted into imaginary contests with Boney.

The blurring of the language of war and the language of sport was not
restricted to those who watched from the sidelines. Wellington himself famously
described Waterloo as 'a pounding match' and said of its opposing armies, 'both
were what the boxers call gluttons'. 95 The war ended in 1815, and Thomas
Moore's 'Epistle from Tom Cribb to Big Ben, Concerning some Foul Play in a
Late Transaction' (1818), satirically compares the conduct of the allies in exiling
Napoleon to St Helena to kicking a man when he is down.

'Foul! Foul!' all the lads of the Fancy exclaim -
Charley Shock is electrified - Belcher spits flame -
And Molyneux - ay, even Blacky cries 'shame!'
Time was, when John Bull little difference spied
'Twixt the foe at his feet, and the friend at his side;
When he found (such his humour in fighting and eating)
His foe, like his beefsteak, the sweeter for beating. 96

In the years that followed, although Boney remained in St Helena, pugilistic jingo-
ism showed no signs of abating. 'In the mythology of the Ring,' writes Peter Bailey,
'the fist was England's national weapon and the skilful and courageous wielding of
it in public kept alive the spirit of Waterloo.' 97 Many found it useful to recall foreign
enemies in the period of increased civil unrest that followed the war's end.

'having the luck to be born an englishman'

A rhetoric of nationalist masculinity was not new to the Napoleonic period, but
what was new, perhaps, was the anxiety, and urgency, with which it was deployed.
The spectre of effeminacy was constantly evoked. Boxing was not merely British
and democratic, but, in its direct physicality, a more masculine way of fighting
than relatively at-a-distance foreign methods (the dagger and knife) mentioned
in popular songs such as 'A Boxing We Will G0'. 98 Works such as 'Defence of Box-
ing' (a 'political view of the subject'), by Windham's friend, William Cobbett,
make much of supposed links between effeminacy and tyranny. Boxing, Cobbett
claimed, could stave off 'national degradation' and help prevent 'submission to
a foreign yoke'. 'Commerce, Opulence, Luxury, Effeminacy, Cowardice, Slavery,'

he maintained, 'are the stages of national degradation.' By threatening to replace
'hardy' sports by those 'requiring less strength, and exposing the persons
engaged in them to less bodily suffering', Britain was already showing symptoms
of effeminacy and edging dangerously towards 'national cowardice'. 99 And if the
effeminate nation then turned to undemocratic weapons such as the knife or the
dagger, a decline into slavery was practically inevitable. 100

But while Cobbett saw in boxing an unambiguous solution to the threat of
national effeminacy, others were less certain both about nation and about mas-
culinity. In Boxiana, the Protestant Irish Pierce Egan sometimes claimed box-
ing for England and sometimes for Britain. In 'The Two Drovers' (1827), Walter
Scott kept the distinction clear; boxing is an English sport. The story is set in the
1780s, and presents a conflict between two friends - a Highlander, Robin Oig,
and an Englishman, Harry Wakefield - two different forms of combat - the
sword and the fists - and two versions of masculinity. 101 The drovers are phys-
ically very different. Robin Oig was 'small of stature, as the epithet Oig implies,
and not very strongly limbed'; on the other hand, he was 'as light and alert as
one of the deer of his mountains'. Harry Wakefield was 'nearly six feet high, gal-
lantly formed to keep the rounds at Smithfield, or maintain the ring at a
wrestling match; and although he might have been overmatched, perhaps,
among the regular professors of the Fancy, yet, as a yokel or a rustic, or a chance
customer, he was able to give a bellyful to any amateur of the pugilistic art.' 102

The men quarrel over who has the right to graze his sheep in a particular
field, just on the English side of the Border. Harry wants a 'turn-up' and even
offers to wear gloves. But Robin prefers the broadsword - 'I have no skill to fight
like a jackanapes, with hands and nails'. Neither is a gentleman, but both are
anxious to claim that status - Robin by evoking the Highland and European
traditions of sword-fighting; Harry by boasting prowess in the fashionable
English 'puglistic art'. They start with Harry's game, at which he beats Robin
'with as much ease as a boy bowls down a nine-pin'. In victory, Harry offers
dubious consolation to his friend:

'Tis not thy fault, man, that not having the luck to be born an English-
man, thou canst not fight more than a school-girl.'

'I can fight,' answered Robin Oig sternly, but calmly, 'and you shall
know it. You, Harry Waakfelt, shewed me today how the Saxon churls
fight - 1 shew you now how the Highland Dunniewassal fights.'

He seconded the word with the action, and plunged the dagger,
which he suddenly displayed, into the broad breast of the English yeo-
man, with such fatal certainty and force, that the hilt made a hollow
sound against the breast-bone, and the double-edged point split the
very heart of his victim.

Both men are aware of the physical intimacy of fighting. Harry had hoped that
the boxing match would end up with a clasping of hands and the two men

'better friends than ever'; it would be a 'tussle for love on the sod'. Although
Robin suggests that boxing, a form of fighting 'with hands and nails', is unseemly,
even animalistic, in its intimate physicality, his later plunge of the dirk into his
friend's heart might be read as a more complete consummation of their uneasy
relationship; it is certainly more suggestively phallic than the mere touch of
hands. 103 Slurs of effeminacy (fighting like a schoolgirl, etc.) have given way to
something else. 'The Two Drovers' ends with Robin Oig on trial, and with the
judge reflecting on the cultural relativity of codes of honour. This has been, after
all, a tale of the Borders.

A rather different interpretation of effeminacy, one with personal rather than
political implications, is also introduced in Cobbett's essay when he refers to the
prize-fighter Jem Belcher. Egan had described Belcher as having a 'prepossessing
appearance, genteel and remarkably placid in his behaviour'. 104 He was generally
thought to be a bit of a dandy, and wore 'immaculate dark clothes, set off by a
vivid and extravagant neckcloth (usually blue with white spots)' which became
known as a 'belcher' (illus. 17). los Cobbett, however, did not refer to Belcher's rep-
utation for elegance (perhaps because he believed that 'women . . . despise personal
vanity in men) and instead characterized him as 'a monster, a perfect ruffian'. 106
Nevertheless, there is 'scarcely a female Saint, perhaps, who would not, in her way
to the conventicle, or even during the snuffling there to be heard, take a peep at
him from beneath her hood. Can as much be said by any one of those noblemen
and gentlemen who have been spending the best years of their lives in danc-
ing by night and playing cricket by day?'
No wonder, Cobbett - the ex-soldier -
added, women like soldiers. Effeminacy in
this passage seems simply to mean sexual
unattractiveness; war is forgotten in the face
of more pressing issues. A little monstrous
manliness would get you the girl.

Sometimes it would also get you the
guy. References to boxers' groupies or
'macaronis' can be found in several eigh-
teenth-century poems. 'Macaroni' was a
derogatory label for young men who had
travelled to France and Italy and came
back with long hair and a taste for foreign
food. In June 1770 the Oxford Magazine
noted that 'a kind of animal, neither male
not female, a thing of the neuter gender'
had 'lately started up amongst us. It is
called a Macaroni. It talks without mean-
ing, it smiles without pleasantry, it eats
without appetite, it rides without exercise,
it wenches without passion .' 107 Three years

Benjamin Marshall,
James Belcher, Bare-
Knuckle Champion of
England, c. 1803, oil
on canvas.

later, mAuldReikie, his poem of Edinburgh life, Robert Fergusson describes the
drunken procession of the presumably beef-eating 'Bruiser' and the 'feckless
Race o' Macaronies' who pursue him. 108 Christopher Anstey's burlesque The
Patriot (1767) expressed the hope that Buckhorse's 'manly Strength' might
'greatly discompose':

The Features of our modern Beaux,
And from their Macaroni Faces
Send packing all the Loves and Graces; 109

By the early nineteenth century, raucous descriptions of men pursuing boxers
and women participating in fights (both, for eighteenth-century men, unfail-
ing sources of comedy) had ceased; fighting was now a serious manly business
and women largely featured as imaginary witnesses to this manliness. (Many
historians have argued that from the 1770s onwards there was an increased
cultural insistence on separate spheres for women and men. 110 ) Sometimes
descriptions of women spectators contain the frisson that Cobbett seems to
experience in imagining the 'female Saint' peeping at the boxer from beneath
her hood, but most often women are evoked precisely to show how alien their
presence would be in the manly world of the Fancy. B. W. Proctor, for example,
speculated in 1820 that 'if women were to attend the prize-fight how charming
might it become':

With what an air would our boxers strike, did they know that bright
eyes were looking on them! How delicately would they 'peel!' and with
what elegant indifference would they come up to 'the scratch!' The con-
sciousness in question would generate the finest feeling amongst them :
honour would ever be upper-most in their thoughts, even in a fall. 111

Proctor clearly thought that any feminine involvement would ruin boxing. Not
everyone agreed. After reluctantly attending a fight in 1818, Thomas Moore
noted in his diary that it was not as 'horrid' as he had expected; indeed, 'had
there been a proportionate mixture of women in the immense ring formed
around, it would have been a very brilliant spectacle'. 112

GENTLEMAN JACK, PROFESSOR OF PUGILISM

John Jackson became Champion of the Prize Ring in 1795 when, in a clear breach
of the rules - grabbing and pulling an opponent's hair was not permitted - he de-
feated Daniel Mendoza. A shrewd businessman, Jackson soon retired to join forces
with fencing instructor Harry Angelo in his rooms at 13, New Bond Street. As one
boxing historian put it, this initiated a new era in the 'gymnastic education of the
aristocracy. Not to have had lessons of Jackson was a reproach. To attempt a list of
his pupils would be to copy one-third of the then peerage.' 113 All the young

nobility flock to his standard,' proclaimed Eaton Stannard Barrett in 1817, 'and,
after a few months, find, with great delight, that they are matches for any drayman
in town.' 114 Pupils included the Prince Regent, who had been a fan of Jackson's since
watching him fight in Croydon in 1788. In 1821, the Prince turned to Jackson to
provide eighteen prize-fighters as ushers at his coronation. Their presence had
more than ceremonial purpose, for when George's estranged wife, the notorious
Queen Caroline, arrived at Westminster Abbey to claim her position as Consort,
the pugilists rushed to the door. William Cobbett was affronted, 'When she got to
the door, and made an attempt to enter, she was actually thrust back by the hands
of a common prize-fighter.' 115

A less demanding, but no less devoted, pupil of Jackson's was George Gordon
Byron, whose 1811 poem 'Hints from Horace' instructed that 'men unpractised in
exchanging knocks / Must go to Jackson ere they dare to box.' 116 On leaving Cam-
bridge in 1806, Byron took up boxing with great passion, initially as part of a rig-
orous regime of exercise and dieting; he quickly lost 3 1 / stone. When he moved to
London in 1808, he spent a great deal of time in Jackson's company (Thomas
Moore's Life features some of Byron's rather bossy letters to Jackson from that
time) and later visits to the capital always included a trip to the New Bond Street
rooms. 117 On 17 March 1814, for example, he noted that he had 'been sparring with
Jackson for exercise this morning, and mean to continue and renew my acquain-
tance with my muffles'.

My chest, and arms, and wind are in a very good plight, and I am not in
flesh. I used to be a hard hitter, and my arms are very long for my height
(5 feet 8/2 inches); at any rate exercise is good, and this, the severest of all;
fencing and the broad-sword never fatigued me so much. 118

Some years later, in a note to the Eleventh Canto of Don Juan, he paid tribute to
'My friend and corporeal pastor and master, John Jackson, Esquire, professor of
pugilism, who I trust still retains the strength and symmetry of his model of a
form, together with his good humour, and athletic as well as mental accomplish-
ments.' 119 Byron, whose Achilles tendons were so contracted he could only walk
on the balls of his toes and who had been reviled as 'a lame brat' by his mother,
remained, throughout his life, anxious about his own looks and an admirer of
good looks in others. 120 Although this is never mentioned in his writings, boxing
and swimming surely appealed to Byron as sports in which the impact of his lame-
ness was minimal. 121

Jackson's portrait was hung among the family pictures at Newstead Abbey,
Byron's family home, and included in a collage of boxers on his dressing screen.
The four-panel, six-foot high screen features theatrical portraits on one side and, on
the other, coloured prints of prize-fighters and fights; some reports from Boxiana
are included and some accounts of fights are handwritten. Both sequences are
arranged chronologically; the boxing sequence begins with Figg and Broughton
and ends with Jackson (illus. 18/19). 122

Byron's screen: four
panels, c, 1811-14,
popular prints
collaged onto a
wooden frame.

Detail of Byron's
screen, featuring
Tom Molineaux.

John Jackson, one of whose nicknames was 'Commander-in-Chief, may
also have been the model for John Johnson, the 'British friend' with whom Don
Juan fights the Turks in canto eight of Byron's satire. 123 This is suggested by the
description of their thrashing by 'Turkish batteries' as like a flail, / Or a good
boxer' in stanza xliii, and the ambiguous phrasing in stanza xcvn, where 'Jack'
could refer to the first or surname:

Up came John Johnson (I will not say Jack)
For that were vulgar, cold, and commonplace,
On great occasions such as an attack . . .

Johnson certainly inspires the sort of admiring devotion in Juan that Jackson
did in Byron. While Juan is a 'mere novice' at war, Johnson is 'a noble fellow'
who is frequently 'very busy without bustle'; in return, we are happy to learn,
Johnson 'really loved him in his way'. 124

Byron's interest in boxing did not stem wholly from its healthful benefits.
The glamorous demi-monde of prize-fighting also appealed. An 1807 letter
described London life as consisting of, among other diversions, 'routs, riots, balls
and boxing matches', a lifestyle that would be duplicated by Don Juan, who
passed his London afternoons 'in visits, luncheons, / Lounging and boxing'. 125

At this time, the boxing world centred on a handful of London pubs in the
back rooms of which boxers often trained, and where their managers might
meet, and dine, with wealthy backers. On retiring, many boxers opened pubs
attracting a sporting clientele with their trophies and their stories. Bob Gregson's
Castle Tavern in High Holborn opened in 1810 and its snuggery soon became an
inner sanctum for the Fancy. After Gregson was convicted for debt evasion, Tom
Belcher took over, 'skimm[ing] the cream off the Fancy', as Egan put it, for
another fourteen years. 126 After Tom Spring defeated Bill Neate, Egan noted
that 'Belcher's house, the Castle Tavern, was like a fair; Randall's was crowded
to suffocation; Holt's hadn't room for a pin; Eales' was overstocked; and Tom
Cribb's was crammed with visitors.' 127 Byron was a regular customer at all these
houses, especially Cribb's - 'Tom is an old friend of mine; I have seen some of
his best battles in my nonage', Byron noted after an evening during which he
'drank more than I like'. 128

Two of the most famous regulars at Jackson's Academy, Cribb's pub, and the
London fights, were fictional - Corinthian Tom and his country cousin, Jerry
Hawthorne, the rakish heroes of Pierce Egan's picaresque bestseller, Life in Lon-
don (1821), a work lavishly illustrated by his friends, Robert and George Cruik-
shank (George, 'not averse from using his fists in an up-and-down tussle', was
sometimes compared to the fighter Tom Spring). 129 The three men often worked
together, and between them created a distinctive 'flash' style of commentary on
Regency life (illus. 48). The next chapter will explore this style in some detail.

The appeal of Life in London lay largely in its promising to bring together
high and low life. A trip to the Royal Academy, for example, is followed by,

and juxtaposed with, one to the slums - cousin Jerry must enjoy the complete
urban experience. When John Clare read Don Juan in 1824 he wrote in his
journal that Byron's 'Hero seems a fit partner for [Egan's] Tom and Jerry'. 130
Byron himself boasted of 'eternal parties', featuring 'Jockies, Gamblers, Boxers,
Authors, parsons, andpoets ... a precious Mixture, but they go on well together.' 131
Boxing culture throve on the promise of social promiscuity. The readers of Life
in London were largely neither upper nor working class, but they could, with
Egan's help, imagine themselves mingling with members of both. At the Castle
Tavern, Egan wrote, 'You may be seated next to an m.p. without being aware
of that honour; or you may likewise rub against some noble lord without com-
mitting a breach of privilege. You may meet poets on the look-out for a hero,
artists for subjects; and boxers for customers.' 132 Readers, whether 'fire-side
heroes' or 'sprightly maidens', could, he promised, '"see Life" without receiving
a scratch.' 133

Some found this picture of social promiscuity more frightening than ap-
pealing. In Tales of a Traveller (1824), Washington Irving's Buckthorne described
a boxing match as nothing more than 'an arena, where the noble and illustrious
are jostled into familiarity with the infamous and the vulgar'. 'What, in fact, is
The Fancy itself,' he continued, 'but a chain of easy communication, extending
down form the peer to the pick-pocket, through the medium of which a man of
rank may find he has shaken hands at three removes, with the murderer on the
gibbet?' 134

For Byron the effect of moving between high and low life had psychological
as well as social consequences. In a journal entry for 23 November 1813, largely
preoccupied with feeling 'wound up' after an unpleasant dream, he noted the
therapeutic effects of such jaunts:

I must not dream again; - it spoils even reality. I will go out of doors and
see what the fog will do for me. Jackson has been here: the boxing world
much as usual; - but the club increases. I shall dine at Crib's tomorrow.
I like energy - even animal energy - of all kinds; and I have need of
both mental and corporeal. I have not dined out, nor indeed, at all,
lately: have heard no music - have seen nobody. Now for a plunge -
high life and low life. Amant alterna Camaana; [The Muses love alternat-
ing verses.] 135

An insistence on the value of alternating between the mental and corpo-
real, or more, an insistence on the necessity of the physical for 'the ethereal', re-
curs throughout his notebooks. On 19 April 1814, he recorded having spent four
days lovesick and alone, except, it emerges, for daily visits from Jackson:

I have sparred for exercise (windows open) with Jackson an hour daily,
to attenuate and keep up the ethereal part of me. The more violent the
fatigue the better my spirits for the rest of the day . . . To-day I have

boxed an hour - written an ode to Napoleon Buonaparte - copied it -
eaten six biscuits -drunk four bottles of soda water -redde away the
rest of my time - besides giving poor [Webster?] a world of advice on
this mistress of his . . . 136

The detailed nature of Byron's accounting - including the perennial dieter's
awareness of the precise number of biscuits he has consumed - suggests that he
did not leave the balance of high and low, physical and emotional, to chance. On
the day of his mother's funeral in 1811, Byron called for his page to bring his box-
ing gloves for his daily exercise rather than follow the coffin to the family vault.
The sparring that day, the page recalled, was more violent than usual. 137 After
his beloved brother Tom died in 1818, a distraught John Keats was taken to a
prize-fight at Crawley Downs by well-meaning friends. Pugilism, the 'Regency
answer to grief, stoical and worldly', did not seem to work in his case. 138

Pugilism and Style

All the great poets should have been fighters. Take Keats and Shelley,

for an example. They were pretty good poets, but they died young.

You know why? Because they didn't train.

Cassius Clay, 1964 1

Byron consistently affected hauteur about those who took writing too seriously;
a gesture characteristic of what Christopher Ricks terms his 'flippant lordli-
ness'. 2 In an 1821 journal entry, he noted that his mother, Madame de Stael and
the Edinburgh Review had all, at various times, compared him to Rousseau. A
page then follows in which he explains why he cannot see 'any point of resem-
blance'. There are many points of contrast, and some interestingly odd
conjunctions. The first comes in Byron's initial distinction - 'he wrote prose, I
verse; he was of the people, I the Aristocracy'. Prose then is aligned with 'the
people'; poetry with the Aristocracy. The revelation that 'he liked Botany, I like
flowers, and herbs, and trees, but know nothing of their pedigrees' further
damns prose for its utilitarianism. Rousseau is little more than an Enlighten-
ment taxonomist. From then on, it is a short step (a mere colon) from 'He wrote
with hesitation and care, I with rapidity and rarely with pains' to an account of
what 'better' things an aristocrat might find to do:

He could never ride nor swim 'nor was cunning of the fence', I am an
excellent swimmer, a decent though not at all dashing rider . . . sufficient
offence . . . not a bad boxer when I could keep my temper, which was
difficult, but which I strove to do ever since I knocked down Mr Purling
and put his knee-pad out (with the gloves on) in Angelo's and Jackson's
rooms in 1806 during the sparring . . .

In a journal entry of 1813, written before going to dinner at Tom Cribb's with
Jackson, Byron complained that 'the mighty stir made about scribbling and
scribes' was a 'sign of effeminacy, degeneracy and weakness. Who would write,
who had anything better to do?' 3

Byron's concern with class is evident in the scorn he expressed five years later
for Leigh Hunt's reference to poetry as a 'profession': 'I thought that Poetry was
an art, or an attribute, and not a profession.' 4 There was one profession, however,
which Byron admired unreservedly. Pugilism was an activity in which the bound-
aries between professional and amateur were clear. Nonchalance was not there-
fore required, and proper training was desirable. Byron could train as hard as he
liked to box, without anyone suspecting that he was not a gentleman. And even
he thought that there were literary activities which required a comparable pro-
fessional attitude. In 'Hints from Horace' (1811), Byron lambasted the Edinburgh
Review critic Francis Jeffrey as unqualified to discuss his poems, suggesting that
no boxer would presume to enter the ring without proper training. 5

In this chapter, I shall explore some of the ways in which, during the early
decades of the nineteenth century, writers and artists found in pugilism not
only a subject-matter, but the basis for a method.

LITERARY FLASH

Writing about pugilism reached its zenith in the 1820s, at a time when the sport
itself had begun to wane. At the forefront of the fad was undoubtedly Pierce
Egan's Boxiana; or Sketches of Ancient and Modern Pugilism. The first volume
appeared in 1812, followed by a second in 1818, a third in 1821, and a new series
in two volumes in 1828 and 1829. His round-by-round accounts of fights be-
tween Mendoza and Humphries, or Cribb and Molineaux, are still the major
sources quoted today. In 1824, he began editing a weekly paper, Pierce Egan's
Life in London and Sporting Guide, which later developed into the famous sport-
ing journal, Bell's Life in London. What distinguished Egan's work from other
boxing histories of the period (such as William Oxberry's 1812 Pancratia) was its
great verve and distinctive style. Dubbed 'the Great Lexicographer of the Fancy',
Egan did not just reflect the language of the Fancy, he created it. 6 His 1822 edi-
tion of Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue included many
of his own coinings.

Egan's writing is characterized by a lively mixture of elaborate metaphors,
dreadful puns and awful verse. In this passage from 'The Fancy on the Road to
Moulsey Hurst', aided by a lavish supply of commas, italics and capitals, he
describes a particular type of 'fancier':

His heart is up to his mouth every moment for fear he should befloored,
he is anxious to look like a swell, if 'tis only for a day: he has therefore
borrowed a prad to come it strong, without recollecting, that to be a top-
ofthe-tree buck requires something more than the furnishing hand of a
tailor, or the assistance of the groom. It should also be remembered,
that although the Corinthian at times descend hastily down a few
steps, to take a peep into the lower regions of society, to mark their
habits and customs, yet many of them can as hastily regain their

eminency, as the player throws off his dress, and appear in reality -

a GENTLEMAN. 7

The horseman's flash style is an unsuccessful attempt at assuming a higher class
position - his gig is 'hired, his horse ('prad') borrowed, and his clothes reflect the
taste of his tailor. The enterprise is doomed, Egan suggests; it is obvious to any-
one really flash, really knowing, that he is an impostor, an 'empty bounce'. The
Corinthian 's 'mark[ing]' of 'the habits and customs' of a lower class is not,
however, subject to the same disparagement. He does not cling to his disguise,
but readily, 'hastily', throws it off to resume his status. Slumming is temporary
and permissible while social climbing, which strives for permanent change,
is not.

Class mobility was a key element in the spread of boxing and its idiom dur-
ing this period. The early nineteenth century saw the establishment of numer-
ous magazines, many of which catered for a growing 'army of bachelor clerks
and lawyer's apprentices' whose aspiration to gentility often manifested itself
as an interest in traditionally aristocratic pastimes. 8 Flash slang involved the
middle-class imitation of an upper-class imitation of lower-class idioms. 9

The Tory Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine was particularly keen on
traditional squirish activities such as pugilism and published numerous reports,
stories and articles on the sport. (In 1822 it declared itself 'a real Magazine of
mirth, misanthropy, wit, wisdom, folly, fiction, fun, festivity, theology, bruising
and thingumbob'. 10 ) Most notable were the boxing writings of John Wilson,
Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University, writing as Blackwood's
fictional editor, 'Christopher North'. Wilson had boxed while a student at
Oxford - his friend Thomas De Quincey recalled that 'not a man, who could
either 'give' or 'take', but boasted to have punished, or to have been punished by,
Wilson ofMallens [Magdalen]' - and often depicted himself in Blackwood's as a
kind of critical pugilist. 11 But while Hugh MacDiarmid later wrote scathingly of
Wilson as 'the most extraordinary exponent' of the kind of 'verbiage' which is
intended 'simply to batter the hearer into a pulpy state of vague acquiescence',
others relished both the verbiage and the battering. 12 'I cannot express . . . the
heavenliness of associations connected with such articles as Professor Wilson's,'
wrote Branwell Bronte in 1835, 'read and re-read while a little child, with all their
poetry of language and divine flights into that visionary realm of imagination'. 13

One of Wilson's finest flights of imagination can be found in the May 1820
issue of Blackwood's in the form of a '"Luctus" on the Death of Sir Daniel Don-
nelly, Late Champion of Ireland.' The prize-fighter had died after a particularly
heavy drinking session. Wilson included copiously footnoted tributes from
imagined scholars in Greek, Hebrew and Latin, along with poems in the style of
Byron and Wordsworth. While Byron is perhaps too obvious a target, and 'Child
Daniel' not particularly funny, the 'extract from my great auto-biographical
poem' contributed by W. W. is sharply attentive to both the Lake Poet's style and
his distance from the world (and slang) of the Fancy:

. . . Yea, even I,
Albeit, who never 'ruffian'd' in the ring,
Nor know of 'challenge', save the echoing hills;
Nor 'fibbing', save that poesy doth feign,
Nor heard his fame, but as the mutterings
Of clouds contentious on Helvellyn's side,
Distant, yet deep, aguise a strange regret,
And mourn Donnelly - Honourable Sir Daniel: - 14

Wordsworth enjoyed a rare immunity to 'boximania'. 15 By the 1820s, it had
become almost unthinkable in certain circles not to understand boxing slang or
the 'flash'. The oed cites the first instance of 'flash' being used to mean 'dashing,
ostentatious, swaggering, "swell"' in 1785: the slightly later meaning of 'belong-
ing to, connected with, or resembling, the class of sporting men, esp. the
patrons of the ring' dates from 1808. But the two meanings seem related. 'A flash
man upon the town' is surely swaggering and dandyish, as well as knowledge-
able about prize-fighting. A third, related, meaning is 'knowing, wide-awake,
"smart", "fly"'. Egan opens Boxiana with a footnote explaining the Fancy 'as
many of our readers may not be flash to the above term'. But it seems likely, as
Egan must surely have realized, that if a reader was flash to 'flash', he would be
flash to 'the Fancy'. 16

Keats's description of Byron's Don Juan as 'a flash poem' seems to draw on
all these meanings; few poems are so knowing, swaggering, and connected to
practitioners and patrons of the ring. 17 Canto xi presents an encounter between
Juan, newly arrived in London from Spain, and an assailant called Tom, 'full
flash, all fancy', whom Juan shoots and kills. '0 Jack, I'm floor'd' are his final
words. Byron then devotes a stanza to the memory of Tom, 'so prime, so swell,
so nutty, and so knowing'. Tom would have understood such flash language,
but Juan does not even understand standard English. 18 A note is supplied, which
refuses to explain anything because, Byron says, 'the advance of science and of
language has rendered it unnecessary to translate the above good and true Eng-
lish, spoken in its original purity by the select mobility and their patrons'. He
directs any readers who 'require a traduction' to Gentleman Jackson. 19 In 1808,
John Cam Hobhouse commented that his friend had been 'deeply admitted into
the penetralia Jacksoniana'; some years later, in his Life of Lord Byron, Thomas
Moore recalled his amusement at observing 'how perfectly familiar with the
annals of "The Ring", and with all the most recondite phraseology of "the
Fancy", was the sublime poet of Childe Harold'. 20 (Byron's attachment to boxing
and its language was, Moore felt, one of his several 'boyish tastes'.)

Gary Dyer argues that Byron and his friends were attracted to the Fancy's
dialect because it 'was fashioned to hide meanings from outsiders'. 21 Indeed as
Thomas Moore put it in the preface to his satirical poem 'Tom Crib's Memor-
ial to Congress', flash 'was invented, and is still used, like the cipher of the diplo-
matists, for purposes of secrecy'. 22 What that secrecy meant to upper-class

'fanciers' like Byron is a matter for speculation. Dyer reads Byron's secrets as
always ultimately referring back to sodomy. Byron's biographer, Benita Eissler,
maintains that Jackson and Angelo were 'rumoured' to be lovers as well as busi-
ness partners, and that the Academy served as a cover for illicit meetings. 23
While there is no direct evidence for this, it is certainly true that Byron's London
circle was interested in sodomy as well as in boxing.

But a secret language surely holds other attractions. One is exclusivity, or,
in the age of the beginnings of commercial journalism, the pretence of exclu-
sivity. In the course of a general denunciation of the Fives Court as a 'college of
scoundrelism' in 1824, Washington Irving's Buckthorne asks, 'what is the slang
language of "The Fancy" but a jargon by which fools and knaves commune and
understand each other, and enjoy a kind of superiority over the uninitiated?' 24
Robert Southey's fictional Don Espriella, 'writing to the uninitiated' back in
Spain in 1807, certainly takes great pleasure in explaining such terms as 'bot-
tom', 'a pleasant fighter' and 'much punished'. 25 In 1818, however, phrases such
as these remain untranslated by Byron, although he tells us that only what he
calls 'the select mobility and their patrons' will understand; only they speak
'good and true English'. Byron's play on 'select nobility' does more than suggest
that boxers are like noblemen. His footnote also mocks the widespread ten-
dency to explain flash language in footnotes. By freely coining his own new
phrase, 'select mobility', Byron is attacking jargon's claim to provide unique
access to knowledge.

Many other poets made comparable play with boxing language. The narra-
tor of Henry Luttrell's Advice to Julia: A Letter in Rhyme (1820) stops a perfectly
adequate description of a fight to apologise for his lack of pugilistic vocabulary:

But hold. - Such prowess to describe

Asks all the jargon of the tribe;

And though enough to serve my turn

From 'Boxiana' I might learn,

Or borrow from an ampler store

In the bright page of Thomas Moore . . . 26

Thomas Moore is an interesting choice of source, for he much disliked boxing.
Nevertheless, Moore too sought out the company of Jackson, and once attended
a fight (which was 'altogether not so horrid as I expected') for the sake of his
verse; in order 'to pick up as much of the fiashfrom authority, as possible'. 27
Although he 'got very little out of Jackson', he went on to write two popular
poems on pugilistic themes.

John Hamilton Reynolds, on the other hand, loved boxing (he was the box-
ing correspondent, as well as theatre critic, for the London Magazine). As a young
man he regularly attended fights and sparred, while writing poetry and work-
ing as a clerk in an insurance office. The Fancy (1820) is semi-autobiography dis-
guised as the fictional biography of Peter Corcoran, boxing groupie and 'Student

of Law' (the name was borrowed from an eighteenth-century fighter and had the
advantage of sharing an acronym with the Pugilistic Club). Corcoran is also a
poet, and much of The Fancy consists of his poems: 'pugilism', the editor notes,
'engrossed nearly all his thoughts, and coloured all his writings'. The writing is
full of cringe-worthy pugilistic puns. Consider, for example, one of the 'Stanzas
to Kate, On Appearing Before Her After a Casual "Turn Up"':

You know I love sparring and poesy, Kate,

And scarcely care whether I'm hit at, or kiss'd; -
You know that Spring equally makes me elate,

With the blow of a flower, and the blow of a fist.

'Spring' is asterisked, and the fictional editor writes, 'I am not sure whether Mr.
Corcoran alluded here to the season, or the pugilist of this name.' 28

Such pompous comments work to distance the reader from the editor as
well as from Corcoran. In the preface, for example, he notes that 'this style of
writing is not good - it is too broken, irresolute, and rugged; and it is too anx-
ious in its search after smart expressions to be continuous or elevated in its sub-
stance'. 29 By the book's end, we become aware both of the compulsive appeal of
such 'rugged' and punning language - particularly as a way of deflating the
'elevated' discourse of much poetry; again Wordsworth seems a target here -
and of its repetitive limitations.

A wider look at the literature of the 1820s (in particular magazine litera-
ture) shows just how pervasive an addiction to flash really was. Thomas De
Quincey, for example, savoured its use in a variety of contexts, some of which
were more apposite than others. Boxing slang works particularly well in a July
1828 attack on 'The Pretensions of Phrenology', because both boxing and
phrenology are interested in the human skull. Medical and sporting jargon are
set against each other in a description of the phrenologists who, 'after receiving
a few hard thumps on ihefrontal sinus and the cerebellum, . . . were fain to have
recourse to shifting and shuffling; bobbing aside their brain-boxes'. In the debate
De Quincey champions the philosopher Sir William Hamilton, who we soon
learn is no 'shy fighter', no 'flincher, a 'tolerably hard hitter and 'rather an ugly
customer: 'the chanceried nobs of his two antagonists exhibit indisputable proofs
of his pugilistic prowess, and of the punishment he is capable of administering'.
And this is only the opening paragraph. 30

Later that same month, De Quincey became a co-editor of the Edinburgh
Evening Post, contributing the latest news from London and writing many short
editorial notices. One addressed a dispute between two Edinburgh intellectuals
on the teaching of Greek at Scottish universities with the promise of organizing
'a set-to ... in our Publishing Office, between three and four' on any day of their
choosing. 31 De Quincey and his co-editor, the Reverend Andrew Crichton, did
not get on, and Crichton's own articles often contained digs at De Quincey 's
'addiction' to metaphors drawn from the 'vile' sport of boxing. The 'defence of

. . . pugilism' is 'very shallow', and 'monstrously inconsistent with Christian
principles', he wrote in a review of Blackwood's; an author who resorts to 'the
slang of the fancy' has 'a rough lump of the brute in him, which ought to be cut
out by the scalpel'. 32 The surgical metaphor is itself an implicit rebuke to such
authors.

HARD WORDS AND HARD BLOWS IN HAZLITT

In essays on topics ranging from parliamentary debate to sculpture to theatre to
boxing, William Hazlitt talked about blows. The Reformation struck a 'death-
blow' at 'scarlet vice and bloated hypocrisy'; William Godwin's Enquiry concern-
ing Political Justice dealt a 'blow to the philosophical mind of the country';
Wordsworth's 'popular, inartificial style gets rid (at a blow) of . . . all the high
places of poetry.' 33 'On Shakespeare and Milton' (1818) reads like a comparison
of the styles of two boxers rather than two writers. Shakespeare's blows are 'rapid
and devious', 'the stroke like the lightning's, is sure as it is sudden'. Milton, on the
other hand, 'always labours, and almost always succeeds'. 34 'Milton has great
gusto. He repeats his blow twice; grapples with and exhausts his subject.' 35

And it is not only poems which deal blows. In an 1826 essay 'On the Prose-
Style of Poets', Hazlitt asserts categorically that 'every word should be a blow:
every thought should instantly grapple with its fellow'. 'Weight', 'precision' and
'contact' are needed to strike the best blow, and produce the best prose. Some
writers display some of these virtues; few all. Byron's prose, for example, is
'heavy, laboured and coarse: he tries to knock some one down with the butt-
end of every line'. 3

Hazlitt foregrounds the relationship between fighting and writing styles in
an 1821 essay on William Cobbett. The essay begins by comparing the radical
politician to the boxer Tom Cribb. Initially the comparison seems to be based
on the fact of Cobbett 's devotion to pugilism and his self-representation as,
like Cribb, a living embodiment of John Bull. 37 Hazlitt then moves on to mat-
ters of style:

His blows are as hard, and he himself is impenetrable. One has no no-
tion of him as making use of a fine pen, but a great mutton-fist; his style
stuns his readers, and he 'fillips the ear of the public with a three-man
beetle'. 38

The last phrase is a quotation from Henry iv part 2, and its inclusion, alongside
sporting analogy, is a favourite technique of Hazlitt 's. In the pages that follow, the
metaphor is developed more fully. Cobbett has a 'pugnacious disposition, that
must have an antagonist power to contend with', but this is a 'bad propensity' since:

If his blows were straightforward and steadily directed to the same
object, no unpopular Minister could live before him; instead of which

he lays about right and left, impartially and remorselessly, makes a
clear stage, has all the ring to himself, and then runs out of it when he
should stand his ground. 39

The essay concludes by shifting the comparison. Cobbett is now no longer Eng-
land's hero, Tom Cribb, but 'Big Ben', Benjamin Brain, known to be 'bullying
and cowardly'. Not so tall but very stocky, Brain had defeated the long-reigning
champion Tom Johnson in 1791 in 'a most tremendous battle'. 40 Johnson had
been a favourite of the fashionable Fancy, and was even reputed to have worn
pink laces in his boxing boots. 41 Big Ben was less gentlemanly. He badly dam-
aged Johnson's nose in the second round, and fought on regardless, even when,
in his distress, Johnson soon after broke a finger on a ring post. For many com-
mentators this victory marks the end of the first era of British boxing, when
men stood toe-to-toe and punched away without much technique. For Hazlitt
to compare Cobbett to Big Ben is to insult not just his bravery, but also his skill
and intelligence. Cobbett, he concludes, is 'a Big Ben in politics, who will fall
upon others and crush them by his weight, but is not prepared for resistance,
and is soon staggered by a few smart blows'. 42

Hazlitt 's most sustained comparison of fighting and writing can be found
in 'Jack Tars', an essay originally published in 1826 under the title 'English
and Foreign Manners'. 'There are two things that an Englishman under-
stands,' Hazlitt begins, 'hard words and hard blows,' and he goes on to define
the English character in terms of a sort of aggressive empiricism. French
audiences appreciate Racine and Moliere, whose 'dramatic dialogue is frothy
verbiage'; English audiences prefer to watch boxing, where 'every Englishman
feels his power to give and take blows increased by sympathy', or, what is put
forward as its equivalent, English plays whose dialogue 'constantly clings to
the concrete and has a purchase upon matter'. Englishmen, in short, perceive
the world through violent opposition. This makes them feel 'alive' and also
manly. 'The English are not a nation of women ... it cannot be denied they
are a pugnacious set.' 43

A complex alignment of qualities is being made. Some are familiar -pug-
nacity, masculinity and Englishness; new to the mix is empiricism, defined
as the pugnacious, masculine, English way of perceiving the world. The Eng-
lish 'require the heavy, hard, and tangible only, something for them to grap-
ple with and resist, to try their strength and their unimpressibility upon'. 44
English empiricism is, in Hazlitt 's terms, less concerned with what John
Locke called secondary qualities (colour, taste and smell are, Hazlitt main-
tained, of more interest to the French), than 'the heavy, hard and tangible'
primary qualities. 45 The solid materialism of Englishness ('our lumpish clay')
is a favourite theme of Hazlitt 's, especially in opposition to light French live-
liness. English criticism of French culture is difficult, he argued, because 'the
strength of the blow is always defeated by the very insignificance and want
of resistance in the object'. 46

'The same images and trains of thought stick by me', Hazlitt wrote in his
'Farewell to Essay-Writing' (1828). 47 This is clearly true, but his use of boxing
idiom and metaphor was not an unthinking tick. Indeed, it serves much more
various and complex purposes in his work than it does in that of any other writer
of the time. Contemporary discussions of Hazlitt's language, however, rarely
went beyond politically motivated condemnation or praise. Blackwood's argued
that prize-fighters were 'downright Tories' and therefore belonged in Black-
wood's, but other journals were more interested in suggesting that neither Ha-
zlitt or pugilists were suitable for their polite middle-class readers. The New
Edinburgh Review was 'sorry to say' that some of Hazlitt's allusions were 'of the
lowest and most shockingly indelicate description'. It joined the Quarterly
Review in dismissing him as a 'Slang-Whanger':

We utterly loathe him where he seems most at home, namely, among
pugilists, and wagerers, and professional tennis-players, passing cur-
rent their vain glorious slang. We protest against allusions to the very
existence of the Bens and Bills and Jacks and Jems and Joes of 'the ring',
in any printed page above the destination of the ale-bench; but to have
their nauseous vocabulary defiling the language of a printed book, reg-
ularly entered at Stationers' Hall, and destined for the use of men and
women of education, taste, and delicacy, is quite past endurance . . .
we strenuously protest against this bang up style, this 'fancy diction',
in a series of 'original essays'. Our conclusion, at least, is irresistible, -
the author has not kept good company . . . 48

The anti-Cockney snobbery of the Tory journals would not have surprised Ha-
zlitt, nor would the qualified support of John Hamilton Reynolds, author of The
Fancy, and boxing correspondent of the liberal London Magazine. Indeed
Reynolds's only criticism of the second volume of Table Talk - that Hazlitt's
points are put forward too directly- is itself made in 'fancy diction':

The style of this book is singularly nervous [i.e. sinewy, strong and vig-
orous] and direct, and seems to aim at mastering its subject by dint of
mere hard hitting. There is no such thing as manoeuvring for a blow.
The language strikes out, and if the intention is not fulfilled, the blow
is repeated until the subject falls. 49

Fascinated by boxing's metaphorical possibilities, Hazlitt wrote only one
essay on the thing itself, 'The Fight' (1822). One of the most influential and fre-
quently anthologized pieces on boxing, the essay encompasses many of the
themes already discussed - style, Englishness, masculinity, the material world
- and presents them in a manner at once casual and densely considered.

Consider the epigraph, which rewrites Hamlet's musings on what he hopes
to accomplish by putting on a play for Claudius's benefit (or punishment):

— The fight, the fight's the thing,

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. 50

Hazlitt's substitution of 'fight' for 'play' has two implications: first, that a fight
is a play, a kind of performance; secondly, that this particular fight/play is a per-
formance from which something is to be learnt. Hamlet's play will catch the
king's conscience. What about the fight Hazlitt witnesses? The contest is first of
all a contest of performed styles; styles that we have come to think of as French
and English. The champion, Bill Hickman, the Gasman, is 'light, vigorous, elas-
tic', his skin glistening in the sun like a panther's hide'; his unfavoured chal-
lenger, Bill Neate, is 'great, heavy, clumsy', with long arms 'like two
sledge-hammers'. At one point, 'Neate seemed like a lifeless lump of flesh and
bone, round which the Gasman's blows played with the rapidity of electricity or
lightning.' The two men also differ in personality. Hickman is a Homeric
boaster, who arrives to fight 'like the cock-of-the-walk'. Hazlitt is more judg-
mental than Homer, however, and complains that Hickman 'strutted about
more than became a hero'. Neate is modest and celebrates his eventual victory
'without any appearance of arrogance'.

In general, though, both men wonderfully exemplify courage and en-
durance. But of what kind? Classical comparison casts Neate as Ajax to Hick-
man's Diomed, Hector to his Achilles. The fight itself amply confirms the 'high
and heroic state of man'. It reminds Hazlitt of the 'dark encounter' between
clouds over the Caspian, in Milton's Paradise Lost, as Satan faces Sin and Death
at hell's gates. 51 And yet the life actually lived during a fight is nasty, brutish,
and (relatively) short. The fighter's triumph is not only transitory, but in essence
banal ('The eyes were filled with blood, the nose streamed blood, the mouth
gaped blood'), and invariably surreptitious (like a 1990s rave, the fight between
Hickman and Neate took place, at the shortest possible notice, in a field near
Newbury). Could it be that the literary form best suited to this brief battle was
not epic poetry, but the essay?

Hazlitt's essay, like the preparations made for the fight by participants and
spectators alike, is much ado, if not exactly about nothing, then about some-
thing as fleeting as it is pungent. He finds it difficult enough to get himself out
of London. Missing the mail coach prompts a self-reproach that seems excessive,
'I had missed it as I missed everything else, by my own absurdity.' Finally, how-
ever, he is on his way, and as he puts on a great coat, his mood improves. Leav-
ing London behind, he enters another world with its own distinctive rules and
customs. Joe Toms walks up Chancery Lane 'with that quick jerk and impatient
stride which distinguishes a lover of the fancy'; in the coach to the fight Ha-
zlitt meets a man 'whose costume bespoke him one of the fancy'; on the way
back he describes his friend, Pigott, as being 'dressed in character for the occa-
sion, or like one of the fancy; that is, with a double portion of great coats, clogs,
and overhauls'. It is only on the journey home that Hazlitt himself is properly
'dressed in character'; Pigott supplies him with a 'genteel drab great coat and

green silk handkerchief (which I must say became me exceedingly).' The cos-
tume gives him the confidence to deride a group of 'Goths and Vandals . . . not
real flash-men, but interlopers, noisy pretenders, butchers from Tothillfields,
brokers from Whitechapel' who brashly interrupt a discussion of the respec-
tive merits of roasted fowl and mutton-chops. The essay ends with him reluc-
tantly returning these clothes. So far, so Pierce Egan.

Like Egan, Hazlitt relished flash language. 'The Fight' is littered with
italicized idioms: 'turn-up', 'swells', 'the scratch', 'pluck'. But the great literary
virtue of an essay is that it does not have to stick to one kind of performance.
Hazlitt rapidly expands his repertoire of allusion beyond Homer, Shakespeare,
and Milton. His allusions politicize pugilism. They enhance its democratic
credentials. Riding in the coach with Toms, he recites, 'in an involuntary fit of
enthusiasm', some lines of Spenser on delight and liberty; Toms promptly
translates these 'into the vulgate' as meaning 'Going to see a fight'. The connection
between boxing, sentiment and (political as well as psychological) liberty is
reinforced on the return journey, when Pigott reads out passages from
Rousseau's NewEloise. And if literature can enhance an appreciation of boxing,
boxing also has literary potential. Hazlitt is enchanted by the conversation of a
man he meets in the pub, and tells him that he talks as well as Cobbett writes.
Perhaps in response to his critics, Hazlitt makes it clear that sporting interests
are not the preserve of Tory squires; middle-class radicals can make them urban,
modern and sophisticated.

Hazlitt 's pleasure in joining this convivial, masculine world is palpable.
This had been his first fight, he announces at the beginning of the essay, 'yet it
more than answered my expectations'. But what were those expectations? In
'On Going A Journey', published four months earlier, Hazlitt had written of the
desire to 'forget the town and all that is in it'. In the town was his landlady's
daughter, Sarah Walker, whose charms and unfaithfulness form the subject of
an autobiographical meditation, Liber Amoris (1823). She is never mentioned
here, but Hazlitt does occasionally (and rather cryptically) evoke his misery.
The essay begins by dedicating what follows to 'Ladies'. He compliments 'the
fairest of the fair' and the loveliest of the lovely' and entreats them to 'notice the
exploits of the brave'. But a rather sour note emerges when he urges ladies to
consider 'how many more ye kill with poison baits than ever fell in the ring'.
These words gain a poignant resonance when we consider that an early draft of
the essay contained a passage about his lovelorn wretchedness. David Bromwich
argues that an awareness of this passage reveals 'the under-plot' of the essay
and explains its 'impetuous pace' and 'arbitrary high spirits'. 52

'The Fight' tells the story of a man who is almost successful at escaping him-
self. If romance is a 'hysterica passio, the Fancy is 'the most practical of all things',
and its emphasis on mundane facts - its thoroughly English empiricism - dis-
tracts him most of the time. 53 'The fancy are not men of imagination', he is
pleased to note. Occasionally, though, he slips back into self-pity. After describ-
ing the pleasures of the training regime, he cannot help adding:

'Is this life not more sweet than mine?' I was going to say; but I will not
libel any life by comparing it to mine, which is (at the date these pres-
ents) bitter as coloquintida and the dregs of aconitum!

But such passages of lovesick rhetoric (passages common in Liber Amoris) are in-
frequent. As long as he can talk of boxing and mutton-chops, love and London
can be kept at bay:

A stranger takes his hue and character from the time and place. He is
a part of the furniture and costume of an inn ... I associate nothing
with my travelling companion but present objects and passing events.
In his ignorance of me and my affairs, I in a manner forget myself. 54

Hazlitt's language of the blow provided him with a means to compare poets
and politicians to athletes and (democratically) to judge one against the other. 55
The 'blows' of John Cavanagh, the fives-player, for example, were 'not undecided
and ineffectual', unlike Coleridge's 'wavering' prose. 56 Hazlitt also judged his own
work by the standard of sport, and sometimes found it lacking. 'What is there
that I can do as well as this?' he once asked on observing some Indian jugglers.
'Nothing', was his reply. 'I have always had this feeling of the inefficacy and slow
progress of intellectual compared to mechanical excellence, and it has always made
me somewhat dissatisfied.' 57 'I have a much greater ambition to be the best racket-
player, than the best prose-writer of the age.' 58 But most of the time, Hazlitt did
believe that prose could eventually achieve its own excellence, comparable (among
other things) to relation between parts in the Elgin marbles; 'one part being given,
another cannot be otherwise than it.' 59 'The Fight' ends with a 'p.s.', in which Ha-
zlitt agrees with his friend Toms's description of the fight as 'a complete thing'.
The last sentence - 'I hope he will relish my account of it' - suggests that the essay
is consciously striving to be something equally 'complete', something in which all
the parts harmoniously create a whole (however ephemeral).

SCULPTING AND PAINTING THE BOXERS

In the same month that 'The Fight' appeared, Hazlitt published the first of three
essays on the Elgin Marbles. His remarks there, and elsewhere, directly attack
Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses (1769-1790), which argued that the beauty of
a work of art was 'general and intellectual': 'the sight never beheld it, nor has the
hand expressed it: it is an idea residing in the breast of the artist'. 60 On this
view, the artist is completely divorced from the craftsman who works with his
eyes, hands and materials. Hazlitt, on the other hand, emphasized the ways in
which art resembled craft and sport - and in all these spheres genius could
emerge. One of the pleasures of painting, he maintained, was that, unlike writ-
ing, it 'exercises the body' and requires 'a continued and steady exertion of
muscular power'. The best paintings, and sculptures, were those in which the

muscular power of both sitter and artist remain apparent. The Elgin Marbles 'do
not seem to be the outer surface of a hard and immovable block of marble, but
to be actuated by an internal machinery'; in Hogarth's pictures, 'every feature
and muscle is put into full play.' Both are 'the reverse of still life'; both are com-
parable to the 'harmonious, flowing, varied prose' of the essayist. 61

Hazlitt frequently included Hogarth in his pantheon of English geniuses, all
of whom rejected notions of the ideal in order to grapple with matter as it is
and who defined beauty in democratic and empirical terms. 'The eye alone must
determine us in our choice of what is most pleasing to itself,' Hogarth wrote in
The Analysis of Beauty (1753), and in that choice, sports fans have at least as good
an eye as sculptors or anatomists:

Almost everyone is farther advanced in the knowledge of this specula-
tive part of proportion that he imagines; especially he hath been inter-
ested in the success of them; and the better he is acquainted with the
nature of the exercise itself, still the better the judge he becomes of the
figure that is to perform it.

In terms that would be echoed in the twentieth century by Bertolt Brecht and
Ezra Pound, Hogarth argued against aesthetic contemplation as a disinterested
activity. The more interested the spectator is (by which he presumably means
the more money he has wagered) the better his judgment is.

For this reason, no sooner are two boxers stript to fight, but even a
butcher, thus skill'd, shews himself a considerable critic in proportion;
and on this sort of judgment often gives, or takes the odds, at bare sight
only of the combatants. I have heard a blacksmith harangue like an
anatomist, or sculptor, on the beauty of a boxer's figure, tho' not per-
haps in the same terms . . .

Too many contemporary artists, Hogarth maintained, learn about the human
body by looking at sculpture (particularly classical sculpture) rather than by
looking at people.

I firmly believe, that one of our common proficients in the athletic art,
would be able to instruct and direct the best sculptor living, (who hath
not seen, or is wholly ignorant of this exercise) in what would give the
statue of an English-boxer, a much better proportion, as to character,
than is to be seen, even in the famous group of antique boxers, (or as
some call them, Roman wrestlers) so much admired to this day. 62

Hogarth is referring to a sculpture, now knows as 'The Wrestlers', which
was much praised and studied by the English Academicians, and formed the
basis for an extensive discussion of muscles in both Joshua Reynolds's Tenth

Discourse (1780) and John Flaxman's Lectures on Sculpture (1829). 63 Small bronze
copies were widely disseminated. 64 In order to understand and thus represent
human movement, Flaxman argued, the sculptor must understand anatomy,
geometry and mechanics:

The forced action of the boxers renders the muscular configuration of
their shoulders so different in appearance from moderate action and
states of rest, that we derive a double advantage from the anatomical
consideration of their forms: first, we shall learn the cause of each par-
ticular form, and, secondly, we shall be convinced how rationally and
justly the ancients copied nature. 65

Hogarth, meanwhile, had looked to Figg, Broughton and George Taylor as
his models. Two years before writing the Analysis, he had produced a series of
drawings of the dying Taylor (supposedly intended for his tombstone),
including Death giving George Taylor a Cross-Buttock and George Taylor Breaking
the Ribs of Death (illus. 20). But it was Figg ('more of a slaughtererthan ... a neat,
finished pugilist') who especially appealed to Hogarth, not only as an exemplar
of English vigour and honesty, but also as a fellow modern urban professional. 66
Figg appeared in several of Hogarth's satirical paintings and prints: in
Southwark Fair (1732) he sits grimly upon a blind horse in the right-hand corner,
in A Midnight Modern Conversation (1733) he is sprawled drunkenly in the
foreground, and in plate two of The Rake's Progress (1735), 'Surrounded by Artists
and Professors', he is pushed into the background by a dandyish French fencing
master. 67

William Hogarth,
George Taylor's Epi-
taph: George Taylor
Breaking the Ribs of
Death, pen and ink
over pencil and
chalk, c. 1750.

Fifty years on, boxing was much more respectable than it had been in Hog-
arth's day, and Hazlitt noted approvingly that the actor Edmund Kean was not
ashamed to admit to 'borrow[ing] . . . from the last efforts of Painter in his fight
with Oliver' in his portrayal of Richard ill's final moments. 68 Next door to the
Fives Court, retired prize-fighter Bill Richmond ran the Horse and Dolphin, a
pub where he was said to have initiated the fashion of sparring bare-chested in
order that spectators could admire the muscular development of the fighters.
Various members of the nearby Royal Academy, including Benjamin Haydon
and the President, Joseph Farington, frequented the Fives Court and Horse and
Dolphin, but more often the boxers posed at the Academy's life classes. 69 Far-
ington's diary for 19 June 1808 records a visit to the home of his friend Dr
Anthony Carlisle, soon to be elected Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy,
where the company were presented with 'Gregson, the Pugilist, stripped naked
to be exhibited to us on acct. of the fineness of His form '. Farington's approach
is not that of Hogarth, or Hazlitt. The real is only interesting in its relation to the
ideal. Gregson the pugilist quickly becomes Gregson the anatomical specimen,
the classical approximation:

All admired the beauty of His proportions from the Knee or rather from
the waist upwards, including His arms, & small head. The Bone of His
leg West Sd [side] is too short & His toes are not long enough & there
is something of heaviness abt the thighs - Knees & legs, - but on the
whole He was allowed to be the finest figure the persons present had
seen. He was placed in many attitudes. 70

While Hogarth was always concerned about proportion in relation to function
('fitness') - what 'dimensions of muscle are proper (according to the principle
of the steelyard) to move such or such a length of arm with this or that degree
of swiftness of force' - the Academicians had very little interest in the use of the
bones and muscles they were contemplating. 71 Boxers were to be admired to
the extent that their bodies approximated pre-determined ideals of beauty, not
because they worked well. Ben Marshall's portrait of Jackson, copied as a mezzo-
tint by Charles Turner in 1810, positions the clothed prize-fighter beside a clas-
sical sculpture. We cannot help comparing their legs (illus. 21).

Ten days after Farington first saw Gregson, the party reassembled at Lord
Elgin's house to see him 'naked among the Antique figures', the newly arrived
fragments of the Panthenon frieze now known as the Elgin Marbles. As soon as
the fighters arrived, one recalled, 'ancient art and the works of Phidias were for-
gotten'. 72 At the end of July, four of the leading fighters of the day -Jackson,
Belcher, Gulley and Dutch Sam - were brought to Elgin's for a 'Pugilistick
Exhibition'. Farington noted that the sculptor John Rossi particularly admired
Dutch Sam's figure 'on account of the Symmetry & the parts being expressed', and
Sam is thought to be the model for Rossi's 1828 sculpture, Athleta Britannicus
(illus. 22). 73 An attempt at pure classicism, we have no idea when looking at the

Charles Turner
after Benjamin
Marshall, Mr John
Jackson, 1810.

sculpture that the model was a nineteenth-century Jew from the East End of
London. 74

The pugilist's identity is also not apparent in Sir Thomas Lawrence's por-
traits of his childhood friend, John Jackson. The first, exhibited at the Royal
Academy exhibition of 1797, featured him, twice-lifesize, as Satan Summoning
His Legions, to illustrate Milton's line, 'Awake, arise, or be forever fallen.' 75 As
Peter Radford notes, the painting makes an 'obvious boxing pun about having
been knocked down and having to get up', but this was for private consump-
tion. While the body was Jackson's - Egan had described him as 'one of the best
made men in the kingdom'; others praised his 'small' joints, 'knit in the man-
ner which is copied so inimitably in many of the statues and paintings of
Michelangelo' - the face was that of the actor, John Kemble. 76 The same combina-
tion featured in an 1800 painting of Rolla, from Sheridan's Pizarro. 71 Jackson's

Charles Rossi,
Athleta Britannka,
1828.

Theodore
Gericault,
Les Boxeurs,
1818, lithograph.

muscular body was a useful starting point from which to paint grand subjects;
his face, and profession, were not important.

Historical context returned, to be married with classical precedent, in the
most widely known boxing image of the early nineteenth century, Theodore Geri-
cault 's lithograph Les Boxeurs (illus. 23). On the one hand, it makes reference to
contemporary events and setting. The boxers, dressed in modern clothes, are
usually taken to be Cribb and Molineaux, and we can pick out a few men in suits
and one in a prominent top hat in the crowd. Two beer tankards are prominently
placed in the bottom right-hand corner. The anglophile Gericault had not
attended either fight between the two men - he first visited England in 1820 - but
he would have witnessed boxing matches in the Paris studio of painter Horace
Vernet, a rendezvous for Restoration liberals, and perhaps, more importantly,
he was familiar with English sporting engravings. His decision to depict the scene
in a lithograph also signalled a commitment to the contemporary. Lithography
was then a new technique and was associated mainly with political satire and
other forms of ephemera. 78

Gericault differs from Hogarth, however, in that he fuses references to the
modern scene with allusions to classical and Renaissance art; he had recently
returned to Paris after some years in Italy. Michelangelo's influence, in particu-
lar, is apparent in the sharp contours, strained poses, bulging muscles and
heroic stylization of the fighters. 79 Several spectators are also portrayed naked
to the waist. Most striking is one in the left foreground -perhaps having just

Theodore
Gericault, Two
Boxers Facing Left,
1818.

been defeated himself? - who lies in a languid classical pose practically at the
fighters' feet. The mixture of realist and classical conventions is disconcert-
ing, but allows Gericault to present the fight as both sharply contemporary and
grandly mythical.

Les Boxeurs positions its opponents very deliberately in the centre of the
work, in identical monumental stances. They are static, unlike the fighters in
Gericault 's more naturalistic pencil and pen studies of the same year (illus. 24).
The black man wears white trousers; the white man's trousers have black stripes.
Gericault is obviously interested in tonal contrast, an interest that would be
revived in George Bellows 's depictions of interracial boxing a hundred years later.
But Gericault 's time, and his politics, were different from Bellows 's. Black men
also feature in Gericault 's great paintings of 1819, The African Slave and The Raft
of the Medusa, works that are often discussed in the context of liberal campaigns
against France's complicity in the slave trade, and Toussaint L'Ouverture's heroic
rebellion in Haiti. 80 In most images of the contest between Cribb and Molin-
eaux, the American appeared as little more than a caricature, often barefooted,
'blackamoor' (illus. 47). In Gericault 's lithograph, he is not only complementary
but absolutely equal to his opponent; here, it seems possible that he might win.

THE ERA OF BOXIMANIA

Works of the early twenties, such as Hazlitt's 'The Fight' (1822), Egan's Life
in London (1821) and John Hamilton Reynolds's The Fancy (1820) celebrated
a cultural moment that was coming to an end. An elegiac air infects their

exuberance. In 1818, Reynolds abandoned poetry (and boxing) to become a
lawyer, and in 1820, about to marry, and with his good friend, Keats, very ill, he
wrote The Fancy as a 'final parting with his youth, his poetry, and the forbidden
delights of youth'. 81 But if Londoners were leaving the Fancy behind, out-of-
towners were becoming increasingly interested. London's sporting pubs were
fast becoming tourist attractions, and places like the Castle Tavern in Holborn
assumed legendary status.

In Howarth in Yorkshire, the Bronte children were keen readers of Black-
wood's Magazine, which was passed to them by a neighbour until 1831. One of
their parodies, The Young Men's Magazine, included an 'Advertisement' by
Charlotte and Branwell, issuing a challenge to 'a match at fisty-cuffs'. 82 Their
juvenilia is populated by young noblemen, always 'masters of the art', who set
at each other 'in slashing style'. 83 Charlotte eventually lost interest, but Branwell
continued to read Blackwood's and Bell's Life. Numerous references to, and
sketches of, his pugilistic heroes can also be found in his letters. 84

Bronte could not decide whether he wanted to be a painter or a poet. The
poems he submitted to Blackwood's were always rejected. In July 1835, he wrote
a letter to the Royal Academy of Art asking for an interview. His biographers
have debated whether he actually sent this letter, and whether, as a result, he vis-
ited London the following month. He claimed that he went. The uncertainty
stems from the detailed account of London adventures he gave on his supposed
return. Juliet Barker, who doubts the trip took place, maintains that Bronte's
impressions of the Castle Tavern, and his account of conversations with its land-
lord, Tom Spring, were lifted straight from the pages of Egan's Boxiana and Book
of Sports (1832), which gives a particularly lively and detailed description of the
tavern and its patrons. 85

A country boy who really did visit the pilgrimage sights of the Fancy was the
poet John Clare. On his third visit to London in 1824, Clare was taken by the
painter Oliver Rippingille to the Castle Tavern, and to Jack Randall's Hole in
the Wall in Chancery Lane - where Hazlitt's 'The Fight' begins - and to see some
sparring at the Fives Court. Clare later recalled:

I caught the mania so much from Rip for such things that I soon became
far more eager for the fancy than himself and I watch'd the appearance
of every new Hero on the stage with as eager curosity [sic] to see what
sort of fellow he was as I had before done the Poets - and I left the place
with one wish strongly in uppermost and that was that I was but a Lord
to patronize Jones the Sailor Boy who took my fancy as being the finest
fellow in the Ring. 86

Iain McCalman and Maureen Perkins speculate that Clare may also have
attended one of the numerous theatrical adaptations of Egan's Life in London,
and argue that 'there can be little doubt that he modelled his own metropolitan
tourist programmes on the "sprees and larks" of Egan's fictional heroes'. 87

In the Northampton asylum in which he spent the last years of his life, Clare
adopted many pseudonyms and alter egos, including those of some of the prize-
fighters he had watched on that trip to London. Inventing new names was of
course a speciality of prize-fighters, but Jonathan Bate speculates that 'the per-
sona of the pugilist became Clare's stance of defiance' in the violent atmosphere
of the asylum. 88 Clare was seen shadow-boxing in his cell, crying out 'I'm Jones
the Sailor Boy', and 'I'm Tom Spring', or, as 'Jack Randall Champion of the Prize
Ring', issuing a 'Challenge to All the World' for 'A Fair Stand Up Fight'. 89 On
one occasion Clare (soon to write his own 'Child Harold' and 'Don Juan a Poem')
even referred to himself as 'Boxer Byron / made of Iron, alias / Box-iron / At
Spring-field.' 90 The personae of Box-iron and Boxer (Lord) Byron pull in differ-
ent directions: Clare wanted to be both the self-made working-class prize-fighter
and the kind of Lord who patronized such men. But his assumption of these
roles brought no relief from his isolation and increasing alienation from both
worlds. One letter (to an unidentified and possibly imaginary correspondent)
laments that although 'It is well known that I am a prize-fighter by profession
and a man that has never feared any body in my life either in the ring or out of
it . . . there is none to accept my challenges which I have from time to time given
to the public.' 91

Two months before he died, an ailing Branwell Bronte wrote to Joseph Ley-
land, signing off with the remark that he was 'nearly worn out'. The letter was
accompanied by a sketch of a man lying in bed and a skeleton standing over
him. The skeleton is saying that 'the half minute time's up, so come to the
scratch; won't you?' The prostrate man replies, 'Blast your eyes, it's no use, for
I cannot come', and above is written - 'Jack Shaw, the Guardsman, and Jack
Painter of Norfolk'. Painter had been defeated by Shaw in 1815 (just weeks
before Shaw died heroically at Waterloo). The fight was largely memorable for
Painter's courageous resilience: he 'received ten knock-down blows in succes-
sion; and, although requested to resign the battle, not the slightest chance
appeared in his favour, he refused to quit the ring till nature was exhausted'. 92

Branwell Bronte, a painter himself, died in 1848, and John Clare followed
in 1864. Both men lasted longer than the Fives Court; built in 1802 at the start
of pugilism's vogue, it was pulled down in 1826 as part of the development of
Trafalgar Square (illus. 49). The golden age of boxing was over.

Fighting, Rightly Understood'

'Modern legislation is chiefly remarkable for its oppressive interference with
the elegant amusements of the mob,' complained Punch, tongue largely in
cheek, in 1841.

Bartholomew-fair is abolished; bull-baiting, cock-pits, and duck-hunts
are put down by act of Parliament; prize-fighting, by the New Police . . .
The 'masses' see no pleasure now. 1

The establishment of Robert Peel's New Police in 1829 had gradually made it
possible to enforce a series of legal judgments to outlaw the prize-ring. But these
judgments did little more than confirm the shift in public attitudes to the sport.
By the time of Victoria's accession in 1837, prize-fighting was firmly in decline.
Pugilists had served as ushers at George iv's coronation in 1821, but the patron-
age of Queen Victoria or the presence of her Prince Consort at ringside was
unthinkable. Respectable middle-class society saw no place for an unruly sport
favoured by an alliance of the working and upper classes (the 'bawling, hustling,
and smashing' Populace and the 'great broad-shouldered' Barbarians, as
Matthew Arnold put it), while evangelical Christianity stressed its brutish
nature. 2 Only 30 years earlier, newspapers had extolled the manly virtues of
pugilism; now they stressed its physical and moral dangers. The New Sporting
Magazine, founded by R. S. Surtees in 1834, announced in its prospectus that
'prize-fighting, Bull-baiting and Cock-fighting' were low and demoralizing pur-
suits' and would be excluded from its pages. 3 In their place Surtees substituted
the 'jaunts and jollities' of riding and hunting.

A series of scandals ranging from thrown fights to murder was partly to
blame. In 1824 fight-promoter John Thurtell was hanged for the murder of a
gambling associate and the trial made sensational news; a few months later
magistrates stopped a fight ('if it could be so termed', said Egan) at Moulsey
Hurst and arrested both fighters. 4 The following year even Hazlitt admitted that
'the Fancy have lately lost something of their gloss in public estimation; and,
after the last fight, few would go far to see a Neate or a Spring set-to'. 5 In the

years that followed the pugilists themselves tried to improve matters - Spring,
for example, set up the Fair Play Club in 1828 - but without aristocratic backing
and finance, the boxers lacked the necessary authority to regulate their sport.
'When honour and fame cease to influence the combatants,' lamented Vincent
Dowling, editor of Bell's Life, 'a system of low gambling is substituted.' 6

Many also considered large gatherings of unruly fight fans to be threaten-
ing, as large-scale popular protest, from the Luddites to the Chartists, continued
into the 1820s. William Cobbett had noted in 1805 that boxing matches do not
merely 'give rise to assemblages of people; they tend to make the people bold'. 7
But without an obvious foreign enemy, such boldness was no longer welcome.
Increasingly, reforming magistrates clamped down on those involved in staging
fights. They even began to appear in this capacity in novels. In Dickens's The
Pickwick Papers (1836-7), George Nupkins boasts of having 'rushed into a prize-
ring . . . attended only by six special constables; and, at the hazard of falling a
sacrifice to the angry passions of an infuriated multitude, prohibited a pugilis-
tic contest between the Middlesex Dumpling, and the Suffolk Bantam'. 8 The
magistrate in George Borrow 's Lavengro (1851), meanwhile, confesses that
although 'of course, I cannot patronize the thing very openly, yet I sometimes
see a prize-fight'. 9 In Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), set in
the 1840s, the town's Roman Amphitheatre is described as a popular venue for
'pugilistic encounters' because it is 'secluded' and 'entirely invisible to the out-
side world save by climbing to the top of the enclosure'. 10

The era of the great boxers also seemed to be over. New champions such as
Tom Spring continued to attract a following, but the tone of much journalism
was resolutely elegiac. A newspaper account of Spring's defeat of the aging Tom
Oliver on 20 February 1821 (a fight attended by the schoolboy William Glad-
stone, bunking off from Eton), described the pair as 'first-raters of the present
day' but greatly inferior to their predecessors. 11 The great fighters, and com-
mentators, of the Regency died soon afterwards: 'Gentleman John' Jackson in
1845; Tom Cribb in 1848; Pierce Egan in 1849; and Tom Spring in 1851, the year
in which, in Lavengro, George Borrow lamented the passing of the great days of
prize-fighting.

I have known the time when a pugilistic encounter between two noted
champions was almost considered in the light of a national affair; when
tens of thousands of individuals, high and low, meditated and brooded
upon it, the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night, until
the great event was decided. But the time is passed, and people will say,
thank God that it is; all I have to say is, that the French still live on the
other side of the water, and are still casting their eyes hitherward - and
that in the days of pugilism it was no vain boast to say, that one English-
man was a match for two of t'other race; at present it would be a vain
boast to say so, for these are not the days of pugilism. 12

AMERICAN BEGINNINGS AND BRITAIN S
GREAT PUGILISTIC REVIVAL'

Although the Molineaux-Cribb fights had generated much British excitement
in 1810, for 'the first quarter of the nineteenth century most Americans were
unaware that boxing matches even took place in their country'. 13 In the decades
that followed, however, ever-increasing numbers of immigrants began to estab-
lish the sport. An Irishman vs. an Englishman was a reliable crowd-puller, but
very few of the early immigrants made a living through prize-fighting.

During the 1830s, some British fighters, facing ever-more limited opportu-
nities at home, decided to cross the Atlantic to capitalize on budding Ameri-
can interest in bare-knuckle bouts. The first to make the journey was James
('Deaf') Burke, who had been unable to find an opponent since a 98-round bat-
tle ended in his adversary's death. Burke arrived in New York in 1836, where he
appeared on stage at Conklin's Hall 'as the Venetian statue' - poses included
'Hercules struggling with the Nemean lion, in five attitudes' and 'Samson slay-
ing the Philistines with a jaw bone'. 14 The following year he had two fights
against Irishmen; one in New Orleans, which degenerated into chaos (Irish sup-
porters attacked Burke, accusing him of unfair play), and the other on Hart's
Island, New York, which he easily won. The New York Herald reported the sec-
ond match with showy reluctance; although we 'regret and detest' the kind of
exhibition the British are so fond of, the paper declared, 'our duty as chroni-
clers compels us to make public what otherwise we should bury in oblivion'. 15

While Burke had been in America, a quick-witted Nottingham fighter called
William Thompson, or more usually Bendigo, had emerged as a real contender
for the Championship. Burke fought Bendigo on his return to England in 1839,
but was disqualified for head-butting; Bendigo lost the championship to Ben
Caunt in 1842, and regained it from him in 1845 (both were bitterly contested
fights). In 1850, he retired from the ring and, in a development considered to be
a sign of the times, became a Methodist preacher. 16

Burke and Bendigo are both mentioned in Herman Melville's 1851 novel,
Moby-Dick. While there is no evidence that Melville attended any of their fights,
these were widely reported in the American press. Certainly Melville felt that
Bendigo was well enough known to refer to him in an 1847 letter to a sick cousin
in Rio: 'come back to us again and send a challenge across the water to fight
Bendigo for the Champion's Belt of all England'. 17

Nationalist bravado also informs Chapter 37 of Moby-Dick, which ends with
a famous passage in which Captain Ahab challenges the 'great gods' to 'swerve'
him from his goal of taking revenge on the White Whale to whom he had lost
a leg. In evoking his 'fixed purpose', Ahab compares himself to a train: 'Over
unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds,
unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way! ' Less
often noted is Ahab's comparison of the unswerving nature of a train on its iron
way to a boxer facing his opponent. Ahab begins his soliloquy by evoking his

own 'steel skull . . . the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering
fight!' He then addresses 'ye great gods' directly:

I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes
and blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies, - Take
some one of your one size: don't pommel me! No, ye've knocked me
down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden. Come forth from
behind your cotton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye; come and see
if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? Ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve
yourselves! Man has ye there. 18

Ahab's claim that the English bruiser gods will not be able to stop his advance on
the whale is pure (and characteristic) bluster. Only a few years later, however, an
American boxer, with a more credible claim to be unswervable, appeared on the
scene. In 1858, the Irish-American fighter John C. Heenan sent a real 'challenge
across the water', not to Bendigo but to the then 'Champion of England', Tom
Sayers.

In January i860 Heenan set off for England carrying a considerable burden
of expectation. He appealed to both ethnic and national loyalties - to Irish-
Americans, he was fighting as 'a son of Erin', to American-born nativists (many
of whom had supported his opponents at home), Heenan was now a represen-
tative of 'Uncle Sammy', a defender of 'dear Columbia's pride'. 19 (A similarly
convenient move took place 100 years later when, by taking on the German
Max Schmeling, Joe Louis became an American' as well as a 'Negro' fighter.)

In England, meanwhile, the Heenan-Sayers fight was greeted as the begin-
ning of a 'Great Pugilistic Revival'; in truth, however, it represented old-style
English pugilism's last stand. 20 This round of Britain vs. the United States dif-
fered in many ways from that which had taken place 50 years earlier. Steadily if
slowly growing in the United States, prize-fighting had continued to decline in
Britain, a shift in the balance of power reflected in the fact that it was now an
English David (5ft 8in and 150 pounds) who was to face an American Goliath
(4 inches taller and nearly 40 pounds heavier). Heenan, named for his home-
town as the 'Benicia Boy', was also nine years younger than Sayers. 21 While
much of the American press looked forward to a test of national supremacy,
the British press treated the event as a brutal anachronism and campaigned to
stop it taking place. The Manchester Guardian, for example, argued against the
association of healthy 'muscular art' with the 'unhealthy excitement' which sur-
rounded prize-fighting:

The fighters . . . perform their part for money; not to develop their
manly energies; nor do they assist in developing the physical powers
of those around them. Instead of going to witness a prize-fight, let
men don the gloves and learn and practice the art of fighting for
themselves. 22

The rhetoric intensified, culminating in a parliamentary debate four days before
the fight took place. One mp called for the Home Secretary and the Prime Min-
ister to intervene and stop what was clearly a 'meditated breach of the peace'.
Pursuing what he described as a 'moderate path', Palmerston argued that he
could see no reason why a prize-fight should constitute a greater breach of the
peace than a 'balloon ascent'. 23

Heenan vs. Sayers went ahead on 17 April i860, in Farnborough, Hamp-
shire, the town having been chosen partly because of its excellent rail links. 24
Thousands of spectators attended. After 37 rounds, over two hours, and many
injuries - Heenan was reduced to near-blindness in his right eye - the contest
ended in chaos and a draw was declared. 25 Although Bell's Life cheerfully
debated who had come off worse, concluding that 'Heenan's mug was decidedly
the most disfigured', the extreme violence of the fight shocked many. 26 The New
York Herald, meanwhile, complained that 'the Britons . . . stopped the fight in
order to save their money':

Let Mr. Bull, who seems to be growing old and shaky about his pins,
keep his five-pound notes - we are rich enough to do without them.
We do not really want his money, but simply desired to let him know
that we could whip him in a matter of muscle as well as in yachts, clip-
per ships, steamboats, india-rubber shoes and other things, city rail-
ways, sewing machines, the electric telegraph, reading machines, pretty
women, and unpickable bank locks. 27

The following month, in an essay on his walks into 'shy neighbourhoods',
Charles Dickens, as 'the uncommercial traveller', noted 'the fancy of a humble artist'
in small shop windows, 'as exemplified in two portraits representing Mr Thomas
Sayers, of Great Britain, and Mr John Heenan, of the United States of America':

These illustrious men are highly coloured, in fighting trim and fighting
attitude. To suggest the pastoral and meditative nature of their peaceful
calling, Mr Heenan is represented by an emerald sward with primroses
and other modest flowers springing up under the heels of his half-boots;
while Mr Sayers is impelled to the administration of his favourite blow,
the Auctioneer, by the silent eloquence of a village church. The humble
homes of England, with their domestic virtues and honeysuckle porches,
urge both heroes to go in and win; and the lark and other singing birds
are observable in the upper air, ecstatically carolling their thanks to
Heaven for a fight. On the whole, the associations entwined with the
pugilistic art by this artist are much in the manner of Izaak Walton. 28

Dickens's target is, as ever, hypocrisy and affectation: not boxing itself, but
attempts to take the edge off a violent sport by wrapping it in a highly romanti-
cized pastoralism.

ft &^te$& <tdte&V*&

TXD 8JUDAT T""" 1 <fSX TU T*MMTTy^T" M ™**-
■UlrCtir JflHN fl HMBAK "MIC Itwtn »!»• iTg« J"fM t..«nri» Jir imumi 1

Currier and Ives,
7fo Great Fight for
the Championship:
Between John C.
Heenan 'TheBenicia
Boy' and Tom Sayers
'Champion of
England', i860,
lithograph.

In the months that followed, portraits of the fighters and depictions of the
fight itself gained wide circulation. The New York Illustrated News even sent over
an engraver to pick up ringside drawings so that he could prepare the blocks
on the trans-Atlantic voyage for immediate printing. 29 Two of the most widely
circulated prints were by J. B. Rowbotham and Currier and Ives; both are rather
formal images of the boxers squaring off before the contest begins. Intended to
commemorate an energetic and violent occasion, they are, ironically, static and
peaceful (illus. 25). One of these prints catches the eye of Stephen Dedalus in
James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), which is set on 16 June 1904, the day the Times
reported the sale of the Sayers-Heenan championship belt. 30 Stephen is window-
shopping when his eye is caught by 'a faded i860 print of Heenan boxing Sayers'.

Staring backers with square hats stood around the roped prizering.
The heavyweights in light loincloths proposed gently each to the other
his bulbous fists. And they are throbbing: heroes' hearts. 31

The inappropriate gentleness of Victorian representations of boxing was
something that Dickens, as we have seen, took comic advantage of. Disraeli,
too, in his 1845 novel Sybil, brought pugilism and cosy domesticity together.
After Sybil is arrested with her radical father at a Chartist gathering, a 'kind-
hearted inspector' takes her home rather than leaving her to languish overnight
in prison. There his wife puts her to bed in a comfortable room decorated with
'a piece of faded embroidery . . . and opposite it . . . portraits of [the pugilists]
Dick Curtis and Dutch Sam, who had been the tutors of her husband, and now
lived as heroes in his memory'. For them, there is no contradiction between the

male (pugilistic) and female (domestic)
arts. 32

But if the inhabitants of 'humble homes'
were untroubled about the compatibility of
an interest in boxing and a devotion to larks
and honeysuckle porches, those of less
humble dwellings were not so sure. In the
weeks following the fight, Punch ran a series
of cartoons in which 'extremely proper-
looking personages' went to great lengths
to disguise their interest in Sayers vs.
Heenan (illus. 26). Certainly the days of un-
abashed flash appreciation were long gone;
Victorian gentlemen, like Disraeli's Egre-
mont, generally had the 'good taste not to
let [their] predilection for sports degener-
ate into slang'. 33 The predilection itself,
however, did not die out.

One proper-looking personage who
retained a lively interest in boxing was the
publisher John Blackwood who, a week
after the fight, wrote to George Lewes, then
in Rome with George Eliot:

reTEllESTiaCi IKTELLiGEXCE,

KH.UX Hqt Ho nqmUUt unl umuntf |irvjic-kn'kiwr iwouiuftt
'■ ffirt / n«. Gur^er; Sfitrfim' Ttttjntft «JK»»H/ 'at y* Hli tkthtfit
'IkUart'itml r|t Milt arm™ Tvb Sijcrj and lk< £n!cia Bo+tl*

I have not much news from London, the fight for the Championship
monopolizing everyone's attention. It is quite comical and I cannot
help feeling as keen as possible about gallant little Tom Sayers with his
one arm maintaining such a fight. I am satisfied if he had not lost the
use of his right arm he would have polished off the giant.

'Interesting

Intelligence',

Punch,

21 April i860.

Although he begins by talking of 'everyone' as if that does not include him-
self, and describes the brouhaha as 'quite comical', Blackwood soon slips
into a discussion of the details of the fight. His authoritative commentary is,
however, quickly (dis)qualified by the un-Corinthian remark, 'I never saw a
prize fight, and I daresay five minutes conversation with the worthy Tom
would effectually cool my enthusiasm.' 34 He had no intention of degenerat-
ing into slang.

Three years later the poet William Allingham expressed a similarly tempered
enthusiasm. His diary for 6 July 1863 excitedly records a glimpse of Sayers,
'a middle-sized but singularly well-knit figure of a man, strong, light, easy of
movement, almost Greek in his poses but altogether natural and unconscious'.
A few days later, having seen Sayers fight 'Young Brooks' in a Lymington cricket
field, he expands on his reflections:

The high-shouldered pugilist such as Leech draws is not the genuine
article. Sayers has rather falling shoulders though wide and muscular,
so has Heenan, and Tom King. Ease and freedom of movement charac-
terizes them all, especially Sayers. They doubtless enjoy life in their
way, so long as they keep within tolerable bounds, and the fighting
itself is a great animal pleasure. 35

Yet even while praising Sayers, both Blackwood and Allingham felt it necessary
to distance themselves from the boxer; Blackwood by suggesting the limits of his
conversation, Allingham by alluding to the pugilistic lifestyle and the necessity
of keeping it 'within tolerable bounds'. William Thackeray mocked such equiv-
ocation in his i860 'roundabout' essay on the Heenan-Sayers fight for the Corn-
hill Magazine entitled 'On Some Late Great Victories'. 'Ought Mr. Sayers be
honoured for being brave, or punished for being naughty?' What the Victorian
public wanted, Thackeray complained, was to have it both ways: to say to
'naughty' Tom Sayers, 'we are moralists, and reprimand you; and you are hereby
reprimanded accordingly', but, at the same time, to reserve the option of chang-
ing their minds. 'I mean that fighting, of course, is wrong; but that there are
occasions when, &c. . .' 3<5

Changing attitudes to boxing typified the gap between the Regency world
that Thackeray had grown up in and the Victorian world of his adulthood. As
a schoolboy he had loved the 'extraordinary slang' of Pierce Egan's rakish tales,
but as an adult he recalled Tom and Jerry as 'a little vulgar'; 'brilliant but some-
what barbarous, it must be confessed'. 'There is enjoyment of life in these young
bucks of 1823 which contrasts strangely with our feelings of i860.' 37 Egan's tales
of sporting gentlemen were now only to be found 'in the corner of some old
country-house library' of a Corinthian 'grandpappa'. 38

The vulgar energetic world of the Corinthians is immortalized in Vanity Fair
(1845), set during the Napoleonic Wars. The novel contains many incidental ref-
erences to the Fancy, most of which are associated with dissipated young men who
hanker after the life of Tom and Jerry, but who don't, somehow, quite come up to
scratch. After a drunken night at Vauxhall Gardens, for example, Jos Sedley tries
to fight a hackney-coachman but instead is carried off to bed. The next day, his
friends, knowing he can't remember a thing, tease Sedley that he 'hit him flat out,
like Molyneux. The watchman says he never saw a fellow go down so straight.' 39

The Crawley family is full of boxers. After being sent down from Cambridge,
Rawdon Crawley becomes a 'celebrated "blood" or dandy about town': 'Boxing,
rat-hunting, the fives-court, and four-in-hand driving were then the fashion of
our British aristocracy; and he was adept in all these noble sciences.' When
Becky Sharp (who will marry him) asks his sister whether he is clever, she is told
that he has 'not an idea in the world beyond his horses, and his regiment, and
his hunting, and his play'. Rawdon's uncle, the Reverend Bute Crawley, has sim-
ilar tastes. While studying theology at Oxford, he 'had thrashed all the best
bruisers of the "town"', and 'carried his taste for boxing and athletic exercises

into life; there was not a fight within twenty miles at which he was not present'
(illus. 51). 40

The most fully developed portrait of an Egan-like young Buck is the Rev-
erend's son, James Crawley, a good-looking 'young Oxonian' who has 'acquired
the inestimable polish of living in a fast set at a small college'. Excited by a coach
journey with 'the Tutbury Pet' and a night at Tom Cribb's Arms, where he was
'enchanted by the Pet's conversation', he proceeds to his aunt's house to ingra-
tiate himself into her will. There, however, he gets increasingly drunk on her
good port, and after describing 'the different pugilistic qualities' of his favourite
fighters, offers to take on his cousin 'with or without gloves'. This then leads to
a disquisition on his favourite theme, 'old blood':

There's nothing like old blood; no, dammy, nothing like it. I'm none of
your radicals. I know what it is to be a gentleman, dammy. . . look at the
fellers in a fight; aye, look at a dawg killing rats, - which is it wins? the
good blooded ones.

The more 'ruby fluid' James ingests, the stronger his devotion to good old blood
becomes. The example of 'good blood' he provides, however, suggests that it is
a fluid he himself lacks:

Why, only last term, just before I was rusticated, that is, I mean just
before I had the measles, ha, ha, - there was me and Ringwood of
Christchurch, Bob Ringwood, Lord Cinqbar's son, having our beer at the
'Bell' at Blenheim, when the Banbury bargeman offered to fight either of
us for a bowl of punch. I couldn't. My arm was in a sling . . . Well, sir, I
couldn't finish him, but Bob had his coat off at once - he stood up to the
Banbury man for three minutes, and polished him off in four rounds,
easy. Gad, how he did drop, sire, and what was it? Blood, sir, all blood. 41

His aunt sends him away in disgust.

All this pugilistic ambition, and interest, is presented as not only rather
ridiculous, but as out of touch with modern life. For Thackeray, pugilism epit-
omizes the profligate world of the Regency, a world that appealed to villains but
also to students and minor army officers who refuse to grow up. 42 Captain Mc-
Murdo is a 49-year-old 'Waterloo man' whose barracks room is 'hung around
with boxing, sporting, and dancing pictures, presented to him by comrades as
they retired from the regiment, and married and settled into a quiet life'. He is
pictured sitting up in bed 'reading in Bell's Life an account of . . . [a] fight
between the Tutbury Pet and the Barking Butcher'. 43 In Robert Browning's 1858
poem 'A Likeness', prints of boxers are relegated to the 'spoils of youth' that
adorn a bachelor's room, along with 'masks, gloves and foils' and 'the cast from
a fist ("not, alas! Mine, / But my master's, the Tipton Slasher")'; in Thackeray's
novel, such artifacts are the spoils of eternal bachelors. 44

The suggestion that an interest in boxing is rather adolescent (and hence
mildly deplorable) is also made in George Eliot's Middlemarch, written slightly
later (1871), and set slightly later, just before the Reform Bill of 1832, in a small
Midlands community. Fred Vincy, 'a young gentleman without capital' and,
despite a university education, 'generally unskilled', finds it particularly difficult
to find a place for himself in the modern world. But Vincy is saved from a life of
fecklessness by the love of his childhood sweetheart, Mary Garth, and eventual
employment in estate management with her father, Caleb. A key moment in his
transformation comes when he chances upon six farm labourers attacking the
agents employed to build the new railway. Vincy tries to take control from the
safety of his horse until one of the men shouts 'a defiance which he did not know
to be Homeric': 'Yo git off your horse, young measter, and I'll have a round wi'
ye, I wull. You daredn't come on w'out your hoss an' whip. I'll soon knock the
breath out on ye, I would.' Vincy, who 'felt confidence in his power of boxing',
tells them, 'I'll come back presently, and have a round with you all in turn, if
you like.' Both Vincy and the farm labourers have grown up in a now outmoded
feudal world and, uncertain how to act in the modern era that the railway rep-
resents, they easily fall back on the old (pugilistic) methods of settling disputes.
But when Caleb Garth hears of Vincy's pugnacious intentions - 'It would be a
good lesson for him. I shall not be five minutes' - he quickly intervenes. Garth,
'a powerful man . . [who] knew little of any fear except the fear of hurting oth-
ers and the fear of having to speechify', is a modern man and knows how to
operate in the modern world. Instead of fighting and teaching 'lessons', he
reasons with the farm workers and reassures them about the impact of the
railway on their livelihood. 45 On the following page, Fred Vincy falls off his horse
into the mud - his real education is beginning.

The idealized Adam Bede, the eponymous hero of Eliot's second book,
needs no such education. Published in 1859, but set during the Napoleonic wars,
the novel contrasts its protagonist's fighting style with that of his rival in love,
Arthur Donnithorne. From the opening pages of the novel, we are meant to
admire Adam as a particularly British physical specimen:

a large-boned muscular man nearly six feet high, with a back so flat
and a head so well poised that when he drew himself up to take a more
distant survey of his work, he had the air of a soldier standing at ease. 46

Adam Bede is 'a Saxon', but with 'a mixture of Celtic blood' - a complete Briton.
'We want such fellows as he to lick the French,' a bystander remarks. Young
squire Arthur Donnithorne is, by contrast, 'well-washed, high-bred, white-
handed, yet looking as if he could deliver well from the left shoulder, and floor
his man'. A boxer at Oxford, Arthur nonetheless acknowledges that Adam
would knock him 'into next week' if they were to 'have a battle'. 47

As indeed happens, inevitably, when Arthur seduces Hetty Sorel, whom
Adam loves, and then abandons her. 'If you get hold of a chap that's got no

shame nor conscience to stop him,' Adam had once remarked, 'you must try
what you can do by bunging his eyes up.' 48 When Adam shows himself to be
such a chap, he and Arthur do battle.

The delicate-handed gentleman was a match for the workman in every-
thing but strength, and Arthur's skill in parrying enabled him to protract
the struggle for some long moments. But between unarmed men, the
battle is to the strong, where the strong is no blunderer, and Arthur must
sink under a well-planted blow of Adam's, as a steel rod is broken by an
iron bar. The blow soon came, and Arthur fell, his head lying concealed
in a tuft of fern, so that Adam could only discern his darkly-clad body. 49

Looked at from one perspective, this passage, published in the same year as The
Origin of Species, presents a classic scene of what Darwin called 'the law of bat-
tle' - instinct drives the two men to fight, 'with the instinctive fierceness of pan-
thers', over a possible mate. 50 The very blows are forces of nature, 'like
lightning'. From another perspective (and I would suggest, more centrally) the
scene encapsulates class struggle, labour (represented by the industrial image
of the blacksmith's 'iron bar') defeating feudal aristocracy (a sword-like 'steel
rod'). This kind of scene occurs many times in Victorian fiction, with interest-
ing variations. Here, it is worth noting that, although Adam's deference, and
Christian pity, have returned by the beginning of the following chapter, he refuses
to shake hands with Arthur: 'I don't forget what's owing to you as a gentleman;
but in this thing we're man and man.' 51

A year later, in the month of the Heenan-Sayers fight - April i860 - George
Eliot's third book, The Mill on the Floss, was published. While Eliot used 'mill' in
her title to refer to a building on a river, the word also had another meaning in
boxing slang - the fight was a 'mill'. 52 These alternatives proved irresistible to
Punch, a magazine which relished the most hackneyed of puns. The humour of
the cartoon lies in the seemingly obvious incompatibility between the novels
(and drawing rooms) of Victorian womanhood and the very thought of a prize-
fight (illus. 27). 53 This was a sentiment which now was accepted even by read-
ers of Blackwood's Magazine. 54 In this context, it was of course great fun to make
jokes about women reading fight-reports and even, occasionally, fighting them-
selves. Thomas Ingoldby's 1840 poem 'The Ghost' describes a man who fears 'his
spouse might knock his head off', for 'spite of all her piety, her arm / She'd
sometimes exercise when in a passion'. The narrator concludes,

Within a well- roped ring, or on a stage,

Boxing may be a very pretty Fancy,
When Messrs. Burke or Bendigo engage;

— 'Tis not so well in Susan, Jane, or Nancy:
To get well mill 'd by any one's an evil,

But by a lady - 'tis the very Devil. 55

'Constance
(literary) and Edith
(literal)', Punch,
28 April i860.

£iffl*fan« IfHtnrii). " Hjivk vim pirjhOTinn Aii-imwW'Tlai !'[«■ era T11K FLOiH,' DSAitT"
JfrtM ftorraf). "SV>, r*»*tt>, I ((.kfr. !«jt; and I tmm TIlAf TOti cm fisd iJrxmaa
TO INTHltaT totf IK TOX LHJSMITWIf «P * DlitilWTIXU I'lmtf-lUHT ! "

In i860, the joke seemed never ending in Punch cartoons, which showed men
'initiating' women (readers of Belle's Life, sic), and mothers handing over their
babies to a burly boxing tutor (illus. 28).

The association of The Mill on the Floss with 'milling' is actually not as absurd
as Punch had implied. A novel of childhood and adolescence, it focuses on the
relationship between a brother and sister, Tom and Maggie Tulliver. Tom Tulliver
is consistently depicted as a lad of honour' and a keen fighter. He particularly
likes to read, and relate, 'fighting stories', and so his fellow pupil, Philip Wakem,
who is said to have been 'brought up like a girl' and whose deformity makes him
'unfit for active sports', tells him the story of Ulysses, 'a little fellow, but very wise
and cunning', in his battle against the Cyclops, Polyphemus. '0 what fun!' says
Tom, but his words have an ironic resonance later in the novel when, some years
later, he accuses Philip Wakem of not 'acting the part of a man and a gentleman'
with his sister, Maggie. Philip replies, 'It is manly of you to talk in this way to me.
Giants have an immemorial right to stupidity and insolent abuse.' Wakem 's
response recalls the Homer of their youth, and Tom is now cast as Cyclops. Tom's
pugnacity exemplifies what Eliot terms 'masculine philosophy', yet it is a mas-
culinity of a particularly limited (schoolboy) type, one whose morality is based
on strength. However many Greek verbs he learns, Tom is unable to be anything
other than 'an excellent bovine lad' who believes in the 'boys' justice' of the fist. 56

'Muscular Educa-
tion - The Private
Tutor', Punch, 26
May i860.

MUSCULAR (etlGATlOH-THe PRIVATE TUTffltt
1 Hii lit. Ux'ia ! "

The guilt-free pleasure of eighteenth-century fight scenes was no longer
possible for Victorian writers or readers. Fighting could not be condoned, except,
of course, in the service of a moral cause. Happily, moral causes were not hard
to find; so much so that in 1901 George Bernard Shaw felt able to condemn what
he described as the 'abominable vein of retaliatory violence all through the
literature of the nineteenth century'. 57

An exemplary case of morally justified retaliation occurs in Chapter Five of
Vanity Fair. This is a very different occasion from the prize-fights mocked
elsewhere in the novel. At 'Dr Swishtail's famous school', Dobbin, the son of a
grocer, is consistently tormented by boys only slightly more secure in their
status. Known to them by the name of 'Figs', he is neither a dandy nor a 'bruiser'.
Although at his happiest when left alone to read the Arabian Nights while the rest
of the school pursue sports, Dobbin cannot ignore the spectacle of 'the great
chief and dandy' Cuff tormenting a smaller boy. The narrator speculates that
Dobbin may be 'revolting' against the 'exercise of tyranny' or perhaps hankers
after revenge. Whatever the reason, his coming forth is compared to that of
'little David' against 'brazen Goliath', and the North American colonies against
George 111. 58 The narrator, claiming that he has not 'the pen of a Napier or a
Bell's Life', nonetheless describes the thirteenth, and final, round of the ensuing
fight in the manner of that sporting journal:

It was the last charge of the Guard (that is, it would have been, only
Waterloo had not yet taken place) - it was Ney's column breasting
the hills of La Haye Sainte, bristling with ten thousand bayonets, and
crowned with twenty eagles - it was the shouts of the beef-eating

British, as leaping down the hill, they rushed to hug the enemy in the
savage arms of battle -in other words, Cuff coming up full of pluck,
but quite reeling and groggy, the Fig-merchant put in his left as usual
on his adversary's nose, and sent him down for the last time. 59

In this passage, which was to inspire similar parodies by James Joyce and Ralph
Ellison in the twentieth century, Thackeray does more than simply show his
familiarity both with the work of the military historian Sir William Napier
and the popular magazine, Bell's Life in London. His target is the all too easy
interchange between the discourses of prize-fighting and war (illus. 46). 6o

SCHOOLBOY BOXERS: 'THE NATURAL AND THE ENGLISH WAY'

The 1850s and '60s saw the creation of many new public schools, in which 'rep-
resentatives of old families [mixed] with the sons of the new middle classes'.
These schools, claims Asa Briggs, instigated 'a gradual fusion of classes', by
'drawing upon a common store of values'. 61 Sport, placed at the heart of the cur-
riculum, was one of the central ways in which those values were transmitted.
Public school sporting stories became enormously popular, with Thomas
Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857) starting the trend and reinventing the
schoolboy as a heroic character. 62

Thomas Hughes's school was Rugby, whose headmaster, Thomas Arnold,
epitomized the values of what became known as muscular Christianity. 63 Good
character depended on a healthy mind in a healthy body - mens sana in corpore
sano. 64 Although rugby and cricket are also considered, the delicate relation-
ship between physical prowess and moral character finds its most vivid expres-
sion in the novel's depiction of boxing. Hughes begins a chapter entitled 'The
Fight' with a warning:

Let those young persons whose stomachs are not strong, or who think
a good set-to with the weapons which God has given us all, an uncivi-
lized, unchristian, or ungentlemanly affair, just skip this chapter at
once, for it won't be to their taste.

The chapter chronicles Brown's initiation into muscular and manly Christian ways
through a fight with, of course, a bigger boy. After the fight is over, Tom and 'the
Slogger' shake hands 'with great satisfaction and mutual respect'. 'Fighting',
Hughes concludes, 'is the natural and English way for English boys to settle their
quarrels' (illus. 29). 65

Throughout the next hundred years, in the pages of magazines at least,
English boys continued to find quarrels which needed settling. In 1866 Edwin
Brett's Boys of England was founded as 'A Magazine of Sport, Travel, Fun and
Adventure', but it was not until 1879 and the launch of The Boy's Own Paper
that sport became a staple of schoolboy stories. In 1948 E. S. Turner joked that

Arthur Hughes,
illustration for Tom
Brown s Schooldays
(1869 edition).

'any historian of the remote future relying exclusively on old volumes of boys'
magazines for his knowledge of the British way of life in the early twentieth
century . . . will record that the country was the battleground of an unending
civil war between a small vigorous race known as Sportsmen and a large, slug-
gish and corrupt race known as Slackers'. 66 The battleground extended far
beyond the school walls. After the First World War, Marvel ran a series of stories
by Arthur S. Handy in which parsons, newspaper editors, farmers, dockers,
millionaires, plumbers and taxi drivers all ended up as boxing heroes, while in
the Champion, 'sport grew from a fetish to a frenzy' (illus. 57). 6?

In his advocacy of boxing, Thomas Hughes had higher ambitions than the
mere settling of schoolboy quarrels and desires, or the exercising of 'the temper,
and . . . the muscles of the back and legs'.

Every one who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be beaten,
be they evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual wickedness in
high places, or Russians, or Border-ruffians, or Bill, Tom, or Harry, who
will not let him live his life in quiet till he has thrashed them. 68

On the one hand, fighting is 'natural', especially if you are English; on the other,

'rightly understood', it must always have a 'chivalrous' and Christian purpose
behind it. 69 In Tom Brown at Oxford (1861), Hughes distinguished the self-
indulgent 'muscleman' from the 'muscular Christian' who, like St Paul, brings
his body into 'subjection'. 70

Hughes's determination to avoid celebrating the mere 'muscleman' meant
that for all his descriptions of sports and fighting, his works give very little sense
of the bodies involved in them. The male body is present less as something con-
crete and material than as a sign of, or instrument for, chivalry. This was not the
case in the work of Hughes's near contemporary, Walter Pater, whose essays,
from 'Winckelmann' (1867) to 'The Age of Athletic Prizemen' (1894), marked yet
another revival of interest in Greek sculpture and the 'Hellenic ideal' of the male
body. 71 Published just two years before the modern Olympics began, 'The Age
of Athletic Prizemen' celebrates 'peaceful combat as a fine art': an art mani-
fested in sculptures of athletes and their poetic equivalents, Pindar's poems,
'sung in language suggestive of a sort of metallic beauty'. 72 For Pater the beauty
of these works derived from their celebration of the fleeting moment: the ath-
lete is poised 'just there for a moment, between the animal and spiritual worlds',
between actions, and between youth and maturity. The emphasis on stillness
('repose' is Pater's word) suggests in turn what he calls 'sexless beauty': the white
marble statues have been 'purged from the angry, bloodlike stains of action and
passion'. The young athletes memorialized are curiously 'virginal yet virile'. 73
They represent the unity of unstained mind and unstained body.

St Paul's emphasis on subjugation appealed to both Hellenists and Muscu-
lar Christians. Pater stressed 'the religious significance of the Greek athletic
service' and argued that 'the athletic life certainly breathes of abstinence, of rule,
of the keeping un der of oneself \ 74 But while Hughes promoted the moral conse-
quences of such subjugation, Pater's emphasis was aesthetic. 75

QUEENSBERRY AND THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF
THE AMATEUR IDEAL

In many different contexts in nineteenth-century Britain, Asa Briggs wrote,
there was 'an interplay between what happened nationally and what happened
in the schools'. 76 Common to both was the codification of sports. The Football
Association was founded in 1863, the cricketing yearbook Wisden was first pro-
duced in 1864, the Rugby Union rules (based on the Rugby School rules) were
formulated in 1871, and in 1866 the Pugilists' Benevolent Association adopted
a series of rules partly devised by the lightweight champion boxer, Arthur Cham-
bers, but famously published, the following year, under the name of their 24-
year-old endorser, the eighth Marquess of Queensberry, John Sholto Douglas. 77
Boxing regulations had gradually become more rigorous during Victoria's
reign: Broughton's 1743 rules were superseded in 1838 by the London Prize Rules
(which were revised in 1853). These specified the size of a boxing ring, the use of
turf, the role of seconds and umpires, and outlawed head-butting, kicking and

biting. Most importantly, they also decreed that if the contest was undecided all
bets were off. 78 The Queensberry Rules (essentially a modified version of those
which had governed sparring for many years) went much further towards bridg-
ing the gap between the amateur and professional sport. All the grappling holds
now associated with wrestling were disallowed, thus ensuring a more upright con-
test; weight categories for boxers were to be strictly observed, and gloves, which
had been used mainly in training, were now to be compulsory in fights. Under
the London Prize Rules, fights were to the finish, although exhausted fighters or
their seconds might agree to a draw (as happened after 37 rounds in the case of
Heenan vs. Sayers). Under the Queensberry rules, there would be a set number of
rounds (usually no more than twenty), limited to three minutes each, with one
minute between rounds; a man who was knocked down was allowed ten seconds
to get to his feet or lose the fight by a knockout).

After the 1860s old-style prize-fights continued clandestinely, but they were
no longer the national events that Sayers vs. Heenan had been. Endorsed by
organizations such as the Amateur Athletic Club, the Queensberry rules were
increasingly chosen over the London Prize Rules. Bare-knuckle boxing was giving
way to boxing in its modern form.

Shortly after the end of the Civil War, the Marquess of Queensberry,
accompanied by Arthur Chambers, visited the United States for, as his grand-
son notes, 'agreement with American supporters of the game was essential'. 79
Queensberry 's rules came into effect slightly later in America than in Britain;
John L. Sullivan's last contest under the London Prize Ring rules took place in
1889. In the United States, the dichotomy between attitudes towards profes-
sional and amateur boxing was particularly pronounced, perhaps because pro-
fessional prize-fighting was even more violent and disorderly there. From the
late 1840s until the Civil War, tension between 'natives' and the growing num-
bers of Irish immigrants found expression in a series of fiercely contested fights

Mathew Brady,
two soldiers posed
as boxers at a
Federal camp
at Petersburg,
Virginia, April 1865.

between various pairings of Tom Hyer, Yankee Sullivan, John Morrissey and
John C. Heenan. The most colourful of these fighters was John Morrissey. Prize-
fighting was only one element in what was effectively a wrong-side-of-the-tracks
Benjamin Franklin career, ranging from street gangs to political 'shoulder-hit-
ting' (persuading voters to make the 'right' choice) to the founding of the
Saratoga race-track (with accompanying lucrative gambling opportunities) to
serving two terms in Congress. Today, Morrissey is remembered for his involve-
ment in the murder of William Poole - Bill the Butcher - the leader of a so-
called Native American (anti-Irish) gang. Herbert Asbury told the story in
The Gangs of New York (1927) and Martin Scorsese adapted it for the cinema
in 2002. 8o

The passing of legislation to outlaw prize-fighting (in Massachusetts in
1849; in New York in 1859) coincided with a boom in sparring academies and
cheap boxing manuals. Partly as a result of the Heenan-Sayers contest, boxing
also became a popular form of camp recreation during the American Civil War;
'a poignant if fleeting alternative to the ghastliness of battle' (illus. 30). 8l From
the antebellum period onwards, working-class prize-fighting was considered
corrupt and deplorable, while genteel sparring was welcomed as a means of
restoring 'vigour' (a popular word particularly by the end of the century) to
middle-class men. Reformers such Thomas Wentworth Higginson argued that
sports such as boxing counteracted what they saw as the inherently emasculat-
ing effects of city life. 82 'I am satisfied', announced Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.,
the asthmatic Autocrat of the Breakfast Table', in 1858, 'that such a set of black-
coated, stiff-jointed, soft-muscled, paste-complexioned youth as we can boast of
in our Atlantic cities never before sprang from loins of Anglo-Saxon lineage.' 83
One of the delights of 'a manly self-hood' that Walt Whitman celebrated in his
i860 'Poem of Joys' was the 'joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the
arena, in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent'
(illus. 31). 84

In the late 1870s and '80s, Henry James created American protagonists
whose masculinity was directly shaped by the Civil War and its aftermath. Vet-
erans of the war like Basil Ransom (in The Bostonians, 1886) and Christopher
Newman (in The American, 1877) were 'national types' whose instinct for battle
had been redirected into commercial and romantic ventures. To be 'a powerful
specimen of an American', Newman must first of all be physically fit, strong
and vigorous. A product of 'the elastic soil of the West', he was 'not a man to
whom fatigue was familiar'; his rhetoric, too, involves delivering blows to his
competitors and generally putting their noses 'out of joint'. It is not simply that
Newman's 'physical capital' correlates with his financial and moral worth;
rather, James suggests, it is his natural physical 'vigour' that allows his other
accomplishments. 'What should I be afraid of?', he announces, 'I am too ridicu-
lously tough'. 85 But Basil Ransom worries that men like Newman are becoming
rare. The 'masculine tone', he complains, is under threat. 86 Perhaps America
was growing 'old and soft'. 87

George A. Hayes, Bare Knuckles c. 1870-85.

George Bellows, Business-men's Class, ymca, lithograph, 1916.

Theodore Roosevelt wrote directly of the nationalistic (Anglo-Saxon
American) imperative behind 'the strenuous life': 'There is no place in the world
for nations who have become enervated by the soft and easy life, or who have
lost their fibre of vigorous hardness and masculinity'. 88 Roosevelt also believed
that boxing was also an ideal sport for city dwellers. 'When obliged to live in
cities,' he wrote in his 1913 autobiography, 'I for a long time found that boxing
and wrestling enabled me to get a good deal of exercise in condensed and
attractive form.' But it was not only the possibility of a vigorous workout in a
limited space that appealed. 'Powerful, vigorous men of strong animal
development', he maintained, 'must have some way in which their animal spirits
can find vent' (illus. 32). 89

'box, don't fight'

In Britain, finding vent for dangerous urban 'animal spirits' was one of the am-
bitions of the Christian socialist movement, which Thomas Hughes founded
with F. D. Maurice and Charles Kingsley. One of their earliest initiatives was a
night school and a series of Working Men's Associations. In 1854 the evening
classes developed into the establishment of the Working Men's College. When
Hughes proposed to teach boxing there, Maurice was alarmed, and indeed 'was
afraid that the fighting in Tom Brown's Schooldays might be used to justify the
brutalities of professional prize-fighting', in particular the notorious contest
between Sayers and Heenan. 90

Maurice need not have worried about associations of amateur sparring with
the dying days of bare-knuckle prize-fighting for, even in the 1860s, and even in
Britain, the two sports were coming to be seen as radically different. 91 Hughes
loathed prize-fighting, writing in an 1864 letter that 'fighting in cold blood for
money is under any conditions as brutal and degrading a custom as any nation
can tolerate'. 92 But that was not to say that 'round shoulders, narrow chests,
stiff limbs' were to be condoned; they were 'as bad as defective grammar and
arithmetic'. Everybody at the college had to box with Hughes, and the sparring
classes 'grew into informal social gatherings'. 93

In 1880, the British Amateur Boxing Association was founded with the
motto, 'Box, don't fight', and with this in mind, social and religious reformers
encouraged the setting up of boxing clubs in working-class areas. The violence
of the street, it was thought, could be redirected into the gym. In his 1899 study
of East London, Walter Besant wrote of the importance of bringing the public
school ideal into poor neighbourhoods:

They work off their restlessness and get rid of the devil in the gym-
nasium with the boxing-gloves and with single stick; they contract
habits of order and discipline; they become infected with some of the
upper-class ideals, especially as regards honor and honesty, purity and
temperance.

The language Besant uses here is suffused with, and indeed confuses,
religious and medical imagery. Boxing would not only enact a kind of
exorcism ('fifteen minutes with a stout adversary knock the devil out of a lad
- the devil of restlessness and pugnacity'), but also, he suggests, become a
kind of beneficial contagion. 94 This might also have other, more immediately
practical, advantages. When, in Besant's novel All Sorts and Conditions of
Men (1882), Angela Messenger worries about security in her Utopian Palace
of Delight (a model for the real People's Palace) her friend, the aristocrat-in-
disguise Harry Le Breton, suggests engaging 'a professor of the noble art of
self-defence'. 95

In East London, Besant recalled the success of a church boxing club in
Shoreditch, and urged readers who 'think that this is not the ideal amusement
for a clergyman' to think again (illus. 33). 96 In fact many churches and later
synagogues ran gyms and supported fighters. 97 The close involvement of
organizations such as the Boy Scout Movement, the Jewish Lads' Brigade and
Boys' Town in amateur boxing forms the basis of many fictional (as well as true)
boxing stories well into the twentieth century. 98 The 'boxer-and-the priest'
movie did particularly well during the thirties. 99

Needless to say, Hollywood notwithstanding, boxing did not always succeed
in ridding the streets of the devil. In his book on the Kray twins, John Pearson
describes their early, highly successful, boxing careers in the London East End
of the 1950s. Their father, he writes, 'thought that boxing would be the making
of the twins, give them the discipline they needed, take them off the streets and
give them something other than mischief to occupy their minds'. As amateurs,
the twins won every bout they fought, and at the age of sixteen, they turned

A. S. Hartnet,
'Men's Club in
Connection with
Holy Trinity
Church, Shoreditch
- A Boxing Match',
The Graphic,
19 October 1889.

professional. But soon afterwards, Pearson notes, 'the street violence they were
involved in mysteriously increased as well'. 100

In the 'social problem' discourse of the late nineteenth century, reformers
often talked about 'the way out' and here too boxing played a part. 101 In Arthur
Morrison's 1896 novel of London's East End, A Child ofthejago, Father Sturt
tries to 'wipe out the blackest spot in the Jago' by creating a lodging-house, a
night-shelter, washhouses and a club where 'he gathered the men of the Jago
indiscriminately, with sole condition of good behaviour on the premises'. 'And
there they smoked, jumped, swung on horizontal bars, boxed, played at cards
and bagatelle, free from interference save when interference became neces-
sary.' 102 But despite the best efforts of Father Sturt, the violence of the streets is
never channelled. A novel full of street battles, A Child ofthejago ends with a
fight in which the protagonist, Dicky, is killed. With his dying breath, he says to
Father Sturt that he's found another 'way out - better'. 103

THE FISTIC PHRASEOLOGY OF CHARLES DICKENS

George Orwell, claiming Dickens as a fellow pacifist in 1939, argued that he 'has
no interest in pugilism':

Considering the age in which he was writing, it is astonishing how lit-
tle physical brutality there is in Dickens's novels ... he sees the stupid-
ity of violence, and also he belongs to a cautious urban class which does
not deal in socks on the jaw, even in theory. 104

Others have disagreed with this reading. John Carey, for example, notes that
while Dickens 'saw himself as the great prophet of cosy, domestic virtue, pur-
veyor of improving literature to the middle classes . . . violence and destruction
were the most powerful stimulants to his imagination'. 105 This violence mani-
fests itself in many ways; in murder, fire and cannibalism. 'Socks on the jaw' are
also not uncommon. The shift in the cultural meanings of boxing in the Victor-
ian era is nowhere better reflected than in a body of work which began in the
1830s and ended in the 1870s.

In an 1852 letter, Dickens wrote that 'Nobody can for a moment suppose
that "sporting" amusements are the sports of the people . . . they are the
amusements of a peculiar and limited class', and boxers (and their supporters)
often figure in his novels as hangovers from that peculiar class and a fading
Regency world. 106 But while upper-class members of the Fancy, such as Sir
Mulberry Hawk in Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9), are villains as well as fools,
working-class or shabby-genteel sporting types, such Sam Weller, Pickwick's
cheerfully cynical and pugilistic manservant, are usually treated with affection.
In Dickens's first novel, The Pickwick Papers (1836-8), the joke on the nostalgic
boxing fan is similar to that on the boxing prints in the i860 'Uncommercial
Traveller' piece. When Mr. Roker recalls the glory days of the butcher-pugilist

with whom Pickwick is to share a room in the debtors' jail, he gazes 'abstractedly
out of the grated window before him, as if he were fondly recalling some peaceful
scene of his early youth':

It seems but yesterday that he whopped the coal-heaver down Fox-
under-the-Hill by the wharf there. I think I can see him now, a-coming
up the Strand between the two street-keepers, a little sobered by the
bruising, with a patch o' winegar and brown paper over his right eye-
lid, and that 'ere lovely bull-dog, as pinned the little boy arterwards, a-
following at his heels. 107

Another recurrent joke features the pugilistic pretensions of clerks as a form
of ersatz gentility. In The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) Dick Swiveller (bearer of a
'small limp' calling card and dandyish attire) attempts fisticuffs at the door of
Daniel Quilp, where he 'hammer[ed] away with such good will and heartiness'
that it takes Quilp a couple of minutes to dislodge him, and even then Swiveller
'perform [ed] a kind of dance round him and require[ed] to know "whether he
wanted any more?"'. 108 Swiveller is not the only one of Dickens's characters to
enjoy a little sparring dance or shadow boxing (which Addison had described
as giving a man 'all the pleasure of boxing, without the blows'). 109 Later in The
Old Curiosity Shop, little Nell's gambling-addicted grandfather is tempted off
the straight and narrow at a pub run by Jem Groves, a retired prize-fighter.
Groves very much admires his own portrait upon the wall and is introduced
'sparring scientifically at a counterfeit Jem Groves, who was sparring at society
in general from a black frame over the chimney-piece'. 110 Real and (safely) coun-
terfeit violence, here and elsewhere in Dickens's work, exist side by side.
Unable to take on his master directly ('I should have spoilt his features ... if I
could have afforded it', he later confesses), Newman Noggs, clerk to the odious
Ralph Nickleby, shadow boxes outside his office door.

He stood at a little distance from the door, with his face towards it; and
with the sleeves of his coat turned back at the wrists, was occupied in
bestowing the most vigorous, scientific, and straightforward blows
upon the empty air.

At first sight, this would have appeared merely a wise precaution
in a man of sedentary habits, with the view of opening the chest and
strengthening the muscles of the arms. But the intense eagerness and
joy depicted in the face of Newman Noggs, which was suffused with
perspiration; the surprising energy with which he directed a constant
succession of blows towards a particular panel about five foot eight
from the ground, and still worked away in the most untiring and per-
severing manner; would have sufficiently explained to the most atten-
tive observer, that his imagination was thrashing to within an inch of
his life, his body's most active employer, Mr. Ralph Nickleby. 111

Dickens enjoyed the language of boxing as much as he did boxers, and nowhere
more than in Dombey and Son (1846-8); indeed he stole the name (but little else)
of a real prize-fighter, 'The Game Chicken' (Henry - 'Hen' - Pearce) for one of
its characters. After coming into his inheritance, Mr Toots, a Corinthian past his
sell-by-date, devotes himself to learning 'those gentle arts which refine and
humanize existence, his chief instructor in which was an interesting character
called the Game Chicken, who was always heard of at the bar of the Black Bad-
ger, wore a shaggy great-coat in the warmest weather, and knocked Mr. Toots
about the head three times a week, for the small consideration often and six
per visit'. We learn about the Game Chicken's past exploits, his glory against
the Nobby Shropshire One, and his defeat ('he was severely fibbed . . . heavily
grassed') by the Larkey Boy. When Mr Toots despairs of winning the love of
Florence Dombey against the wishes of her father, the Chicken reassures him
that 'it is within the resources of Science to double him up, with one blow in
the waistcoat'. 112

When, in Bleak House (1852-3), Mr Snagsby comments that 'when a time is
named for tea, it's better to come up to it', his wife is appalled.

'To come up to it!' Mrs Snasgby repeats with severity. 'Up to it! As if

Mr Snagsby was a fighter!'
'Not at all, my dear,' says Mr. Snagsby. 113

Mrs Snagsby views the use of boxing jargon as a sign of vulgarity, which must
be avoided at all costs. Dickens, though, had no such qualms. A boxing pun
may even be intended in the title of the opening chapter of Bleak House, 'In
Chancery'. The oed gives as the slang meaning of the term, 'the position of the
head when held under the opponent's left arm to be pommelled severely, the vic-
tim meanwhile being unable to retaliate effectively.' 114 The meaning derives,
the Dictionary adds, 'from the tenacity and absolute control with which the
Court of Chancery holds anything'. This legal metaphor was frequently used in
boxing slang, and, with the new meaning attached, occasionally reapplied to
law. In August 1841, Punch enjoyed a typical joke on legal pugilism':

The Chancery bar has been lately occupied with a question relating to
a patent for pins' heads . . . The lawyers are the best boxers, after all.
Only let them get a head in chancery, even a pin's, and see how they
make the proprietor bleed. 115

Dickens used the phrase himself in The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) when the
Revd Crisparkle affectionately takes on his mother and 'wound up by getting
the old lady's head into Chancery, a technical term used in scientific circles, with
a lightness of touch that hardly stirred the lightest lavender or cherry riband in
it'. 116 In Bleak House, he may have wanted the phrase's additional meaning to
reinforce the novel's emphasis on deadlock of various kinds.

Elsewhere, what Dickens terms 'fistic phraseology' proves remarkably ver-
satile, and his relish in its use is palpable. Some metaphors have only fleeting
comic potential, often to characterize a marriage: in the above example, the joke
rests in the fact that Mrs rather than Mr Snagsby is clearly the pugilist in the
family; in the opening chapter of Nicholas Nickleby, on the other hand, Mr. God-
frey Nickleby and his wife are described as 'two principles in a sparring match,
who, when fortune is low and backers scarce, will chivalrously set to, for the
mere pleasure of the buffeting.' 117 When Wemmick, in Great Expectations (1861),
tries to put an arm around Miss Skiffins, she stops it with her green-gloved
hands and 'the neatness of a placid boxer'. 118

By putting pugilistic slang in the mouths of unlikely speakers in unlikely
contexts, Dickens encourages his readers to think about the values such idioms
conventionally entail. When the tender-hearted and literal-minded Mr Pick-
wick says 'Take that, Sir' to the wretched Job Trotter, Dickens intervenes with
'Take what?'

In the ordinary acceptation of such language, it should have been a
blow. As the world runs, it ought to have been a sound, hearty cuff; for
Mr. Pickwick had been duped, deceived, and wronged by the destitute
outcast who was now wholly in his power. Must we tell the truth? It
was something from Mr. Pickwick's waistcoat, which chinked as it was
given into Job's hand . . . 119

Pickwick just does not do metaphors. However, it is not only in 'the Pickwick-
ian sense' that words can be redefined. 120 In David Copperfield (1850), Mr Mi-
cawber repeatedly 'cull[s] a figure of speech from the vocabulary of our coarser
national sports'. On several occasions Micawber describes himself as 'floored'
by circumstances and at one point he tells David, 'I can show fight no more'.
But the point about Mr Micawber is that he never gives up; however often he
finds himself on the floor, he always does fight on. And the last time he tells
David he is 'floored', it is by the friendliness of Mr Dick. 121

Other metaphors are more fully developed. In Chapter Two of Hard Times
(1854), the 'government officer' who accompanies Mr Gradgrind on his school
inspection is given 'in his way (and in most other people's too)', the supplement-
ary identity of 'professed pugilist; always in training'. This allows for consider-
able elaboration. Gradgrind came prepared

always with a system to force down the general throat like a bolus,
always to be heard of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to fight
all England. To continue in fistic phraseology, he had a genius for
coming up to the scratch, wherever and whatever it was, and proving
himself an ugly customer. He would go in and damage any subject
whatever with his right, follow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter,
bore his opponent (he always fought All England) to the ropes, and fall

upon him neatly. He was certain to knock the wind out of common-
sense, and render that unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time. 122

The pugilistic energies of the Regency have been diverted by utilitarian Eng-
land, Dickens seems to be suggesting, and that is perhaps not wholly a good
thing: in the classroom, the pugilist-turned-bureaucrat (once hero of 'the Fancy')
is reduced to fighting 'fancy' in the form of flowered carpets, and pictures of
horses on the walls.

While references to boxers and boxing slang remain incidental in Dickens's
novels, fights in which boxing skills are employed occur remarkably frequently.
Such fights, in particular those with a strong moral impetus behind them, were,
of course, popular with readers. When Nicholas Nickleby asks Mr Crummies
why he stages combats between mismatched opponents, Crummies replies, 'it's
the essence of the combat that there should be a foot or two between them. How
are you to get up the sympathies of the audience in a legitimate manner, if there
isn't a little man contending against a big one'. 123 Such contests also serve a
structural purpose, often marking turning points in the novels; in defending
the honour of another (a sister or a mother or a small boy) the hero embarks on
a new stage in his adventure. For example, after Noah Claypole insults his
mother, Oliver Twist, 'crimson with fury', knocks him down with a blow that
'contains his whole force'; beaten in turn, he decides to run away from the work-
house -to London and into the clutches of Fagin (illus. 34). 124 Nicholas Nickleby
experiences several such turning points, the most important occurring after his
defeat of the cruel schoolmaster, Squeers. This fight is presented as the key
incident of what can only be described as a kind of slave narrative. On Nickleby's
arrival at the school, Squeers tells his wife that he now feels like 'a slave-driver
in the West Indies [who] is allowed a man under him to see that his blacks don't
run away, or get up a rebellion'; Nickleby is 'to do the same with our blacks'. On
this analogy, the abject child, Smike, who runs away only to be recaptured, takes
on the role of the beaten slave. But while in the classic American slave-narra-
tives, he would fight either his master or overseer, here the overseer (Nickleby)
intervenes on the slave's behalf and then the two run away together. 125

Many of Dickens's fights combine a defence of vulnerable virtue with an
awareness of class status and conflict, in a manner that recalls Adam Bede's bat-
tle. In Dickens, however, the fight is not usually between a decadent aristocrat
and a humble peasant, but between various members of the middle class. John
Carey argues that whenever 'virtuous muscles' are involved, Dickens's writing
'deteriorates'. 'Hopelessly dignified, the good characters brandish their sticks
or fists, and the villains tumble. Dickens beams complacently. It is dutiful,
perfunctory business.' 126 Although Carey's assessment rings true for some of
the instances given above, there are other cases in which virtue and violence
have a less easy relationship, and where the writing is far from perfunctory.
Often considered as alternative versions of Dickens's own autobiography, David

George Cruikshank,

'Oliver plucks up

spirit', illustration

for Oliver Twist

(1837).

Copperfield and Great Expectations present their fisticuffs rather more anxiously
and interestingly.

Aware of himself from an early age as a 'little gent', David Copperfield strug-
gles to establish this fact in the world. 127 Chapter Eighteen presents some of the
events that, in retrospect, he believes 'mark' the course of coming of age: these
are falling in love, twice, and fighting the local butcher, twice.

'The terror of the youth of Canterbury', the butcher is reputed to have
'unnatural strength' because of 'the beef suet with which he anoints his hair'. He
taunts David and punches some younger boys about the head, and so David
decided to fight him. David loses the fight and goes home to tell Agnes (the girl
he does not yet know he loves) all about it. Her response is perfect: 'she thinks
I couldn't have done otherwise than fight the butcher, while she shrinks and
trembles at my having fought him'. Following beef-steaks to the eyes, some bear's

grease to the hair, another thwarted love, and 'new provocation', David fights
the butcher again and this time wins, knocking his adversary's tooth out. Al-
though David says of the first contest, 'I hardly know which is myself and which
the butcher, we are always in such a tangle and tussle, knocking about the trod-
den grass', it is precisely to establish who he is, and particularly to make it clear
to which class he belongs, that he fights. 128

At the end of the chapter, the young David believes he is now prepared for
life as a Regency gentleman manque; indeed next time he sees the butcher he
contemplates the gentlemanly act of throwing him 'five shillings to drink'. But
David has not yet, his older self admits, fallen in love 'in earnest', nor has he yet
fought in earnest. When, a few chapters later he takes sparring lessons with
James Steerforth, he feels himself 'the greenest and most inexperienced of mor-
tals'. (Mildly embarrassed about his lack of boxing skill in front of Steerforth,
he could, however, 'never bear' to show it in front of a man he feels is his infe-
rior, Steerforth's servant, Littimer.) 129

The real fight in David's life is against Uriah Heep, a man whose social am-
bition is unsettlingly similar to his own (Heep calls David an 'upstart'; David
calls Heep an over-reacher). Heep is described as creepy and fawning - a 'crawl-
ing impersonation of meanness'. He gives David 'damp fishy' handshakes, but
he is not harmless. His hand may be damp but it is also revengeful, a 'cruel-look-
ing hand'. It takes David a long time to realize this, and even longer to act on his
feelings of disgust. When he first sees Heep admiring Agnes, he wishes he had
leave to knock him down'; 30 pages later, he recalls another leer' and wonders
'that I did not collar him'; it takes another five pages before, 'enraged as I never
was before and never have been since', he strikes the cheek that is 'invitingly'
before him. 1 struck it with my open hand with that force that my fingers tingled
as if I had burnt them'. By assuming a gentlemanly persona, David could break
the butcher's tooth, but here there is not enough class distance for fists to be
clenched. Fortunately for David, Mr. Micawber, who defines equality as being
able to look my fellow man in the face, and punch his face if he offended me',
has fewer class anxieties. He steps in and breaks Heep's wrist with a ruler wielded
as a sword. David says he has never seen 'anything more ridiculous', but it is
clear that he could not have done as much. 130

David's uneasy sense of his own hands might be compared to his reading of
the other pairs he encounters in the novel. Some are easily understood: Trad-
dies, a clerk, has 'soft' hands; Ham Pegotty, a fisherman, has 'manly' hands.
Others are more confusing. Heep's hands are both 'damp' and 'cruel'. Steerforth,
the Byronic 'Oxford man', conceals his hands with gloves when he spars; he
'knew everything' about sports, says David, but this is a misreading. What he
sees as Steerforth's harmless sporting 'skirmish with Miss Dartle', for example,
is the gloved aftermarth of an unsporting, ungloved, attack, for at the end of
the novel we learn that it is Steerforth who has scarred her. 131

An understanding of the social and moral weight carried by different kinds
of hands features even more centrally in Great Expectations. When Pip first

103

visits Satis House, he is overwhelmed by Estella's contempt for him; it is, he
says, 'so strong, that it became infectious and I caught it'. 'I had never thought
of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to consider them a very
indifferent pair.' Nevertheless, Estella instructs him to use his 'coarse hands' to
play cards with her (she wins every game), and then feeds him outside on the
courtyard stones. Pip's reaction to this is so powerful as to be inexpressible ver-
bally - 'humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry -I cannot hit upon the
right name for the smart' - the only 'counteraction' he finds to 'the smart with-
out a name' is to twist his hair, kick the wall and cry. 132

A second visit to Satis House follows much the same pattern - cards fol-
lowed by food in the yard 'in the former dog-like manner'. This time, however,
Pip's wandering in the grounds leads not to self-flagellation, but the flagellation
of the Pale Young Gentleman (Herbert Pocket). He has 'hit upon' something
more than the right name. It is Pocket who initiates the bout by inviting Pip to
'come and fight'. As a young Regency gentleman, Pocket considers fighting a
jolly game whose pleasure derives primarily from the following of laws', 'regu-
lar rules' and numerous 'preliminaries'. The first requirement is 'a reason for
fighting' and so he pulls Pip's hair and charges his head into his stomach; next,
proper ground must be found, along with 'a bottle of water and a sponge dipped
in vinegar'; then one must 'denude for battle'. Pip finds this behaviour 'at once
light-hearted, business-like, and blood-thirsty'. But of course Pip does not un-
derstand the nature of the game, or indeed that it is a game. He is 'morally and
physically' offended by the attack on his hair and stomach ('particularly dis-
agreeable after bread and meat') and just wants to hit his attacker and be done
with it. Fighting, for him, in other words, should be a natural response to hurt,
but instead he has to wait until the preparations are complete. When his first
blow sends Pocket to the ground, he thinks that is the end of it, but Pocket keeps
coming back for more - Pip floors him with every punch - stopping only for
the pleasure of 'sponging himself or drinking out of the water-bottle, with the
greatest satisfaction in seconding himself according to the form'. Finally
Pocket throws his sponge in, and then has to explain to Pip that that means he
has won. 133

At first glance, the fight seems a perfect 'counteraction' to Estella's humili-
ating behaviour. The gentleman's spurious 'reason' - a butt to the stomach -
has unwittingly hit Pip where it hurts, for his stomach is full of Estella's bread
and meat. Now Pip no longer needs to hurt himself (by kicking at walls and
twisting his hair), but can hurt someone else, someone who, like Estella, wants
to play silly games with his hands. Pip even admits that 'the more I hit him, the
harder I hit him'. But ultimately Pip finds only 'gloomy satisfaction' in his vic-
tory. Failing to understand that the fight was a game (the only game in which a
blacksmith's apprentice could strike a gentleman), he is consumed by guilt
and fear - 'I felt that the pale young gentleman's blood was on my head, and that
the law would avenge it'. (That this is an extreme misinterpretation of events
is confirmed later in the book when the two meet again, and Pocket asks Pip to

104

forgive him 'for having knocked you about so.') Nor is his nameless smart (might
'nausea' be the word?) any better, despite the fact that he soon encounters Estella
with 'a bright flush upon her face'. Aroused by what she sees as his instinctive
vitality, she invites him to kiss her and he does. 'But I felt that the kiss was given
to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and that it
was worth nothing.' We might compare her response to that of the shrinking
and trembling Agnes in David Copperfield. m

For all his considerable technical knowledge, Pocket is a poor physical spec-
imen: 'pale', with 'red eyelids', 'pimples on his face and a breaking out in his
mouth'. He is tall, but 'his elbows, knees, wrists, and heels' are the most devel-
oped parts. Pocket is also, Pip observes, 'inky', and 'has been at his books', al-
though we do not learn if it is those that taught him about boxing. Pip knows
nothing about the science of boxing, but fights with the 'coarse hands' that, at
this point in the story, he feels are his only inheritance. His victory over a gen-
tleman, and Estella's reaction, merely confirm that coarseness (while David's
victory over a butcher briefly gave him gentlemanly airs). Like Joe, Pip is a black-
smith and blacksmiths, along with butchers, were famous as fighters. Joe strikes
his horseshoes 'complete, in a single blow'; Pip has struck Pocket in the same
way. Soon after, Mr Jaggers announces Pip's great expectations, and offers Joe
financial compensation. Joe's reaction is remarkably like Pip's had been earlier:
first, masochistic (he 'scooped his eyes with his disengaged wrist, as if he were
bent on gouging himself) and then, pugilistic. Jaggers 's patronizing words are
finally stopped 'by Joe's suddenly working round him with every demonstra-
tion of pugilistic purpose'. The lawyer soon departs. It is only later (when he
can 'see again' in writing his story) that Pip realizes that a 'muscular blacksmith's
arm' is also the arm most likely to have a gentle and loving touch. 135

One of the ideas that Dickens explored in Great Expectations was what it
meant to be a gentleman. For much of the novel, Pip believes it is a matter of
playing games, and Pocket soon proves a genial teacher of all manner of rules.
Although David Copperfield had been happy to be treated like a plaything' by
Steerforth, Pip will not assume that role for long. 136 Instead he learns the rules
that govern the gentlemanly use of cutlery, domestic life, being an employer
and financial management. It is only later, when he realizes the source of his
wealth, that he comes to appreciate Mr. Pocket Senior's comment that 'no man
who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was ... a true gentleman in man-
ner'. In other words, Herbert Pocket is a gentleman not because he knows the
many and complex rules of boxing, but because, when he plays that game (and
when he does not), 'he bears all blows and buffets'. 137

If Dickens's first novels explored the comic remnants of the Regency world,
his last, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished at his death in 1870), presents
one of the most appealing literary portraits of a Muscular Christian. 138 Minor
Canon the Reverend Septimus Crisparkle is a man who is not ashamed to follow
Hughes's advice and fight with 'the weapons which God has given us all'.
Crisparkle is another of Dickens's shadow boxers, but in his case it is not a

105

matter of imaginative thrashing. Rather he merely assist[s] his circulation by
boxing at a looking glass with great science and prowess . . . while his radi-
ant features teemed with innocence, and soft-hearted benevolence beamed from
his boxing gloves'. As a prelude to breakfast he takes his mother's face between
his boxing gloves and kisses it; 'Having done so with tenderness, the Reverend
Septimus turned to again, countering with his left, and putting in his right, in
a tremendous manner.' 139

Later in the novel, Crisparkle uses his boxing knowledge to make an ex-
tended comparison of gentle pugilists and pugnacious philanthropists. When
he arrives at the office of the Haven of Philanthropy, he finds it populated by
'Professors . . . ready for a turn-up with any Novice who might be on hand'.

Preparations were in progress for a moral little Mill somewhere on the
rural circuit, and other Professors were backing this or that Heavy-
weight as good for such or such speech-making hits, so very much after
the manner of the sporting publicans, that the intended Resolutions
might have been Rounds.

Although both pugilists and philanthropists have 'a propensity to "pitch into"
[their] fellow-creatures', differences between the two 'professions' soon emerge.
While the philanthropists cannot claim to be in good physical condition (they
present a 'superabundance of what is known to Pugilistic Experts as Suet Pud-
ding'), they easily top the prize-fighters in aggression, bad language, bad tem-
per and foul play. Although much involved in charitable causes himself, Dickens
objected strongly to what he called 'the cant of philanthropy' and its profession-
alization. 140 'The Professors of the Noble Art,' Crisparkle concludes, are 'much
nobler than the Professors of Philanthropy.' 141

'IT WAS DIFFERENT IN THE DAYS OF WHICH I SPEAK . . ,' 142

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, English nostalgia for the golden
age of Regency prize-fighting returned with fervour. There are various possi-
ble explanations for this. As the Queensberry rules took hold, it became clear
that the new sport of gloved boxing was entirely different from the old bare-
knuckle prize-fighting. That sense of loss was perhaps intensified by that fact
that the golden age of pugilism had also been the time when British sporting
and military superiority was clear. In 1884 Francis Galton observed the dis-
turbing fact that the 'rising generation' simply couldn't hit straight. Describ-
ing a machine for measuring the swiftness and force of a person's blow, Galton
noted, 'it was a matter of surprise to me, who was born in the days of pugilism,
to find that the art of delivering a clean hit, straight from the shoulder, as re-
quired by this instrument, is nearly lost to the rising generation. Notwith-
standing the simplicity of the test, a large proportion of persons bungled
absurdly over it.' 143

106

By the 1890s boxing was not simply a modern sport, but increasingly an Amer-
ican one. The last British heavyweight champion (until Lennox Lewis in 2002) was
Robert Fitzsimmons, who won his title from 'Gentleman Jim' Corbett in 1897, and
lost it two years later to Jim Jeffries. 144 The relinquishing of the heavyweight box-
ing crown was seen by some as symptomatic of the way in which America was
forging ahead (economically and militarily) of a colonially overstretched Britain.

Angus Wilson described 'the naughty nineties' as a period in which the 'old
unregenerate manliness of the Regency' resurfaced. His father is proposed as a
representative figure: 'a middle class rentier', to whom 'being a man' meant 'pay-
ing a quid or two to a Covent Garden porter to fight him barefisted when he
rolled home to the Tavistock Hotel after a night's card playing.'

This was the old manliness that had united the ungodly upper class
and the ungodly poor which had hidden its face from the blinding light
of Queen Victoria's overwhelmingly pure home life; nothing to do with
the manly thrashing which Tom Brown would administer to bullies
after hearing the Doctor preach a heartening, noble and manly sermon
in Rugby Chapel. 145

This 'old manliness' reasserted itself against the watered-down Christian kind
in a variety of different quarters. In his 1894 autobiography, novelist David
Christie Murray confidently asserted that 'few greater blunders have been made
by those who legislate for our well-being than by those moral people who abol-
ished the Prize-Ring'. Many, he admits, will think him an 'irredeemable barbar-
ian' for saying so, but he is keen to observe that a 'marked deterioration has
been noticeable in the character of our people since the sport of the ring ceased
to be a source of popular amusement'. Lost national pride is once again closely
aligned with lost masculine 'virtue'. Looking back to his youth, Murray recalled
the exploits of the Tipton Slasher (who 'trained my youthful hands to guard my
youthful head') and the man who took his crown, Tom Sayers. Murray's empha-
sis is largely on the inevitability of champions (and men in general) succeeding
each other, and the chapter, and indeed, the memoir, ends with Sayers 's reflec-
tion that, 'It is my turn to-day and somebody else's tomorrow.' 146

Among the many novels of the 1890s to evoke romantically the days of the
great bare-knuckle champions is Arthur Conan Doyle's Rodney Stone (1896). 147
Like many of Doyle's historical novels, it is narrated by an old man looking back
to his youth. Stone's Corinthian coming of age is interwoven with a Dickensian
mystery story and a detailed account of the development of the sport, largely
culled from Boxiana. In terms that recall Hazlitt's eulogy to male camaraderie in
'The Fight', Stone evokes the 'solid and virile' values of the past:

The ale-drinking, the rude good-fellowship, the heartiness, the laughter
at discomforts, the craving to see the fight - all these may be set down as
vulgar and trivial by those to whom they are distasteful; but to me, listen-

107

Sidney Paget,

illustration for

Arthur Conan

Doyle, Rodney Stone

(1912).

ing to the far-off and uncertain echoes of our distant past, they seem to
have been the very bones upon which much that is most solid and virile
in this ancient race was molded. 148

Asked by his publisher George Newnes, 'Why that subject, of all subjects on
earth?', Doyle replied, 'Better that our sports should be a little too rough than
that we should run the risk of effeminacy' (illus. 35). 149

Conan Doyle was reputed to have been a fine boxer himself, and an interest
in the sport seeps into works in several different genres. 150 The French anti-hero

108

of his 1903 Napoleonic romp, The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard, for example, has
several comically inept bouts against a 'solid and virile' Englishman. 151 It is from
such Englishmen that Sherlock Holmes is descended. Although Holmes assures
Watson that he is in large part 'a brain' and the rest of him 'mere appendix,'
that appendix often proves quite useful. In The Sign of Four (1889), he encounters
an ex-champion prize-fighter now working as a bodyguard. 152 Refused entrance,
Holmes reminds the man of their acquaintance 'at Alison's rooms on the night
of your benefit four years back'.

'Not Mr Sherlock Holmes!' roared the prize-fighter. 'God's truth! How
could I have mistook you? If instead o' standin' there so quiet you had
just stepped up and given me that cross-hit of yours under the jaw, I'd
ha' known you without question. Ah, you're the one that has wasted your
gifts, you have! You might have aimed high, if you had joined the fancy.' 153

Holmes's jokey aside to Watson - 'if all else fails me, I have still one of the scientific
professions open to me' - relies on the fact that both pugilism and detection were
deemed 'scientific'. Yet this is no mere coincidence of terminology. Both prize-
fighting and crime-solving, as depicted by Doyle, require the careful application of
method and technique to an often elusive opponent. Furthermore both are solitary
pursuits, shunning the support of team-members or a uniformed force. At the end
of Tom Brown's Schooldays 'young master' tells his pupils that cricket 'ought to be
such an unselfish game. It merges the individual in the eleven; he doesn't play that
he may win but that his side may.' Tom agrees with this view, 'now one comes to
think of it', but Holmes is a different case. 154 In the Memoirs, he confides in Watson
about his college days. 'I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather
fond of moping in my rooms and working out my own little methods of thought,
so that I never mixed with the men of my year. Bar fencing and boxing I had few
athletic traits'. 155 Boxing, as Holmes had known it, was the sport of loners and
intellectuals, an amateur pursuit that depended on the cultivation of 'little methods
of thought' as well as chivalric intentions . That, however, was no longer strictly the
case by the 1890s. Boxing was becoming a business and a profession.

109

Like Any Other Profession'

From the 1880s to the 1920s boxing was in a state of flux. One set of codes and
regulations replaced another, British dominance collapsed in the face of new
American prowess, and new audiences emerged through the development of
popular mass media from magazines to film. By the mid-i920s, boxing had be-
come a mainstream spectator sport in the United States, and its associations
with an illegal subculture loosened, for a while at least.

These changes are epitomized in the career of the 'Boston strong boy', John
L. Sullivan. In 1881, Sullivan was a bare-knuckle pugilist, scrapping on a barge
on the Hudson River in order to evade the attention of police; less than a decade
later he was boxing in gloves according to the Queensberry rules in an indoor
arena, lit by electricity, in front of a crowd that included middle-class business-
men and their wives.

Described by his biographer as 'the first significant mass cultural hero in
American life', Sullivan was one of the first sportsmen to become a celebrity
through the services of the national popular press in general, and one maga-
zine in particular. 1 Founded in 1846, the Police Gazette reached its heyday in the
1880s and '90s under the editorship of Richard Kyle Fox. Fox introduced a po-
tent mix of celebrity gossip, racial stereotyping, and sport, all lavishly illustrated
with woodcuts. The Police Gazette's interest in sport, as Tom Wolfe points out,
had 'nothing to do with the High Victorian ideal of "athletics", and everything
to do with gambling'. 2 Readers, it seemed, would bet on absolutely anything,
from cock-fighting, badger-baiting, rat-killing and butchery to wood-chopping,
hairdressing, speedy water-drinking, weightlifting by the teeth, sleep depriva-
tion, and fasting. The magazine awarded championship belts in all these 'events'
and so challenges were regularly issued. But the Police Gazette was particu-
larly interested in boxing. Gene Smith argues that, 'almost alone', Fox's mag-
azine 'made boxing big business and so popular that [in 1882] the result of a
Sullivan-Ryan fight was of immensely more interest to citizens than the result
of a Garfield-Hancock Presidential election'. 3

Sullivan had publicly humiliated Fox in 1881 by refusing to visit his table in
a Boston saloon. 'If he wants to see John L. Sullivan,' the prize-fighter blustered,

The 45th round of
Sullivan vs. Kilrain,
as illustrated in the
Police Gazette (1889).

*0a

'he can do the walking.' From then on, the Police Gazette devoted itself to slander-
ing Sullivan, and Fox set about finding a fighter who could defeat him. English,
Irish, American and New Zealand contenders were all featured in the magazine
as they prepared to take him on. None succeeded. Finally, in 1889, Sullivan faced
Jake Kilrain, whom Fox had dubbed champion of the world (although in fact he
had only drawn with the British champion, Jem Smith). 4 Each side posted a
$10,000 bet, winner to take all. Unfortunately for Fox, after 75 bloody rounds
under the Mississippi sun, Sullivan also beat Kilrain (illus. 36). Fox finally gave
up the feud and awarded him the Police Gazette championship belt.

Following his defeat of Kilrain, Sullivan did not simply become a celebrity;
like Heenan and Sayers before him, he became a screen onto which a wide
variety of feelings and attitudes could be projected. In the late nineteenth century,
many of those feelings concerned doctrines of materialism, whether economic,
aesthetic, physical, or national. The Cuban essayist, poet, and revolutionary
leader, Jose Marti, for example, saw the 1882 Ryan-Sullivan fight as proof of the
uncivilized, and outmoded, nature of North American life. 5 Robert Frost, on
the contrary, used Sullivan's name to demonstrate 'the level of intelligence' in
New Hampshire. 'The matter with the Mid-Victorians,' a farmer states in his
poem, 'New Hampshire', 'Seems to have been a man named John L. Darwin.' 6
The farmer's conflation of the brute materialism of prize-fighting and that of
Darwinism, Frost suggests, demonstrated high intelligence.

To young newspaperman Theodore Dreiser, 'raw, red-faced, big-fisted,
broad-shouldered, drunken' Sullivan, 'with gaudy waistcoat and tie, and rings
and pins set with enormous diamonds and rubies', embodied another kind of
materialism, that of Gilded Age conspicuous consumption. Sullivan, Dreiser
claimed, was 'the apotheosis of the humourously gross and vigorous and mate-
rial ... a sort of prize-fighting J. P. Morgan ... I adored him'. 7 Dreiser drew on
their 1893 meeting in his later fiction; most notably in a crucial scene in Sister
Carrie (1900). 8 Having just helped Carrie take a step up in her inexorable rise,
George Hurstwood goes to the 'gorgeous saloon' which he manages, and there
encounters his rival for her affections, Charles Drouet.

It was at five in the afternoon and the place was crowded with mer-
chants, actors, managers, politicians - a goodly company of rotund,
rosy figures, silk-hatted, starchy-bosomed, be-ringed and be-scarf-
pinned to the queen's taste. John L. Sullivan, the pugilist, was at one
end of the glittering bar, surrounded by a company of loudly dressed
sports who were holding a most animated conversation. Drouet came
across the floor with a festive stride, a new pair of tan shoes squeaking
audibly his progress.

Sullivan's presence foreshadows the conflict between the two men for the prize
of Carrie. It also suggests the terms in which the fight will be played out. If Sul-
livan is 'the apotheosis of the humourously gross and vigorous and material',
Drouet, a travelling salesman in 'new tan shoes' is following, squeakily, in his
footsteps. Saloon-manager Hurstwood has a solidity- 'composed in part of his
fine clothes, his clean linen, his jewels, and, above all, his own sense of his
importance' - which, in Carrie's eyes raises him above Drouet. By the end of the
novel, however, he too will have met his match. The apotheosis of vigorous
materialism, of course, turns out to be Carrie herself. 9

Vachel Lindsay, meanwhile, considered Sullivan's materialism primarily in
literary terms. His poem about the defeat of Kilrain describes the effect 'the
Strong Boy of Boston' had on his nine-year-old self. Sullivan's example, Lindsay
claimed, injected a much-needed infusion of red-blooded masculinity into his
feminized late-Victorian life. Until hearing the 'battle trumpet sound' of John L.,
he had dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy, and, when not under the sway of 'the
cult of Tennyson's Elaine', had taken Louisa May Alcott as his 'gentle guide'. 10
After Sullivan's victory, it seems, being a Bostonian meant something differ-
ent. 11 As a poem, 'The Strong Boy' is a good example of what Lindsay described
as his deployment of 'the Higher Vaudeville imagination'. Like his more famous
'The Congo', it was meant to be chanted, and has a cheerful refrain:

'London Bridge is falling down.'

And . . .

John L. Sullivan

The strong boy

OfBoston

Broke every single rib of Jake Kilrain. 12

But only three years after his defeat of Kilrain, Sullivan's great bare-knuck-
led strength had begun to seem old-fashioned; the future came in the form of
James J. Corbett, 'Gentleman Jim', a bank clerk who taught sparring at San Fran-
cisco's Olympic Club. Corbett defeated Sullivan under the Queensberry rules in
1892, thus becoming the first gloved fighter to be recognized as heavyweight
champion. The fight played out the classic antimonies of youth versus age, and
science versus strength, but it also represented two different eras. Indeed some
saw Sullivan's defeat as representing, once and for all, America's fall from grace
(when hard-drinking men were hard-drinking men) into an age where even prize-
fighters wore evening dress and sipped cocktails. Sullivan described Corbett as
a 'damned dude'.

'Pompadour Jim', or more commonly 'Gentleman Jim', Corbett took his
celebrity status and good looks seriously - 'why a fighter can't be careful about
his appearance I don't understand' - and, with the help of his manager, William
A. Brady, skilfully capitalized on them. 13 Not much had changed financially for
boxers since Mendoza's day. They made little money from fighting itself. Any
boxer with a well-known name took to the stage. All this would change with the
introduction of film in the late 1890s, but until then Corbett toured the coun-
try, staging boxing exhibitions and appearing in a series of successful plays. 14 An
example of his awareness of the tight control needed to maintain his celebrity
can be found in his meeting with Mark Twain in 1894. When Twain jokingly
challenged him to a contest, Corbett declined, 'so gravely', noted Twain, 'that
one might easily have thought him in earnest'. Corbett, it seemed, was worried
that Twain might knock him out 'by a purely accidental blow': 'then my repu-
tation would be gone and you would have a double one. You have got fame
enough already and you ought not to want to take mine away from me.' 15

Fox's Police Gazette campaigned to make boxing legal as well as popular, but
the sport continued to move in and out of legality until the 1920s, with differ-
ent restrictions operating in different states at different times. Following their
fight in Mississippi, for example, Sullivan and Kilrain were arrested and had to
pay substantial fines to avoid imprisonment, while in 1895 legal obstructions
meant that a planned fight between Jim Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons had to
move around the country several times before it finally took place two years
later in Carson City, Nevada. 16 The desire to suppress prize-fighting during this
period was not, as now, based on concerns about the health of the boxers.
Rather, arguments about the legalization of boxing centred on its associations
with crime and political corruption. In 1910 Corbett wrote that he hardly ever
had a fight without a bribe being offered. 'The only objection I have to the prize
ring', declared Theodore Roosevelt in 1913, 'is the crookedness that has attended
its commercial development.' 17

113

In the 1880s New York became one of the main centres of prize-fighting,
despite frequent police disruption and calls from the press to end events 'which
attract the worst ruffians and criminals in the city'. 18 Pushed out of the city,
boxing clubs simply moved to nearby Long Island and Coney Island (popu-
larly known as 'Sodom-by-the-Sea') where they continued to flourish. In order
to try and control this spiralling illegal activity, New York became, in 1896, the
first state to legalize a version of boxing by statute. Sparring with five-ounce
gloves for a maximum of twenty rounds in buildings owned by incorporated
athletic associations was now allowed, but 'disorderly gatherings' and police
intervention continued, and, with the support of Governor Roosevelt, the law
was repealed in 1900.

Outlawing professional boxing made little difference to the growth of its
popularity, however, and in many places fights continued to be staged almost
nightly. Those who were interested had no difficulty finding out where to go.
One scam was to stage 'exhibitions' or, more commonly, to operate politically
supported 'membership clubs'; anyone who paid a dollar could join the club
and watch the fight. The status of athletic associations and saloon-based clubs
shifted during the years that followed, until, in New York at least, boxing was
finally legalized, and properly licensed, in 1920 (illus. 37). 19

In his 1906 novel of the Chicago stockyards, The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
described a club run by the Democratic Party's 'War-Whoop League', where
cock fights, dog fights and boxing take place. 'The policemen in the district all
belonged to the league, and instead of suppressing the fights, they sold tickets
for them.' The clubhouse is a hotbed of 'agencies of corruption' including,
among others, 'the prize-fighter and the professional slugger, the race-track

Kid McCoy at the
Broadway Athletic
Club, 1900.

114

"tout", the procurer, the white-slave agent, and the expert seducer of young
girls', all of whom are, in turn, in 'blood brotherhood with the politician and the
police'. 'More often than not', Sinclair wrote, 'they were one and the same person
- the police captain would own the brothel he pretended to raid . . . On election
day all those powers of vice and corruption were one power; they could tell
within one per cent what the vote of their district would be, and they could
change it at an hour's notice.' 20

The boxing membership clubs were not merely magnets for criminals and
corrupt politicians. As Jack London pointed out in his 1913 'alcoholic memoirs'
of 'bouts' with John Barleycorn, the saloon was a place where men believed they
could escape 'from the narrowness of women's influence into the wide free world
of men'. 21 A steady stream of middle-class men, in pursuit of the strenuous life,
passed though the doors of the boxing clubs, some more anxiously than oth-
ers. In his Life and Confessions, the psychologist G. Stanley Hall admitted a com-
pulsive interest in the 'raw side of human life', so much so that he 'never missed
an opportunity to attend a prizefight if I could do so unknown and away from
home'. 22 The artist Thomas Eakins was quite open about his interest in prize-
fights, and, with his friend, sportswriter Clarence Cranmer, regularly attended
the amphitheatre of the Philadelphia Arena, which was on the other side of
Broad Street from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. 23 His three major
paintings of 1898 and 1899 feature fighters who appeared there during this time,
and two of these were exhibited in the Academy's annual exhibitions. The ille-
gal world of boxing had crossed the road. (Was Sylvester Stallone alluding to
this when he has Rocky train on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art?)

Eakins was uninterested in painting boxers exchanging blows. His paintings
rather explore the moments within a fight when the action stops (Takingthe Count
and Between Rounds) and the moment when it is all over (Salutat). The profes-
sional activities surrounding the fight - involving the boxers' attendants, the ref-
eree, the press, and the police - interested him as much as the boxers themselves.
In the first two paintings, large banners advertising a circus hang from the
balcony. Salutat also alludes to gladiatorial combat (carved into the original
frame of the painting were the words dextra victrice conclamentes salutat, 'the right
hand of the victor salutes those acclaiming him'). Eakins wanted to show that the
artist could find heroism and beauty in male semi-nudity without having
recourse to Rome; modern America, he believed, provided ample material. 24 Salu-
tat features Billy Smith, a local professional featherweight, known as 'Turkey
Point'. While his chiselled white body evokes classical sculpture, his tanned face,
neck and hands remind us that he is a working-class American boy (illus. 38). 25

The victorious boxer's body, and in particular his musculature, is high-
lighted by bright electrical light, but the painting seems equally interested in
celebrating his intimate involvement with the spectators (and indeed their
intimate involvement with the artist, since all six men sitting along the railing
are identifiable from Eakins's personal circle; his father is on the far right).
Although a contemporary reviewer complained that these men are brought 'so

115

Thomas Eakins,
Salutat, 1898.

far forward as to give the impression that both victor and audience might shake
hands', this seems to be one of the painting's great strengths. 26 The triumphantly
raised right hand of Billy Smith is reflected in the raised right hand (with hat) of
Eakins's friend, Clarence Cranmer; patches of blue (in Smith's sash and Cran-
mer's bow tie) also connect them. Without sportswriters such as Cranmer,
Eakins may be suggesting, news of a boxer's victory would not travel far; more
personally, without Cranmer 's encouragement and support, Eakins might never
have attended prize-fights or have gained access to boxers as models. And with-
out such venues as the Philadelphia Arena, men could not gather together to
gaze admiringly at other men. (As Michael Hutt points out, 'Salutat reveals more
of the male body than is strictly necessary'. 27 ) The barrier that divides specta-
tors and participants is less important than the links which connect them.

116

John Sloan's
Philadelphia studio,
December 1895.
Sloan, second from
the left, is watching
a mock boxing
match; George
Luks is the boxer
on the left.

Several of Eakins's followers pursued his interest in boxing, finding in it a
subject matter which would both challenge academic painting, and American-
ize it in a properly 'manly' way. In the mid-i890s, Robert Henri, who had stud-
ied in Philadelphia with a pupil of Eakins, held regular gatherings where
up-and-coming artists such as John Sloan and George Luks sometimes staged
mock boxing matches. Luks invented numerous pugilistic personae for himself
(Lusty Luks, Socko Sam, Curtain Conway, Monk-the-Morgue and Chicago
Whitey). When he later became famous, he enjoyed telling journalists that, as
Chicago Whitey, he fought some 150 fights, or that, as Lusty Luks, he was the
former holder of the light heavyweight crown (illus. 39). 28

In 1900 Henri moved to New York where, along with Sloan and Luks, he
became successful as a member of the 'Immortal Eight', later dubbed the 'Ash-
can school'. At the New York School of Art, he instructed his students to attend
football games and boxing matches, in short to 'be a man first, an artist later'. 29
Nevertheless, art was the primary object of this manly activity. Henri believed
that he could tell which students were 'fighters' and had 'guts' by looking at
their work. Some ways of painting were, he maintained, more masculine than
others and students were forbidden to use small brushes (which he considered
effeminate) and urged to paint in 'the straightforward unfinicky manner of the

117

male'. 30 The most prominent of Henri's students, and one who took this advice
to heart, was George Bellows. Bellows frequently told journalists that his aim
was to introduce 'manliness, frankness, love of the game' into his painting.
'Things that Henri only paid lip service to,' Edward Lucie-Smith argues, 'Bellows
put into practice'. 31

Bellows 's studio was situated across the street from retired prize-fighter Tom
Sharkey's saloon-cum-boxing club on Broadway, and, before he 'married and
became semi-respectable' in 1910, he was a frequent visitor there. 32 The back-
room at Tom Sharkey's, as depicted in Bellows 's paintings, Club Night (1907) and
Stag at Sharkey's (1909), is a rather hellish place (illus. 40). While Eakins depicted
boxing spectators as decent sober middle-class men - many of whom are worthy
of their own portraits - Bellows saw a mass of Goya-like grotesques. Those figures
who can be distinguished, not so much by their faces as by their waistcoats and
shirts, represent a mix of social classes and, as Marianna Doezema points out, 'a
stereotypical range of reactions, from horror to fascination.' 33 ('The best part of
a prize fight', wrote Charles Belmont Davis in 1906, 'is not the sight of two human
brutes pounding each other into insensibility on a resined floor, but rather the
yelling, crazy mob with its innate love of carnage that the two brutes have turned
into the principal actors.' 34 ) The claustrophobic atmosphere of Stag at Sharkey's
is further intensified by the fact that the spectators encircle the boxers, and that
they look up, rather than down, at the action. The viewer is situated among those
spectators, virtually, but not quite, at ringside. The artist too may be included in
the half-hidden portrait of a bald man whose eyes and raised eyebrows poke
above the floor of the ring, 'as if he is here only to look. His head is inclined down-
ward, perhaps toward a sketchbook, so he must glance sharply up to catch the
action.' Bellows presents himself, Doezma argues, 'as a relatively detached
observer, the professional artist in the act of gathering visual material'. 35

Yet the painting is anything but detached. 'I didn't paint anatomy,' Bellows
declared, 'I painted action'. 36 Some have read the immediacy and energy of this
action, in which the limbs of nearly naked men are intertwined, as conflating a
violent sexuality and a sexualized violence. 37 The club is so dark that little can
be distinguished within it, except where a light from the left illuminates the
white bodies of the boxers. The only colour present is the red of their faces (from
exertion or blood?) which is reflected in the face of a bloodthirsty ringside spec-
tator. Bellows is not interested in individual psychology or muscular precision.
Instead he presents a thickly painted and almost abstract composition.

Bellows's early critics praised the 'manliness' of his style as well as his sub-
ject matter, but did not really explain what this meant. What was involved in
translating manly subject matter, such as boxing, into style? Was it merely a
matter of bold brush strokes and impasto? When James Huneker said that
Bellows's 'muscular painting' hit the viewer 'between the eyes', he was suggest-
ing that painting was itself a form of boxing. 38 Such claims recall Hazlitt's
comments on Byron's masculine style some hundred years earlier, but a more
relevant comparison might be with Hogarth's quarrel with academic painting.

118

George Bellows,

Stag at Sharkey's,

1909.

Both Hogarth and Bellows co-opted low-life activities such as boxing to epito-
mize 'the real' in their propaganda battles against the artificiality of established
conventions. Hogarth set low against high, down-to-earth Englishness against
continental neo-classicism; Bellows set low against middle, American virility
against Victorian sentimentality and the 'genteel tradition', John L. Sullivan
against Louisa May Alcott. 39

Frank Norris's advocacy of literary realism made similar connections. In a
1903 essay on the 'fakery' involved in most historical fiction, he proposed that
novelists try harder to 'get at the life immediately around you'. Since 'we are all
Anglo-Saxons enough to enjoy the sight of a fight', he argued, surely our litera-
ture should strive to convey 'the essential vital, elemental, all-important true
life within the spirit' evident at the best of these occasions; the novelist should
strike to 'get at' 'Mr. Robert Fitzsimmons or Mr. James Jeffries'. The novelist's
'heavy' responsibility, he concluded, was not to make money but to write with
'sincerity'. 40 Realism was again proposed as the manly literary equivalent of
pugilism, but this very move required romanticization. Norris did not consider
the possibility that Fitzsimmons and Jeffries (both of Irish rather than Anglo-
Saxon descent) might have been more interested in making money than in ex-
pressing vitality, virility or sincerity.

119

MEN OF BUSINESS

Early nineteenth-century artists and writers had considered boxers wholly from
the outside, as sub-cultural heroes or villains who, although their clothes, lan-
guage or behaviour might be imitated, remained apart. In the 1880s, however,
some artists and writers began to suggest that the fighter's life and experience
might, in certain ways, resemble that of everyone else; it might even usefully be
considered a representative life. This shift in attitude changed the way that box-
ers were represented in art. Increasingly boxers had more than satirical or
metaphorical significance and the occasional walk-on part in a story. By the end
of the nineteenth century, they began to feature in forms of representation, such
as the novel and genre painting, that encouraged some degree of identification.

Thomas Eakins's boxing paintings, I have suggested, brought together
policemen, sportswriters, sketch artists and boxers as men engaged in compa-
rable professional activities. George Bernard Shaw made a similar claim in
Cashel Byron's Profession (1886), which he intended as the first serious boxing
novel. Instead of 'retaliatory violence' and 'romantic fisticuffs', it would deal
with the challenges and injustices of the modern world. It would be about work
and about sex, 'a hymn to skill and science over incoherent strength' and 'a dar-
ing anticipation of coming social developments'. 41 The book was a huge popu-
lar success. Running to many editions, it was pirated for the stage in the United
States, prompting Shaw in 1901 to write a dramatic version (in blank verse),
The Admirable Bashville. 42 But the novel's popularity, Shaw later lamented, did
not stem from the pertinent social and political debates it addressed, but from
its depiction of Cashel's 'professional performances'. 43 'Here lay the whole
schoolboy secret of the book's little vogue,' he complained. In 1902, P. G. Wode-
house praised Cashel Byron as 'the best drawn pugilist in fiction', and laughed
at Shaw's dismissal of the English novel's 'gospel of pugilism'. 'And why not?'
declared Wodehouse. 'All fights are good reading, and if the hero invariably
wins, well, what does it matter?' 44

Shaw had become interested in boxing in the late 1870s when his friend,
Pakenham Beatty, an aspiring poet and keen amateur fighter, introduced him
to Ned Donnelly, a 'Professor of Boxing' who ran a gymnasium near the Hay-
market Theatre. In February 1883 Shaw completed Cashel Byron 's Profession and
a month later the two men entered for the Amateur Boxing Championship. (The
first championship meeting of the Amateur Boxing Association had taken place
in 1881.) Neither was chosen to compete. In a 1917 interview Shaw recalled this
time, and in particular the 'brilliant boxer' Jack Burke. 'It was an exhibition spar
of his that suggested the exploits of Cashel Byron.' 45

After 1900 Shaw came to reject his boxing novel, and for twenty years
largely stopped attending fights, primarily, he claimed, because the 'second-
rate boxing' on offer 'reduced me to such a condition of deadly boredom that
even disgust would have been a relief.' 46 In 1919, however, Shaw was persuaded
to write an article for The Nation on Joe Beckett's European Heavyweight Cham-

pionship fight against a man he considered a 'genius', Georges Carpentier
(Arnold Bennett was The New Statesman's correspondent), and in the 1920s, he
became great friends with another scholarly fighter, Gene Tunney. 47 Tunney's
reading was often commented upon by the press: on the eve of his first fight
with Jack Dempsey in 1926, he was caught with Samuel Butler's The Way of All
Flesh. Michael Holroyd reads Tunney's career as 'a Shavian romance' while Shaw
himself praised Tunney for winning 'by mental and moral superiority . . . You
might almost say that he wins because he has the good sense to win.' 48

The main argument of Cashel Byron's Profession (and it is a very argumen-
tative novel) is that 'the pugilistic profession is like any other profession'. 'The
intelligent prize-fighter is not a knight-errant: he is a disillusioned man of busi-
ness trying to make money at a certain weight and at certain risks, not of bod-
ily injury (for a bruise is soon cured), but of pecuniary loss.' 49 What profession,
the novel asks, might be open to Cashel Byron, son of an actress and pupil at a
minor public school which promotes 'bodily exercises'? The school had encour-
aged Cashel to believe that the army was 'the only profession for a gentleman',
but it is one that he cannot afford. He runs away as a sailor to Australia where
he is taken in and trained by an ex-champion boxer (modelled on Ned Don-
nelly) who sagely tells him 'when you rise to be a regular professional, you wont
care to spar with nobody without youre well paid for it'. This is confirmed later
in the book when, like a Victorian hero, Cashel is forced to fight to defend the
honour of a wealthy lady. But after the fight is over, he tells her, without Victor-
ian chivalry, 'It's no pleasure to me to fight chance men in the streets for noth-
ing; I don't get my living that way.' When he marries her, he gives up pugilism.
'He had gone through with it when it was his business; but he had no idea of
doing it for pleasure.' 50

Another man who turns to fighting purely to make some money is Robert
Montgomery, the protagonist of Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Croxley Master'
(1905). Montgomery is a medical student who cannot afford the £60 needed to
complete his degree. He is employed by a doctor who refuses to advance his
wages and no other source of money seems forthcoming. 'His brains were fairly
good, but brains of that quality were a drug in the market. He only excelled in
his strength; and where was he to find a customer for that?' Fortunately, an op-
portunity arises for Montgomery to earn £60 if he beats the 'Croxley Master'
('twenty rounds, two-ounce gloves, Queensberry rules, and a decision on points
if you fight to the finish'). Montgomery had excelled in university boxing, but
had had 'no particular ambition' to enter amateur championships. Fighting for
money is a different matter. 'He had thought bitterly that morning that there
was no market for his strength, but here was one where his muscle might earn
more in an hour than his brains in a year.' Montgomery is realistic about his
chances: 'he knew enough to appreciate the difference which exists in boxing,
as in every sport, between the amateur and the professional'. One of the Crox-
ley Master's 'iron blows was worth three of his, and . . . without the gloves he
could not have stood for three rounds against him. All the amateur work that

he had done was the merest tapping and flapping when compared to those
frightful blows, from arms toughed by the shovel and the crowbar.' However, he
is in good physical shape, and can rely on 'that higher nerve energy which counts
for nothing upon a measuring tape'. Furthermore, the Queensberry rules favour
the scientific amateur over the old-style artisan pugilist. When Montgomery
wins the fight, the Master urges him to a rematch, 'old style and bare knuckes'.
But he refuses this offer, and one to become a professional fighter, in order to re-
turn to medical school. 51

In 'The Croxley Master', Conan Doyle had come a long way from the Re-
gency romance of Rodney Stone (published nine years earlier) to an almost Sha-
vian position. 'It's not what a man would like to do that he must do in this world;
it's what he can do,' declares Cashel Byron, 'and the only mortal thing I could do
properly was fight.' Shaw reiterated this point in his own words nearly 40 years
later: 'It was worth Carpentier's while to escape from the slavery of the coal pit
and win £5,000 in 74 seconds with his fists. It would not have been worth his
while if he had been Charles xn.' 52

As work of last resort, Shaw further maintained, boxing had much in com-
mon with prostitution. His 1893 play Mrs Warren's Profession was originally sub-
titled 'A tragic variation on the theme of Cashel Byron's Profession' ', and he
considered subtitling Major Barbara (1905) Andrew Undershaft's Profession'.
Like Mrs Warren, arms dealer Andrew Undershaft and pugilist Cashel Byron
'do things for money that they would not do if they had other assured means of
livelihood'. 53 If the word 'prostitution' is to be applied to one of these jobs, Shaw
wrote, it should be applied 'impartially' to all. As long as society is so organized
that the destitute athlete and the destitute beauty are forced to choose
between underpaid drudgery as industrial producers, and comparative self-
respect, plenty, and popularity as prize-fighters and mercenary brides, licit or
illicit, it is idle to affect virtuous indignation at their expense.' 54 Although prosti-
tution, arms-dealing and prize-fighting were professions which 'society officially
repudiates', each of them, he maintained, could serve 'as a metaphor for the
way in which that larger society is really conducted'. The 'prostitute class of men'
did not only consist of prize-fighters: lawyers, doctors, clergymen, politicians,
journalists and dramatists 'daily [use] their highest faculties to belie their real
sentiments'. 55 On this reading, boxing was not merely 'a profession like any
other', but expressive of the very nature of modern working life, its injustices
and brutalities (illus. 41).

While Shaw and Conan Doyle maintained a clear distinction between the
(degrading) professional and the (invigorating) amateur versions of boxing,
their near contemporary, the American sociologist Thorstein Veblen, drew
attention to a common element. Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
includes a chapter entitled 'Modern Survivals of Prowess', which considers the
value of sport to the industrial and leisure classes. On the one hand, 'the leisure-
class canon demands strict and comprehensive futility', which sport provides;
on the other, the 'manly virtues' cultivated by sport 'do in fact further what may

Jack Yeats, Not Pretty
hut Useful, 1897-9.

broadly be called workmanship'. Sport, in short, cultivates 'two barbarian traits,
ferocity and astuteness', both of which 'are highly serviceable for individual
expediency in a life looking to invidious success . . . Both are fostered by the
pecuniary culture. But both alike are of no use for the purposes of the collective
life.' 56 Veblen's ideas recur in many subsequent accounts of sport. Theodor
Adorno, for example, argued that while modern sports might seem 'to restore
to the body some of the functions of which the machine has deprived it . . . they
do so only to train men all the more inexorably to serve the machine'. 57

A MEATY BUSINESS

When the body was considered a machine, its workings were discussed in terms
of 'fuel', 'efficiency' and 'waste'. The early twentieth century saw the develop-

123

ment of nutrition as a field, led by Horace Fletcher, champion of mastication
and 'rationally economic alimentation'. The body could, Fletcher promised, be
run on the same principles as an efficiently managed factory. 58 These ideas
quickly filtered through into popular fiction. The 'decivilization' of the dog Buck
in Jack London's The Call of the Wild (1903) is, rather oddly, signalled by his
adoption of Fletcherite principles. Buck is said to have 'achieved an internal as
well as an external economy. He could eat anything, no matter how loathsome
or indigestible and once eaten, the juices of his stomach extracted the least par-
ticle of nutriment; and his blood carried it to the farthest reaches of his body,
building into the toughest and stoutest of tissues.' 59

But while Buck might have been able to eat anything and still flourish as
an efficient organism, human workers tended to have more particular nutri-
tional needs. In the boxer's case, this invariably meant lots of meat. Discus-
sions of meat in boxing stories (fictional and non-fictional) have traditionally
assumed a rather magical aura: the boxer must eat meat in order to be meaty
enough to fight against other slabs of men. It was easy for these activities to get
confused. While Rocky, 'the Italian stallion', trains by punching sides of frozen
beef, Jake La Motta (alternately described as a 'fucking gorilla', a 'fat pig' and
a 'raging bull' in Martin Scorsese's film) hurls a steak across the room at his
wife: 'You overcook it, it's no good. It defeats its own purpose.' 60 When Oliver
Twist knocks out Noah Claypole in Dickens's 1838 novel, Mrs Sowerberry thinks
the boy has gone mad. Mr Bumble soon puts her right: 'It's not Madness, ma'am
. . . It's Meat.' 61

Boxing became linked with meat partly because of the sport's early associ-
ation with John Bull Englishness, and partly because many early boxers, includ-
ing Tom Spring, Jem Belcher and Peter 'Young Rumpsteak' Crawley, were
butchers; Moses Browne's 1736 poem, 'A Survey of the Amphitheatre', describes
'gentle butchers' engaged in 'that brotherhood's peculiar sport'. 62 Butchery was
a trade that required considerable upper-body strength and provided a ready
supply of prime steaks. The latter, rather than the former, was considered the
significant factor, and early training manuals paid a great deal of attention to
what should and should not be consumed. Francis Dowling, in Fistiana (1841),
rejected 'young meat such as veal and lamb, [and] all white flesh, whether game
or poultry' as 'good for nothing'. Only bloody beef contained sufficient 'nour-
ishment for the muscle', and some maintained, the spirit. 63 Over a hundred
years later, Norman Mailer was appalled at the thought of Ali eating fish and re-
lieved to hear he had 'resumed the flesh of animals'. 4

Sporting nutritionists were not invented in the twentieth century. An obses-
sion with the boxer's diet first aroused public interest in the 1810 run-up to Tom
Cribb's rematch with Tom Molineaux. Cribb's trainer, Captain Barclay, was
determined that his boxer should lose two-and-a-half stone before the fight, and
put him on a strict regime, even reputedly monitoring his excrement. Black-
wood's Magazine ran a satirical article on the subject:

124

In the morning, at four of the clock, a serving-man doth enter my cham-
ber, bringing me a cup containing half one quart of pig's urine, which
I do drink ... At breakfast I doe commonly eat 12 goose's eggs, dressed
in whale's oil, wherefrom I experience much good effects. For dinner I
doe chiefly prefer a roasted cat, whereof the hair has first been burned
by the fire. If it be stuffed with salted herrings which are a good and
pleasant fish, it will be better . . . 65

And so on. But while popular mythology maintained that boxers are never short
of meat - in Sybil, Disraeli's novel of 'the hungry forties', the only customers
whom Mother Carey believes might be able to afford her 'butcher's meat' are
prize-fighters or the mayor himself- the fighters themselves frequently told a
different story. 66 The often-impoverished Daniel Mendoza concluded his reflec-
tions on training by stressing that 'above all, a man should be kept easy and
comfortable in his situation, and therefore not be suffered to want a guinea in
his pocket, or a good table to resort to'. 67

Turn-of-the-century socialist fiction developed this theme at length. Meat
is so important to Jack London's 1909 short story A Piece of Steak' and Arthur
Morrison's 'Three Rounds' (1894) that it might almost be a character itself.

In 'Three Rounds', Neddy Milton arrives at the Regent Pub on the Bethnal
Green Road in London's East End 'after a day's questing for an odd job'. He
has put his name down to fight in an attempt to 'mend his fortunes' and pro-
vide an 'avenue of advancement', but the match turns out to be merely more
casual labour. Neddy is 'weary in the feet' from having walked all day; rain has
dampened his shoulders and seeped into what he fears is a hole in his boot.
More worrying is the hole in his stomach. Breakfast was ten hours ago and
since then he has had only 'a half-pint of four-ale'. Now it 'lay cold on the stom-
ach for want of solid company'. At home less than half a loaf remains, and he
knows that if he goes there his mother will insist he have it. He has spent a
shilling as his fee for the fight and he now contemplates all he could have
bought with it: 'fried fish, for instance, whereof the aromas warm and rank,
met him thrice in a hundred yards, and the frizzle, loud or faint, sang in his ears
all along the Bethnal Green Road'. But he has invested, or gambled, the money
in the fight and the promise it offers of something better than fish. For the time
being, he must go hungry. 68

Morrison continues the food theme in the pub. There, a potential backer
asserts that 'it would be unsafe to back Neddy to fight anything but a beefsteak';
instead, unfortunately, his opponent is to be a butcher - 'red-faced, well-fed,
fleshy, and confident', and a stone heavier. At the last minute, a friend gives
Neddy a bite of his sausage roll - it is 'pallid', 'a heavy and a clammy thing'
(processed rather than fresh meat) and, with the weight of a lump of cold lead',
it sticks 'half-way', making breathing difficult. 69

The situation is not promising and Morrison describes a fight that is hard
labour for both men. Neddy, however, is 'a competent workman, with all his

125

tools in order', and he gets down to work. By the second round, Patsy, the well-
fed butcher, is still going strong, but hungry Neddy has 'a worn feeling in his
arm-muscles' and notices his strength going 'earlier than in the last round'. He
seems to be fading fast; aware of himself only as 'somebody with no control of
his legs and no breath to spit away the blood from his nose as it ran and stuck
over his lips.' He is knocked down but the bell saves him from being counted
out. Behind on points and with 'little more than half a minute's boxing left in
him' - the machine running on empty - his only chance to win in the third,
and final, round, is by a knockout. Somehow or other - it is a mystery to him
- this happens. 'Business' over, Neddy returns to the bar, but 'the stout red-
faced men who smoked fourpenny cigars and drank special Scotch' ignore him.
This hasn't been his big break after all, just another meaningless job. Perhaps
next time, or the one after that, he thinks as he lays his head on the table and
falls asleep.

At first glance, London's approach in 'A Piece of Steak' seems more roman-
tic. He describes his has-been boxer-protagonist, Tom King, leaving to go out
into the night', into the jungle: 'to get meat for his mate and cubs - not like the
modern working-man going to his machine grind, but in the old, primitive,
royal, animal way, by fighting for it'. 7 °

London often brought up the distinction between the drudgeries and
indignities of 'machine grind' and the 'old, primitive, royal, animal way'. 71 'The
Somnambulists', written in 1906 at the height of the intense concern about
American meat production, imagines a meat manufacturer sitting down to a
roast beef dinner. As the 'greasy juices of the meat' settle on his moustache, the
manufacturer is 'fastidiously nauseated at the thought of two prize-fighters
bruising each other with their fists'. And this is not the end of his hypocrisy:
'because it will cost him some money, he will refuse to protect the machines in
his factory, though he is aware that the lack of such protection every year man-
gles, batters, and destroys out of all humanness thousands of working-men,
women, and children'. 72 For traditional boxing butchers (sources of pure meat
in two senses), the modern world has substituted factories in which machines
'batter' their operators as well as animal carcasses. 'Far better', London con-
cluded, 'to have the front of one's face pushed in by the fist of an honest prize-
fighter than to have the lining of one's stomach corroded by the embalmed beef
of a dishonest manufacturer'. 73

Discussing A Piece of Steak' in 1945, George Orwell expressed anxiety about
the politics of London's 'instinctive tendency to accept via victis as a law of
Nature': 'It is not so much an approval of the harshness of Nature, as a mystical
belief that Nature is like that.' 74 But London's opposition between work and
honest natural pugilism soon breaks down. The language that he uses to de-
scribe the fight continually confuses the primitive with the modern. If Tom King
is presented as a 'fighting animal', he is also, like Neddy Milton, a modern urban
worker, trying to scrape together a living. 'Sheer animal' that he is, fighting is
nevertheless 'a plain business proposition' to King. In boxing terms at least, he

126

Jack London in boxing
pose in an undated
photograph.

is 'old', and so he must fight with a 'policy of economy', in a manner that is 'par-
simonious of effort', showing little 'expenditure of effort'. His experience is
described as his 'chief asset'. The story revolves around another, missing, asset:
the 'piece of steak' which he could not afford to have before the fight, and which,
he thinks, would have enabled him to win.

A great and terrible hatred rose up in him for the butchers who would
not give him credit ... A piece of steak was such a little thing, a few
pennies at best; yet it meant thirty quid to him.

What Orwell terms London's 'natural urge towards the glorification of beauty'
is thus checked by 'his knowledge, theoretical as well as practical, of what

127

industrial capitalism means in terms of human suffering'. 75 While the meaty
imagery that pervades this and other boxing stories evokes a world in which
the 'old, primitive, royal, animal' ways still operate, it is clear that in the urban
jungle, steak is simply what the modern worker requires to turn himself into
the piece of meat that the capitalist 'machine' requires. The 'abysmal brute' is
nothing more than a lean and hungry proletarian'. 76 The 'fight game', Midge
Kelly tells his brother in the classic 1949 noir movie, Champion, is like any other
business - only the blood shows'. 77

London's only (human) alternative to capitalist boxing comes in his 1911
story, 'The Mexican', in which Felipe Rivera becomes a fighter to earn money to
buy guns for the Mexican revolution. 78 Rivera's opponent, Danny Ward, is yet
another casual worker who 'fought for money, and for the easy way of life that
money would bring'. 'But the things Rivera fought for', London insists, 'burned
in his brain.' 79

PLOTS of exhaustion: muscle bankruptcy

Both 'A Piece of Steak' and 'Three Rounds' are what Philip Fisher calls 'plots of
exhaustion', plots concerned with strength and weakness rather than good and
evil. 'Their essential matters are youth and age, freshness and exhaustion.
Behind the plot of decline is the Darwinian description of struggle, survival,
and extinction.' 80 The naturalist story tells not of an individual's gradually
improving social position, Fisher argues, but rather of a rapid rise to the sexual
reproductive peak, followed by a long, slow physical decline. Most of life then,
on this model, is the story of decline. What Fisher terms the 'chronicle of sub-
traction' is exemplified in Sister Carrie:

A man's fortune, or material progress, is very much the same as his bod-
ily growth. Either he is growing stronger, healthier, wiser, as the youth
approaching manhood; or he is growing weaker, older, less incisive men-
tally, as the man approaching old age. There are no other states. 81

The boxing story provides an accelerated version of this phenomenon. If the
arc of a man's life in general is short and sharp, that of a boxer's is consider-
ably shorter and sharper. This was a theme in boxing literature from its very
beginnings in Homer and Virgil, where the 'aged' (i.e. 35-year-old) boxer faced
callow youth. 'No men are more subject to the caprice or changes of fortune
than the pugilists', wrote Pierce Egan; 'victory brings them fame, riches, and
patrons; . . . their lives pass on pleasantly, till defeat comes and reverses the
scene.' Finally, 'a premature end puts a period to their misfortune'. 82 As
Roland Barthes observed, the story of boxing is the story of 'the rise and fall
offortunes'. 83

The naturalist emphasis, however, was less on ironic reversal than on
thermodynamic expenditure. 'Vitality cannot be used over again,' wrote Jack

London, in the popular terms of the late nineteenth century. 'If it be expended
on one thing, there is none left for the other thing.' 84 London believed that the
amount of vitality or energy available to an individual could be calculated quite
precisely. In 1910, two days before Jack Johnson beat Jim Jeffries, he published
an article applying 'a little science called histology', which, he claimed, 'has a
lot of bearing on Jeff's case'. 'Each creature,' London wrote, 'is born with so
many potential cell generations. When these generations are used up the crea-
ture dies . . . Each man has only so many cell generations, which means each
man has only so much work in him.' From this, he deduced, 'each fighter is
born with so many fights in him. When he has made those fights he is finished.'
Predicting the outcome of a fight is no longer, then, a question of comparing
the training methods of the fighters or noting who has recently had steak for
dinner. Rather, commentators (and gamblers) should devise a formula to cal-
culate how many cells have been lost by asking how many fights the boxer had
fought, and how gruelling those fights were. Jeffries, London concluded, has
plenty of cells left 'alive in his muscles'. But 'can he whip Johnson? This is an-
other story.' 85

In a 1906 essay, on 'what life means to me', London explained his decision
to give up manual work for writing in similar terms. Muscle-power, the
labourer's sole form of capital, did not renew itself. Determined not to die a
'muscle bankrupt', the nineteen-year-old London made up his mind to sell
brain-power instead. 86 Authorship was not a matter of inspiration, but of rig-
orous work habits, and a watchful eye on market demand. Writing, like box-
ing, was supposed to be a way of escaping the factory, but somehow the logic
of the factory remained. 87 Byron may have had to tussle with metaphors and
hostile critics, but London faced more serious opponents. He frequently de-
scribed the effort of writing and publishing as physical, especially when deal-
ing with the machines of literary production. In John Barleycorn, an encounter
with a particularly uncomfortable typewriter is described as a 'bout', but that
is nothing compared to Martin Eden (1909), where the eponymous hero must
tussle with 'the editorial machine', a 'cunning arrangement of cogs that
changed the manuscript from one envelope to another and stuck on the
stamps'. Although he is 'a good fighter', Martin is soon 'bleeding to death, and
not years, but weeks would determine the fight'. 88 However much 'brain-
power' the business of writing involved, no one could deny that it also was a
vigorous, manly activity (illus. 42).

TIME!

Under the old prize-fighting rules, the precise amount of energy a boxer had in
him was measured not in terms of the weight of his blows but of how long he
lasted. Many of the classic fights of the nineteenth century ran to 80 or 90
rounds. A round, however, had no fixed duration, and was usually, as Bernard
Shaw noted, 'terminated by the fall of one of the combatants (in practice usually

145

both of them), and was followed by an interval of half a minute for recupera-
tion'. This meant that whenever a boxer needed a rest he could pretend to be
knocked down. Under the Queensberry rules, the number of rounds was pre-
determined, as was their duration (usually three or four minutes) and 'a com-
batant who did not stand up to his opponent continuously during that time
(ten seconds being allowed for rising in the event of a knock-down) lost the
battle'. 'That unobtrusively slipped-on ten seconds limit', argued Shaw, 'has
produced the modern glove fight.' 89 Under the old rules, it would not have
mattered if a man stayed down for twelve or fifteen seconds, and 30-second
knockout blows were fairly rare. Indeed, without gloves, a big blow was as likely
to break a fighter's hands as knock down his opponent. Exhaustion was the usual
reason for a man to lose.

But under the Queensberry rules, after 10 seconds, the fighter must either
concede defeat or else 'stagger to his feet in a helpless condition and be eagerly
battered into insensibility before he can recover his powers of self-defence'. 90 It
was not until 1927 that a rule was introduced forbidding a boxer to hover over his
downed opponent. Following its introduction, Gene Tunney benefited from a
fourteen-second rest while the referee tried to persuade Jack Dempsey to go to a
neutral corner. The fight is remembered as the 'Battle of the Long Count', but
charges of a long count were not uncommon. After Jim Corbett was defeated by
Bob Fitzsimmons in 1897, his manager insisted that the film of the fight be shown
so that the length of time Fitzsimmons spent on the floor in the sixth round could
be checked. Several stopwatches confirmed thirteen seconds until it was discov-
ered that the projectionist had slowed down the hand-cranked machine. 91 Crafty
boxers, and their managers, always did what they could to extend their rest and
cut short that of their opponents. Some fighters were renowned for 'accidentally'
stepping on the bell to cut a round short. The new rules made knockout blows
much more likely. This development had serious medical consequences, greatly
increasing 'the likelihood that fighters would become brain-damaged over a long
career, for the trauma of repeated concussions had a cumulative effect, produc-
ing lesions that resulted in the "punch-drunk" syndrome', argues Eliott Gorn. In
other words, 'boxing might look a bit less brutal, but became more dangerous'. 92

The increased frequency of the knockout blow, combined with a limitation
on the number of rounds that could be fought, also meant that boxing matches
now lasted, at most, little more than an hour. Faster-paced, more offensive, and
always with the potential for high drama, boxing was now much more mar-
ketable as a spectator sport; particularly so when film entered into the equa-
tion. The 'most important result of the Queensberry rules', Gorn writes, 'was
not too make the ring less violent but to make it more assimilable to the enter-
tainment industry and to mass commercial spectacles'. 93

In 1847 Karl Marx wrote that since the 'pendulum of the clock has become
as accurate a measure of the relative activity of two workers as it is of the speed
of two locomotives', men have been 'effaced by their labour'. 'Time is everything,
man is nothing; he is, at most, time's carcase.' 94 Certainly, as the nineteenth

146

6 4

George Belcher,
Time & Judgement at
the National Sporting
Club (J. H. Douglas
and E. Zerega), 1898.

til J» « /f^w lit. .

century (and the industrial revolution) progressed, the clock assumed an ever-
increasing importance in determining the pace of working lives, and gradually
both worker and employer internalized its regular rhythms of work and rest.
Under the Queensberry rules, the sound of the gong and the ten-count become
boxing's equivalents of the factory whistle. 95

Once the precise measurement of time became paramount, and before auto-
matic devices took over, the timekeeper assumed a key role in the story of the
fight, intervening as a deus ex machina to determine the course of its action. 96
Conan Doyle's Robert Montgomery is saved because the end of the round is
announced ('Time!') before he can be counted out, while Neddy Milton wins
because his opponent fails to rise while 'the time-keeper watched the seconds-
hands pass its ten points' (illus. 64).

It did not take long for writers to find metaphorical potential in the call of
time. In Arthur Morrison's novel Cunning Murrell (1900), set during the
Crimean War, Roboshobery Dove is happily watching a boxing match on Can-
vey Island when he catches sight of a newspaper headline, 'The Baltic Fleet'.
'And then of a sudden, just at the cry of "Time", the paper went grey and blue
before Roboshobery Dove's eyes, and the tumult of shouts died in his ears.' The
paper had announced the death of a man he knew. 97

147

The conjunction between calls of time in boxing and in life is further devel-
oped in John Masefield's 1911 poem, 'The Everlasting Mercy'. The poem features
a fight over poaching rights between Saul Kane and his best friend. They box
according to the Queensberry rules and Masefield ends each stanza with the
call of 'Time!' Timing proves significant to the outcome of the fight; the 'clink,
clink, clink' of brandy flasks that mark time save Kane from defeat in one round,
and he wins by a knockout in another. But Masefield also suggests that Kane's
life can be divided into rounds. The first few stanzas measure its progress in
decades, 'from '41 to '51', 'from '51 to '61', 'from '61 to '67'. But the fight marks a
change of pace. The night following his victory, Kane lies drunkenly awake lis-
tening to the village church clock 'ticking the time out' and ponders how it 'ticks
to different men'. After several pages of soul-searching, he ends up in a pub
where he is confronted by a Quaker woman, preaching temperance. As the clock
chimes and closing time is announced, 'something broke inside my brain'. 'Miss
Bourne stood still and I stood still, / And "Tick. Slow. Tick. Slow" went the
clock.' Christ, it seems, has dealt his sin a knock-down blow. 98

Referees and timekeepers also became the subjects of paintings, most
notably Eakins's Taking the Count (1898) and Between Rounds (1898-9)." The
tension of concentrated immobility is the most striking thing about these works,
uniting all the participants in moments out of time. 100 Taking the Count was
Eakins's first prize-fighting painting and was never exhibited during his life-
time. A huge work, it depicts, almost lifesize, the boxer Charlie McKeever stand-
ing waiting while the referee, a portrait of sportswriter Henry Walter Schlichter,
counts to ten. McKeever's opponent, Joe Mack, crouches in the right-hand cor-
ner, seemingly waiting until the last moment to rise. His second can be seen
offering advice between the legs of McKeever and Schlichter. A spectator sitting
underneath one of the circus banners is looking at his watch, perhaps to confirm
the accuracy of the count. Between Rounds depicts Billy Smith being attended
to by his seconds (illus. 52). A poster advertising the fight between Smith and
Tim Callahan hangs in the upper left corner of the painting. Smith's out-
stretched arms are reflected in those of his manager, Billy McCarney, who fans
him; on a lower level, those of the timekeeper, and on a higher level, those of
spectators leaning over the balcony. But, unlike Salutat, which wholeheartedly
brings participants and spectators together, Between Rounds suggests the limits
of knowledge for both ringside spectators and viewers of the painting. For one
thing, as Michael Fried notes, we can 'only barely glimpse the watchface being
studied by the timekeeper'. 101 The painting seems to distinguish those who, in
various capacities, are engaged in some professional capacity from those who
merely look on. The viewer is outside of, and slightly below, the ring. The time-
keeper, the seconds, and the boxer are the central protagonists, but the police-
man standing on the left, and the men in the press box (including perhaps an
artist) are also active participants. The presence of each of these professional
men is necessary for the fight to proceed. If this is a kind of circus, as the balcony
banners suggest, it is also a keenly run business. 102

148

BROBDINGNAGIAN ATTRACTIONS: PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM

In 1878 Eadweard Muybridge produced his first sequential photographs of mov-
ing horses. In the 1880s his experiments (with Thomas Eakins) at the University
of Pennsylvania resulted in over 100,000 negatives of animal and human bod-
ies in motion, including photographs of men boxing and shadow-boxing (illus
50). By looking at these sequences, viewers could learn more about both the
way that bodies moved and the way the brain constructed an image of that
movement out of many still components. Muybridge's photographs were said
to support various contemporary theories about human nature. On the one
hand, they drew attention to the similarities between human and animal move-
ment, and refused to discriminate between methods of viewing humans and
traditionally lower' forms of life, and so were regarded as evidence for evolu-
tionary theory. On the other hand, they supported the popular metaphor of the
human machine whose every movement could be timed and quantified.

Staging, and looking at, these images in the name of disinterested scientific
curiosity, had, of course, nothing to do with the shocking and sensational world
of prize-fighting. It was in the name of science that men (some from the univer-
sity, others from local gyms) and women (most of whom were artists' models)
allowed themselves to be photographed nude. Eakins conducted similarly stark
and decontextualized motion studies, but many of his photographs from this
period contain enough contextual setting and enough drama to complicate the
scientific interest of his 'naked series'. 103 The sparring figures in Two Male Stu-
dents Posing as Boxers (1886), for example, are carefully positioned within an
artist's studio in which a cast of a man's torso sits next to a closed easel from
which boxing gloves hang; between the men we glimpse a painting of an inver-
tebrate skeleton upon another easel. The aesthetic study of anatomy, in various
forms, is carefully signalled (illus. 65). In its woodland setting and careful
arrangement of spectators' limbs, Seven Males, Nude, Two Boxing at Centre (1883)
is rather different (illus. 66); another genre scene, it evokes both pastoral clas-
sicism and Manet's Dejeuner sur Vherbe (1863). Both Manet's painting and
Eakins's photograph prominently position a reclining figure with knee bent in
the bottom left-hand corner; in both cases a figure in the bottom left-hand cor-
ner observes activity in the centre of the image. Like Manet, Eakins wanted to
make the nude 'modern'; for the American artist, however, the essence of mod-
ern nudity (like that of classical Greece on which it modelled itself) was com-
munal and male. 104 Eakins's 1890s paintings depict the enclosed all-male world
of professional boxing; his 1880s photographs explore a parallel community
made up of his students at the Pennsylvania Academy and the Arts Students'
League. It is the easy intimacy of that community that is most apparent in these
photographs.

A desire to consider humanity scientifically also inspired literary work, but
here too other interests tended to compromise a properly scientific methodol-
ogy. In his classic 1880 exposition of naturalist technique, Emile Zola compared

149

Circle of Thomas
Eakins, Two Male
Students Posing as
Boxers, c. 1886.

Thomas Eakins,
Seven Males, Nude,
Two Boxing at Centre,
c. 1883.

writing a novel to performing a laboratory experiment; an experiment in which
the effects of a specific heredity and environment on a character or group of
characters was to be observed. One of the most frequently performed natural-
ist experiments was to test (once again) the thesis that living bodies . . . [can be]
brought and reduced to the general mechanism of matter . . . that man's body
is a machine'. 105 For the experiment to be successful, however, it had to be per-
formed in a carefully controlled environment. The setting was to be both closely
restricted and extreme enough to reveal what were thought of as the essentials

150

of human nature. Characters 'must be twisted from the ordinary, wrenched out
of the quiet, uneventful round of life, and flung into the throes of a vast and ter-
rible drama that works itself out in unleashed passions, in blood and in sudden
death'. 106 Examples of this type of extreme and restricted experiment include
'The Open Boat' (1897), in which Stephen Crane considers the effect of four ship-
wrecked men unable to land their boat, and McTeague (1899) where Frank Norris
ends his antagonists' struggle for gold in an inescapable Death Valley.

Jack London's experimental settings range from the frozen snows of Alaska
to ships in the violent seas of the Pacific, and to the socially brutal world of the
boxing ring. In such environments, as this fight scene from Martin Eden suggests,
sophisticated men swiftly revert (or devolve) to what Zola calls 'the animal
machine':

Then they fell upon each other, like young bulls, in all the glory of
youth, with naked fists, with hatred, with desire to hurt, to maim, to de-
stroy. All the painful, thousand years' gains of man in his upward climb
through creation were lost. Only the electric light remained, a mile-
stone on the path of the great human adventure. Martin and Cheese-
Face were two savages, of the stone age, of the squatting place and the
tree refuge. They sank lower and lower into the muddy abyss, back to
the dregs of the raw beginnings of life, striving blindly and chemically,
as atoms strive, as the star-dust of the heavens strives, colliding, recoil-
ing and colliding again and eternally again.

In this scene, Barthes's story of the 'rise and fall of fortunes' seems to be straight-
forwardly reduced to the colliding of atoms and star-dust, but reading on, the
issues are complicated considerably, as London introduces Martin's own per-
spective on the scene. He is described as being 'both onlooker and participant':

It was to him, with his splendid power of vision, like staring into a kine-
toscope. . . His long months of culture and refinement shuddered at
the sight; then the present was blotted out of his consciousness, and
the ghosts of the past possessed him . . . 107

If the boxing ring is only one of many settings in which the validity of natural-
ist ideas can be tested and observed, it is one of the few in which the act of observa-
tion itself is emphasized. In boxing narratives - where the protagonist performs his
rite in front of an audience - there are several levels of spectatorship operating. The
fighters survey each other and the crowd watches them, while the writer or painter
or filmmaker observes, and interprets, both fighters and crowd. The scientific
observation of atoms colliding or muscles moving always exists in tension with
multiple and often conflicting (financial, erotic, even aesthetic) viewing interests.

Martin Eden compares his sense of being both participant and observer in
the fight to 'staring into a kinetoscope'. Thomas Edison's kinetoscope was the

151

first commercially produced device for viewing film, and according to Terry
Ramsaye, the opening of the first Kinetoscope Parlor on Broadway in 1894 marks
the birth of the film industry. Initially there were only ten machines and, Ram-
saye noted, 'long queues of patrons stood waiting to look into the peep hole
machines': 'the spectator paid his twenty-five cents admission, and passed down
the line to peer into the peep holes, while an attendant switched on the
machines one after another. Presently Edison supplied a nickel-in-the-slot
attachment which eliminated the man at the switches.' 108

London evokes two aspects of the kinetoscope experience. Unlike later
cinema-going, hunching over the peephole machine was an essentially private
experience - the viewer did not know whether those around him were watching
what he was, and, because the world around had been blocked out, what he saw
could seem to come from his own consciousness. The intimacy and powerfully
engaging nature of kinetoscope films is also apparent. At the height of the fight,
Eden is somehow detached enough from his own actions to imagine watching
them, but, ironically, that very act of observation so involves him that he re-
engages and feels himself a participant again. 109

It is unsurprising that Eden (and London) associated film with boxing. The
very earliest films featured boxing matches, staged and choreographed in
Edison's 'Black Maria' studio. 110 The first boxing film was made in August 1894
and consisted of six rounds of a minute each between minor prize-fighters, Mike
Leonard and Jack Cushing. There was a seven-minute interval between rounds
as the film was changed. Viewers paid 10c and, through the kinetoscope peep-
hole, saw a round; paid another 10c, and saw the next. The result of the contest
was kept secret, but 'some thrifty people went straight to the sixth Kinetoscope,
to see only the end of the fight'. Since that portion of the film wore out, the
secret remains. 111 The film was so popular that the following month another
was made, this time featuring Peter Courtney against then champion Jim Corbett,
who was repeatedly instructed to turn his face to the camera. 112

The technology was developing fast, and the following year the Kinetoscope
Exhibition Company developed a method (known as the 'Latham loop' and used
in most cameras and projectors ever since) of filming continuously for eight
minutes (a seven-minute increase). They used this to make a four-minute film
of 'Young Griffo' vs. 'Battling Charles Barnett' on the roof of Madison Square
Gardens, and, by shining an arc lamp behind a kinetoscope, projected the film
on 20 May 1895; only a small, indistinct image was produced, but this was 'the
world's first commercial presentation of projected film'. 113

From 1895 to 1897, attempts were made to stage, and film, the heavyweight
championship fight between Corbett and Robert Fitzsimmons. Fight promoter
Dan Stuart had great difficulties in securing a location that would be free from
legal interference, and would also suit Enoch Rector, who had an exclusive con-
tract to film the contest. Stuart was the first promoter to recognize that he could
earn more in film distribution rights than in gate receipts. The fight (or in Stu-
art's words, the 'fistic carnival') finally took place in Carson City, Nevada on 17

152

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Poster advertising
film of the Corbett-
Fitzsimmons Record
Prize Fight, London,
1897.

March (St Patrick's Day) 1897; Fitzsimmons
won in the fourteenth round with his
famous 'solar plexus punch'. 114 'I consider
that I have witnessed today the greatest
fight with gloves that was ever held in this
or any other country,' wrote gun-fighter
Wyatt Earp for the New York World. 115

Enoch Rector was at ringside with
three cameras and 48,000 feet of film - he
ended up using 11,000 (in other words,
about two miles) which was finally edited
to 2,880 feet, a figure whose significance
becomes clear if we note that most films at
this time used about 50 feet of film. The
ring platform was painted with 'copy-
right THE VERISCOPE COMPANY' SO that

spectators would know they were watching
the real thing and not a re-enactment. (Rec-
tor was right to worry, for fake fight films
were common, and Sigmund Lubin's 'Re-
production of the Corbett and Fitzsim-
mons Fight', played by two freight handlers
from the Pennsylvania terminal, came out
a week before the Veriscope film and did
good business in Philadelphia. 'What do
you expect for 10 cents, anyhow?' asked Lubin. 116 ) Rector's four-reel Nevada fight
film was the longest film yet seen, and it was shown as a prize exhibit at such up-
market venues as New York's Academy of Music ('the first film invasion of the fa-
mous old Academy') and London's Imperial Theatre. A poster announcing its
showing at the Imperial Theatre advertised 'a revolution in amusement enter-
prise' and 'Brobdignagian attractions' (sic) in the form of the 'two greatest novel-
ties of the present century' (illus. 67). Henry James attended a showing, and 'quite
revelled' in it. 117 Another writer who may have seen the film was James Joyce. In
Ulysses (1922), young Patrick Dignam catches sight of a poster advertising a re-
cent local boxing match, which sets him off reminiscing about other good 'puck-
ers'. 'Fitzsimons', he thinks, is 'the best pucker going for strength', 'Jem Corbet'
'the best pucker for science'. Fitzsimmons, only a middleweight, as Patrick re-
calls, 'knocked the stuffings out of him, dodging and all'. 118 Ulysses is set in 1904,
just seven years after the fight took place, and it is quite likely that Patrick's knowl-
edge of it, and Joyce's, came from the Rector film.

Corbett 's manager, William A. Brady, complained that while the film had
made between $600,000 and $700,000, each fighter received only $80, 000. 119
It didn't take long, however, before fighters, and their managers, negotiated a
fairer share of the profits. 'Poor scrapper,' Bernard Shaw noted in 1901, 'is hardly

153

the word for a modern fashionable pugilist', for the contests in which he engaged
now took place 'in huge halls before enormous audiences, with cinematographs
hard at work recording the scene for reproduction'. 120

While the impact of film on the development of boxing was huge - open-
ing up new and lucrative markets - it is fair to say that boxing also had an im-
pact on the development of film. Claims for the relationship between the two
vary from the circumspect - 'the evolution of the modern form of . . . [boxing]
closely paralleled the development of the motion pictures' - to the bold - 'box-
ing created cinema'. 121 Early filmmakers were interested in filming boxing
matches for a variety of reasons - personal, commercial and technical. Person-
ally, it just happened that the Latham brothers and Enoch Rector (collectively
the Kinetoscope Exhibition Company) were interested in boxing. Commercially,
fight films were good business because they appealed to the male working-class
audiences most likely to frequent kinetoscope parlours. Technically, although
early cinema was obsessed with 'movement for movement's sake', early cam-
eras were heavy and had a restricted viewpoint; it was, however, quite simple to
set cameras to cover the relatively small space of the boxing ring within which
lots of movement took place. 122 'The cameraman could then grind away, secure
in the certainty that the picture was not getting away from him, unless indeed
the combatants jumped the ropes and ran away'. 123

While boxing films were seen as a way of making boxing more palatable to
middle-class tastes - spectators would be 'Without any of the Demoralizing
Surroundings Unavoidable at the Actual Fight' - the association of film with
the 'odium of pugilism' damaged attempts to gentrify the new art. 124 In The Art
of the Moving Picture (1915), Vachel Lindsay wrote of 'trying to convert a talented
and noble friend to the films. The first time we went there was a prize-fight
between a black and a white man, not advertised, used as a filler. I said it was
queer, and would not happen again. The next time my noble friend was persuaded
to go, there was a cock-fight . . . The convert was not made.' 125 Lindsay's example
is complicated by the fact that the film featured interracial boxing (something
I'll consider in more detail in the next chapter), but there was also a broader
sense among the middle-classes that a film show almost inevitably involved
boxing. 'It is not very creditable to our civilization', complained the New York
Times in 1897, 'that an achievement of what is now called the veriscope that has
attracted and will attract the widest attention should be the representation of
the prizefight'. 126 By 1912, an English critic, Frederick Talbot, noted the 'consid-
erable opposition' which prize-fight films met. This, he said, 'should be wel-
comed as a healthy sign even by the film-producers themselves. The
cinematograph can surely do more elevating, profitable and entertaining work
than the recording of a prize-fight.' 127

Before the first dedicated cinemas (the nickelodeons) opened in 1905, box-
ing films were often shown as part of an evening's entertainment at a music hall
or in a burlesque or vaudeville show, where they often drew upon the conven-
tions of the acts that surrounded them. 128 This generally meant matching tall,

154

thin men against short, stout ones. 129 One of the great subjects for turn of the
century British film-makers was the Boer War, and, although most films were
topical, a few comic dramas were made. In 1900, for example, a film entitled
'Prize fight or Glove Contest between John Bull and President Kruger' was pro-
moted as a comedy, while in the previous year, the Warwick Trade Co. (Ltd)
produced a three-round, three-reel 'Comic Boxing Match' in which three foot six
inches defeated six foot three inches on the deck of a ship bound for Africa. 130
Charlie Chaplin's career began in the English music hall and several of his
very early films feature similar slapstick pantomime. In Mack Sennett's The
Knockout (1914), he has a bit -part as a referee who gets hit quite frequently and
provides no help to cowardly heavyweight Fatty Arbuckle in his fight against a
real boxer, Edgar Kennedy. When he loses the match, Fatty grabs a revolver from
the attending sheriff, and the film ends with a spirited chase involving the
Keystone Cops (illus. 68). A few days later Chaplin made another film with a
pugilistic theme, Mabel's Married Life. There he plays a husband who is jealous
of his wife's flirtation with a burly man. 131 He retreats to a saloon and gets very
drunk, while Mabel, angry because Charlie did not defend himself, goes out
and buys a boxing dummy. He comes home and, thinking he is taking on his

Charlie Chaplin and
Fatty Arbuckle in a
poster advertising
Counted Out (1914),
also known as The
Knockout.

MACO COMEDIES Offer

155

rival, rights the dummy. The dummy wins. 132 By the following year Chaplin had
become both director and 'the tramp', and so in The Champion (1915), some
pathos is injected to counter the comedy of balletic violence. With his faithful
and hungry bulldog, the tramp find a lucky horseshoe just as he passes a training
camp advertising for a sparring partner 'who can take a beating'. After watching
several fighters being carried out on a stretcher, he puts the horseshoe into his
glove. He wins. Suddenly favourite for the championship, Charlie, billed as the
'Jersey Mosquito', now has to fight without his horseshoe. His dog watches the
fight, smiles when he lands a punch, and becomes fierce and then gloomy when
he is knocked down. Finally the dog enters the ring and distracts Charlie's
opponent so that he can land a knockout punch. Size, strength, and even Anglo-
Saxon fair play emerge as no match for immigrant cleverness, cunning and luck.

Chaplin revisited these vaudeville boxing balletics in City Lights (1931), a
defiantly silent film at the start of the sound era. As in The Champion, the tramp
only resorts to boxing because he needs to feed another. This time it is a blind
flower girl. He happily agrees to take part in a fixed fight, but unfortunately his
opponent disappears after finding out the police are after him. Instead he is
faced with Hank Mann, who is not only much bigger but refuses to take part in
the fix. As his anxiety rises, Charlie begins to mince and flirt with the giant. His
opponent is so unnerved by this that he hides behind a curtain to change into
his shorts. The tramp has once more gained a (temporary) advantage over a
physically superior opponent, one who finds sitting next to a supposed homo-
sexual more frightening than being hit. 133 (Subsequently, however, Charlie is
knocked out twice - once in the ring, and once by a falling glove in the dressing
room.) Mark Winokur argues that these later films are not slapstick but what
he calls transformative comedy. While 'slapstick insists on perpetuating into
the realm of fantasy the insult to the body that occurs in the world', 'transforma-
tive comedy', he argues, 'insists on the intelligence of the body in avoiding insult
(successfully or otherwise)'. 134 Although Chaplin was a fan of boxing and a friend
of boxers, his films debunk much of the masculine and nativist posturing that sur-
rounded it. 135

Such debunking was not, of course, the ambition of D. W. Griffith in his
1915 film of the Civil War and its aftermath, The Birth of a Nation; the film most
often credited with making movie-going respectable in America. Accompanied
by an orchestral score, it was shown in large legitimate theatres at high prices
and was an enormous (if hugely controversial) success. The Birth of a Nation
aspired to the status of serious history as well as entertainment; Griffith's next
film, Intolerance (1916), was a philosophical meditation on the development of
a 'universal theme' through the ages. Only twenty years had passed since
Corbett vs Fitzsimmons had first wowed audiences, but the aspirations of film-
makers had changed enormously. It might seem odd then that in 1919 Griffith
decided to film Thomas Burke's story of a London prize-fighter and his daugh-
ter. 136 Broken Blossoms is about the destruction of a young girl (Lillian Gish) who
is trapped between two competing versions of masculinity - one passive, oriental

156

and threatening miscegenation (represented by her suitor, the Yellow Man,
played by Richard Barthelmess), the other active, Anglo-Saxon and hyper-
masculine (represented by her father, a prize-fighter called Battling Burrows,
played by Donald Crisp and described in an inter-title as an 'abysmal brute, a
gorilla of the jungles of East London'). 137 The Yellow Man leans languidly against
walls and on couches; Burrows pummels both his opponent (the 'Limehouse
Tiger', played by real boxer, Kid McCoy) and his daughter (his 'punching bag').
The dialectic between these modes of conduct can also be mapped onto the
formal conflict between the stasis of painting and the constant motion of
narrative film. Dudley Andrew notes that while the Yellow Man is seen 'in gently
curved poses which concentrate the dramatic energy within the frame', Battling
Burrows 's thrashing movements thrust 'our attention out of the frame and to the
object of his aggression'. 138 Brigitte Peucker suggests that Griffith's decision to
represent Burrows as a boxer was a way of alluding to 'proto- and early cinematic
films'; both boxers and boxing movies were crude and primitive. 139 No one gets
out of Broken Blossoms alive: Burrows kills Lucy, the Yellow Man shoots Burrows
and then goes home to kill himself with a knife. A reference to the latest casualty
figures from the Western Front suggests that the whole world might have battled
itself to a halt.

THE PRIZE-FIGHTER AND THE LADY

While maintaining that it was natural for women to admire fighters, John L.
Sullivan was adamant that fights themselves should be seen only by men. The
next generation was not so fastidious. Women made up a substantial part of
the audience at the premiere of Rector's movie in 1897. 14 ° Miriam Hansen
argues that this film, 'the cinematic mediation' of the prize-fight, as she calls it,
opened up a previously forbidden spectacle to a large number of women who
relished the sight of a little male flesh. 141 Indeed it seems that Corbett 'calculat-
edly played on his awareness of his "ladies' man" image' by dressing for his fight
films in trunks that prominently display his bottom, 'not often found on other
fighters' and rather similar to those worn by Billy Smith in Eakins's Salutat. But
'the Adonis of the Fistic arena', who also had a huge following as a stage actor,
was clearly an exception. Dan Streible notes that 'subsequent fight films, even
those showing Jim Corbett, never again attracted female patrons in significant
numbers'. 142

Even before the cinematic mediation of 1897, it was not unheard of for women
to attend fights and to be seen to express an interest in prize-fighters. And again
novelty was largely the point. In 1889, Nellie Bly, feature writer for the New York
World, interviewed John L. Sullivan as he prepared for his fight with Jake Kilrain.
Bly begins by announcing that she 'was surprised' by her visit, and the article goes
on to explain why. She arrives at the house, which is 'in the prettiest part of town'
and 'one would never imagine from the surroundings that a prize-fighter was
being trained there'. When Sullivan enters the room, she finds him 'half-bashful',

157

'very boyish' and 'not ungraceful'. Next she admires his 'straight and shapely'
fingers, and finds 'the closely trimmed nails ... a lovely oval and pink'. Finally,
they eat breakfast, and 'the daintiness of everything' from 'the white table linen
and beautiful dishes, down to the large bunch of fragrant lilacs and another of
beautifully shaped and coloured wild flowers, separated by a slipper filled with
velvety pansies - was all entirely foreign to any idea I had ever conceived of prize-
fighters and their surroundings'. 143 But while some women may have been
attracted to prize-fighting by reassurances of clean nails and dainty dishes, others,
it seems, went because they wanted to see blood and half-naked men (or at least
that is what male readers liked to think). Steible points out that 'the figure of the
lone, disguised woman at ringside became a recurring one in tabloid stories of
the 1890s'; the San Francisco Examiner, for example, sent Annie Laurie (touted as
'the first woman to report a prize fight') who watched 'from behind a curtained
booth' and reported back that 'men have a world into which women cannot
enter'. 144 This was not strictly true. In Carson City in 1897, a special section was
designated for women spectators, and Rose Fitzsimmons acted as one of her hus-
band's seconds. 'As the battle went on,' reported the Chicago Tribune, 'she became
more and more demonstrative, sometimes breaking out with exclamations which
bordered on the profane.' 145 From the ring itself, meanwhile, James Corbett not-
iced in the crowd, 'a big, blonde, and very excited woman, her hair loose, hat
jammed down over one ear, the blood from Fitz spattering her own face, and she,
meanwhile, yelling at me things that were not at all flattering either to my skill as
a fighter or my conduct as a gentleman'. 146 In 1905 the San Francisco Examiner
reported the attendance of 'a few misplaced women' at the Nelson-Britt fight. A
few of them looked like decent women, but the most gave token of being jaded,
jades in search of some new torment for the sagging nerves' (illus. 69). 147

These stories largely appealed to men who enjoying being a little shocked
at the prospect of an occasional narrowing of the gap between manly boxing
and their ideas of femininity. There is nothing like an exception to prove the
rule. But some men - fight promoters and film-makers - actively encouraged the
presence of women spectators, believing that their attendance would confer
respectability on movie-going and provide a strong argument in favour of the
legalization of prize-fighting. Streible notes that fight film advertisements often
included 'such exaggerated inducements as "witnessed by hundreds of
ladies'". 148 In 1915, the Broadway Sporting Club advertised that women would
be charged a reduced rate of 50 cents to attend the next fight. Over 1,000 men
showed up, but only one woman. The club then offered triple trading stamps as
an inducement to 'flee pink tea and sewing circles'. 149 Two women came.

It has become commonplace to suggest that when a male writer or artist
depicts a woman looking at a man, the female point of view is really a mask for
the male artist's own, usually erotic, interest. This is undoubtedly true in some
cases, but there are other reasons (perhaps even conflicting reasons) why a man
might explore a female point of view. We should not, for example, rule out the
possibility of vanity. As the influence of Darwinian ideas spread, men (and later

158

6 9

George Bellows,
Preliminaries to the
Big Bout, 1916.

1 ^^v^^fedfl^^jnE jp ^ Tift

VH ^

1- V

* • ( V-i

women) also became interested in boxing as a subject matter within which to ex-
plore the mechanisms of sexual selection, the 'struggle between the males for
possession of the females'. 150

Cashel Byron's Profession tells the story of the eponymous hero's romance
with an independent, aristocratic 'New Woman', Lydia Carew. At first the
attraction is aesthetic. Lydia, who is described as having 'a taste for . . . the fine
arts', first encounters the boxer while walking, appropriately with a copy of
Faust, in the woods of her home:

The trees seem never ending: she began to think she must possess a for-
est as well as a park. At last she saw an opening. Hastening towards it,
she came again into the sunlight, and stopped, dazzled by an appari-
tion which she at first took to be a beautiful statue, but presently recog-
nized, with a strange glow of delight, as a living man . . . the man was
clad in a jersey and knee-breeches of white material, and his bare arms
shone like those of a gladiator. His broad pectoral muscles, in their white
covering, were like slabs of marble. Even his hair, short, crisp, and curly,
seemed like burnished bronze in the evening light. 151

When James Corbett played Cashel Byron in one of the early pirated stage ver-
sions, Shaw noted that American ladies were seized with a desire to go on the
stage and be Lydia Carew for two thrilling hours'. 152 In the novel, too, it does not
take Lydia long to recognize that Cashel's value is more than sculptural. Not that

159

anyone would 'dare to suspect her . . . of anything so vulgarly human as sexual in-
terest in Cashel'. 'A utilitarian before everything', Lydia assesses his animal vital-
ity as a necessary complement to her own intellectualism and 'fine breeding',
and decides to marry him in order to produce healthy children. 'I believe in the
doctrine of heredity; and as my body is frail and my mind morbidly active, I think
my impulse towards a man strong in body and untroubled in mind a trust-
worthy one.' He becomes, in other words, her stud. It is 'a plain proposition in
eugenics', but it does not quite work. The boys turn out like her, and the girls
like him, and she 'soon came to regard him as one of the children'. 153

The female assessment of a potential mate was central to many of Jack Lon-
don's fight scenes, and more often than not his emphasis is on male excitement
in realizing that this is the case. While in Great Expectations, Pip had been app-
alled at Estella's flushed checks, London's men like to see their women aroused
by a good fight. Expecting 'to find a shocked and frightened maiden counte-
nance', they are often pleasantly surprised by a 'flushed and deeply interested
face'. In the midst of a fierce exchange of blows, Martin Eden finds time to watch
Lizzie Connolly watching him. 'Usually the girls screamed when the fellows got
to scrapping, but she was looking on with bated breath, leaning slightly for-
ward, so keen was her interest, one hand pressed to her breast, her cheek flushed,
and in her eyes a great and amazed admiration.' Martin was 'thrilling all over'. 154

London's interest in the female perspective is most fully explored in The
Game (1905), a novella which grew out of his local club fight reports for the Oak-
land Herald; it remained one of his favourite works. 155 Chapter One begins with
the protagonists Joe and Genevieve choosing a carpet. They are to be married
the next day, but first Joe will fight one last time and he wants her to watch - 'I'll
fight as never before with you lookin' at me'. Genevieve's response to this is am-
biguous. On the one hand, she responds with appropriate feminine revulsion;
on the other, 'the masculinity of the fighting male . . . [made] its inevitable
appeal to her, a female, moulded by all heredity to seek out the strong man for
mate'. Joe too experiences a conflict of desires:

He saw only the antagonism between the concrete, flesh-and-blood
Genevieve and the great, abstract, living Game. Each resented the
other, each claimed him; he was torn with the strife, and yet drifted
helpless on the current of their contention. 156

Before any boxing has taken place, then, we see that the central fight of the story
is to be between the values of the 'abstract' and 'the concrete'. Contrary to what
we might expect, abstraction is allied with 'the Game' while romantic love con-
cerns the physical.

Chapter Two goes back to consider Joe and Genevieve's courtship, and to em-
phasize the importance of what they see of each other in forming their relationship.
As they walk in the park the eyes of passers-by are 'continually drawn to them,' and
each observes the admiring glances the other attracts. 157 This emphasis on seeing

160

and being seen sets the tone for the fight scene itself. As women were not allowed
into the arena Genevieve disguises herself as a boy and watches the fight through
a peephole in the wall. 158 As a boy, indeed wearing Joe's shoes, she is, for the first
time in her life, unnoticed by the men in the hall, 'this haunt of men where women
came not'. This, London suggests, is her first moment of liberation from what he
calls 'the bounds laid down by that harshest of tyrants, the Mrs. Grundy of the
working class'. 159 The next such moment comes when she sees Joe's 'beautiful
nakedness'. She feels guilty 'in beholding what she knew must be sinful to behold',
but London informs us that 'the pagan in her, original sin, and all nature urged her
on'. The terms in which Genevieve perceives Joe are, however, far from straight-
forwardly erotic. Rather, her appreciation curiously shifts between the religious
and the aesthetic, and much of it is feminizing. Joe is 'godlike', and she feels 'sac-
rilege' in looking at him, but his face is also like a cameo', a thing of 'Dresden
china', and London tells us that 'her chromo-trained aesthetic sense exceeded its
education'. Joe's delicacy, fragility, smoothness and fairness are also continually
emphasized. His opponent, on the other hand, is the classic 'beast with a streak
for a forehead', 'a thing savage, primordial, ferocious'. 160 Looking connects the
concreteness of romantic love to the fight's abstraction.

During the central fight scenes, London seems to forget that we are seeing
the fight from Genevieve's perspective, and there are several pages of detailed
blow-by-blow description. Moreover, when Genevieve's perspective does return
it seems confused, as if London was not really sure what do with it. On the one
hand, he describes her attraction to what he calls the pagan values of pain, sex
and death: 'She, too, was out of herself; softness and tenderness had vanished;
she exulted in each crushing blow her lover delivered'. Yet, only moments later,
her responses seem quite distinct from those of the crowd; she feels sick, faint,
both 'overwrought with horror at what she had seen and was seeing' and baffled
at the whole process. The fight in the ring ends when Joe slips and is caught on
the chin with a lucky punch. Chance seems initially to be working for Genevieve,
for believing that 'the Game had played him false', she concludes that 'he was
more surely hers'. When she realizes that he is dead, however, it is with the
acknowledgment that she had already lost him to 'the awful facts of this Game
she did not understand'. 161 The Game is finally ambiguous about the status of
both the boxer's body (it is a source not simply of violence, but of economic
power, and self-expression) and the spectator's interpretation of the body (bio-
logically, erotically, religiously and aesthetically). It is not only Joe's death that
makes the conclusion bleak. He was also gambling on his ability to communi-
cate the meaning of the Game to Genevieve, and that gamble failed as well.
Women might look but they do not really understand men; London, however,
understands that female lack of understanding. 162

While Genevieve in The Game and Lydia in Cashel Byron 's Profession achieve
a certain power simply by watching men fight, other works of the period (again
usually by men) imagine female power more directly as the women themselves
don gloves (illus. 70). William H. Bishop's 1895 novel, The Garden of Eden, usa,

161

Women boxers,

c. 1911.

for example, presents a Utopia of sexual and economic equality in which cook-
ing and housework are done by centralized machinery. This was perhaps the
first novel to discuss rape as a social problem and certainly the first to suggest,
as a possible form of resistance, boxing. 163 In the world outside Utopia, Bishop
argues, 'the power of self-defense or of indignant protest is more necessary to
women than to men'. In the Garden of Eden, however, women box 'more in
bravado of conventional prejudices than anything else'. 164

Although Bishop's is not the only work in which a feminist agenda is pres-
ent, many references to women boxing in this period seem to involve little more
than a return to the scantily clad heroines of Fielding's day. In 1880 the Police
Gazette announced that a Miss Libbie Ross was 'champion female boxer of
America', and in 1884, Hattie Stewart was declared world female champion, but
no one seemed to take these titles very seriously. More popular were stories in
which women (ignoring Darwin) fought over men and against 'mashers', usu-
ally 'according to pugilistic rules' (illus. 71). l65 Athletic new women also featured
in the new visual technologies, where great attention was paid to their costumes
and what they revealed. A form of photography that was very popular between
the 1850s and 1930s was stereoscopy. When two almost identical photographs,
placed side by side, were seen though a stereoscope, a sense of depth and solid-
ity was created. The technique was most often used to view images of land-
scape and women in their underwear. No. 95 in a late nineteenth-century
'Beauty Series' featured a Hallowe'en party boxing match entitled 'England's
Advantage' (illus. 72). We cannot see either of the girl's faces, but that is hardly
the point. The American 'beauty' has her opponent's glove in her face, and we

162

'The Girls Biffed
Each Other', from
Police Gazette (1890).

Stereoscopic photo
of a Hallowe'en
party boxing
match, 'England's
Advantage'.

THE GIRLS BIFFED EACH OTHER.

MA II IE HERBETT AND MABEL BROWN FIGHT **}» GEOfiGE
WOODWARD IN PLEASANTVILLE, N.J.

get a fine view (especially through a stereoscope) of the English girl's bloomers.
Thomas Edison's 1898 film, Comedy Set-To was one of many early films in which
women box for laughs. Starring the Police Gazette 'Champion Lady Bag Puncher',
Belle Gordon, against Billy Curtis, it was, according to one magazine, 'refined,
scientific, and a genuine comedy'. 'Belle Gordon is as frisky a little lady as ever
donned a boxing outfit, and her abbreviated skirt, short sleeves and low necked
waist make a very jaunty costume.' 166

Women's arm muscles had suddenly become a new erogenous zone. The
ethereal hero of Joris-Karl Huysmans's A Rebours (1884) falls briefly in love with
a female acrobat, 'an American girl', largely because of her 'muscles of steel and
arms of iron', while Everard in George Gissing's The Odd Women (1893) is very
impressed by Rhoda Nunn's 'strong wrists, with exquisite vein-tracings on the
pure white'. 167 In 1897 Frank Norris interviewed Alcide Capitaine, hailed as 'the
female Sandow'. The resulting essay begins with sound feminist intentions.
Norris addresses male readers who might be tempted to call her 'a "little
woman" . . . and . . . might even . . . assume the certain condescension of man-
ner that men - some men - display when talking to the "weaker" sex.' Such
condescension would immediately vanish, however, when attempting to grasp
her upper arm 'at first with one hand, then, failing in this, with two ... A man
must have large hands to do the thing, for the bicep measurement is fifteen and
a half inches.' Norris, we now realize, is not primarily interested in Capitaine
as a living refutation of sexism or a feminist role model. It is the fact that her
body is so different when 'at ease' and when 'muscled up' that excites him so
much. Muscles relaxed, she is a 'quiet, retiring sort of little body'; a little flexing,
however, and 'Tom Sharkey himself would be proud of that arm.' 'Really it took
one's breath away.' While many New Women cultivated athleticism as an alter-
native to Victorian restrictions on their bodies and behaviour, the fantasies of
their often rather prurient supporters rested on the conjunction, or rather
disjunction, of the new and the old, the 'frame of a pugilist in the person of a
girl not yet out of her teens'.

Although descriptions such as this carry more than a touch of the freak
show, they also represent a broader cultural tendency to define both male and
female sexuality (often referred to as biological health or fitness) in masculine
terms. Biceps, rather than breasts or hips, were considered indicators of fitness
for both men and women. When Norris compares Capitaine to Tom Sharkey he
is not saying that he would prefer to sleep with Sharkey (even vicariously). In
social and psychological terms, Capitaine remains womanly, but (by being a
little bit manly around the arms) she also reveals herself to be sexually active and
biologically fit.

Early on in Jack London's first novel, A Daughter of the Snows (1902), Frona
Welse offers her arm to an old family friend. ""Tis muscle," he admitted, passing
his hand admiringly over the swelling bunch; "just as though ye'd een workin'
hard for yer livin"".

164

Jack and Charmian

London boxing

together.

'Oh, I can swing clubs, and box, and fence,' she cried, successively strik-
ing the typical postures; 'and swim, and make high dives, chin a bar
twenty times, and - walk on my hands. There!' 169

Like Genevieve, Frona is engaged in the task of sexual selection, but unlike
Genevieve, she is highly educated in Social Darwinian terminology and so can
recognize quite precisely what she is feeling. The novel is structured around
Frona's choice between two suitors, the rather brutish Gregory St Vincent, and
Vance Corliss, whose 'muscular development was more qualitative than quanti-
tative', and whom she eventually picks. Fortunately, Vance likes her too, and for
very similar reasons - 'the strength of her slenderness' and 'the joy of life', which
'romped through her blood, abstemiously filling out and rounding off each
shapely muscle .. . Especially he liked the swell of her forearm, which rose firm and
strong and tantalizing'. 170 Genevieve could only look at Joe uncomprehendingly;
Frona and Vance look at each other and rationally assess what they see. Theirs is
to be a marriage of biological equals, 'mate man' and 'mate woman' boxing to-
gether, just as London did with his second wife, Charmian (illus. 73).

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, writers lost interest in the distinc-
tive sub-culture and language of boxing; instead, the sport became a focus for
many competing, and often oddly intermingling, discourses. In their rhetorical
battles, often with each other, eugenics, professionalism, strenuousness, realism
and feminism all drew upon pugilism to make their points. Missing from this
list, and this chapter, however, are two fiercely debated topics in early twentieth-
century America: nation, and race. It is these that the next chapter will consider.

165

The Boxing Boys,
wall-painting from
Akrotiri, Thera, 17th
to 16th century bc.

Female Combatants

OR WHO 8IIALL -

a:,

The Female Combatants, Or Who Shall, 1776, etching.

Humphreys vs Mendozajug, 1788.

The Prussian prize-fighter and his allies attempting to tame imperial Kate, or, the state of the European bruisers, Cartoon
shows Catherine 11 and Frederick William 11 as pugilists, stripped to the waist with fists raised. Published by William
Dent, 14 February 1791.

The Close of the Battle or the Champion Triumphant, 1811.

Robert and George Cruikshank, 'Cribb's Parlour: Tom introducing Jerry and Logic to the Champion of England', coloured
aquatint illustration from Pierce Egan, Life in London (1821).

-I"

Charles Turner after T. Blake, The Interior of the Fives Court, with Randall and Turner Sparring, 1825.

The Zoopraxiscope,
Athletes Boxing,
by Eadweard
Muybridge, c. 1893.

'Gown! Gown! Town!
Town! or, The Battle
of Peas Hill', illustra-
tion from Gradus ad
Cantahrigiam (1824).

Thomas Eakins, Between Rounds, 1898-9.

\ttiz. tn£ mtt i wu?. t
Twey "ctitMA/r ftcen mm.

i£n .. * it *i .

Cover of T/?f Coming Champion,
1910, Blackface Minstrel Show,
script for a sketch.

'If I Wuz the Man I Wuz, They
Wouldn't Need Him', postcard,
New York, 1912.

I'rn'r IS C«TJ

DE N I SON S

BLACKFACE

The Coming
Champion

1 WALTER K BAKER CO.

WLUIffiLft. - IWllMfti

I ^1 -wlMTCR St UdSTCitiuSi

Archibald J. Motley Jr, The Plotters, 1933.

OltOih IS. ittL

PUNCH, OH THK rXA'DON CHARIVARI,

tr.

THE SYMPATHETIC SPECTATOR.

William Low, 'The Sympathetic Spectator', Punch, 15 October 1924.

Cover of The Champion annual, 1953.

Cover of The Fight magazine, 13 February 1931.

r>'"'

Karl Arnold, Women Boxers, Berlin, from Simplicissimus, August 1923.

A
20 ham

20heures

CHAMPION DU MONDE

QUI V1INT □ ■ HITTDI PUDtl£R K O AU 1 ROUND

PLACES

K)-75\v

HiH'Ht ihirnDin

COflTRE ' ^B

COffTRE

HOPERt

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Poster advertising Panama Al Brown at the Palais des Sports, Brussels, 1938.

Aligi Sassu,

Pugilatori, 1929.

Max Pechstein, Boxer in the Ring, postcard to Erich Heckel, 4 November 1910.

The Stenberg Brothers, poster for The Boxer's Bride, 1926.

Fresh Hopes

'We are all Anglo-Saxons enough to enjoy the sight of a fight,' Frank Norris
declared in 1903, before, unblushingly, going on to praise the talents of a New
Zealander of Cornish descent, Bob Fitzsimmons. 1 A rather loose approach to
matters of race, ethnicity and nationality had long been a feature in boxing,
even when those affiliations were supposedly the point. Such leniency allowed
a former American slave, Tom Molineaux, to be co-opted into the English battle
against Napoleon in 1812, the Irish-born and California-bred John Heenan to
be feted as a symbol of both American and Irish anti-British sentiment in i860,
and Joe Louis to become a symbol of Jim Crow America's fight against foreign
fascism in 1938.

The rapid development of sports in the United States in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century was closely linked to questions of national identity
- what it meant to be an American, and more critically for the new immigrants,
what was needed to become one. 2 'To be an American, dress like an American,
look like an American, and even, if only in fantasy, talk like an American' was
the goal of the young immigrant. 3 Sports such as boxing provided a readily avail-
able subject-matter, and vocabulary, for recognizably American talk.

In Abraham Cahan's 1896 novella, Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, Yekl
Podkovnik's metamorphosis into Jake, 'an American feller, a Yankee', is repre-
sented by his enthusiasm for dance halls and boxing. The story opens with Jake
giving his fellow Lower East Side sweatshop workers a detailed account of the
exploits of Sullivan, Corbett and others, proudly displaying his grasp of the cor-
rect idiom:

'Say, Dzake,' the presser broke in, 'John Sullivan is tzampion no longer,
is he?

'Oh no! Not always is it holiday!' Jake responded, with what he con-
sidered a Yankee jerk of his head. 'Why don't you know? Jimmie Cor-
bett leaked him, and Jimmie leaked Cholly Meetchel, too. You can betch
you' bootsh! Johnnie could not leak Chollie, becaush he is a big bluffer,
Chollie is,' he pursued, his clean-shaven florid face beaming with enthu-

166

siasm for his subject, and with pride in the diminutive proper nouns he
flaunted. 'But Jimmie pundished him. Oh, didn't he knock him out off
shightl He came near making a meat-ball of him' -with a chuckle. 'He
tzettled him in three roynds. I knew a feller who had seen the fight.'
'What is a rawnd, Dzake?' the presser inquired. 4

Reading this slang-laden fight description (which then goes on into 'a minute ex-
position of "right-handers", "left-handers", "sending to sleep", "first blood", and
other commodities of the fistic business') we might almost be back in Regency
England. But there are important differences. The first thing to notice is a foot-
note that tells us that 'English words incorporated in the Yiddish of the charac-
ters of this narrative are given in italics'. Fluent standard English, in other words,
represents fluent standard Yiddish. The English that appears in italics is the
same kind of English that Pierce Egan italicized in the 1800s, and like Egan, Jake
is putting on a costume when he uses 'diminutive proper nouns' and talks of
'tzampions' and 'roynds'. Sabinne Haenni suggests that this speech could 'qual-
ify for the vaudeville stage'. 5 But Jake's language is further complicated by the
fact that he has recently moved to New York from Boston, and so even his Yid-
dish is different from that of his co-workers and 'his r's could do credit to the
thickest Irish brogue'. In Boston, Jake says, 'every Jew speaks English like a
stream', but what kind of English is it that flows so freely? It is hardly standard-
ized - one man says 'roynd'; another 'rawnd '. Cahan describes the English his
characters speak as 'mutilated' and 'gibberish'. 6

When his friends dismiss boxing as mere fighting, Jake evokes its rules. One
of the men, a scholar called Bernstein, makes a joke: 'America is an educated
country, so they won't even break each other's bones without grammar. They
tear each other's sides according to "right and left", you know.' Cahan explains
that 'this was a thrust at Jake's right-handers and left-handers, which had inter-
fered with Jake's reading', and adds, in a footnote, that 'right and left' is 'a term
relating to the Hebrew equivalent of the letter s, whose pronunciation depends
on the right or left position of a mark over it'. The rules of Hebrew are thus jux-
taposed with those of American boxing. Jake may 'speak quicker' than his
friends, his American slang flowing like a stream', but he is illiterate; Bernstein
has little standard English and less slang, but he is a Hebrew scholar. 7

Cahan himself sat somewhere between his two characters. 8 Before Yekl,
Cahan had published several stories in Yiddish and had enthusiastically wel-
comed the American publication of stories by I. L. Peretz and Shalom Aleichem.
But Yiddish was generally regarded by Jewish intellectuals as non-literary. The
languages of the literature were Hebrew, Russian, Polish, German, and, if a broad
American audience was to be reached, English. 9 A Tale of the Ghetto' written
specifically for those outside the ghetto, Yekl followed in the tradition of what
was then known as local color' fiction and positioned its characters and their
environment with anthropological exactness. The narrator is a key figure in this
process, our tour guide around the ghetto, and our translator of its speech. His

167

English is self-consciously literary and genteel. The opening paragraph, for exam-
ple, tells us that the boss was on Broadway 'where he had betaken himself two or
three hours before', and that 'the little sweltering assemblage . . . beguiled their
suspense variously'. Jules Chametzsky maintains that the extreme contrast
between this language and that of Cahan's characters entails 'an arch and conde-
scending attitude' towards them. 'Their fractured English is comic when it is not
grotesque.' 10 But something more interesting seems to be going on. While the
English the characters speak is, in Cahan's word, 'mutilated', as we have seen,
their Yiddish (written as English) is fluent and in many ways, much more expres-
sive than the narrator's English. Yiddish, Cahan notes, is 'omnivorous'. Several
jokes in the text emerge from phrases or words that sound similar in Yiddish
and English (left and right' above; 'dinner' in Yiddish is 'thinner' in English).
The language of the ghetto, like the ghetto itself, remains a complicated, and not
wholly translatable, 'hodgepodge'. English may be the official language of the
story but within its embrace are found several varieties of Yiddish (one of which
is spoken with an Irish lilt), Russian and Hebrew (when Jake takes a Hebrew
letter to be translated, Cahan jokes that it 'was Greek to Jake'). 11

For Jake, however, following boxing is not only about finding an excuse to
show off his new mastery of American colloquialisms. It is also a 'trying on of
roles ... [a] delight in assuming new identities'; in particular new versions of
masculinity. 12 Becoming an American man was not a matter of simply gaining
something additional (a style on top); it also meant giving something up. The
shifting balance between gains and losses is what the story is all about, and at
times the debate slips into verbal sparring. When one of Jake's co-workers dis-
misses the fight talk, Jake is immediately 'on the defensive'.

'Don't you like it? I do,' Jake declared tartly. 'Once I live in America,' he
pursued, on the defensive, 'I want to know that I live in America. Dot'sh
a kin' a man I ami One must notbe a greenhorn. Here a Jew is as good as
a Gentile. How, then, would you have it? The way it is in Russia, where
a Jew is afraid to stand within four ells of a Christian?' 13

In the 1890s Zionists in Germany, England and the Unites States had begun
to speak of a modern muscular Judaism, and often evoked the name of the early
nineteenth-century Jewish boxers, Daniel Mendoza and Dutch Sam. 14 In the
'Proem' to The Children of the Ghetto (1914), Israel Zangwill told the story of an
old peddler called Sleepy Sol who is defended from the brutality of a local
hostler by his son-in-law, who turns out to be Dutch Sam. 'The young Jew
paralysed him by putting his left hand negligently into his pocket. With his
remaining hand he closed the hostler's right eye, and sent the flesh about it into
mourning.' Zangwill included the story to make the point that 'Judaea has always
a cosmos in little, and its prize-fighters and scientists, its philosophers and
"fences" [etc] . . . have always been in the first rank.' 15 When Yekl defends his
interest in prize-fighting by evoking Russian persecution of Jews, he seems to be

168

aligning himself with muscular Judaism. To his friends, and indeed to most
Orthodox Russian and Polish immigrants at this time, however, the idea of the
tough Jew (the muskeljuden) was not merely an anathema but a contradiction in
terms, and its adoption signalled the beginning of the end of traditional values. 16
In The Spirit of the Ghetto (1902), Hutchins Hapgood observed that many of those
who talked of the 'crimes of which they read in the newspapers, of prize-fights,
of budding business propositions . . . gradually quit going to synagogue, give up
heder promptly when they are thirteen years old, avoid the Yiddish theatres,
seek the up-town places of amusement, dress in the latest American fashion,
and have a keen eye for the right thing in neckties'. 17

When Bernstein asks Yekl, 'Are there no other Christians than fighters in
America?' he might have added, are no other Americans than Irish-Americans?
But neither man seems aware that Yekl's American icons were both first-genera-
tion Irish immigrants: Sullivan's parents came from Tralee and Athlone, Corbett's
from Galway. 18 If you wanted to become an American in late nineteenth-century
Boston it made sense to adopt an Irish brogue and talk about Sullivan and
Corbett. At the time, Irishness was almost synonymous with pugnacity, and pug-
nacity was almost synonymous with Americanness; ergo the Irish were the 'real'
Americans, the immigrants who best performed the accepted version of national
identity. 19 Assimilation simply meant adopting the ways of the previous genera-
tion of immigrants.

The complexities of ethnic identification form the basis of 0. Henry's 1906
story, 'The Coming-out of Maggie', in which an Irish girl sneaks her Italian
boyfriend Tony Spinelli into the Clover Leaf Social Club under the name of Terry
O'Sullivan. 'Terry' falls out with the leader of the Give and Take Athletic Asso-
ciation, Dempsey Donovan, who challenges him to a fight. Faced with Donovan,
'dancing, light-footed, with the wary grace of a modern pugilist', Terry reverts
to his essential Tony-ness and, with 'a murderous look in his dark eyes', pulls a
stiletto from his jacket. Maggie apologizes for bringing a 'Guinea' into the club
and Donovan walks her home. 20 Tony Spinelli was not the only immigrant to
adopt an Irish name; many turn-of-the-century Italian and Jewish fighters fol-
lowed suit. Mushy Callahan was Jewish; Hugo Kelly was Italian. 21 In James
T. Farrell's 1932 novel Young Lonigan, set in 1916, Old Man O'Brien remembers
the good old days, 'when most of them [the boxers] were real Irish, lads who'd
bless themselves before they fought: they weren't fake Irish like most of the
present-day dagoes and wops and sheenies who took Hibernian names'.
Meanwhile Davey Cohen, a Jewish boy, sees 'all the Irish race personified in the
face of Studs Lonigan' and imagines himself 'punching that face, cutting it,
bloodying the nose, blackening the eyes, mashing it'. 22

Soon Jews were participating in, as well as watching and imagining, such
fights. Along with Sullivan and Corbett, Yekl might have celebrated the San
Francisco Jewish boxer, Joe Choynski, who fought Corbett, Fitzsimmons,
Sharkey and Jack Johnson and whose father published Public Opinion, a muck-
raking newspaper that exposed anti-Semitism. 23 Corbett recalls that their 1889

169

fight was partly promoted as 'Jew versus Gentile'. 24 In 1905, the Police Gazette
noted that a generation of 'peaceable and inoffensive' Russian Jewish immi-
grants had been succeeded by 'turbulent young men from whose ranks have
been graduated a number of professional pugilists and boxers'. 25 The first Jew-
ish-American champions were bantamweight Harry Harris, who won his crown
in 1901, and featherweight Abe Attell, who held the title from 1904 to 1912. In
New York's Lower East Side, the first popular Jewish fighter was Leach Cross
(Louis Wallach) who, from 1906 to 1915, fought as 'The Fighting Dentist', while
London's East End produced 1915 world welterweight champion Ted 'Kid' Lewis
(Gershon Mendeloff ), and lightweight and junior welterweight champion Jackie
'Kid' Berg (Judah Bergman), the 'Whitechapel Windmill', who famously hung
his tzitzis on the ringpost at the start of each fight. 26 In 1920 the Italian Samuel
Mandella began fighting under the Jewish-sounding name of Sammy Mandell,
and by the early 1930s, Jews dominated boxing on both sides of the Atlantic,
not simply as fighters and fans, but as promoters, trainers, managers, referees,
journalists and sporting goods manufacturers.

It wasn't long before the story of the Jewish boy who broke his father's heart
by becoming a boxer became a bit of a cliche. His People, a 1925 film about Jewish
life on the Lower East Side, tells the story of Sammy and Morris Cominsky, both
of whom stray from the ways of their Orthodox parents. Morris becomes a lawyer
and Sammy a prize-fighter. As the father expels Sammy from the house, his words
are presented in an inter-title:

A box-fyteh!? So that's what you've become? For this we came to Amer-
ica? So that you should become a box-fyteh? Better you should be a
gangster or even a murderer. The shame of it. A box-fyteh! 27

In Nineteen Nineteen (1932), John Dos Passos introduced the character of Benny
Compton: 'The old people were Jews but at school Benny always said he no he
wasn't a Jew he was an American'. The Compton children assimilate in differ-
ent ways. Ben becomes a political activist, his sister Gladys a secretary, and their
brother, Izzy 'palled around with an Irishman who was going to get him into
the ring.' Although it is Benny and Gladys who eventually come to bad ends, it
is Izzy's career choice that most upsets his parents. 'Momma cried and Pop for-
bade any of the kids to mention his name'. 28

Boxing promoters capitalized on ethnic animosities and often matched a Jew-
ish fighter against an Irishman or an Italian against either (illus. 74). Prompted by
the gift of The Jewish Boxers' Hall of Fame, Herman Roth recalled many of the early
Jewish champions (and in particular those from New Jersey) in a 1988 conversa-
tion with his son Philip, whom he had taken as a child to the Thursday night fights
at Newark's Laurel Garden. 'They fought two battles', Herman said.

They fought because they were fighters, and they fought because they
were Jews. They'd put two guys in the ring, an Italian and a Jew, and

170

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Irishman and a Jew, and they fought like they meant it, they fought to
hurt. There was always a certain amount of hatred in it. Trying to show
who was superior. 29

As a teenager, Philip Roth 'could recite the names and weights of all the cham-
pions and contenders', and was particularly keen on Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom,
light heavyweight champion from 1932 to 1934. 'Jewish boxers and boxing
aficionados,' he later noted, were a 'strange deviation from the norm' of Jewish
culture and 'interesting largely for that reason'.

In the world whose values first formed me, unrestrained physical
violence was considered contemptible everywhere else. I could no more
smash a nose with a fist than fire a pistol into someone's heart. And
what imposed this restraint, if not on Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom, then
on me, was my being Jewish. In my scheme of things, Slapsie Maxie
was a more miraculous Jewish phenomena by far than Dr. Albert
Einstein. 30

Although less strikingly named than Slapsie Maxie, the most famous Jewish
boxer of the early twentieth century was undoubtedly Benny Leonard; Farrell's
Davey Cohen describes him as 'one smart hebe that could beat the Irish at their
own game' (illus. 75). 31 Benny's real surname was Leiner, but he fought under
the name of Leonard, supposedly in case his mother read about his fights in the

171

Jewish Daily Forward. One day, returning home with
a black eye, he was unable to conceal the truth
from parents:

My mother looked at my black eye and
wept. My father, who had to work all week
for $20, said, 'All right Benny, keep on
fighting. It's worth getting a black eye for
$20; I am getting verschwartzt [black-
ened] for $20 a week. 32

Leonard became world lightweight champion in

1917 and retired undefeated in 1925. 33 Like many

boxers, he then dabbled in vaudeville, including a

1921 appearance in one of the Marx Brothers' most

successful stage shows, a fast-paced revue called

On the Mezzanine Floor. The brothers were keen

fight fans, and Harpo had known Leonard for

some time (illus. 76). 34 Leonard was in love with

Hattie Darling, the dancing violinist star of the

show, and, as Groucho recalled, 'she was able to

talk him into putting money into our act'. 'A few

times he joined the act and would come on stage,

and the four of us would try to box with him. The

audience loved that. They loved to see a world champion kidding around on

stage.' 35 After the Wall Street crash of 1929, Leonard briefly returned to boxing;

'The Great Bennah' died, while refereeing a fight, in 1947.

In 1980, Budd Schulberg recalled Leonard's importance to the children of
Jewish immigrants; children who had 'tasted the fists and felt the shoe-leather
of righteous Irish and Italian Christian children'. Benny Leonard was their
'superhero'. Schulberg, who was born in 1914, was luckier than most because
his father, a Hollywood mogul, knew Leonard personally.

Benny Leonard,
cigarette card
given away with
The Champion,
3 June 1922.

To see him climb in the ring sporting the six-pointed Jewish star on his
fighting trunks was to anticipate sweet revenge for all the bloody noses,
split lips, and mocking laughter at pale little Jewish boys who had run
the neighbourhood gauntlet. 36

'More than any other group of athletes', Jewish boxers provided a 'vivid coun-
terpoint to popular anti-Semitic stereotypes'. 37

But the stereotypes were remarkably persistent. 'No Business' (1915), by
Charles E. Van Loan, is the story of a boxer called Isidore Mandelbaum. Two
Irish fight fans discuss his career, and while conceding that he can 'hit with
both hands - hit hard too', they lament his lack of 'the heart and the stomach'.

172

Mandelbaum, they conclude, is 'a gladiator for revenue only'. 'The only part
of the fight game that he likes is the split-up in the box office . . . He'll never
fight for the pure love of fightin', understand me? Put an Irish heart in him
... an' you'd have a champion - no less'. The men construct an elaborate set-up
to encourage Mandelbaum to be a little more 'game' in the ring. It works and
they're happy, but we never learn what Mandelbaum thought. 38

Perhaps the most famous portrait from this period of a Jew who boxes is
Robert Cohn in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926). 39 Cohn is not just
any Jew, fresh off the boat, but 'a member, through his father, of one of the rich-
est Jewish families in New York, and through his mother, one of the oldest'. He
has many privileges that the novel's narrator, Jake Barnes, lacks. The first, a Prince-
ton education, is mentioned in the novel's opening sentence: 'Robert Cohn was
once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton.' 'Do not think that I am very
much impressed by that as a boxing title', Jake quickly adds, 'but it meant a lot to
Cohn.' The paragraph continues as a virtuoso exercise in deflation. We next learn
that Cohn 'cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it', and then that 'he never
fought except in the gym'. In other words, Cohn is no sportsman. Princeton may
have given him a 'flattened nose', but after he left, no one remembered him or his
title. 40 The insinuation is that Cohn boxed in order to remove the obvious mark
of his Jewishness, hoping to assume in its place the flat-nosed pugilistic style that
Jake feels is his own birthright. Throughout the novel, Jake goes to great lengths
to demonstrate that it takes more than a little outmoded Ivy League undergradu-
ate 'spirit' to turn a Jew into a proper sporting strenuous American. 41

The problem with Cohn, as Jake sees it, is that his responses to life, literature
and sport are not genuine - they are, like Yekl's speech, merely a costume that he

The Marx Brothers

with their fists

raised.

173

dons. Cohn likes the idea of a mistress more than any actual mistress; the idea of 'a
lady of title' more than Lady Brett Ashley; the idea of chivalrous battle more than
a real fight. He thinks boxing is something that takes place in gyms, and worries that
he'll be 'bored' at the corrida. His 'undergraduate quality' is constantly noted. At 34
he still wears polo shirts and reads novels full of fights and handshakes, novels like
W. H. Hudson's romantic potboiler, The Purple Land (1885), which Jake claims he
took literally'. When he stands up 'ready to do battle for his lady love', Jake mocks
the 'childish, drunken heroic of it'. In his first fight outside the gym, Cohn ends up
taking on everybody he can, all in the same spirit and in his polo shirt. He first
knocks down Mike, who is 'not a fighter', and Jake, 'the human punching-bag', who
then obliges him by shaking hands. But things are different with the toreador,
Romero, who 'kept getting up and getting knocked down again'. When Cohn tries
to shake hands with him, Romero punches him in the face. Mike dismisses both
'Jews and bullfighters' as 'those sorts of people'; Jake, however, knows that Brett's
substitution of Romero for Robert, and himself, is a definite upgrade. 42

Walter Benn Michaels remarks that 'Hemingway's obsessive commitment
to distinguishing between Cohn and Jake only makes sense in the light of their
being in some sense indistinguishable.' 43 For all their differences, Robert Cohn
and Jake Barnes are both 'taken in hand' by Brett, 'manipulated' in a way that
recalls the boxer dolls that Jake nearly trips over on the Boulevard des Capucines.
There, a 'girl assistant' lackadaisically pulls the threads that make the dolls dance
on stands, while she stands with 'folded hands', looking away'. 44

'the peculiar gift of the white man'

The narrator of Herman Melville's 1846 novel, Typee, is surprised to find that
the inhabitants of the South Sea island on which he is marooned don't under-
stand boxing: 'not one of the natives', he complains, 'had soul enough in him to
stand up like a man, and allow me to hammer away at him':

The noble art of self-defence appeared to be regarded by them as the pe-
culiar gift of the white man; and I make little doubt but that they sup-
posed armies of Europeans were drawn up provided with nothing else
but bony fists and stout hearts, with which they set to in column, and
pummelled one another at the word of command. 45

Despite the success of early nineteenth-century black boxers such as Tom Mo-
lineaux and Bill Richmond, by Melville's time it had become a commonplace
that 'the noble art of self-defence' - an art no less - was 'the peculiar gift of the
white man'. In 1908, this confidence would be shattered when a black American
became heavyweight champion of the world and the country plunged into a
feverish, and futile, search for a 'great white hope' with a sufficiently stout heart
and bony fists to defeat him. After 1908, many whites played down 'art' and
began to talk of nature.

174

Although black Americans had boxed before the Civil War, it was really
only in the last quarter of the nineteenth century that they began to make any
headway in the sport. This was partly to do with the development and profes-
sionalization of sport in general, and partly to do with the growth of a significant
black urban population. James Weldon Johnson's Black Manhattan (1930) tells
the story of the origins of black urban culture, and of the ways in which 'the
Negro . . . effectively impressed himself upon the city and the country'. 'Within
this period,' he noted, 'roughly speaking, the Negro in the North emerged and
gained national notice in three great professional sports: horse-racing, baseball,
and prize-fighting.' Johnson devotes most of his attention to boxing, the sport
which, he maintained, had the advantage of depending (at least more than the
others) on 'individual skill and stamina'. 46

The growth of an urban black sporting and theatrical community was
accompanied by the development of what Johnson calls a 'black Bohemia' of
sporting and gambling clubs. The walls of a typical club 'were literally covered
with photographs or lithographs of every colored man in America who had ever
"done anything"'.

There were pictures of Frederick Douglass and of Peter Jackson, of all
the lesser lights of the prize-ring, of all the famous jockeys and the stage
celebrities, down to the newest song and dance team ... It was, in short,
a centre of coloured Bohemians and sports. 47

From the myriad of photographs and lithographs that cover the club walls, John-
son picks out two portraits - those of Frederick Douglass and Peter Jackson.
Jackson was a great late nineteenth-century heavyweight (and I'll consider his
career in a moment), but it is worth remembering that Frederick Douglass also
had a reputation as a pugilist.

A SLAVE BECOMES A MAN': DOUGLASS VS. COVEY

Before the Civil War, slaves in Southern states were often set to fight for the
entertainment of their masters, who made money gambling on the outcome.
Frederick Douglass, a runaway slave who became a prominent anti-slavery orator
and author of the best-selling Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an Amer-
ican Slave (1845), noted with horror the way in which slave owners encouraged
slaves to participate in boxing and wrestling matches, designed also to serve as
'safety-valves, to carry off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity'. As an
alternative Sabbath activity, Douglass set up a school to teach his fellow slaves
to read, but this had to be kept secret, 'for they had much rather see us engaged
in those degrading sports, than to see us behaving like intellectual, moral, and
accountable beings'. 48 For Douglass, reading, writing and speaking offered the
ultimate resistance to slavery's dehumanization. Nevertheless, verbal self-
expression is directly connected to violent, physical self-expression in the

175

Narrative. A 'turning-point' in the book, and in Douglass's 'career as a slave', is
a fight, in which, as a sixteen-year-old boy, he takes on the brutal 'nigger-breaker'
Edward Covey. Covey has broken Douglass's spirit - 'the disposition to read de-
parted . . . behold a man transformed into a brute' - and it is only by fighting
that he can again become a man who reads.

In some ways the shape of the book follows the form of a conversion narra-
tive, and the depiction of the fight, which is dense in biblical allusion, refigures
religious conversion. Covey is a 'professor of religion' - 'a pious soul', the Narrative
ironically notes - but it is Douglass who is preaching a sermon. 49 In fighting Covey,
Douglass becomes a combination of Daniel escaped from the Lions' Den, Jacob
wrestling with the Angel, and the suffering Christ; the outcome of the fight is
likened to 'a glorious resurrection from the tomb of slavery'. 50 Usually such a
rebellion would have been rewarded with further whipping, but for reasons that
Douglass does not fully convey, he remains unpunished. Neither man is really a
loser here: Covey's 'unbounded reputation' as an overseer remained intact; Dou-
glass gained the 'self-confidence' necessary to take the next steps in his progression
towards freedom, and leadership. The conversion from bondage to freedom
enacted here is not, therefore, actual - he would remain a slave for four more years
- but psychological. Douglass's formulation, 'You have seen how a man was made
a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man', indicates that 'slave' and 'man'
are to be understood as opposing and contradictory concepts (as indeed, Dou-
glass believed, were 'slave' and 'American'). The events leading up to the fight
show Covey whipping Douglass, and by this stage of the Narrative, we realize that
to accept such whippings is to be in some way feminine. 51 In resisting (and in turn
feminizing) Covey - a fierce tiger before, a trembling leaf afterwards - Douglass
says he has 'revived within me a sense of my own manhood'. Only when this psy-
chological transformation has taken place can the truly liberating activities - read-
ing, writing and running away- develop a proper momentum.

It might be argued that this fight is very different from a boxing match. It
did not have an audience, it was not undertaken for money or show; it was an
authentic struggle. Yet in the context of the Narrative, as in all literary, or auto-
biographical descriptions of fights, the scene takes on some characteristics of a
performance. In addition, it is important to remember that the Narrative was
written primarily for an abolitionist readership, and that Douglass was con-
sciously fashioning an acceptable image of the male slave. This put him in a
difficult position. On the one hand, as Richard Yarborough observes, blacks
were viewed as 'unmanly and otherwise inferior because they were enslaved'; on
the other hand, they were seen as 'beasts and otherwise inferior if they rebelled
violently'. 52 In presenting his fight with Covey, Douglass treads a fine line
between appropriate manliness and frightening bestiality. Douglass wants to
present himself to his readers as manly and assertive, yet not as too manly or too
assertive. 'I held him uneasy causing the blood to run where I touched him with
the ends of my fingers,' he wrote; an awkward description that seems to reflect
his own uneasiness about what he had done. 53

176

The problematic nature of this encounter is made evident if the later revi-
sions of the Narrative are considered. In 1855, by now famous, Douglass
expanded and revised his account as My Bondage and My Freedom; in 1881, a final
version, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, was published. In these two
later versions, he is not merely relating his escape from slavery; he is recount-
ing the exemplary story of his life as a self-made man, Benjamin Franklin style.
The fight remains central to the story, but its depiction is very different. Covey
is transformed into the stock villain of the melodramatic novel, the 'scoundrel'
and 'cowardly tormentor' against whom he must reluctantly defend himself.
Douglass ends by apologizing to readers who might find his narration of the
'skirmish' as 'undignified' as the event itself. 54 This seems to be a move toward
what David Leverentz calls 'genteel chumminess': 'at any rate,' wrote Douglass,
7 was resolved to fight, and, what was better still, I was actually hard at it'. 55 Yet
the very expansion of a single long paragraph to several pages of detailed
description might be read as itself an act of politically motivated aggression.

Douglass's political views had changed significantly since 1845. Then, he
opposed the idea of violent slave resistance, which he believed would delay aboli-
tion; instead he called for the peaceful conversion of slaveholders. After the in-
troduction of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, he became frustrated with the
ineffectiveness of non-violent persuasion and began to speak out in favour of ac-
tive, violent, slave resistance as both morally defensible and more likely to end
slavery. 56 Douglass may also have thought it necessary to develop the fight scene
as counter-propaganda to Harriet Beecher Stowe's best-selling 1852 novel, Uncle
Tom 's Cabin, a work which certainly did not advocate slave rebellion. In a piv-
otal scene, Uncle Tom capitulates, with Christian stoicism, to the whip of Simon
Legree. 57 Dramatizations of the novel were popular well into the twentieth cen-
tury, and, in one of the ironies of segregated America, many black boxers, some
of whom, like Peter Jackson and Jack Johnson, had recently defeated white op-
ponents, found ready employment playing the mild, emasculated Tom. 58 My
Bondage uses every means possible, including italics and capitals, to emphasize
both Douglass's manliness - 'I was nothing before; I was a man now' - and the
role that the fight played in developing it - A man, without force, is without the
essential dignity of humanity.' 59

As a free man, Douglass retained his faith in pugilistic metaphor and ex-
ample. In 1862 he made a speech to a largely black audience in which he com-
plained that 'we are striking the guilty rebels with our soft white hand, when
we should be striking with the iron hand of the black man'. 60 The following
year, he intensified his call of 'Men of Color, To Arms', arguing that the 'imper-
iled nation' must 'unchain against her foes her powerful black hand . . . Words
are useful only as they stimulate blows . . . "Who would be free, must them-
selves strike the blow."' 61 At the height of the war, in 1864, Douglass declared
that the conflict had 'swept away' many 'delusions' about black men. 'One was
. . . that the Negro would not fight; that he . . . was a perfect lamb, or an "Uncle
Tom"; disposed to take off his coat whenever required, fold his hands, and be

177

whipped by anybody who wanted to whip him'. The war, Douglass noted, 'has
proved that there is a great deal of human nature in the Negro, and that he will
fight, as Mr. Quincy, our President, said, in earlier days than these, "when there
is a reasonable probability of his whipping anybody"'. 62

I have discussed Douglass vs. Covey in some detail partly because of its own
interest as a fight story, but also because of its continued importance for black
American writers, artists and political leaders throughout the twentieth cen-
tury. 63 After his death in 1897, Douglass was frequently presented as a model of
'the New Negro Man', exemplary to some in his 'manly courage', and, to others,
in his self-restraint and patience. 64 Paul Lawrence Dunbar's elegy, for example,
celebrates him as 'no soft-tongued apologist' but a warrior: 'He died in action,
with his armor on.' 65 A rather less forceful figure emerges in Booker T. Washing-
ton's 1906 biography, in which he both sought to establish himself as Douglass's
rightful heir and to distance himself from his defiant tone. That Washington
had some trouble with the Covey fight is indicated by the brevity of his account
of it, and by his frequent use of words such as 'reckless' and 'rash'. The fight
over, both men behave suspiciously well. Covey admits himself 'fairly outdone',
while, Washington concludes, 'it speaks well for the natural dignity and good
sense of young Douglass that he neither boasted of his triumph nor did any-
thing rash as a consequence of it'. 66 A few years later, Washington would ex-
press concern at both the rash behaviour and boastfulness of the first black
heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson.

Throughout the twentieth century, explorations of the nature of black lead-
ership often allude to Douglass and his portrait crops up in many places, often
aligned, or contrasted with, that of a prize-fighter. Douglass himself kept a pic-
ture of Peter Jackson in his study and, according to James Weldon Johnson,
'used to point to it and say, "Peter is doing a great deal with his fists to solve the
Negro question"'. 67 For many, Frederick Douglass's battle with Covey remained
the model of what an authentic black vs. white fight should be (illus. 77).

Following Emancipation and Reconstruction, increasing anxiety about polic-
ing the boundaries between blacks and whites led to the introduction of wide-
spread segregation (institutionalized with the infamous Supreme Court Pessy
vs. Ferguson decision of 1896 which guaranteed 'separate but equal' status for
blacks). In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois declared that 'the problem of the twentieth cen-
tury' would be 'the problem of the color line', and the colour line was firmly
asserted in most competitive sports. 68 Initially, boxing was less segregated than
team sports such as baseball and football. George Dixon held the American ban-
tamweight title from 1890 to 1892, and the featherweight title from 1892 to 1900;
Joe Walcott was welterweight champion from 1901 to 1906, and Joe Gans was
lightweight champion from 1902 to 1908. Although many white fans, particu-
larly in the South, 'winced' every time a black boxer hit a white boxer, these fights
continued. 69 But the heavyweight title carried heavier symbolism.

Today Peter Jackson is often described as the finest boxer never to have
fought for a world title. He wanted to, but no champion would take him on.

178

Jacob Lawrence,

Frederick Douglass

series, no. 10,

1938-9, tempera on

hardboard.

Having won Australia's heavyweight championship in 1886, Jackson travelled
to the United States looking for a match with John L. Sullivan. While he
received an ecstatic reception from black Americans - 'in every city the local
black community went wild with excitement over his presence and would
honor him with a testimonial dinner' - Sullivan refused to meet him. 70 In 1891,
in the face of a great deal of adverse publicity, Jim Corbett agreed to a contest.
Corbett presented his decision to fight Jackson as a kind of experiment: 'There
may be something in a dark opponent that is not found in a light one and, if
so, it behooves me to find out.' 71 An unprecedented purse of $10,000 may also
have helped. A classic of endurance, Jackson vs. Corbett was finally stopped
in the 61st round, by which time the fighters were struggling to keep upright,
and many spectators had fallen asleep. 72 As the fight had been declared a draw
either man could justifiably have challenged Sullivan's title. Both did, but
Sullivan ignored Jackson. A few months later Corbett won the title and imme-
diately capitalized on his sex-symbol reputation by taking to the stage. He was

179

not frightened of Jackson, he said, just too busy for a rematch. With no alter-
natives, Jackson also resorted to the theatre, where he toured as Uncle Tom.
When he tried to introduce a little sparring into the role (and thus maintain his
credibility as a championship contender) the press complained that he had
'degraded the character'. 73

Peter Jackson's rather limited moment of glory came in 1892 at London's
National Sporting Club. The Club had opened just six months earlier, and of-
fered as the climax to its inaugural season a keenly fought contest between Jack-
son and Frank Slavin. The fight lived up to its billing. Soon everyone who was
anyone claimed to have been there. Young Winston Churchill bunked off from
Harrow to attend. He drew a rather ugly caricature of Jackson and reputedly
used it to settle his tuckshop bill. 74 The fight may have inspired another artist,
too: in his 1898 volume of woodcuts, Almanac of Sports, Sir William Nicholson
chose to represent boxing with an image of a white and a black fighter, poised
for action (illus. 78). The night itself was a study in contrasts. Jackson, celebrated
as the Black Prince, dressed in white; Slavin, who was white, wore dark blue.
Jackson was slim and 'beautifully proportioned'. But it was Slavin, 'with his
beetle brows and smouldering, deep-sunken eyes, leonine mane, fierce mous-
tache, hairy chest and arms', who was London's idol. He was also an unabashed

Sir William

Nicholson,

'November' from

An Almanac of

Twelve Sports,

180

racist, and had loudly declared that 'to be beaten by a black fellow, however
good a fellow, is a pill I shall never swallow'. Slavin had to swallow the pill, but it
was administered with care. Jackson steadily demolished his outclassed opponent
for nine rounds, then looked to the referee to stop the fight. Urged to box on, he
brought Slavin to his knees with 'five mercifully gentle blows'. Someone heard
him say, 'Sorry, Frank.' 75 Born in the Virgin Islands and raised in Australia, Jack-
son knew the gestures that were required of the Empire's subjects. 7 In 1930
James Weldon Johnson described Jackson as the first prize-fighter who was also
a 'cultured gentleman'. 'His chivalry in the ring was so great that sports-writers
down to today apply to him the doubtful compliment "a white colored man".' 77
The next black contender, Jack Johnson, would not be so chivalrous.

THE GOLDEN GRIN

Writing in 1936 on the 'ethics of living Jim Crow', novelist Richard Wright noted
many subjects that were 'taboo from the white man's point of view':

American white women; the Ku Klux Klan; France, and how Negro sol-
diers fared while there; French women; Jack Johnson; the entire northern
part of the United States; the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln; U. S. Grant;
General Sherman; Catholics; the Pope; Jews; the Republican Party; slav-
ery; social equality; Communism; Socialism; the 13th and 14th Amend-
ments to the Constitution; or any topic calling for positive knowledge or
manly self-assertion on the part of the Negro. 78

Among a range of general topics such as 'slavery' and 'social equality', only four
individuals are named: three are the liberators of the Civil War - General Sher-
man, Ulysses S. Grant, and Abraham Lincoln; the fourth, an early twentieth-
century black boxer, Jack Johnson. How did Johnson endup in such illustrious
company, and why his name was still taboo to whites in 1936?

Born in the port of Galveston, Texas in 1878, Arthur John Johnson was of the
first generation of free black Americans. At thirteen he began working on the
docks where he soon developed a reputation as a fighter, and, at seventeen, he
took up boxing professionally. After beating all the other good black heavy-
weights, including Joe Jeanette and Sam Langford, he secured a title fight in
Australia, then one of the world's boxing centres. The promoter's guarantee of
$30,000 supposedly overcame the reluctance of then champion Tommy Burns
(whose real name was Noah Brusso) to fight a black man. 'Shame on the money-
mad Champion!' John L. Sullivan is said to have exclaimed, 'Shame on the man
who upsets good American precedents because there are Dollars, Dollars, Dol-
lars in it.' 79 On 26 December 1908, after fourteen rounds, during which Johnson
casually taunted the out-matched Burns, the referee stopped the match. 80 Jack
London was there, and his fight report established the terms in which Johnson
would most often be subsequently described:

181

A golden smile tells the story, and that golden smile was Johnson's . . .
At times . . . Johnson would deliberately assume the fierce, vicious, in-
tent expression, only apparently for the purpose of suddenly relaxing
and letting his teeth flash forth like the rise of a harvest moon, while his
face beamed with all the happy care-free innocence of a little child . . .
[Johnson's] part was the clown. 81

London's view of Johnson as a clown or a minstrel drew upon the myth of black
shiftless gaiety peddled by 'coon songs' popular since before the Civil War (char-
acteristic numbers included A Nigger's Life is Always Gay' and 'Happy Are We,
Darkies So Gay'). When Johnson entered the ring to fight Jim Jeffries in Reno in
1910, the band played All Coons Look Alike to Me'. 82 The popular press repre-
sented Johnson's victory with a flurry of Sambo cartoons, all emphasizing his
smile. 83 Johnson's 'golden grin' (he had several gold teeth) quickly became his
trademark, a symbol of laughing defiance that infuriated and obsessed white
America. But what many critics described as Johnson's laziness' was in fact a
carefully thought out defensive style. He fought with his hands low, at only chest
height, and looked like an artist leaning back from a canvas to evaluate the pic-
ture from a distance'. This defensive style, Randy Roberts points out, was culti-
vated by all the great black heavyweights of the time; in order to secure fights
they needed 'to just barely defeat' their white opponents. 84

Within moments of Johnson's gaining the title, the search for an Anglo-
Saxon challenger began. Former champion Jim Jeffries was the popular choice
to come out of retirement and 'remove the golden smile from Jack Johnson's
face'. 85 Jeffries was 'the great white hope'. Now ubiquitous, the phrase seems to
have been coined by London, perhaps trying to evoke Roosevelt's reputation as
the 'Great White Father' or Rudyard Kipling's 'White Man's Burden'. Written in
response to the Roosevelt-led American takeover of the Philippines after the
Spanish-American War in 1899, Kipling's poem instructs readers to 'Take up
the White Man's Burden - / Send forth the best ye breed'. 86 The expectations
of white America were a heavy burden indeed.

In the run-up to the Johnson-Jeffries fight, the Social Darwinian 'scientific'
racist rhetoric of the day intensified. Promoter Tex Rickard foolishly advertised
the fight as the 'ultimate test of racial superiority', and newspapers published
articles predicting that Jeffries, who 'had Runnymede and Agincourt behind
him', was bound to beat Johnson who 'had nothing but the jungle'. 87 The same
result was also predicted, in song, by Groucho Marx, as an inadvisable part of
his act at the Pekin, an all-black theatre in Chicago. Unfortunately for Groucho,
'Johnson was in the audience'; he 'barely survived the evening'. 88 'Heart', the
quality that Jews also seemed to lack, and a possible 'yellow streak' were much
discussed. Is Johnson a typical example of his race in the lack of that intangible
"something" that we call "heart"?' asked a typical newspaper columnist. 89 In
the weird world of racial attribution, blacks did, it seemed, have some advan-
tages. Would Johnson benefit from what some saw as an 'insensibility to pain

182

which distinguishes the African and gives him a peculiar advantage in the sports
of the ring'? Would Jeffries, 'a thinker' who 'undoubtedly possesses the worry-
ing qualities of the white race' lose out to the 'care free and cool' Johnson? 'The
art of relaxing', London claimed, was 'one of Johnson's great assets' since the
'tensing of muscle consumes energy'. 90

What was announced as the 'fight of the century' finally took place in Reno,
Nevada, on 4 July 1910, and ended in the fifteenth round when Jeffries's seconds
threw in the towel. Assertions of white supremacy suddenly seemed a lot less
certain.

News of the result spread quickly by telegraph; crowds gathered in front
of the 'automatic bulletin' at the New York Times building, and the paper later
reported Johnson's mother and sisters listening to its click on the stage of the
Pekin Theatre in Chicago and sharing 'in the big crowd's happiness'. 91 But
for blacks in less congenial surroundings, the result was not such good news.
Louis Armstrong recalled being told to hurry home from his paper round in
New Orleans, while Henry Crowder remembered thousands of whites gath-
ering in Washington's Pennsylvania Avenue: 'no Negro dared show his face
on that street'. 92 As the news spread by telegraph across America, lynchings,
fights and full-scale riots were reported. Allen Guttman summarizes:

In Houston, Charles Williams openly celebrated Johnson's triumph
and a white man 'slashed his throat from ear to ear'; in Little Rock, two
blacks were killed by a group of whites after an argument about the
fight in a streetcar; in Roanoke, Virginia, a gang of white sailors injured
several blacks; in Wilmington, Delaware, a group of blacks attacked a
white and whites retaliated with a lynching bee'; in Atlanta a black ran
amok with a knife; in Washington . . . two whites were fatally stabbed
by blacks; in New York, one black was beaten to death and scores were
injured; in Pueblo, Colorado, thirty people were injured in a race riot;
in Shreveport, Louisiana, three blacks were killed by white assailants.
Other murders or injuries were reported in New Orleans, Baltimore,
Cincinnati, St Joseph, Los Angeles, Chattanooga, and many other small
cities and towns. 93

For some, the dead became martyrs in the struggle for equality. William
Pickens, later field secretary of the naacp, wrote in the Chicago Defender that
'it was a good deal better for Johnson to win, and a few Negroes to be killed in
body for it, than for Johnson to have lost and all Negroes to have been killed
in spirit by the preachments of inferiority from the combined white press'. 94
A 1910 postcard presented Johnson alongside Abraham Lincolm as 'Our
Champions' (illus. 79).

In the months and years that followed, the search for a suitable white chal-
lenger continued. Johnson had refused to fight any black contenders, recogniz-
ing that in such contests he had nothing to gain and everything to lose. 'I am

183

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champion of the world', he reputedly said, 'I have had a hard time to get a
chance and I really think I am the only colored fellow who ever was given a
chance to win the title . . . I'll retire the only colored heavyweight champion.' 95
Soon, as John Lardner put it, 'well-muscled white boys more than six feet two
inches tall were not safe out of their mother's sight', but nothing seemed to
work. 96 Seeing Johnson humble successive white hopes, many whites lost hope
about the best that they could breed. Some took comfort in the belief that it
was merely generational problem . 'Honestly', asked William A. Phelon, 'is there
one single, genuine, solitary Hope, now rampant and challenging, that you be-
lieve could have gone five rounds with Bob Fitzsimmons?' Fitzsimmons, Sulli-
van, or Corbett 'could have plowed though the present staff of hopes like an axe
through cheese'. 97 In a 1912 cartoon, a red-faced reveller looks at a poster adver-
tising the latest challenger and reflects, 'If I wuz the man I wuz, they wouldn't
need him' (illus. 53).

Some decided simply to ignore Johnson and staged all-white champion-
-ships. Georges Carpentier's London fight against Gunboat Smith in 1914, for
instance, was billed the 'White World Heavy-Weight Championship'; Carpentier
noted that this was 'certainly good publicity if perhaps a trifle unorthodox'. 98
Others relied on fiction for consolatory stories of white triumph. Just a few
months after Jeffries's defeat, Jack London began work on The Absymal Brute,
the story of a white boy, Pat Glendon, who only fights other white boys.
Nevertheless, Johnson's existence as the real champion was hard for London to
forget. Glendon is described as 'the hope of the white race' and there is a passing
reference to Jeffries who could have 'worried' him 'a bit, but only a bit'. 99 Jeffries
and the Reno fight are also mentioned in Edgar Rice Burroughs's 1914 serial The
Mucker and W.R.H. Trowbridge's The White Hope (1913), but there too, fictional
compensation is provided. After defeating a series of 'white hopes', Burroughs's
Chicago-Irish 'mucker', Billy Byrne, emerges as 'the most likely heavy since

184

Jeffries'. The story ends with a deal to fight 'the black champion', although
Byrne's manager complains that the terms are 'as usual, rather one-sided'. 100
More ambitious in its fantasy, the finale of The White Hope sees the middle-
weight crown wrested away from a 'grinning' black champion.

The negro's knees sagged and he lurched forward . . . Sam Crowfoot,
face down on the boards, with the sand of the ring showing in patches
on his black skin, was out to the world. 101

Advertisement for
Jeffries-Johnson
Fight Pictures, 1910.

Jeffries-Johnson Fight Pictures

BHUi uncii ;

Much of the public agitation about Johnson's continuing success centred
around its representation, and circulation, on film. In 1910, many states acted
quickly to ban showings of the Reno film, arguing that riots would necessarily
follow. The film was not shown in the South or in most American cities. When
news spread that Johnson was due to defend his title against Jim Flynn on 4 July
1912, the '"white hopes" of Congress' got to work. 102 Just weeks after Johnson's
knockout of Flynn, the Sims Act was passed, forbidding the interstate trans-
portation of any film showing 'any prize fight or encounter of pugilists' for
'purposes of public exhibition' (illus. 80). In 1915, when D. W. Griffith's Klan-
celebrating The Birth of a Nation was released, James Weldon Johnson won-
dered if 'some of the moral fervour' expended against prize-fight films might
be extended to Griffith's movie. 103

Whites who had previously cele-
brated boxing as the sport of manly
self-assertion, now remarked brutality.
Theodore Roosevelt, longtime champion
of the strenuous art, announced that he
was forsaking boxing after Jeffries 's defeat.
T sincerely trust,' Roosevelt declared
piously, 'that public sentiment will be so
aroused, and will make itself felt so effec-
tively, as to guarantee that this is the last
prize fight to take place in the United
States.' 104 How curious, W.E.B. Du Bois
pointed, that it was only when the world
champion was black that commentators
felt the urge to object to boxing per se.
'Neither he nor his race invented prize
fighting or particularly like it. Why then
this thrill of national disgust? Because
Johnson is black.' 105 In the years that
followed Johnson's 1915 defeat, Du Bois
remained unsure about the significance
of boxers as cultural heroes. On the one
hand, he worried that an interest in sport

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185

might distract black Americans from the importance of education, noting, for
example, that the receipts from Harry Willis's fight with Luis Firpo were
'enough to endow a Negro University'. 106 On the other hand, the continuing
success of black boxers in the 1920s was a repeated blow to white supremacy,
and their continuing bad treatment a reminder that whites were 'afraid to meet
black boxers in competition wherever equality and fairness in the contest
are necessary'. 107

As a folk hero Jack Johnson's reputation rested on much more than simply
his boxing skill. In and out of the ring, he flamboyantly broke taboos. Urged by
civil rights activist Ida B. Wells to invest in a gymnasium for black boys in
Chicago's South Side, Johnson instead opened the Cafe de Champion, serving
black and white customers together. Wells complained that he was catering to
the 'worst passions of both races'. 108 By his own admission, Johnson was 'a
dandy'; shaving his head and sporting everything Booker T. Washington had
promised whites that accommodating blacks would refrain from wearing: 'a
high hat, imitation gold eye-glasses, a showy walking-stick, kid gloves, fancy
boots, and what not'. 109 In 1909 Washington's personal secretary argued that
Johnson needed to 'refrain from anything resembling boastfulness'. 110 He also
liked fast cars and famously hired a white chauffeur to drive him around. 111
Worse of all, Johnson spent his money on white prostitutes and had three wives,
all white. 112 Just months after legislating against the interstate transportation of
Johnson's films, the American legal system took another shot at the champion.
In 1912 Johnson was charged with having violated the 1910 'White Slave Traffic
Act', also known by the name of its sponsor, Mann. The Act was designed to
target commercial vice rings and it was rare that individuals were taken to court.
But, 'for Jack Johnson the government was willing to make an exception'. When
charges concerning Lucille Cameron (a 'sporting woman' whom he later mar-
ried) fell through, the government latched onto Belle Schreiber. Resentful at
having been rejected by Johnson, she testified to receiving money and crossing
state lines with the boxer. 113 Booker T. Washington issued a statement deplor-
ing Johnson's behaviour and claiming that it would injure the 'whole race'. 'I do
not believe it is necessary for me to say that the honest, sober element of the
Negro people of the United States is as severe in condemnation of this kind of
immorality ... as any other portion of the community.' 114 The whole case was,
as Johnson later said, 'a rank frame-up.' 115 But that made no odds. Convicted by
a white jury and sentenced to a year and a day in prison and a $1000 fine, he
jumped bail and fled the country with Lucille in 1913. He spent the next two
years in giving exhibition fights and performing as the 'agreeable gentleman
with the settled smile and the shining white teeth' in vaudeville in Europe,
Canada, and Mexico. 116 In 1915 Johnson agreed to defend his title against the
white American Jess Willard in Havana. Willard knocked Johnson out in the
26th round according, Johnson later claimed, to a deal he had made with the fbi
in order to be allowed to return to the States. Most boxing historians, having
studied the film footage, believe that it was a fair fight. 117 On becoming cham-

186

pion, Willard immediately reinstated the colour line. It was upheld until 1937
when Joe Louis finally broke it for good.

In the years that followed his defeat, Johnson's star showed no signs of wan-
ing. When he arrived in Harlem in 1921, after finally serving his jail sentence in
Kansas, he was welcomed by thousands as a returning hero. The explosion of
1920s black urban culture, now known as the Harlem Renaissance, established
him as an iconic figure. Claude McKay's 1928 novel Home to Harlem is full of ref-
erences to Johnson; every time someone gets hit his name is evoked. As well as
pugnacity, the boxer represented the possibility of black celebrity. One little
boy shows off to another that he 'done met mos'n all our big niggers', including
Johnson, but both are upstaged by a Miss Curdy who claims to know 'all that up-
stage race gang that wouldn't touch Jack Johnson with a ten-foot pole'. The
greatest compliment the protagonist Jake receives is when someone tells him,
'If I was as famous as Jack Johnson and rich as Madame Walker I'd prefer to
have you as my friend than - President Wilson.' 118

The eventful, and inspirational, life of Johnson appealed to writers, and even
more to publishers. In 1930, following the success of the reissued The Autobiog-
raphy of an Ex-Colored Man, publisher Blanche Knopf urged James Weldon John-
son to write a novel based on Johnson. When he refused, she turned to Walter
White. Although he contemplated including Johnson in a planned series of bi-
ographical essays and wrote 152 pages of a novel about a boxer, neither project
was completed. 119 Instead Johnson's story was told in minstrel show sketches
such as The Coming Champion (illus. 54) and in a Broadway play by two white
writers, Jim Tully and Frank Dazey, called Black Boy. 1,10 Black Boy opened in 1926,
with Paul Robeson taking the lead (illus. 81). The fact that 'Black Boy' became in-
volved with a white woman on stage prompted great controversy. Robert Cole-
man wrote in the New York Daily Mirror that 'the authors have cheapened their
portrait of the pugilist by introducing the problem of race antagonism. In our
opinion it is always in bad taste to introduce this unpleasant element.' 121

ASCERTAINING THE PROGRESS OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO'

The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was not simply a flowering of black art,
but part of a much larger process of political and social change. Postwar politi-
cal radicalism was largely diverted into a cultural patriotism which asked what
'gift' blacks could contribute to the American melting pot. 122 Works such as Alain
Locke's The New Negro (1925) and V. F. Calverton's An Anthology of American Negro
Literature (1929) sought to demonstrate 'the existence of the black tradition as a
political defense of the racial self against racism'. 123 In a 1916 essay called 'Inside
Measurement', James Weldon Johnson considered what he thought were the
'various methods of measurement for ascertaining the progress of the American
Negro'. What he termed 'outside measurements' recorded growth in population
and increase in wealth. An 'inner measurement' could be made by keeping 'a
record of the number of intelligently written books bought and read each year by

187

Paul Robeson on

stage in Black Boy,

1926.

the colored people'. 124 Johnson developed this idea further in The Book of Amer-
ican Negro Poetry (1922), where he argued that the artistic achievement of black
Americans could go a long way in improving their social status in the United
States. 125 In 1903 Du Bois had argued that an overemphasis on industrial educa-
tion would not produce black leaders: instead a 'talented tenth' must be encour-
aged to achieve as cultured individuals in order to 'inspire the masses'. 126

Johnson was a problematic figure for the Harlem intellectuals. On the one
hand, it was widely believed that art and literature were the correct ways to
demonstrate 'intellectual parity'. On the other, in 1915, Weldon Johnson con-
ceded that 'there is not, perhaps, a spot on the globe where Jack Johnson's name
is not familiar'.

Johnson's bad personal breaks deprived him of the sympathy and ap-
proval of most of his own race; yet it must be admitted that with these

188

breaks left out of the question, his record as a pugilist has been some-
thing of a racial asset. The white race, in spite of its vaunted civiliza-
tion, pays more attention to the argument of force than any other race
in the world. 127

Some years later, Weldon Johnson wrote of his meeting with Jack Johnson, and,
alluding to Douglass's comment that Peter Jackson had done 'a great deal with
his fists to solve the Negro question', concluded that 'after the reckoning of his
big and little failings has been made, [Johnson] may be said to have done his
share'. 128 If the celebration of a sports hero was difficult to square with a belief
in artistic and intellectual achievement, one way to reconcile them was to con-
sider boxing itself as an art or as analogous to art. In his 1916 essay, 'The Negro
in American Art', Weldon Johnson had argued that 'there is nothing of artistic
value belonging to America which has not been originated by the Negro'. As
'partial corroboration' he quoted the white avant-garde artist and editor Robert
Coady, describing Jack Johnson's 'shadow dancing', as 'the most beautiful danc-
ing of modern times'. 'When he strikes a fighting pose', Coady rhapsodized, 'we
are carried back to the days of Greek bronzes.' 129 Perhaps it was not so far-
fetched then to imagine Johnson as a member of the Talented Tenth. 130

But not everyone agreed with such analogies. In 1926 George Schuyler de-
nounced what he called 'The Negro-Art Hokum'. There was, he claimed, no
unique Aframerican art': 'the literature, painting and sculpture of Aframeri-
cans - such as there is - is identical in kind with the literature, painting and
sculpture of white Americans'. To say otherwise, he implied, was just another
form of racist thinking:

The mere mention of the word 'Negro' conjures up in the average white
American's mind a composite stereotype of Bert Williams, Aunt
Jemima, Uncle Tom, Jack Johnson, Florian Slappy, and the various mon-
strosities scrawled by cartoonists. Your average Aframerican no more
resembles this stereotype than the average American resembles a com-
posite of Andy Gump, Jim Jeffries, and a cartoon by Rube Goldberg. 131

For Schuyler, Johnson's influence was of no more use than that of Uncle Tom;
indeed, in some ways, it might be seen as worse. 'It must be tragic for a sensitive
Negro to be a poet', George Bernard Shaw remarked to Claude McKay in 1920.
'Why didn't you choose pugilism instead of poetry for a profession?' 132

'THE NEW NEGRO. WHEN HE'S HIT, HE HITS BACK!'

For the most part, Jack Johnson was celebrated less for his statuesque appearance
than for his defiant qualities - however stereotypal those might be. During the
First World War, for example, heavy black shells were nicknamed 'Jack John-
sons'. 133 Numerous songs celebrated his victory over Jeffries. One blues reworked

189

'Amazing Grace' so that the 'sweet' and saving sound was no longer God's word,
but the thud of Jeffries hitting the canvas.

Amaze an' Grace, how sweet it sounds,
Jack Johnson knocked Jim Jeffries down.
Jim Jeffries jumped up an' hit Jack on the chin,
An' then Jack knocked him down agin.

The Yankees hold the play,

The white man pulls the trigger;

But it makes no difference what the white man say,

The world champion's still a nigger. 134

However assertive the 'but' might be, it only serves highlight the limits of John-
son's victory in a world in which the white man 'holds the play' and 'pulls the
trigger'. Other popular songs were less equivocal. 'The Black Gladiator: Veni,
Vidi, Vici- Jack Johnson' celebrated his victory over Burns as 'proof that all
men are the same / in muscle, sinew, and in brain / No blood flows through
our veins / but that of Negro Ham's own strain / Master of all the world -your
claim.' 135 'Titanic', a 1912 song by Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly), is equally forth-
right. The flooring of Jeffries is matched as a blow to white supremacists only by
the sinking of the Titanic (which wouldn't allow blacks as passengers).

It was midnight on the sea,

The band was playin' 'Nearer, My God, to Thee.'

Cryin', 'Fare thee, Titanic, fare thee well!'

Jack Johnson wanted to get on boa'd;

Captain Smith hollered, 'I ain't haulin' no coal.'

Crying 'Fare thee, Titanic, fare thee well!'

Black man oughta shout for joy,
Never lost a girl or either a boy.
Crying, 'Fare thee, Titanic, fare thee well!' 1313

At the end of the First World War, the black soldiers who returned to Amer-
ica were unwilling to put up with escalating white racism. The summer of 1919
saw unprecedented race riots, and in their wake, the Liberator published Claude
McKay's sonnet, 'If We Must Die', now often considered the 'inaugural address'
of the Harlem Renaissance. 137 The poem depicted blacks as 'hogs', 'hunted and
penned in an inglorious spot', and whites as 'mad and hungry dogs / Making
their mock at our accursed lot'. It ends with the plea that 'though far outnum-
bered let us show brave, / And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!'

190

Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back! 138

What was supposedly 'new' about the much discussed New Negro was not
aggression but retaliation; not a desire to fight, but a renewed willingness to
fight back. 139 In 1921, Rollin Lynde Hartt, a white Congregational minister and
journalist, described 'a negro magazine' bearing the legend (an adaptation of
Frederick Douglass's Childe Harold allusion), 'They who would be free must
themselves strike the blow.' When hit, Hartt concluded, the New Negro, unlike
'the timorous, docile negro of the past', does not hesitate to 'hit back'. 140 The
political radicalism of the New Negro was often linked to his 'dauntless man-
hood'. 'The Old Negro,' wrote J. A. Rogers in 1927, 'protests that he does not
want social equality; the New . . . demands it.' While 'the Old . . . acts as if he
were always in the way', 'the New is erect, manly, bold; if necessary, defiant'. 141

For many, the New Negro was epitomized in the figure of Jack Johnson,
and his name became a shorthand for many different kinds of 'erect, manly; if
necessary, defiant' behaviour. Zora Neale Hurston noted that in the folktales
she grew up with, the trickster who 'outsmarted the devil' was always called
'Jack' or 'High John de Conquer'; he was 'our hope-bringer'. 142 After 1910, black
men who challenged, and beat, white authority were commonly dubbed, or
dubbed themselves, 'Jack Johnson'. 143 In 1934 Henry Crowder published a
series of eight autobiographical vignettes about segregation, racial abuse, and
'hitting back' in Negro, an anthology edited by Nancy Cunard. In the first, he
walks away after being refused service in a Georgia cafe, but by the second, he
is not afraid to 'wade in'. The final vignette tells of Johnson's defeat of Jeffries
and the fights that broke out in its wake in Washington. While the police search
for 'a giant Negro armed with brass knuckles', 'we Negroes remained where
we were, drinking and laughing'. 144

One of the books reviewed in Negro was Sterling Brown's Southern Road
(1932); Alain Locke designated Brown 'the New Negro Folk-Poet'. 145 In one of the
strongest poems in the collection, 'Strange Legacies', Brown places Johnson
alongside John Henry and 'a nameless couple' of sharecroppers as symbols of
folk resilience; all endured their troubles, 'taking punishment'. The poem ends,
'guess we'll give it one mo' try'.

One thing you left with us, Jack Johnson.
One thing before they got you.

You used to stand there like a man,

Taking punishment

With a golden, spacious grin;

Confident.

Inviting big Jim Jeffries, who was boring in:

"Heah ah is, big boy; yuh sees whah Ise at.

191

Come on in . . ."
Thanks, Jack, for that. 146

Some linked Johnson's 'hitting back' to Frederick Douglass's resistance to
Covey, and Johnson himself lined up with Douglass against Booker T. Wash-
ington, who had condemned his behaviour on several occasions. Washington,
Johnson wrote in 1927, ' has to my mind not been altogether frank in the state-
ment of the problem or courageous in his solutions'. Douglass's 'honest and
straightforward program has had more of an appeal to me, because he faced is-
sues without compromising.' 147 In 1919, Johnson had taken out an adver-
tisement in an Industrial Workers of the World magazine, Gale's, urging 'colored
people' to leave 'the "boasted" land of the liberty' and move to Mexico where
they would no longer be lynched, tortured, mobbed, persecuted and discrim-
inated against'. 148

In 1922 Claude McKay travelled to the Soviet Union, one of the first black
Americans to be invited by the Bolshevik government. While in Moscow he was
commissioned to write a short book to inform the Soviets about the condition of
Negry v Amerike {The Negroes in America). Although McKay was keen to argue that
race should be considered primarily 'from a class point of view', his analysis
focuses as much on culture as on economics. 149 In a chapter titled 'Negroes in
Sports', McKay provides a complex and astute reading of Jack Johnson and the
ideological status of black boxers more generally. 150 The prize-fighter only has
limited value as a symbol for defiance. Although the boxing ring can seem to be a
site of struggle against white dominance (one where African-American workers
'exert all their efforts to gain the victory' and one where victory is possible), it
nevertheless remains a 'large business . . . managed by corporations', white
corporations that set the terms of black entrance and success. For McKay, it was
foolish to believe that 'racial differences' could be resolved by 'fist fights arranged
for a commercial purpose'. 151 Langston Hughes made a similar point in 'Prize
Fighter' (1927):

Only dumb guys fight

If I wasn't dumb

I wouldn't be fightin'.

I could make six dollars a day.

On the docks

And I'd save more than I do now.

Only dumb guys fight. 152

But while Marxists such as Hughes and McKay pointed out the economic
reality, the symbolism of Johnson's career, and interracial fighting more gener-
ally, continued to have resonance for many artists and writers. In Archibald J.
Motley's 1933 painting, The Plotters, a fight between a black and a white boxer

192

is used to represent not simply defiance and resilience, but conspiracy (illus.
55). The painting depicts a group of black men sitting at a table, and the title tells
us what they are doing. Two men at the table look intently at one another while
a partially obscured standing figure points at a piece of paper. On the wall be-
hind the table we see part of a painting, featuring a black and a white boxer.
The men at the table, like the boxers in the painting, seem too large for the
confines of the framed space. A boxing match may be nothing more than a de-
grading, commercially motivated performance, nevertheless, as Motley sug-
gests, it can symbolically represent a real fight.

A similar thought seems to lie behind 'Box Seat', a story in Jean Toomer's
Cane (1923), in which a boxing match between dwarfs is performed as a
grotesque spectacle. Dan Moore, angry and frustrated with the 'sick' world, has
followed the respectable Muriel into the theatre. At first he is appalled by the
freak show and thinks Muriel, who is trying to pass as white, a 'she-slave' for
watching. But all of a sudden, play-acting breaks out into something else when
one of the men lands a stiff blow'. 'This makes the other sore. He commences
slugging. A real scrap is on.'

The gong rings. No fooling this time. The dwarfs set to. They clinch. The
referee parts them. One swings a cruel upper-cut and knocks the other
down. A huge head hits the floor. Pop! The house roars. The fighter,
groggy, scrambles up. The referee whispers to the contenders not to fight
so hard. They ignore him. They charge. Their heads jab like boxing
gloves. They kick and spit and bite. They pound each other furiously.
Muriel pounds. The house pounds. Cut lips. Bloody noses. The referee
asks for the gong. Time! The house roars. The dwarfs bow, are made to
bow. The house wants more. The dwarfs are led from the stage. 153

But the crowd is not satisfied until the violence of the contest is defused by the
winner of the fight, Mr. Barry, singing 'a sentimental love song' to various girls
in the audience. Finally Mr. Barry turns to Muriel, and offers her a white rose,
which he has kissed with his blood-stained lips. She 'shrinks away', 'flinches
back', 'tight in revulsion', but this only provokes him further. Dan reads the
dwarf's eyes as a reproach and an acknowledgment of their shared identity as
Christ-like freaks. He leaps up, shouts, 'jesus was once a leper!', and 'hooks'
the jaw of the complaining man sitting next to him. The story ends with the
man taking off his jacket to fight in earnest in an alley behind the theatre, but
Dan, 'having forgotten him', walks away. 154

MATTERS OF COLOUR

Jack Johnson's career had a significant resonance for white, as well as black,
artists and writers. While black artists saw Johnson as an inspirational figure
(whether representing the possibility of celebrity, progress or defiance) and paid

193

no attention either to his white opponents or to his white wives, whites were
almost obsessively drawn to representations of a black and a white man fight-
ing together. The only time that Johnson (or a Johnson-like figure) is mentioned
without reference to a white opponent, or girlfriend, he functions as a minstrel
figure. 155 In Conan Doyle's 1926 story, 'The Adventure of the Three Gables', a
black boxer bursts into Sherlock Holmes's rooms at Baker Street and offends
Dr Watson and the detective with his 'hideous mouth' and 'smell'. Watson's
first impression is that 'he would have been a comic figure if he had not been
terrific, for he was dressed in a very loud gray check suit with a flowing salmon-
coloured tie. His broad face and flattened nose were thrust forward, as his sullen
dark eyes, with a smouldering gleam of malice in them, turned from one of us
to the other.' After he has left Holmes tells Watson that he is 'glad you were not
forced to break his woolly head': 'he is really rather a harmless fellow, a great
muscular, foolish, blustering baby, and easily cowed, as you have seen.' 156 John-
son is also 'easily cowed' in a story that William Carlos Williams included in his
Autobiography. One day there was 'a near riot' in a cafe in Paris. 'They began tear-
ing the chairs apart for clubs. When it was all over and the lights went on again
they found the World's Champion under a table scared stiff. "That's not the
kind of fight I'm interested in," he said frankly.' 157

The image which perhaps best encapsulates the white response to Johnson
is George Bellows 's Both Members of this Club (1909), originally entitled A Nig-
ger and A White Man (illus. 82). Bellows began work on the painting in October

George Bellows,
Both Members of
This Club, 1909.

194

George Bellows, The

White Hope, 1921.

1909, the month in which the terms for Johnson's fight against Jeffries were
finally agreed. The setting is dark and the figures are elongated smears of white,
brown and red paint; the faces in the crowd are grotesques. The painting re-
works the geometrical design and impasto of earlier works such as Stag at
Sharkey's, but is considerably larger and more claustrophobically 'dreamlike' in
its atmosphere. 158 The title refers to the fact that, because of the legal restric-
tions on prize-fights, boxers as well as spectators needed to take out a nominal
club 'membership'. This practice meant that Jim Crow America found itself
sanctioning organizations in which blacks and whites could both be members.
In his choice of title, Bellows seems to be making a joke about the fact that a
law designed to stop one undesirable practice (boxing) should lead to another
(what Claude McKay described as the 'strange un-American' coming together
of blacks and whites under equal terms). 159 The painting's perspective suggests
that the viewer too has joined the club. After finishing Both Members, Bellows
abandoned boxing as a subject for paintings until the mid-±920s. His litho-
graphs, however, continue to explore America's obsession with interracial
boxing. 160 The White Hope did not appear until 1921, by which time the colour
line had been firmly re-established (illus. 83). It was now safe to imagine white
defeat and black compassion.

A Matter of Color' was the title of the first boxing story written by Ernest
Hemingway, as a high school student in 1916. A Ring Lardner-style vernacular
yarn with an 0. Henry twist at the end, it presents a retired trainer telling the
story of how he had once fixed a fight by hiring a 'big Swede' to clobber the black
opponent, the young Joe Gans no less, with a baseball bat through a curtain.

195

But the Swede hit the white boxer by mistake. Back in the dressing room, the
trainer asks him, 'Why in the name of the Prophet did you hit the white man in-
stead of the black man?' The Swede replies, 'I bane color blind.' 161 The story
ends there. (Joe Gans went on to become world lightweight champion.)

It is not surprising that in 1916 a young boxing fan such as Hemingway
would have thought to write of a set-up against a black boxer. The previous year,
Jack Johnson had finally been defeated by Willard, and soon afterwards he
began to claim it was a set-up. Hemingway never commented directly on this
fight, or indeed on Johnson's career, but his subsequent fiction repeatedly drew
on interracial boxing for more than simply a snappy punch line. In The Sun Also
Rises (1925), Bill Gorton returns to Paris after a trip to Vienna where he wit-
nesses a fixed fight between a bribed black American and an unskilled local.

Wonderful nigger. Looked like Tiger Flowers, only four times as big.
All of a sudden everybody started to throw things. Not me. Nigger'd
just knocked local boy down. Nigger put up his glove. Wanted to make
a speech. Awful noble-looking nigger. Started to make a speech. Then
local white boy hit him. Then he knocked white boy cold. Then every-
body commenced to throw chairs . . . Big sporting evening.

For all his casually racist speech, Gorton is the good guy in the story, and he
helps the fighter, who never gets the money owed to him, flee the enraged
crowd. 'Injustice everywhere', he concludes. 162 Later in the same chapter, the
two friends go off to have dinner with Jake's ex-lover, Brett (whom he notices is
not wearing stockings), and her new fiance, the 'very fit' Mike Campbell. When
Mike asks, 'Isn't she a lovely piece? Don't you think so, Jake?', Bill replies,
'There's a fight tonight . . . Like to go?' The implication is that Jake, who has 'a
rotten habit of picturing the bedroom scenes of my friends', wants to fight
Mike. 163 Bill understands this impossible-to-realize ambition and provides an
alternative outlet for his friend. Although he has to change the date to suit the
novel's chronology, Hemingway makes a particular point of mentioning the
names of the fighters they see in action, Charles Ledoux and Kid Francis. Once
a great fighter, Ledoux was past his prime in 1925, and that night he lost 'a
twelve-round decision in a furious brawl with his younger opponent'. Michael
Reynolds notes that the evening confirmed Hemingway's view that 'champions
never come back'; a view, which it seems, Jake was also entertaining. 164 Injustice
(whether racial, economic or romantic) is indeed everywhere.

The White Hope era also informs Hemingway's 'The Light of the World'
(i933), in which the teenage narrator and his friend, Tom, encounter a motley
crew of late-night travellers at a railway station: 'five whores . . ., and six white
men and four Indians'. 165 Among the prostitutes are two 'big' women, Alice and
Peroxide, who argue about who really knew 'Steve' or 'Stanley' Ketchel (they
also can't agree on the first name). 166 The cook remembers Stanley Ketchel's
1909 fight with Jack Johnson, in particular how Ketchel had floored Johnson in

196

the twelfth round just before Johnson knocked him out. 7 Peroxide attributes
Ketchel's defeat to a punch by Johnson ('the big black bastard') when Ketchel,
'the only man she ever loved', smiled at her in the audience. Alice remembers
Steve Ketchel telling her she was 'a lovely piece'. They both refer continuously
to Ketchel's 'whiteness' - 'I never saw a man as clean and as white and as beau-
tiful', says Peroxide. 'White', as Walter Benn Michaels notes, 'becomes an adjec-
tive describing character instead of skin' and so Ketchel is figured as a kind of
Christ-like figure, while Johnson, 'that black son of a bitch from hell', is the
devil. 168 Ketchel's pseudo-divinity is suggested by such statements as 'I loved
him like you love God'; 'His own father shot and killed him. Yes, by Christ, his
own father'; and, of course, the title. Philip Young points out that Hemingway
placed this story after 'the most pessimistic of all his stories', 'A Clean, Well-
Lighted Place', in Winner Take Nothing 'as if the point of the story is really that
the light of the world has gone out.' 169

But there seems to be more going on under the surface of this particular
iceberg. First of all, the confusion of names and facts is important, and once
again, some knowledge of boxing history helps. Stanley Ketchel was not killed
by his father - that was Steve Ketchel, a lightweight boxer, who never got near
Johnson. Stanley was shot in 1910, by the husband of a woman with whom he
was having an affair. Secondly, of all boxers, Stanley Ketchel was perhaps the
most unlikely possible candidate for Redeemer. His nickname was the 'Michi-
gan Assassin', and, according to one reporter, 'he couldn't get enough blood.' 170
While the prostitutes may be seeking salvation, the story that they tell is ab-
surd. So what is going on? Howard Hannum argues that much of the dialogue
between the two women 'has the quality of counterpunching', as if they are
restaging Ketchel's contest against Johnson: here, the (bleached) blonde versus
the heavyweight. 171 But the cook's role also needs to be considered. The discus-
sion of whiteness begins when the narrator notices a 'white man' speaking; 'his
face was white and his hands were white and thin'. The other men tease the
cook about the whiteness of his hands ('he puts lemon juice on his hands') and
hint that he is gay. Are these two things connected? And, if they are, what does
that suggest about clean, white, beautiful Ketchel? When asked his age, Tom
joins in the sexual bantering with hints at 'inversion' - 'I'm ninety-six and he's
sixty-nine' - but throughout the boys remain uneasy and confused. By the end
of the story, the narrator seems quite smitten with Alice ('she had the prettiest
face I ever saw'). Tom notices this and says it is time to leave. The supposedly
natural order of whites beating blacks, men having sex with women, and 'huge
whores' being unappealing has been unsettled. When the cook asks where the
boys are going, Tom replies, 'the other way from you'.

Racial and sexual ambiguities also trouble 'The Battler', one of the Nick
Adams initiation stories in In Our Time (1922). 172 The story begins with Nick
himself having just survived a battle with a brakeman on a freight train. He has
been thrown off the train and lands with a scuffed knee and bruise on the face,
of which he is rather proud - 'He wished he could see it' - but he is still stand-

197

ing. 'He was all right.' Nick then ventures into another battling arena - a firelit
camp which seems to be a refuge but which also turns out to be a kind of box-
ing ring. 173 There he encounters Ad Francis, an ex-champion prize-fighter whose
bruises are more impressive, and much more disgusting, than his own.

In the firelight Nick saw that his face was misshapen. His nose was
sunken, his eyes were like slits, he had queer-shaped lips. Nick did not
perceive all this at once, he only saw the man's face was queerly formed
and mutilated. It was like putty in color. Dead looking in the firelight. 174

That 'Nick did not perceive all this at once' suggests that he kept looking away.
'Don't you like my pan?' the fighter asks, revealing even worse: 'He had only
one ear. It was thickened and tight against the side of his head. Where the other
one should have been there was a stump.' Although Nick is 'a little sick', he coun-
ters Ad's pugnacious assertions with gusto:

'It must have made him [the brakeman] feel good to bust you,' the man

said seriously.
'I'll bust him.' . . .
All you kids are tough.'
'You got to be tough,' Nick said.
'That's what I said.'

Nick's pleasure at establishing a rapport with a fellow battler is short-lived,
however. Ad, he discovers, is unstable ('crazy'), and depends on his companion
Bugs to stop him battling. When Ad tries to start a fight with Nick, in 'an ugly
parody of a boxing match', Bugs intervenes by knocking him out with a stick
from behind in a manner that recalls A Matter of Color'. 175 Colour is also impor-
tant here as Nick is obviously startled by the fact that Bugs is black, and makes
a great deal of his 'negro's voice', the 'negro way' he walks, and his 'long nigger's
legs'. Although it has been argued that the story reveals Hemingway's racism,
these almost compulsively repeated epithets (like those describing whiteness
in 'The Light of the World') seem to be Nick's as he struggles to understand the
relationship between the two men. White prize-fighters, after all, were not sup-
posed to have black friends. Bugs tells Nick a story about Ad which adds to his
confusion. Ad had a woman manager, and it was always being 'written up in
the papers all about brothers and sisters and how she loved her brother and
how he loved his sister, and then they got married in New York and that made
a lot of unpleasantness'. Nick vaguely remembers this, but then Bugs adds, 'of
course they wasn't really brother and sister no more than a rabbit, but there
was a lot of people didn't like it either way'. Bugs repeatedly stresses how 'awful
good looking' the woman was, and how she looked enough like him to be
twins'. Some have read this admiring comment (along with the description of
Ad's face as 'queerly formed' and his lips as 'queer shaped') as a suggestion that

198

8 4

Woodcut from
Joseph Moncure
March, TheSet-Up
(1931 edition).

the two men may be lovers. 17 Less directly, like
'The Light of the World', the story slides anx-
iously between taboos - incest becomes homo-
sexuality becomes miscegenation.

Interracial fighting provided a dramatic sub-
ject for many popular novels during this period,
including Louis Hemon's Battling Malone,
Pugiliste (1925), Alin Laubreaux's Mulatto Johnny
(1931), and Joseph Moncure March's The Set-Up
(1928). Starkly contrasting woodcuts depicting
white and black fighters - whether expression-
ist in style (The Set-Up) or vaguely cubist {Battling
Malone) - provided vivid illustrations (illus. 84
and illus. 85). 177 Joseph Moncure March's novels
translated the exciting underbelly of twenties
America into verse: The Wild Party deals with
prohibition and The Set-Up with prize-fighting
and the Jack Johnson story. The Set-Up's protag-
onist Pansy is a middleweight who 'had the stuff,
but his skin was brown; / And he never got a
chance at the middleweight crown.' Finally, it
seems, he will get a shot at the title, but then 'the
brass-knuckled hand of the law / Hung a hot one

on Pansy's jaw.' Pansy is charged with bigamy and serves five years in prison.

When he gets out he gradually rebuilds his career and finally gets a fight with a

white boxer called Sailor. It is a set-up (Pansy's meant to take a fall) but no one

has told him, thinking he'll lose anyway.

M ^3

M&wA

Clement Serveau,
woodcut from Louis
Hemon, Battling
Malone, Pugiliste
(i93i).

199

His face was blank;

Grim in repose:

And what he was thinking

God only knows.

Those lynx-like eyes,

That skull without hair

Gave him a savage,

Menacing air.

He made you think

Of the missing link.

He looked like something

To catch and cage:

Like something that belonged

In a Jungle Age. 178

After winning the fight, Pansy learns about the set-up. He tries to escape the
gangsters but running away finds himself in the subway where he is hit by a
train. In 1949 March's book was, loosely, to form the basis of a powerful film
noir of the same title. The film changes many things, including the race of its
protagonist. In 1928, however, stories of the Jungle Age were still popular.

Another popular work which drew on the Johnson myth was Mae West's
1930 novel, The Constant Sinner. It tells the story of a ruthless (yet not unappeal-
ing) lady of pleasure', Babe Gordon, and her adventures in the New York of the
1920s. One of the first things we learn about Babe is that, 'Every man she looked
at she sized up as a fighter would an opponent.' 179 Her opponents are, first a
white prizefighter, the Bearcat, then a black gangster, Money Johnson, and
finally, an upper class white businessman, Baldwin. Babe's fighting talk seems
to come easily to West, whose father was a boxer and who herself had affairs
with numerous white and black fighters. 180

What makes The Constant Sinner revealing of its time is not simply its box-
ing figuration of the battle between the sexes but, more specifically, the way it
uses boxing to talk about interracial sexual relations. Bearcat, dubbed 'the sal-
vation of our race' by one female admirer, does not hold the colour line and is
described fighting Harlem Joe who 'moved like a panther and endeared him-
self to coloured worship by a famous watermelon grin'.

The two contrasting bodies came to the ring centre, clasped gloves and
received final instructions. The human throng pulled up taut and tense,
to feast upon this supreme battle of black and white. The gong rang!

The two bodies rushed at each other and became a whirlpool of
stabbing, slashing arms, swirling like angry foam in boiling rapids, now
white, now muddy black -a gush of red blood in the foam -the white
form of Bearcat sank to the canvas.

Babe, who has already 'ruined more than one promising white hope', eventually
leaves Bearcat for Money Johnson and a Harlem which West describes as 'the
pool of sex, where all colours are blended, all bloods mingled'. Johnson, whose
'magnificent body, lynx-eyes, and pearly-white grin had brought the women of
Harlem crawling to him', has eyes only for white Babe. Like his namesake Jack,
'he craved white women. He wanted the whitest and most beautiful, and so he
fell for Babe Gordon'. The novel ends with Johnson being shot by the jealous
Baldwin and a gullible Bearcat agreeing to take the blame. He of course gets off
(in what some have seen as a parody of D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation) as the
prosecutor argues that he was a hero for defending his wife against 'the low,
lustful, black beast'. Baldwin's attraction to Babe is presented as entirely de-
pendent on her association with Johnson. At the novel's end, when he finally
has Babe (at least temporarily) he 'cannot avoid thinking of Babe's white body
and Johnson's black body, darkness mating with dawn ... He has Babe now to
himself. He is happy. But the black and white pattern is indelibly woven into
the tapestry of his memory.' 181

The sex appeal of Jack Johnson, and black men like him, is just one of many
targets in Wallace Thurman's bitterly funny satire of the Harlem Renaissance,
Infants of the Spring (1932). Lucille tells the protagonist, Ray, 'one of the black
hopes of Negro literature', that she will 'never go to bed with any white man . . .
because I'd never be sure that I wasn't doing it just because he was white'. In
fact Lucille feels almost white herself, as she justifies her infatuation for a painter
called Bull, 'the personification of what the newspaper headlines are pleased to
call a burly Negro'. The women in his paintings have 'pugilistic biceps'. 'I sup-
pose I find the same thing in Bull that white women claim to find in a man like
Jack Johnson,' concedes Lucille, 'That's the price I pay, evidently, for becoming
civilized.' 182 Ray is in love with Lucille and later 'snaps' that Bull 'is so afraid of
the white man that his only recourse is to floor one at every opportunity and on
any pretext'. Indeed when Bull finds out that Lucille is pregnant, his response
is to 'sock her in the jaw, and stalk away'. Ray helps her to get an abortion and
she promises to lay off 'virile men . . .at least . . .for the purpose of procreation'.
Bull, she concedes, was simply 'an experiment I had to make'. 183

Interracial fighting is again linked to interracial sex in William Faulkner's
Absalom, Absalom! (1936), which explores the history and legacy of American
slavery from 1807 until 1910, the year in which Johnson defeated Jeffries. The
novel opens with the narrative of a survivor of the Civil War, Rosa Coldfield.
Rosa's sister Ellen married Thomas Sutpen, a man of poor origins and great so-
cial ambition, who has built a house in the woods with a group of 'wild Negroes'.
Another of the novel's narrators, Mr. Compson, compares Sutpen's social
awkwardness to that of John L. Sullivan 'having taught himself painfully and
tediously to do the schottische, having drilled himself and drilled himself in
secret until he now believed it no longer necessary to count the music's beat,
say'. But having gone to great lengths to become the perfect Mississippi gentle-
man, ensconced in 'baronial splendor', Sutpen tends to slip back into his old

ways, 'some opposite of respectability' in which strict racial segregation does
not play a part. Rosa tells the story of Ellen watching a fight in Sutpen's stables:

Yes, Ellen and those two children alone in that house twelve miles from
town, and down there in the stable a hollow square of faces in the
lantern light, the white faces on three sides, the black ones on the
fourth, and in the centre two of the wild Negroes fighting, naked, not
as white men fight, with rules and weapons, but as Negroes fight to
hurt one another quick bad . . .

Ellen, Rosa says, 'accepted' this - 'this', she thinks, 'is all'. But it is not all. One
night she enters and sees 'not the two black beasts she had expected to see but
instead a white one and a black one' - the 'grande finale'. What frightens her is
not the fight but the fact that men are indistinguishable. 'Her husband and
father of her children', a slave owner, cannot be told apart from the slaves, the
'wild negroes' who 'belonged to him body and soul'. Rosa uses a kind of
demonic Darwinian imagery to describe the fight scene that she has not wit-
nessed. It becomes a primeval scene, as Rosa imagines Ellen witnessing the men
with their 'teeth showing': 'both naked to the waist and gouging at one another's
eyes as of they should not only have been the same color, but should have been
covered in fur too'. And still that is not all. First, Ellen sees that her son Henry
is watching, and then, what's much worse, that her daughter, Judith is also there.
A final horror comes in the observation that the pattern of 'nigger and white' is
repeated in 'Judith and . . . the negro girl beside her', Clytie (Sutpen's other
daughter, by a slave mother) - 'two Sutpen faces'. Ellen's terror (certainly Rosa's)
- that one cannot tell black from white, or sister from brother - becomes the
novel's. The doubling of Sutpen and 'the wild niggers' ('his face exactly like the
Negro's') is repeated in the doubling of Judith in Clytie; the intermingling of
white and black bodies in a fight once again prefigures their sexual intermin-
gling. 'There is something in the touch of flesh with flesh which abrogates, cuts sharp
and straight across the devious intricate channels of decorous ordering, which en-
emies, as well as lovers know because it makes them both . . . let flesh touch with flesh,
and watch the fall of all the eggshell shibboleth of caste and color too.' 184

JAMES JOYCE AND 'THAT EPOCK-MARKING EVENT'

If Jack Johnson's victories over white opponents exercised white America in var-
ious ways, they also provoked those further afield. James Joyce, it is frequently
asserted, didn't like sports, and especially not violent ones. Nevertheless, in
1910, according to his brother, Stanislaus, he read the plethora of newspaper
articles building up to the Johnson-Jeffries fight. Stanislaus suggests that Joyce's
'ironical comments' on nationalism in 'that epock-marking event' formed 'a
rough draft' of the Keogh-Bennett fight described in the 'Cyclops' section of
Ulysses (1922). l8s Another source was a fight between a British soldier and a

Dubliner that he saw advertised in the Freeman's Journal. 1 ^ 6 American racist
ideology is thus echoed and refigured in British and Irish nationalist terms.
The debts of the Harlem Renaissance to the Irish Renaissance are well docu-
mented; this incident reveals that Irish literature also owes something to black
America. 187

The Keogh-Bennett fight is first alluded to in 'Lestrygonians', when Blazes
Boylan is mentioned as the trainer of Keogh and a fight promoter. 188 It gets a
proper airing, however, in 'Cyclops', when, at Barney Kiernan's pub in Little
Britain Street, we learn that Boylan has made a hundred pounds by spreading
the rumour that Keogh was 'on the beer'. 'Cyclops' is narrated by a nameless
barfly, whose opinionated commentary is interrupted periodically by a series of
extravagant parodies. One of the most exuberant parodies adopts the inflated
language of early nineteenth-century fight reports, and from it we learn that
the 'redcoat' has had his 'right eye nearly closed' by 'Dublin's pet lamb'. We im-
mediately think of Ulysses and Polyphemus, and indeed, Heenan and Sayers,
whose commemorative print Stephen Dedalus had seen earlier in the novel.
Ignoring the attempts of Leopold Bloom to change the subject, another barfly,
Alf Bergan notes, in a more up-to-date pugilistic jargon, that 'Myler dusted the
floor with him . . . Heenan and Sayers was only a bloody fool to it. Handed him
the mother and father of a beating.' 189

Bloom's voice in 'Cyclops' is usually heard as one at war with the 'blindness'
and aggressive masculine violence of racism and nationalism. Later in the scene,
he famously rejects 'force, hatred, history, all that' in favour of love', 'the oppo-
site of hatred'. This is generally taken to be Joyce's view as well. According to
his brother, he wrote the scene 'not to express personal bias but to associate
violence and brutality with patriotism'. While I do not wish to claim that Joyce
is advocating violence, I suggest that the novel's repeated allusions to boxing
do more than simply update Homer. A certain latent aggression is also ex-
pressed. Just before he speaks out against force, Bloom tells the pub denizens
that he too belongs to a race, 'that is hated and persecuted. Also now. This very
moment. This very instant', and while he speaks he nearly burns his fingers on
his cigar. Unlike Ulysses, armed with his fiery club, Bloom does not get near the
eye of his Cyclops. Nevertheless, he put[s] up his fist'. 'Talking about injustice'
like this, the force of Bloom's feeling is expressed in staccato (punchy?) phrases
and even single words, quite unlike his usual eloquent and loquacious speech:

Robbed, says he. Plundered. Insulted. Persecuted. Taking what belongs
to us by right. At this very moment, says he, putting up his fist, sold by
auction off in Morocco like slaves or cattle.

Before talking about the 'opposite of hatred', the narrator tells us that Bloom
'collapses all of a sudden, twisting around all the opposite, as limp as a wet rag'.
But this second Bloom does not completely displace the first. Bloom may be
finally seem a 'wet rag', advocating love as he runs away from a flying biscuit

203

tin, but something remains of the man who raises his fist in angry defiance. 190
How does one choose between two rather absurd cliches?

As the day goes on, Bloom himself seems uncertain about what role in
which to cast himself. 191 On the beach, at little later, he ponders the incident:
'Got my own back there. Drunken ranters what I said about his God made him
wince. Mistake to hit back. Or? No. Ought to go home and laugh at themselves
. . . Suppose he hit me. Look at it other way round. Not so bad then. Perhaps not
to hurt he meant.' In his conversations with Stephen in the cabshelter that night,
Bloom continues to vacillate between self-congratulation on his cool and
rational response, and anxiety about his lack of physicality. He tells the story of
his encounter with the Citizen twice. In his first version he presents himself as
'much injured but on the whole eventempered' and assures Stephen that 'A soft
answer turns away wrath'.

I resent violence or intolerance in any shape or form . . . It's a patent ab-
surdity to hate people because they live around the corner and speak an-
other vernacular, so to speak ... All those wretched quarrels, in his
humble opinion, stirring up bad blood - bump of combativeness or
gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of ho-
nour and a flag - were very largely a question of the money question . . .

This is partly said to reassure Stephen who has just survived a fight in 'Circe', but
it is also serves as self-reassurance. Twenty pages later, the narrator returns to
the subject, and gives it a rather different gloss:

He, though often considerably misunderstood and the least pug-
nacious of mortals, be it repeated, departed from his customary
habit to give him (metaphorically) one in the gizzard though so far as
politics themselves were concerned, he was only too conscious of the
casualties inevitably resulting from propaganda and displays of
mutual animosity and the misery and suffering it entailed as a fore-
gone conclusion on fine young fellows, chiefly, destruction of the
fittest, in a word. 192

At the start of this retelling at least, Bloom is associated with linguistic pugnac-
ity and the hard 'vernacular' of his enemy. As the sentence proceeds, the narra-
tive voice reconnects Bloom to his customary pacifism and its accompanying
verbosity. If the cliches of pugnacity give readers (metaphorically) 'one in the giz-
zard', the cliches of pacifism put them (metaphorically) to sleep. 193

Bloom's equivocal interpretation of the events in the pub is revealed again
in 'Ithaca'. As tension mounted in the pub that afternoon, Bloom had started
listing Jews: 'Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spin-
oza. And the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God.' In his third
list of 'anapocryphal illustrious sons of the law and children of a selected or

204

rejected race' in 'Ithaca', Bloom again includes Mendelssohn and Spinoza, in-
forming us of their professions (composer and philosopher respectively), but
now he adds to their company Daniel Mendoza, the London pugilist credited
with having introduced boxing into Ireland, and Ferdinand Lassalle, who, we are
told, managed to combine the professions of 'reformer' and 'duellist'. 194 Fight-
ers, it now seems, can be good Jews too. But this is not the last word on the sub-
ject. At the end of the chapter, when Bloom relates his day to Molly in bed, he
does not mention the 'altercation' in the pub at all. He has not, despite all these
rehearsals, been able to settle on a version of events that pleases him, or, more
to the point, that he thinks will please Molly. 195

Bloom's aspirations to get bigger and stronger are largely informed by
Eugen Sandow's Strength and How to Obtain It (1897). 196 Sandow was a music
hall muscleman rather than a sports hero, and his books were aimed at commer-
cial travellers and other city workers like Bloom. 197 They offered a modern met-
ropolitan kind of manliness distinct from the archaic nationalist version touted
by the Citizen. Yet Sandow's presence is not unrelated to themes of injustice,
revenge, or, indeed, the Cyclops. While the first part of Sandow's book is a con-
ventional manual of exercises and measurement charts, part two - 'Incidents of
My Professional Career' - reads at times like a Horatio Alger novel, for each 'in-
cident' is most importantly a step onward and upward. One step involves the
'defeat' of two bodybuilding rivals, Samson and Cyclops. Sandow is at pains to
stress that he is a small man and that 'in evening dress there was nothing . . .
specially remarkable about my appearance. But when I took off my coat [to fight
Cyclops] and the people could see my muscular development, the tone of indif-
ference changed immediately to surprise and curiosity.' Sandow lets it be known
that instead of exhibiting himself, he could have been a boxer. But although it
would have been the 'shorter road to wealth', he was not tempted. 'No man',
he concludes, 'can be a prize fighter and remain a gentleman'. 198

Boxing, or at least street-fighting with pretensions to boxing, finally con-
nects Stephen and Bloom in 'Circe', where Homer's underworld is refigured as
a phantasmagoric vaudeville show. 'Nighttown' is a grotesque place where sex
and violence come together, where a bawd sells 'maidenhead' for ten shillings
and armless loiterers' in 'paintspeckled hats' can be found 'flop [ped] wrestling,
growling in maimed sodden playfight.' 1 " Earlier in the day, the romantic
Stephen had briefly identified with Heenan and Sayers performing before a star-
ing audience in a print he saw in a shop window. In 'Nighttown', when a
drunken British soldier hits him square in the face, he is suddenly forced to
become a participant rather than a spectator. Could there be a more definite
victory for what Joyce, elsewhere, praised as the solid materialism of 'sudden
reality' over 'romanticism'? 200

An important difference between the two encounters is that the heroic and
popular mid-nineteenth century pugilism that the Heenan vs. Sayers fight
represented has been replaced by Queensberry-rules sparring, associated par-
ticularly with the army and with public schools - English violence disguised as

205

English honour. According to Stanislaus Joyce, his brother 'detested rugby, box-
ing and wrestling,' which he had to take part in at school, and 'which he consid-
ered a training not in self-control, as the English pretend, but in violence and
brutality.' 201 In Stephen Hero, Joyce had described the 'system of hardy brutal-
ity' with which 'Anglo-Saxon educators' tried to 'cure' the 'fantastic ideal[ism]'
of youth and had bemoaned the ugly 'Saxon slang' that accompanied such
cures. 202 In 'Circe', the Saxon slang of 'biffing' and 'blighters', the basis of what
Bernard Shaw had described as 'the vast propaganda of pugnacity in modern
fiction', is as much the subject of mockery as the brutality itself. 203

Like a good Homeric hero, Stephen drunkenly extends his hospitality to
Privates Compton and Carr, the two red-coated British soldiers that he runs
into on the street, stating that, although 'uninvited', they are his 'guests'. Nev-
ertheless, that's not their fault. 'History is to blame'. Thinking that Stephen is
insulting both Carr's girl, Cissy Caffrey ('faithful . . . although only a shilling
whore') and Edward vn, Private Compton tells his friend to 'biff him one' - 'Go
it, Harry. Do him one in the eye ... he doesn't half want a thick ear, the
blighter.' 204 Stephen, meanwhile, 'a bit sprung' and so especially facetious,
mocks 'the noble art of self-pretence', misquotes Swift, and rather effetely com-
plains about his hand, which 'hurts me slightly'. 'Personally,' he says, 'I detest
action.' That may be so, but, as his friend Lynch points out, 'he likes dialectic'.
In the sequence that follows, Edward vn appears as the referee - 'We have come
here to witness a clean straight fight and we heartily wish both men the best of
good luck.' As the fight begins, Stephen imaginatively transforms it, using the
traditional imagery of both cataclysm and crucifixion, into a grand and heroic
battle. But Private Carr brings the battle to a swift and bathetic end. Carr 'rushes
Stephen, fists outstretched, and strikes him in the face. Stephen totters, collapses, falls
stunned. He lies prone, his face to the sky, his hat rolling to the wall. Bloomfollows and
picks it up.' As in the Heenan-Sayers and the Keogh-Bennett fights, the crowd
breaks through, and chaos descends, but there are no firm allegiances. The 'hag'
and 'bawd' switch sides repeatedly; the 'quarrelling knot' of the Irish, it seems,
are too busy fighting among themselves to be concerned with the slapstick
main event. 205

By the time we reach this scene in 'Circe', it becomes clear that a pattern is
being presented. All things pass and, 'being humus the same returns', wrote
Joyce in Finnegans Wake (1939). 2o6 In 'Wandering Rocks', Stephen sees an image
of Heenan vs. Sayers in Farnborough in i860; a few pages later, Patrick Dignam
sees a poster advertising Bennett vs. Keogh, and thinks about the 1897 Carson
City contest between Corbett and Fitzsimmons. In 'Cyclops', the connection be-
tween Farnborough in i860 and Dublin in 1904 is reinforced (and, if we read
Stanislaus Joyce, we can also make a connection to Reno in 1910). These discrete
boxing matches all feature a small man taking on a big man, and an Irishman
(broadly defined) taking on a British man. 207 They also recall the battles faced re-
peatedly by Ulysses on his journey home to Ithaca. Joyce's critics have, I would
suggest, rather overplayed his rejection of such battles. Stanislaus Joyce recalled

206

that his brother first encountered Homer through Lamb's Adventures of Ulysses
and when 'asked to say which of the heroes they admired most', chose Ulysses 'in
reaction against the general admiration of the heftier, muscle-bound dealers of
Homeric blows'. Richard Ellmann, meanwhile, rather romantically maintained
that 'Joyce makes his Ulysses a man who is not physically a fighter, but whose
mind is unsubduable.' Ulysses, while certainly peace-loving, and neither 'hefty'
nor 'muscle-bound', hardly avoided adept and well-placed 'Homeric blows'. 208
Bloom, and indeed Stephen, are certainly less willing or able fighters, but this is
not to say that thoughts of fighting do not preoccupy them and that their fists are
never clenched or raised. While parodying its posturing and patois, Joyce rel-
ished the dramatic possibilities of boxing. In all the many ways it unfolds, Ulysses
is also, some of the time, a boxing novel.

Boxing images come less directly in Finnegans Wake (as does everything
else), yet one of Joyce's many allusive patterns there links back to Johnson. The
opening chapter of the novel introduces the comic strip characters of Mutt and
Jute, representing the battle of 1014 between the Irish and Danes on the field of
Clontarf. Mutt is the Irishman; Jute, the invader. Communication between the
two is impossible - Mutt is 'jeffmute', Jute is 'haudibble'. The duo reappear in
many guises throughout the novel - Butt and Taff; Bett and Tipp; Muta and
Juva - as variants on the quarrelling brothers, Shem and Shaun, whose endless
battles and reconciliations propel it forward. As Muta puts it, 'when we shall
have acquired unification we shall pass on to diversity and when we shall have
passed on to diversity we shall have acquired the instinct to combat and when
we shall have acquired the instinct of combat we shall pass back to the spirit of
appeasement'. 209

Mutt and Jeff originate in a cartoon strip by H. C. (Bud) Fisher which first
appeared under the title 'A. Mutt' on the racing page of the San Francisco Chron-
icle'm 1907. Mutt first encountered Jeff on 27 March 1908, a 'sacred moment in
our cultural development' remarked Gilbert Seldes. The encounter took place
'during the days before one of Jim Jeffries' fights'.

It was as Mr Mutt passed the asylum walls that a strange creature
confided to the air the notable remark that he himself was Jeffries . Mutt
rescued the little gentleman and named him Jeff. In gratitude Jeff daily
submits to indignities which might otherwise seem intolerable. 210

Jeff's allegiance to Jeffries reached fruition in 1910 when he and Mutt resolve to
see him fight Jack Johnson. Fisher devoted weeks of the strip to stories of the
friends' mishaps as they travel to Reno, try to get seats, and then, with difficulty,
try to get home again (illus. 86).

Dan Schiff suggests that the pair may have appealed to James Augustine
Joyce because their names, Augustus Mutt and James Jeffries, represent a strug-
gle within his own name and between two sides of his personality. 211 But Joyce
may also have enjoyed the comical contrast the couple made - beanpole Mutt

207

1 l - <j>i la Ft - 3 *«>

Bud Fisher, 'A. Mutt',
lgio: ' Mutt secures
a ticket to the
Jeffries-Johnson
fight'.

and stocky little Jeff- and the physical violence of their encounters. The last panel
was often reserved for a knockout. Jeff, having driven Mutt to distraction, is
usually the recipient; he is depicted conked or punched in the head, sometimes
accompanied by the word 'Powf A similar resolution can be found in the 'Night-
lessons' chapter of Finnegans Wake. In this 'drame' of 'caricatures', Shaun (the
Mutt of the two) becomes fed up with the boastful Shem, and 'floors' him. 212 The
'countinghands' of a referee suggest that a knockout has been accomplished, and
then go on to conduct Wagner. Shem forgives his 'bloater', and the chapter ends
with a catalogue of topics for the brothers' lessons, which range from 'When is a
Pun not a Pun?' to 'Do you approve of our Existing Parliamentary System?' to
'Compare the fistic styles of Jimmy Wilde and Jack Sharkey.' 213

The chapter takes the form of a central text, with marginal comments (from
the two brothers) on either side, and footnotes (from their sister, Izzy). 214 In the
final section, Shem (on the Right) is silent, but Shaun provides classical and
biblical parallels to the lesson themes. Flyweight Jimmy Wilde and heavyweight
Jack Sharkey are matched with Castor and Pollux, the brothers who encounter
Amycus in Theocritus' Idylls. 215 The names of the fighters may change, but
the schoolboy sport of light vs. large, and the philosophical sport of thesis vs.
antithesis, continue. 'Is a game over? The game goes on.' 216

208

Sport of the Future

Although he had fulfilled the stated brief by defeating Jack Johnson, Jess Willard
was not the Great White Hope that so many had longed for. 1 Willard was
large, slow and uncharismatic, and the public did not warm to their new white
champion. It would be another four years before the White Hope of fantasy
would emerge, realized in the tanned wiry body of Jack Dempsey. The Golden
Grin would be laid to rest by a scowl.

Born into a poor Irish-American family in Manassa, Colorado, Dempsey
was initially a fairly mediocre boxer, fighting for $100 a time in Western bars and
living sporadically as a hobo. He struck lucky when he met up with manager
Jack Kearns, who carefully groomed him for a shot at the championship. Kearns
ensured that Dempsey only encountered opponents whom he could easily
knock out, and that 'he spent nearly as much time making the rounds of
newspaper offices as he did fighting'. Between them Kearns and promoter Tex
Rickard carefully cultivated the image of the 'Manassa Mauler' as America's
perfect fighting man'. 2 They knew that in the post-Johnson era (and even more
so in the Klan-dominated twenties), there would be no money to be made in
matching Dempsey against black opponents such as Harry Wills who might
actually beat him. It made financial sense to maintain the colour line. 3

By 1918 Damon Runyon, a syndicated columnist for the Hearst newspapers,
was urging Willard to meet the new challenger. On 4 July 1919 (nine years after
Johnson beat Jeffries), Dempsey fought Willard before 'a shirt-sleeved frontier mob'
in Toledo, Ohio. 4 Willard was 6 foot 7 inches tall and weighed 245 pounds.
Dempsey, 6 inches shorter and 55 pounds lighter, was definitely the underdog, and
many thought the fight likely to be a poor affair. A sceptical Ring Lardner quipped:
'I guess I got those there Toledo Blues, / About this fight I simply can't enthuse.' 5

Nevertheless, Dempsey defeated Willard in three rounds, with what boxing
historians agree was an extraordinary excess of violence. Peter Heller describes
the fight as 'one of the most savage in boxing history', and Joyce Carol Oates ar-
gues that Dempsey 's ring style, 'swift, pitiless, always direct and percussive . . .
changed American boxing forever'. 6 According to Paul Gallico, Dempsey was
'never a good boxer and had little or no defense. His protection was aggression.' 7

209

That aggression was feted and fetishized from the start. 8 This is Damon Run-
yon's gory account of the fallen Willard:

At the feet of the gargantuan pugilist was a dark spot which was slowly
widening on the brown canvas as it was replaced by the drip-drip-drip-
drip of blood from the man's wounds. He was flecked with red from
head to foot. The flesh on his enormous limbs shook like custard. He
was like a man who had just been pulled from the wreck of an automo-
bile, or railroad train. 9

In his 1950 teach-yourself guide to 'explosive punching and aggressive defence',
Championship Fighting, Dempsey himself recalled the fight, preferring to de-
scribe Willard as the victim of 'a premature mine blast' rather than of a car or
rail accident:

I won the ring's most coveted title by stopping a man much larger and
stronger than I was ... I blasted him into helplessness by exploding
my body-weight against him . . . My body-weight was moving like light-
ning, and I was exploding that weight terrifically against the giant. 10

Dempsey 's persona was complicated. First of all, he was Jack the Giant Killer,
an image that Kearns and Rickard were keen to exploit, matching him with an-
other sluggish giant, Luis Angel Firpo, 'the Wild Bull of the Pampas', in 1923. But
it was not merely success against all odds that Dempsey represented; it was the
instant success of the knockout blow. The step-by-step rise of a Horatio Alger
was old-fashioned; the impatient Twenties favoured the 'cocainizing punch'. 11
And there was still more to the Dempsey image. In the passage above, he litters
his description with metaphors drawn from his days working in the Colorado
mines, and he was often promoted as a rugged Westerner. Kearns ensured he
tanned his face and upper body before the Willard fight, to give him the appear-
ance, according to Runyon, of a 'saddle-colored demon'. 12 In the years that
followed this ruggedness was carefully cultivated. Runyon coined the name
'Manassa Mauler', and ghost-wrote Dempsey 's biography, A Tale of Two Fists',
for serialization in the Hearst papers in 1919. Runyon, who had also grown up in
Colorado, made much of Dempsey 's early days free-riding the railroads. 13 When,
in 1921, Dempsey knocked out the European light heavyweight champion,
Georges Carpentier, the press described the victory as one for the frontier spirit
(and old bare-knuckle days) against decadent European modernity (Carpentier,
who liked to talk of the 'psychology of boxing', was dubbed the 'Orchid Man' 14 ).
Gallico's characterization of Dempsey as someone who had been schooled in 'the
hobo jungles, bar-rooms, and mining camps of the West' was typical:

Where Dempsey learned to fight, there were no rounds, rest intervals,
gloves, referees, or attending seconds. There are no draws and no

decisions in rough and tough fighting. You had to win. If you lost you
went to the hospital or to the undertaking parlor. 15

Dempsey's supposed affinities with the spirit of the old frontier appealed to
1920s urban America precisely because, as Roderick Nash puts it, at that time
'the self-reliant rugged individual . . . seemed on the verge of becoming as irrel-
evant as the covered wagon'.

The major difference between American boxing before 1920 and after-
wards, was that it was now legal, and once legal it became big business. At the
heart of that business was Madison Square Garden, which in 1925 assumed its
third incarnation on the corner of 49th and 50th Street on Eighth Avenue. 17
When Max Schmeling arrived in the United States in 1929, he noted that 'the
Garden and the Hearst Corporation took turns calling the shots'. 18 The Garden,
as it quickly became known, was huge and intimidating. According to Jerry
Doyle, the narrator of Hemingway's 1927 'Fifty Grand', the walk from the entrance
to the ring looked like a half a mile'. 19

This difference between small club illegal boxing and the new legal sport is
strikingly apparent if we compare George Bellows 's Stag at Sharkey's (1909) and
his 1920s paintings of legitimate, high-profile boxing, Ringside Seats (1924) and
Dempsey and Fiq>o (1924). Gone is the grotesque male intimacy of spectators
and fighters, and with it, a dark, expressionist claustrophobia. In their place,
Bellows depicts a brightly lit space, vibrant with colour but rather flat. The
paintings have more in common with contemporary magazine illustrations of
well-dressed men and women than with his earlier paintings. Dempsey andtirpo
presents the famous moment in their 1923 fight when Firpo sent Dempsey flying
into the ringside typewriters (illus. 87). 2 °

The 1920s are often recalled as a golden age of sport, but it was an age of
mass consumption rather than mass participation. Some thought that this was
a very bad thing. In their 1929 sociological case study of Middletown, the Lynds
noted that modern leisure was now 'mainly spent sitting down'. 21 A few play,'
elaborated Stuart Chase, 'while the rest of us shout, clap hands . . . crush in our
neighbours' hats, and get what thrill we may from passive rather than active
participation.' For Chase, this was sport 'at one remove'. 22

Worse still was listening to the radio ('sport at two removes'). While Jack
Johnson's fights had been available to national audiences only by way of reports
telegraphed to the newspapers, and illegal films, radio brought sport to all. Radio
broadcasts of fights began in 1920 and the first title fight to be broadcast live on
the radio was the 1921 Dempsey-Carpentier match. In Buenos Aires in 1923
crowds gathered in the home of nine-year-old Julio Cortazar to listen to the radio
describe Firpo's defeat in New York (afterwards, he later wrote, 'there was weep-
ing and brutal indignation, followed by humiliated melancholy that was almost
colonial'.) In anticipation of Dempsey's 1926 fight against Tunney, Halperin's
Department Store acquired the first radio in Fitzgerald, Georgia; Lois Garrison
recalls that 'the whole town' gathered to listen to speakers rigged up in the

neighbouring streets. 23 Joe Louis grew up listening to Dempsey's fights on the
radio, and the radio would bring Louis's fights to many more during the 1930s. 24

The sports pages of national newspapers (first introduced by Hearst in 1895)
also played an important part in promoting and popularizing sport. Research
by the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1929 revealed that one out of
four readers bought a paper primarily because of its sports page. The editors
voted Jack Dempsey the 'greatest stimulation to circulation in 20 years'. 25 The
press, and in particular the Hearst newspapers, saw to it that 'you knew
Dempsey better than a member of your own family'. 26 During his seven-year
reign as champion, Dempsey entertained readers with a divorce and remarriage
to a Hollywood starlet, and a trial for draft evasion (he was acquitted on the
grounds that he needed to provide financial support to his mother and wife).
Boxing itself played a relatively small part in the story; in seven years, Dempsey
only defended his title six times. 27

The flourishing of the sports pages is also associated with a golden age of
American sports writing. In 1922, Nat Fleischer founded The Ring, still regarded
as the leading boxing magazine, while the sports pages of the daily papers fea-
tured writers such as Damon Runyon, Ring Lardner and Paul Gallico, all of
whom eventually moved successfully from (rather literary) sports reporting to

George Bellows,

Dempsey and Firpo,

1924.

(rather sporty) fiction. Although they detailed the minutiae of contemporary
sports events, these writers never took sport entirely seriously, and certainly
not solemnly. This is Heywood Broun, on Dempsey vs. Carpentier:

[Carpentier's] head was back and his eyes and his smile flamed as he
crawled through the ropes. And he gave some curious flick to his
bathrobe as he turned to meet the applause. Until that very moment we
had been for Dempsey, but suddenly we found ourselves up on our feet
making silly noises. We shouted 'Carpentier! Carpentier! Carpentier!'
and forgot even to be ashamed of our pronunciation. 28

Broun's report exemplifies what sociologist Leo Lowenthal identified as a dis-
tinctive 1920s language of directness'. At the very moment when 'modern insti-
tutions of mass communication' were promising 'total coverage', he argued,
journalists increased their use of 'you' or 'we' to create a compensatory sense of
intimacy between writer and reader. 29 Boxing, perhaps, lent itself more readily
then most sports to the language of directness. In 1924, Punch cartoonist William
Low suggested a comparable intimacy between fighter and spectator (illus. 56).
Low's spectator takes 'sympathy' to absurd lengths and eventually knocks him-
self out. Broun's article, more of which is quoted below, goes on to compare the
Dempsey-Carpentier fight to Greek tragedy. Lowenthal claimed that such allu-
sions were designed to confer 'pseudo-sanctity and pseudo-safety on the futile
affairs of mass culture', and complained that they were mixed up with 'slang and
colloquial speech'. 30 But this seems to miss the tone and the point. There is no
'linguistic confusion'. Like flash language in the 1820s, prose such as Broun's (and
Lardner's, Galileo's and Runyon's) confidently celebrates its ability to embrace
both high and low and to make a joke of either or both. Knowing cheerfulness
was the tone of the 'boxing scribes'. 31

It was also, largely, the tone of the cinema. 'Suddenly the mid-1920's movie
theater became a very happy place', notes William Everson. 'Comedy was every-
where, and in all forms.' 32 Boxing movies were no exception and numerous come-
dies debunked the masculine posturing of the ring. Hal Roach wrote and produced
many of them, including The Champeen (1923), Laurel and Hardy's The Battle of
the Century (1927), and Joe and Chubby's Boxing Gloves (1929); others include Mack
Sennett's Scarum Much (1924). One of the most successful boxing comedies was an
independently made series The Leather Pushers (1922-4), starring Reginald Denny,
a former Royal Flying Corps heavyweight champion. Now largely forgotten, in
the mid-twenties Denny was 'Universal's most important star, and next to Chap-
lin, the highest-paid Englishman in pictures'. Denny was also responsible for in-
troducing 'some comedy ideas' into what he called 'the hokum' of an adaptation
of Jack London's boxing story, The Abysmal Brute (1923). 33

For Paul Gallico, sports editor and columnist for the Daily News, the 1920s
were a time of 'great, innocent ballyhoo', but for many others, particularly those on
the left, the cocktail of sport, movies and the tabloid press made for a dangerous

213

mass opiate. 34 Newspapers in the twenties, Robert K. Murray argued, moved
away from the Progressive agenda of the pre-war years and 'began to view Amer-
ican life not so much as a political and economic struggle but as a hilarious
merry-go-round of sport, crime, and sex'. A growing obsession with 'the antics
. . . of Dempsey and Babe Ruth' may, he suggested, have 'helped take the nation's
mind off bolshevism', both at home and abroad. 35 'It was characteristic of the
Jazz Age that it had no interest in politics at all', declared Scott Fitzgerald in
1931. That same year (one of the worst of the Depression) Frederick Allen Lewis
published a history of 'the Coolidge Prosperity' and argued that one of its most
'striking characteristics . . . was the unparalleled rapidity and unanimity with
which millions of men and women turned their attention, their talk, and their
emotional interest upon a series of tremendous trifles - a heavyweight boxing-
match, a murder trial, a new automobile, a transatlantic flight'. Lewis dubbed
this era 'the Ballyhoo Years'. 36

The changing nature of American newspapers and the celebrity cult of
sportsmen and movie stars are recurring preoccupations in John Dos Passos's
trilogy of novels, usa (1930-36). Each novel breaks up its narrative with a series
of 'Newsreel' sections, collages of undated newspaper headlines, juxtaposed for
connection and contrast. One such juxtaposition, in Nineteen Nineteen, involves
Dempsey. There is something appalling, Dos Passos suggests, about the ease
with which readers can slip from 'earthquake in italy devestates like war'
to 'dempsey knocks out willard in third round'. 37 Dempsey himself, as
we have already seen, was only too willing to compare the effects of his pugnac-
ity to catastrophe on a grand scale.

If the media attention given to Dempsey 's 1919 fight against Willard was
lavish, it was nothing compared to that generated two years later, when he took
on 'gorgeous' Georges Carpentier. The 4 July Jersey City fight attracted 80,000
spectators and is remembered as the first million-dollar gate. The stark contrast
between the two protagonists, arranged with great care once again by Rickard,
succeeded in creating a journalistic frenzy. Carpentier agreed to the mis-match
(he was considerably lighter than Dempsey) knowing that he could earn a lot in
America - in Hollywood as well as in the ring. 38 Carpentier 's fan base included
European intellectuals such as George Bernard Shaw, Arnold Bennett and
Francois Mauriac. Shaw and Bennett had fulsomely described his 1919 victory
over Englishman Joe Beckett, while Mauriac thought Carpentier both as 'one
of those graceful Apollos slightly grazed by the pick in the process of their ex-
humation' and 'the type of honest man dear to Pascal'. 39 Sophisticated New
Yorkers were also enchanted by the Frenchman. Heywood Broun described the
fight as 'the finest tragic performance in the lives of ninety thousand persons'.
It was, he joshed, 'sport for art's sake', comparable even to the work of Eugene
O'Neill, 'the white hope of the American drama'. 'None of the crowds in Greece
who went to somewhat more beautiful stadia in search of Euripides ever saw
the spirit of tragedy more truly presented.' 40 Ring Lardner was less sentimen-
tal. He believed that the fight should never have taken place and satirized it

214

ruthlessly in a short story called 'The Battle of the Century'. The Dempsey char-
acter, Jim Dugan, complains about his training: 'I've got to show the boys I'm
working so they won't think it's a farce. Like it wasn't a farce already!' The real
winner, the narrator notes, was Dugan's manager Charley Riggs (based on Tex
Rickard), who not only 'came out with a profit for himself and his backer of
something like half a million . . . but the way he handled it put him in a class by
himself as a promoter. The big fights to come will be staged by Charley or they
won't be big fights.' 41

After the 1923 Firpo contest, Dempsey did not fight for three years. Instead he
went to Hollywood, travelled in Europe, and retained a high profile through the
gossip columns and product endorsements. By 1926, however, it was time to make
some more money, and Rickard's next 'big fight' matched Dempsey against Gene
Tunney as part of Philadelphia's sesquicentennial celebration. Marketing was
again a crucial factor, and in choosing Dempsey 's opponent, Rickard repeated the
formula that had proved so profitable in the Carpentier fight. Dempsey was once
again portrayed as the Western 'brute' and 'a slacker', while Tunney, a former us
marine and aspiring Greenwich Village intellectual, was clean-living patriotism
personified. The Associated Press made a great deal of the fact that Samuel But-
ler's The Way of All Flesh had been spotted on Tunney 's bedside table. 42 The pub-
lic personae of the two men were reinforced in their ring styles. Dempsey was an
aggressive slugger, famous for his knockout blows; Tunney, a defensive counter-
puncher, who gradually wore his opponents down. Dempsey was instinctual, a
'natural', a born 'killer'; Tunney a 'synthetic' boxer, a student of 'ring science'. 43
While this was a perennial opposition, its extraordinary success in 1926 suggests
that it tapped into particular contemporary anxieties. While Tunney represented
the middle-class ideal of self-improving and self-controlling masculinity (like Scott
Fitzgerald's 'advertisement of the man'), Dempsey appealed to a persistent fantasy
of untameable virility and independence. 44

Dempsey was unfit and unprepared, but Rickard and his associates con-
cealed this well from the public, who 'bet on the champion at preposterous
odds'. 45 Tunney won the ten-round fight clearly on points, his defensive skills
keeping Dempsey safely at a distance. Afterwards, Grantland Rice argued that
the fight had not been a sporting contest but a 'Golden Fleece', and indeed the
largest fight crowd in history (a crowd that included Chaplin, Hearst and vari-
ous Astors, Mellons and Rockefellers) paid a record-breaking $1,895,733 for the
privilege. 46 A rematch was inevitable, and in 1927, 145,000 spectators gathered
at Soldier Fields, Chicago, in what would prove to be the culmination of Tex
Rickard's career. 47

When Dempsey fought Firpo in 1923, commentators were appalled by the
way in which he stood over his prone opponent, ready to strike again as soon
as Firpo rose to his feet. Although this was not allowed, the referee failed to
intervene. New York boxing authorities then introduced a rule requiring the
boxer who delivered the knockdown blow to go to a neutral corner prior to the
referee beginning his ten-count. Many think this rule cost Dempsey his chance

215

Joseph Webster
Golinkin, The Long
Count, 1927,
lithograph on paper.

at regaining the championship in his 1927 fight with Tunney, a fight which
became known as the 'Long Count' (illus. 88). In the seventh round, Dempsey
knocked Tunney down and stood over him ready to do the same again. The
referee refused to begin the count until Dempsey retired to the farthest neutral
corner, and by the time he reached nine, Tunney had recovered. 'Enough running.
Come on and fight,' the frustrated Dempsey shouted, but Tunney managed to
hold him off and win again, by a clear decision. 48

Tunney was not a popular champion, partly because his defensive style was
rather dull and partly because he was represented by the press as a snob who de-
spised the average boxing fan. According to Sherwood Anderson, 'he was always
a bit too patronizing about his trade'. 49 Tunney married a Connecticut socialite,
delivered a course of lectures on Shakespeare at Yale, became a personal friend of
Bernard Shaw and Thornton Wilder and, worst of all, dropped into conversation

216

words such as 'ineffectual', 'hitherto' and 'cosmeticize'. 50 'His fastidious and
abstracted air suggested that he had won the world championship on his way to
acquiring a good library.' 51 In 1928, after suffering from amnesia following a blow
to the head, he decided to retire from boxing. His decision was praised by the
Journal of the American Medical Association in an influential article on the effects
of repeated cerebral injury, or 'punch drunkenness'. 52

Tunney famously took a trip to the Alps with Shaw, and Sherwood Anderson
(a Dempsey fan) imagined them walking 'along the road together':

One was thinking, 'Here am I, a man of the mind. I have a close friend
who is a prize fighter. How wonderful! ' And there was the other think-
ing, 'I am a prize fighter, but I am no brute. I am a man of the mind. My
being with this writer proves it.'

Anderson was eager to mock the mutual attraction of author and prize-fighter
because he believed it originated in a false dichotomy. For Anderson, 'real'
fighters, such as Dempsey and Jack Johnson, have 'better minds' than Tunney,
and 'real' artists and writers are themselves men 'of action'.

I have watched painters at work who were like fighters about to enter
the prize ring . . . Thoughts and feelings elude like a fast opponent in
the ring. You rush at your opponent - the mood. 'Oh, if I could only
hit it squarely, send it sprawling!'

If Anderson's account of painting recalls Hazlitt, his model of writing, or rather
the more energetic activity of manual typing, develops that proposed by Jack
London. Anderson recalls visiting 'a writer friend' for dinner. When he arrives,
the man is lying on his bed, exhausted. 'He was as a prize fighter might have
been after a marvelous fight.' Anderson reports that this 'bout' had taken place
after the man 'had been working for two years trying to get just the feeling he
wanted in a certain piece of work.' That morning, he had sat down at his type-
writer and produced 12,000 words. While London had focused merely on the
production of quantities of writing, Anderson wants to relate the nature of pro-
duction ('hitting and hitting' at the typewriter) to the flawless quality of the
product, the 'timing' of the sentences and the 'feeling' expressed in them. In ap-
pearance, very different activities, fighting and writing end up looking exactly
the same. 'Marvelous' writers don't need to hang out with 'marvelous' fighters;
they are 'marvelous' fighters. 53

Ernest Hemingway draws a similar conclusion in his 1926 'Banal Story' (al-
though, unlike Anderson, he did not like Dempsey and believed Tunney, whose
nose he once bloodied, to be 'one of the greatest of heavyweight champions'. 54 )
Hemingway's satire is directed against popular 'intellectual' magazines such as
the Forum and the story parodies many articles that actually appeared in the mag-
azine. 'Do we want big men - or do we want them cultured?' is one of the many

217

'banal' questions that the writer-protagonist encounters in its pages. 'What star
must our college students aim at? There is Jack Britton [a welterweight]. There
is Doctor Henry Van Dyke [the clergyman author of inspirational stories]. Can
we reconcile the two? Take the case of Young Stribling [a heavyweight].' The story
ends with an account of the death and funeral of a bullfighter. In its attention to
detail, and its lack of abstraction and posturing, this embedded story is not banal;
in fact, it is a vignette that could easily have appeared in In Our Time. It is also a
story that could only have been written by a man for whom there is no gulf be-
tween sophistication and size, a man like the protagonist (and the author) who
is as confident in his knowledge of boxing as he is in his ability to write collo-
quial, immediate prose. 'Far away in Paris,' the narrator thinks, as he spits seeds
from an orange, 'Mascart had knocked Danny Frush cuckoo in the second round
. . . There was Romance.' 55

NOW THAT LADIES GO TO THE FIGHTS

After 1920, it became increasingly fashionable for women to attend boxing
matches; Rickard actively encouraged their presence in his efforts to make box-
ing mainstream entertainment. In 1889 Nellie Bly had reassured women read-
ers about the 'daintiness' of John L. Sullivan's table linen and the cleanliness of
his nails. But twenties readers were more interested in the boxer's face and
figure. Cartoons depicted fighters receiving flowers and advertising hair cream
(illus. 58, 92). Boxers were sex symbols and women were no longer coy about ad-
mitting it. 'How women love - / The rituals of Dempsey and Carpentier,' noted
Mina Loy in a poem, 'Perlun', published the month after 2,000 women were
estimated to have attended the 1921 New Jersey fight. (H. L. Mencken com-
plained that he had missed the preliminary bouts because he had been dis-
tracted by a woman in a low-cut pink dress. 56 ) Gosta Adrian-Nilsson's 1926
collage Bloo dy Boxing Debut juxtaposes images of Dempsey and Tunney with the
words, 'Bloody', 'boxing debut', 'body' and 'a happy woman'. 57

Women also began to write about boxers (if not boxing) for the daily
papers. In 1914 Djuna Barnes reported on the phenomenon of women prize-
fight spectators for the New York World magazine. At that time, she said that the
main difference between male and female audiences was that when men looked
at a boxer they noticed 'the muscles of his back', while women 'softly' praise his
'fine eyes': 'the woman's interest lies not in strength but in beauty'. 58 Five years
later, she interviewed Jess Willard and described him with a suitably aesthetic
vocabulary: 'His head, having been overlooked by Sargent, is reproduced in
every forest that cutters have been - that gravely solemn thing, the stump of
some huge tree staring in blunt Rodinesque mutilation from the ground.' 59 By
1921, when Barnes interviewed Jack Dempsey, it was no longer quite such a nov-
elty to see women at boxing matches (illus. 89). She quotes Dempsey as saying,
'It's no longer enough to have speed and a good right arm to be the favorite. You
have to be good-looking, too, now that ladies go to the fights.' 60 Katharine

218

Djuna Barnes,
Dempsey, 1921

Jack

Fullerton Gerould came to the same con-
clusion. Her reactions to Dempsey 's 1926
fight with Tunney, she admitted, were
'only aesthetic and psychological'. 'I do
not know what "happened"; or why Gene
Tunney was able to beat Jack Dempsey. I
keep unperturbed, my own deep sense of
the spectacle'. Aesthetically Tunney did
not appeal at all. His 'tall ugliness (as
Henry James would have put it)' reminded
her of a 'gasoline salesman'; fortunately,
the 'ferocious face and beautiful body' of
Dempsey 'suggested nothing but the great
gladiator'. 61 Aesthetic contemplation of
the statuesque male boxer often tipped
over into (not always acknowledged) erotic
excitement. Magazine illustrator Neysa
McMein, for example, swooningly wrote
of Carpentier that 'Michel Angelo would
have fainted for joy with the beauty of his
profile.' 62 All this emphasis on the boxer's head, profile, and 'fine eyes' conceals
the fact that the men these women were looking at were standing before them
bare-chested in shorts. Only Mae West was candid enough to write of the de-
sire of 'soft' female bodies for the 'touch' of 'raw, irritated flesh which had been
scraped on the ring ropes'. 63

Colette's 1920 novel, Cheri, is the story of a pre-war love affair between a mid-
dle-aged woman and a boy half her age. After observing Cheri's hand while he's
asleep - 'a hand not strictly feminine, yet a trifle prettier than one could have
wished' - and noticing how pale and exhausted he seems, Lea resolves to feed
him up (on strawberries, cream, and corn-fed chicken), and to hire him a boxing
coach, Patron. Patron, she tells the jealous Cheri, has 'nothing of the dissipated
schoolboy' about him: 'He has other attractions, and a good deal more to rec-
ommend him than a perky little face and two black rings round his eyes.' 64
Shortly afterwards, Lea watches Patron instructing Cheri in a little woodland al-
cove (a pastoral setting that recalls Cashel Byron's Profession):

Lea smiled, and revelled in the warm sun, sitting still and watching
the bouts between these two men, both young and both stripped. In
her mind she kept comparing them. 'How handsome Patron is - as
solid as a house! And the boy's shaping well. You don't find knees like
his running about the streets every day of the week, or I'm no judge.
His back, too, is . . . will be . . . marvellous . . . And the set of his head!
quite a statue!'

219

Later in the day, Lea discusses Cheri's progress with Patron. Patron praises the
boy's physique: 'There's muscles on him now such as you don't see on our French
lads; his are more like a coloured boy's - though he couldn't look any whiter, I
must say. Nice little muscles they are, and not too showy. He'll never have mus-
cles like melons.' She then embarrasses him by replying, 'I should hope not, Pa-
tron! But then, you know, I didn't take him on for his boxing!' 65 Pugilistic sexual
potency - often, as here, analogous to 'coloured' sexual potency - crops up in a
variety of women's writing of the period. In Paris in 1930, the writer and pub-
lisher Nancy Cunard saw off (or possibly exacerbated) rumours about her close
friendship with the black fighter Bob Scanlon by claiming he was giving her
boxing lessons. 66

Boxers crop up as sex objects in the work of writers as diverse as Rosamund
Lehmann, Jane Bowles and Zelda Fitzgerald. Lehmann's heroine in The Weather
in the Streets (1936), recovering from a failed love affair, takes up with a 'very hand-
some' boxer, Ed, whose powerful hands suggest 'magnetism' rather than 'comrade-
ship' (and remind her of her ex). 67 In Jane Bowles's story, 'Going to Massachusetts',
Janet tries to woo the feisty Sis, but Sis, 'full of fighting spirit', likes 'men who are
champions. Like champion boxers' (especially when they're not in training).
'Whiskey,' she demanded. 'The world loves drunks, but it despises perverts.
Athletes and boxers drink when they're not in training. All the time.' 68 In Save Me
the Waltz (1936), Zelda Fitzgerald detailed 'the post-war extravagance which sent
. . . some sixty thousand . . . Americans wandering over the face of Europe'. When
her protagonists, David and Alabama, arrive at the Hotel George-v in Paris, the
bartender points out a Miss Dickie Axton, telling them, 'She'd been drinking in
this bar the night she shot her lover in the Gare de l'Est.' We don't learn much
more about Miss Axton, merely that 'her long legs struck forcefully forward as
if she pressed her toes watchfully on the accelerator of the universe' and that 'peo-
ple said she had slept with a Negro.' The bartender doesn't believe this. 'He didn't
see where Miss Axton would have found the time between white gentlemen -
pugilists, too, sometimes.' 69

In his Autobiography, William Carlos Williams recalled a 1924 visit with his
wife Floss to see the Hemingways' new baby. After supper, they go to a prize-fight.

In the row in front of us . . . was Ogden Nash, upon whose back, when
one of the fighters got bloodiest, Floss pounded as she screamed, "Kill
him! Kill him!" to my horror and astonishment. Home by taxi early.

Only a few pages earlier, Williams had distinguished men, 'the technical
morons of the tribe', from women who 'remain sound even in debauchery'. No
wonder the taxi came early. 70

Numerous films from the 1920s and '30s draw on the sexual lure of the
champion boxer for respectable girls. Most, however, rather moralistically
demonstrate how pugilistic sex drive, as well as sex appeal, could break careers
as well as hearts. Usually there is a clear distinction between good and bad

women. In Love in the Ring (1930), Max Schmeling stars as a boxer who falls
under the influence of a society woman and nearly loses an important fight. His
childhood sweetheart sets him right. 71 In The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933),
Steve Morgan (Max Baer) wins the heart of Belle Mercer (Myrna Loy), a hard-
working, sensible woman who is good for his career. She has 'a lot of mother' in
her, but, she adds, 'a lot of woman too'. Belle and Steve marry but his roving
eye and legions of fans soon lead to trouble. While Belle stays at home and lis-
tens to his fights on the radio, brassy blondes ogle the 'Adonis of the Ring' from
the front row. 'I wouldn't mind having him on a pedestal in my front yard', one
whispers. 'I bet you're a good dancer,' she says later when she manages to get
closer. Corrupted by such women, Steve seems destined to lose an important
fight - until Belle intervenes in his corner. He says he wants to quit ('I'm tired
of being a big shot. I just want you') but she forbids it. She's doing her 'job' as
his wife; he must finish his and become champion. 72

The prevalence of prize-fighters as sex symbols put pressure on men to act
the part, and many comedies of the period exploit the gap between the boxer
and the average guy. The bobbed heroine of the 1926 German film The Boxer's
Bride becomes so obsessed with boxers that her fiance decides to pose as a fighter
to win her affections. 73 A similar performance is undertaken by Alfred Butler,
the hero of Buster Keaton's most successful silent film, Battling Butler (1926). 74
(Martin Scorsese later claimed that Keaton was 'the only person who had the
right attitude about boxing in movies'. 75 ) Battling Butler is about a wealthy fop
whose father sends him to the mountains to 'rough it' and 'be a man'. Accompa-
nied by his valet, Martin, Alfred Butler has no intention of roughing it. His camp-
ing equipment consists of a brass bed, full silver service dinnerware, and three
changes of clothes a day. Masculinity, we realize early on, is an elaborate mas-
querade. Alfred falls in love with a local Mountain Girl (Sally O'Neil), but her
brother and father reject his proposal of marriage until Martin tells them that Al-
fred is actually 'Battling Butler', a champion boxer. Unfortunately the real Battling
hears of this fraud and decides to humiliate the impostor by having him fight
the Alabama Murderer'. Alfred is taken for training, and locks up his wife to
keep her from seeing his disgrace. After much nervous pacing in the changing
room, however, he finds that the real Battling Butler has already fought and won
the bout. The play on which the film was based ended here, but Keaton realized
that a movie audience would not put up with this: 'we couldn't promise 'em for
seven reels that I was goin' to fight in the ring and then not fight. So we staged a
fight in the dressing room with the guy ... and myself. And it worked out swell.' 76
While the early sparring sessions consisted of familiar choreographed slapstick,
in the final fight, Walter Kerr notes, Keaton 'suddenly seems no comedian at all':

Without warning, he can take no more. He turns on his assailant . . .
pounding him bloody against the walls of the small room, picking him
up off the floor to batter him senseless again. 77

Measuring Rudolph

Valentino's biceps.

If Keaton provided an unexpected Dempsey, an even less likely contender
was Hollywood idol and 'catnip to women', Rudolph Valentino (illus. 90). 78 In
1921 Valentino became friendly with Dempsey who was living in Hollywood,
promoting the career of his actress wife, Estelle Taylor, and acting in a few films
himself. Although Valentino was a keen sportsman and often sparred with
Dempsey and other Hollywood friends, his image, forged by films such as The
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and The Sheik (1921), was that of dancer
and lover, roles, it seemed, that were neither properly manly nor properly Amer-
ican. 'While we try to assure ourselves in this country', wrote Vera Caspary in
1926, 'that dancing is as masculine as boxing and the dancer the physical peer
of the fighter, we don't honestly believe it.' 79

'Many a "Powder
Puff'", advertise-
ment for training
bags, Everlast Boxing
Record, 1926.

c- p-ouibitititB nf

JJ7S fk-«r rJ

Valentino's later films are often more concerned with exploring and
exploiting his star persona than in creating parts for him to act. For example,
in Cobra (1925) he played an Italian count who had gone to America to escape
women-trouble, but found himself accused of being an 'indoor sheik'.
Dempsey helped him prepare for the knockdown punch with which he deci-
sively answered the charge. The scene was to prove tragically prescient. The
following year Valentino was deeply offended when a Chicago Tribune journal-
ist dubbed him a 'pink powder puff' and claimed he represented a threat to
'Homo Americanus'. 'Hollywood', the editorial stated, 'is a national school of
masculinity. Rudy, the beautiful gardener's boy, is the prototype of the Amer-
ican male. Hell's bells. Oh, sugar.' Valentino responded with an open letter in
a rival paper, challenging the journalist 'to meet me in the boxing . . . arena to
prove in typical American fashion . . . which of us is more a man. I do not know
how big you are but this challenge stands if you are as big as Jack Dempsey.' 80
The journalist never responded, but Valentino would not let the matter drop.
With Dempsey 's help, he staged a 'fight' with the sportswriter on the roof of a
New York hotel. Valentino's opponent duly went down and the Evening] ournal
ran a headline, 'powder puff? whami' The following month, Valentino was
rushed to hospital with acute appendicitis and perforated gastric ulcers, the
result, some claim, of all the boxing. Waking after surgery, his first words were

reputedly, 'Did I behave like a pink pow-
der puff or like a man?' After two weeks
Valentino died, at the age of 31. Later that
year, the annual Everlast Record Book pub-
lished an advertisement for training bags
with the text, 'Many a "Powder Puff"
boxer developed a "kick like a mule's" that
changed him to a "knockout artist"' (illus.
91). According to John Dos Passos,
Valentino's tragedy resulted from trying
'to make good in he-man, two-fisted,
bronco-busting, poker-playing, stock-jug-
gling America'. After the actor's death, he
noted, 'the champion himself [Dempsey]
allowed himself to be quoted that the boy
was fond of boxing and a great admirer of
the champion.' 81

The gap between movie star and
pugilist was not, in fact, so big. While
Valentino struggled to present himself a
properly masculine American boxer - 'the
Dempsey of the Nile', as Dorothy Parker
quipped - the Manassa Mauler was told
to get a Hollywood nose job. 82 After all, as

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223

'Go easy this round,
Basher; The Hair
Cream Company
is takin' 'is pitcher',
cartoon in Punch,
October 1935.

John R. Turnis noted in 1929, both sportsmen and actors were primarily sales-
men in a rapidly expanding entertainment commodity market (illus. 92).

The modern pugilist is last of all a fighter. A lecturer, and endorser of
belts, underwear, shaving cream and storage batteries he must be.
An apt speaker on the radio, a handy man with his pen when con-
tracts are being flourished, knowing in the art of publicity - these are
the gifts which must be cultivated by the pugilist of today. As he will
need to contest on average but one bout a year, his ability is of far less
importance. 83

224

AMERICA! THE FUTURE! : BOXING AND AMERICANISM

In Germany in 1916, the painter George Grosz was certain that America repre-
sented 'the future'. 84 It was not, however, the country itself that excited him so
much as 'Americanism', which he later defined as 'a much used and much dis-
cussed word for an advancement in technical civilization that was permeating
the world under American leadership.' 85 By the time of the First World War,
'American' had become almost synonymous for 'urban' and 'modern' through-
out Europe. Wanda M. Corn describes how early twentieth-century European
travellers to the United States, while dismissing its high culture as 'a pale imita-
tion of their own . . . were fascinated by vaudeville, jazz, popular dances, comic
books, movies, boxing, football and baseball, forms for which Europeans had
few equivalents . . . they found them exotic and described them in great detail,
often as if they were tribal rituals practiced by a strange barbarian race'. 86

If 'American' translated into 'the urban', and 'the modern', 'boxing' increas-
ingly featured as a synecdoche for all of these. This would have seemed absurd
in, for example, the mid-nineteenth century, when prize-fighting was viewed as
a lingering anachronism. But in the early twentieth century, boxers are fre-
quently found in lists, assemblages, collages and films that claimed to repre-
93 sent cities, Americanism or modernity. Apollinaire's summing up of the urban

Guillaume modernity of Montparnasse in a series of twelve calligrammes included 'un ter-

po inaire ribleboxeur' (illus. 93); William Ruttman's film, Berlin- The Symphony of a Great

Un terrible boxeur v yj " _ ' / t / J

from Montparnasse City (1927) cut between scenes of nightclub dancing and boxing matches as al-

(1914)- ternative forms of evening entertainment; murals such as Anatol Shulkin's

American Life (1934) and Thomas Hart

T Benton's City Activities (1930) included

boxing matches in their encapsulations of
O am 'the city' or 'America'. 87 Shulkin places a

JX_ ^j clinch between a black and a white fighter

at the centre of a mural of crowded figures

«v

' |J/| V*\& an d scenes, including gangsters, strikers,

acrobats, the trombone section of a jazz

.- « band, a roller-coaster and collapsing sky-

"^%Arfw¥ """ scrapers (illus. 94). Benton's mural focuses

*** on the exaggerated, grotesque body in the

3? city, and juxtaposes images of solitude in

J* crowds - on the subway, watching dancers

£« f *^ I + - with images of connection - kissing on

j,. * *^? %• ^ <L a park bench and fighting in the spotlight

,Jr " *4^ ff%M» of the boxing ring. 'How easy it is to slip /

VC* ^U into the old mode, how hard to / cling

^f\Jrl gkA firmly to the advance,' declared William

J ^ V|| #' Carlos Williams in Spring and All (1923).

*^ * The advance could come in many forms,

225

but it must find itself 'freed from the handcuffs of "art"'. 'That is why', Williams
maintained, 'boxing matches and / Chinese poems are the same'. 88

America and Americanism were particularly on the minds of Germans in
the Weimar republic (1919-32). While economists sought to emulate the suc-
cesses of Henry Ford's production methods, the avant-garde embraced jazz,
movies and sport, everything that had been denied them during the war years. 89
But if Americans indulged in the trivialities of popular culture as a way of shrug-
ging off serious matters, Germans took it all very seriously. To champion Amer-
ican movies and sports stars was a way for many to assert their allegiance to
modernity and to reject the nostalgic mode of much traditional German culture,
which seemed mired in nature, nation and sentimental idealism. 90 'The stadium
vanquishes the art museum,' declared Hannes Meyer in 1926, 'and bodily reality
replaces beautiful illusion. Sport unifies the individual with the masses.' 91 The
following year Herbert Jhering argued that 'the penetration of the English-
American jargon of the sports dialect' would do a 'proper service to the German
language', and through the language, the German people. 'High German, intel-
lectualized and burdened with culture, has gained in imagery and activity from
the speech of engineering and the inroads of sports. A different kind of person,
a different way of expressing himself.' 92 In modern boxing's promise of 'a differ-
ent kind of person' lay the reason why both the Left and the Right, both Brecht
and Hitler, admired the sport. 93

Boxing was also the favourite sport of Der Querschnitt, a journal founded by
art dealer Alfred Flechtheim and edited by Hermann von Wedderkop. 'We con-
sider it our duty', a 1921 editorial declared, 'to promote boxing in German artis-
tic circles as has long been the case elsewhere. In Paris Braque, Derain, Dufy,
Matisse, Picasso, and Rodin are all enthusiastic boxing fans.' 94 In 1926, Flechtheim
noted contentedly that, 'the Sportpalast doesn't recruit its public from beer-
deliverymen and drivers alone; - all of Berlin's fine society is there, princes and
princesses, painters and sculptors, literati . . . and all the actors who aren't work-
ing this evening.' 95 Flechtheim held regular soirees where members of the intelli-
gentsia, including Heinrich Mann, Alfred Doblin, George Grosz, Rudolf Grossman,
Willi Baumeister and Josef von Sternberg, could mingle with boxers such as Hans
Breitenstrater, Paul Samson-Korner and Max Schmeling. These meetings were

Anatol Shulkin,

American Life, 1934.

226

Willi Baumeister,
from Sport und
Maschine series,
Querschnitt, 1929.

Willi Batimdtier

often productive. Baumeister's paintings of 'impersonal' athletes were frequently
reproduced in Querschnitt (illus. 95), while Grossman's series of lithographs, 'The
Boxer', was distributed together with Breitenstrater's autobiography. 96 Schmeling
posed for numerous paintings and sculptures, including Rudolf Belling's bronze,
which took pride of place at the Sport in Culture Exhibition in Berlin in May 1930.
Ernst Krenek wrote an opera about him, Heavyweight: The Nation's Honour. 97
George Grosz painted Schmeling's portrait, and the two men exchanged thoughts
on their respective professions. Grosz concluded that 'the painter and the boxer
have at least one characteristic in common: both have to see through someone
who at first glance is a complete stranger to them. What sort of man is that, what

227

does his life look like, what kind of character does he have. I have to provide a
picture, you must anticipate a mode of fighting.' 98

Max Schmeling had taken up boxing after seeing the film of Dempsey's fight
against Carpentier ('I saw it practically every evening for a week', he recalled). He
turned professional in 1924 and in 1928 became European light heavyweight
champion after knocking out Mussolini's favourite, Michele Bonaglia, in what
was heralded as 'a triumph of the democratic principle over fascist Italy', and in
1930, the first modern non-American world champion, after fighting Jack
Sharkey for Gene Tunney's vacant crown. Schmeling quickly realized that if he
was going to get fights in the States, he needed an American manager and signed
on with Joe Jacobs, a Hungarian Jew from New York. Their relationship was to
cause Schmeling problems when Hitler came to power. He was none the less
summoned to the Chancellory on several occasions and when he got married in
1933, Hitler sent him a Japanese maple tree as a wedding present."

By the late twenties, what Schmeling termed 'boxing fever' was widespread
and his gym became a fashionable place for film people like Carola Neher and
Leni Riefenstahl to exercise. Marlene Dietrich, it was reported, preferred to use her
punching ball at home. 100 But of all those infected with a passion for the United
States, and with prize-fighting, the most persistent was undoubtedly Bertolt
Brecht. In 1920 he complained in his diary, 'how boring Germany is! It's a good
average country, its pale colours and surfaces are beautiful, but what inhabitants!'
'What's left?', he asked. America!' This sentiment was given a more melodramatic
spin in a poem of the same year, 'Germany, You Blond Pale Creature':

Oh! carrion land, misery hole!

Shame strangles the remembrance of you

And in the young men whom

You have not ruined

America awakens. 101

According to Grosz, even Brecht 's suits were American, 'with padded shoulders
and wedge-shaped trousers, a style no longer worn in America (but in Germany
it made you look American).' 102

A preoccupation with American city life informs much of Brecht 's mid-i920s
writing, and boxing was both a tantalizing part of that life, one of the 'great myth-
ical diversions of the giant cities on the other side of the herring pond', and a
symbol of its decadent, dynamic, jungle-like struggles. 103 Man Equals Man (1925)
was the first of his Berlin plays to be infused with both the ethos of sports and
what was known as the 'Neue Sachlichkeit or New Matter-of-Factness. The term
has been applied to a diverse group of writers and artists who wanted to record
the modern Germany in a detached and direct way (illus. 96). For Brecht, sports-
men epitomized the matter-of-fact, and no one more so than Jack Dempsey. As
someone who eschewed science for knockout punches, Dempsey ('Tiger Jack,
the Manassa Mauler') was Brecht's archetypal fighter, and indeed archetypal

228

Conrad Felixmuller,

The Booth Boxer,

1921.

American. The 'further boxing distances itself from the k.o.,' Brecht wrote, 'the
less it has anything to do with real sport. A fighter who cannot beat his oppo-
nent into the ground hasn't, of course, really beaten him at all.' 104 Man Equals
Man tells the story of a porter, Galy Gay, who is persuaded to take the place of
Jeraiah Jip, a soldier and 'human fighting-machine'. Brecht used the phrase
'human fighting-machine' on several occasions, and in his poem, 'Tablet to the
Memory of 12 World Champions', noted that it originated in connection with
Billy Papke, middleweight champion from 1908 to 1913. los The play was accom-
panied by an interlude, 'The Elephant Calf which was to be performed in the the-
atre foyer during the intermission and which ends with Gay offering to fight one
of the soldiers 'straight away for eight rounds with the four-ounce gloves'. The
final stage direction is All off to the fight'. As Franco Ruffini notes, this could be
read as a description of where the play itself is headed. 106

The 'objective' boxing match also provided a model for In the Jungle of
Cities, which Brecht worked on between 1921 and 1924, when he moved to

229

Berlin. Further boxing and American allusions were introduced before the
play was published in 1927. Set in a mythical 1912 Chicago, strongly
influenced by Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, the play presents a battle between
Shlink, a rich merchant, and George Garga, a poor library employee (Brecht's
note describes him as 'like A. Rimbaud in appearance. He is essentially a
German translation into American from the French'.) Garga permits him-
self to have opinions on the books he deals with; Schlink wants to buy that
right; Garga refuses. Chicago is the 'ring' in which the fight takes place, and
when, in scene 9, Garga thinks he has won 'a technical knockout', he con-
cludes that 'Chicago has thrown in the towel' for Shlink. But there are still
two more rounds to go. In scene ten, Garga dies; in scene eleven, Shlink
heads off to take on New York. 107 In 1924 Brecht began writing about a myth-
ical American Sodom and Gomorrah which he called Mahagonny. He started
with songs about whisky, poker and Jack Dempsey, and eventually wrote a
full-length opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930), which in-
cludes a boxing scene in which Trinity Moses and Joe box 'in time to the
music'. 108 In 1927 the preparatory Mahagonny-Songspiel was staged in a box-
ing ring in front of projections by Caspar Neher at the Baden-Baden music
festival.

During this time Brecht became a good friend of the middleweight boxer
Paul Samson-Korner and wrote several works about him. 109 Samson-Korner
was famous for his 'no-nonsense and effective' boxing technique. Schmeling
praised it as an American style', reliant on 'concentration, mercilessness and
toughness'. 110 More importantly, for Brecht, Samson-Korner was 'un-Ger-
man'. If Germans could learn to box with unfussy efficiency like Americans,
perhaps, as Samson-Korner himself suggested, they could become more like
Americans in other ways. Individual physical productivity might spark na-
tional economic productivity. 111

By the mid-i920s the cabaret revue had become the most popular form
of entertainment in Berlin. Consisting of a large variety of fast-paced acts
(including songs, dances and comedy), revues were thought to express the
random juxtapositions and speed of modernity, its 'multiple interweaving
of surfaces'. 112 Once again boxing was frequently included. Brecht's list of
topics for a planned revue on Americanism in 1926 read: 'Record Girl, Smiling,
Advertising, Boxing match, Revue, Tarzan, Sisday races, Slow Motion film,
Business, radio.' 113 In 1922, the epitome of Americanism himself, Jack
Dempsey, visited a Berlin revue where what the New York Times dubbed
'pugilettes' fought 'in decollete fancy tights' (illus. 59). 114 Damon Runyon,
who was also there, described one bout between 'a pretty sixteen-year-old
girl and her older opponent.' He was amazed at 'the boxing skill and punching
power displayed.'

The young girl was outclassed for the first five rounds and was bleed-
ing from the nose and mouth. The Americans thought it was a shame

230

that the bout was continued, when Jack Kearns sent Louie Meyer, one
of our group here who speaks German, to the young girl's corner and
told her to try a left hand body punch.

When the last round started the young girl staggered into her cor-
ner and let fly, according to Kearns's instructions. She knocked her
opponent cold.

Dempsey thought the rounds were too long for girls, that their
bodies were insufficiently protected and really disliked the entire
business. 115

Altogether the idol of Weimar Berlin found its excesses a little shocking. 'The
people were friendly and gave me a fine reception, but as for the vice there, I
wouldn't have believed there was anything like it in the world.' 116

Those pursuing Americanism in Berlin always felt themselves a step be-
hind what was going on in Paris, and there were other important differences
between the two cities. Berliners looked to America to save them from economic
and spiritual crisis, but, as Gramsci noted, Parisians treated Americanism
merely as 'a form of make-up, a superficial foreign fashion'. 117 Indeed, for many
Americans, 'cosmopolitan Paris was what America ought to be.' 118

Boxing had been introduced to French culture in the early nineteenth cen-
tury through an Anglophile sporting society (that included Gericault), and until
the late nineteenth century, it was always advertised as la boxe anglaise to distin-
guish it from the French version (also known as la savate). In George Du Maurier's
1894 novel, Trilby, a group of young English artists devote part of each day to
boxing in their Paris studio. Particularly adept at the sport is a large Yorkshire-
man called Taffy who has a 'mighty forearm' with muscles 'strong as iron bands'
and biceps that 'equalled Mr Sandow's', and who only missed the charge at Bal-
aklava because he had sprained his ankle playing leap-frog in the trenches. Taffy
constitutes a kind of benchmark of traditional Anglo-Saxon masculinity against
which the novel's other men are measured. A visitor from Oxford, for example,
initially seems impressive because he has longer whiskers than Taffy, but then
we learn that 'the mere sight of a boxing glove made him feel sick'. Taffy's biceps
are no mere ornaments. Du Maurier builds them up for the specific purpose of
slapping the evil Jewish interloper Svengali and swinging him by his nose. After-
wards, 'he had, for hours, the feel of that long, thick, shapely Hebrew nose being
kneaded between his gloved fingers'. In bohemian Paris, where sexual and racial
confusion reign, Taffy is the epitome of blue-eyed Englishness. 119

Boxing is also an English sport for Marcel Proust, for whom one of the
meanings of Englishness was sex. Boxers are sexual predators, but more often
sexual objects, offering aristocrats what Claude Menieur describes as the charm
of 'amours declasses'. 120 In In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, the Marquis
de Saint-Loup encounters some young girls by the beach whom he takes 'for
the mistresses of racing cyclists or prize-fighters'; in Sodom and Gomorrah, the
Baron de Charlus admires a man whose face expresses 'a delicacy which touches

231

our hearts, a grace, a natural gentleness such as men do not possess' but is 'dis-
mayed to learn that this young man runs after boxers'. In The Captive, we learn
that the Baron 'confused his ruling passion with friendship, which does not
resemble it in the least, and the athletes of Praxiteles with obliging boxers'. 121

In the early years of the twentieth century, the United States took over from
England as the centre of international boxing. In 1907, French dandies still
'strove to turn themselves into Englishmen', but by 1909, due to 'the advent of
the Yankee boxers', 'everyone' was American. Paris, 'to make use of a cliche,
went berserk', observed amateur pugilist and proto-Dadaist Arthur Cravan. 122
'We had heard a good deal of American boxers, long before we had even set eyes
on one,' recalled Georges Carpentier, 'The reverence in which we held them was
next to sacrilegious, for they appeared as gods on the fistic firmament.' By 1912,
the gods were walking the streets of Paris, and 'the American invasion' was 'in
full swing'. 'Boxing tournaments were attracting bigger and bigger audiences,'
Carpentier wrote, 'and even the most famous American boxing champions did
not hesitate to pack their trunks and set off for Paris'. 123 (Later, Carpentier was
to characterize his own new 'French style of boxing' as 'English science blended
with American ruggedness.' 124 ) The First World War brought more Americans
to Europe, and in its aftermath, 'the old continent began to resound with the
mis-pronounced names of American boxers'. 125

An interest in boxing extended into many unlikely quarters. Colette wrote
fight reports for Le Matin, Jean Cocteau managed middleweight Al Brown and
rhapsodized about his 'active poetry' and its 'mysterious syntax', while artists
as diverse as Picasso, Man Ray, Miro, Masson, Bonnard and Braque attended
fights and sparred in their studios. 126 In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Humbert
Humbert recalls his Parisian marriage to Valeria: 'We had quite a few cozy
evenings together, she deep in her Paris-Soir, I working at a rickety table. We
went to movies, bicycle races and boxing matches.' 127

For some Parisians, the appeal of boxing lay in its association with primi-
tivism and black culture. By the outbreak of war in 1914, what some called 'ne-
grophilia', and Apollinaire dubbed 'melanophilia', was well established; after
1920, it blossomed into 'melanomania'. 128 The black aesthetic was encapsulated
in two figures, the male boxer and the female dancer, and one or other tended
to be evoked in most discussions of African or black American art. Sometimes
the two figures became interchangeable. Josephine Baker opened at the Revue
Negre in 1925 and immediately captivated the city. One critic praised the revue
as 'rousing the tired public ... to thrills and madness as otherwise only a box-
ing match can do', while Paul Colin, whose lithographs of Baker were published
in 1927 as Le tumulte noir, described his first impressions of her as 'part rubber
woman, part female tarzan' and 'part boxing kangaroo'. In 1931 Baker was filmed
singing her hit/a/ deux amours, mon Pays et Paris as she crouched in the corner
of a boxing ring. 129

Black boxers also played a part in evocations of modernist primitivism.
When, for example, Apollinaire lectured on African art at Paul Guillaume's

232

gallery, Max Jacob described the event as the art dealer's 'Boxing School'. 130
While pre-war fighters such as Sam McVea, Joe Jeanette and, of course, Jack
Johnson were much admired, the 'male Josephine Baker' was 'Panama' Al Brown
(illus. 122). 131 Brown tried to establish a career as a bantamweight in Harlem in
the early 1920s but finding few lucrative matches in the strictly segregated post-
Jack-Johnson era, he moved to Paris in 1926. There he established himself as a
successful fighter and man about town (illus. 60). Sponsored by Jean Cocteau
(who briefly acted as his manager) he was a glamorous figure, often seen driv-
ing fast cars and drinking champagne in the city's most fashionable cafes.
Brown's most controversial contest took place in 1931, when he agreed to par-
ticipate in a gala with French champion Roger Simende in order to raise funds
for the Dakar-Djibouti mission, an expedition to Farica to document African
civilization and collect artefacts for Paris 's newly remodelled museum of ethnog-
raphy and anthropology. Held in the Cirque d'Hiver before an audience which
included Cocteau, Georges Bataille, Raymond Roussel and Michel Leiris, the
boxing exhibition was a great success, raising over 100,000 francs. The mission
finally resulted 'in the collection of approximately 3,500 objects at Trocadero,
the annotation and transcription of 30 African dialects, and the assembly of
6,000 photographs, 1,600 metres of film, and scores of documents for the re-
modelled museum.' 132 The new museum (in 1937 it became the Musee de
l'Homme) was intended to move anthropology away from an emphasis on race
and biology and toward the comparative study of different cultures. For some,
the boxing gala indicates the incomplete nature of this shift. Many who attended
viewed the fight not simply as a fund-raiser but as a primitive ritual itself
worthy of anthropological study. 'The black man who fought that night', argues
Jean Jamin 'prefigured the "objets negres" that, two years later, the exhibition
would bring back from the land of his ancestors'. 133

Many black American boxers followed Brown across the Atlantic in search
of work. The experience of one is the subject of Gwendolyn Bennett's short story
'Wedding Day', published in the Harlem journal Fire! in 1926. The story was
loosely based on the life of Georgia-born Eugene Bullard, who travelled around
the world working as a boxer before settling in Paris in 1913 at the age of nine-
teen. Along with Bob Scanlon, Bullard joined the French Foreign Legion when
war broke out. After the Armistice he married Marcelle de Straumann, the
daughter of a French countess. The wedding guests included 'outstanding
people in all walks of life and colours and religions'. 'I felt as if I were back
in the Foreign Legion,' said Bullard, 'where there is no prejudice and everybody
appreciates everybody else just for himself as a human being'. 134 The boxer in
Bennett's story does not fall in love with a French countess but with a white
American prostitute. On the day they are due to marry, she sends him a letter
saying that she '"just couldn't go through with it", white women just don't marry
colored men.' 135 Bennett's substitution of an American for a Frenchwoman
seems intended to show up the difference in the treatment of blacks in the two
countries. That 'the separate, individual black-skinned man' received better

233

treatment in France than anywhere else in Europe or America was widely held
as axiomatic, as Claude McKay reported to the Soviet Congress in 1922.

The black intelligensia of America looks upon France as the most cul-
tured nation in the world; the single great country where all citizens
enjoy equal rights before the law, without respect to race or skin color.

McKay's scepticism about such beliefs becomes clear in the following sentence
where he notes that this individual 'good treatment' is 'valued so highly by
Negroes that they are beginning to forget about the vile exploitation of Africans
by the French'. For McKay, the limits of French justice were revealed by what
he called 'the scandalous story of Siki and Carpentier'. 136

Born in 1897 in the port of St Louis, Senegal (then called French West
Africa), Baye Phal moved to France as a teenager. There he began to fight
professionally as Battling Siki, and in 1914, he enlisted in the French army,
where he earned both the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille Militaire. 137
When Siki fought Georges Carpentier for the light heavyweight champi-
onship on 24 September 1922 - the first million franc gate - he was the first
black fighter to contest a championship for seven years. 138 After the first
round, a relaxed Carpentier told his manager, 'I'll get him when I want to',
but the script was disrupted by 'tough slowthinker' Siki and 'his mauling
style'; in the sixth round, after a series of 'fearful, fast, hammering blows',
Siki knocked the Frenchman out. 139 At this point, as Lincoln Steffens re-
ported in the New York Evening Journal, sport ended, and 'as usual, business
butted in'. 14 ° Claiming that Siki had tripped Carpentier, the referee dis-
qualified him, but the crowd was furious, and so the judges, fearing a riot,
reversed the decision. The 'applause of the crowd', recalled Bob Scanlon,
'was like a dozen machine-guns rattling'. 141 A few days later, Carpentier's
manager appealed unsuccessfully. The French and American press revived
the racism of the Johnson era with gusto. Newspapers dubbed Siki 'Champi-
onzee' and Siki's manager told the New York Times that 'Siki has something
in him which is not human. A long time ago I used to think that if one could
find an intelligent Gorilla and teach him to box, one would have the world's
champion. Well, that's what I found in Siki.' 142 'This kind of thing hurts me,'
the boxer responded, 'I was never anywhere but a big city in all my life. I've
never even seen a jungle.' After his victory, Siki became a Parisian celebrity,
walking the streets dressed in spats, a frock coat and a monocle, with a lion
on a leash, and drinking absinthe in the best cafes. Fashionable women had
his silhouette painted on their arms. But Siki's moment of glory was short.
His boxing career floundered, and in 1925, he was found shot dead on the
street in Hell's Kitchen, New York; seemingly because of a bad debt. Until
the body was identified, the police reported another 'nigger corpse'. 143

'The Carpentier-Siki fight was a story, a good play,' wrote Lincoln Steffens,
and for him, it was a story about Carpentier's defeat rather than Siki's victory.

234

'Man put to the test, and almost always failing' was, for Steffens, the constant
story of 'business, reform, and polities'. In particular, it reminded him of the
peace conferences. In 1922, the terms of the 1919 Versailles Treaty, 'a treaty of
peace that was full of war', were still being discussed in conferences in Genoa,
The Hague and Lausanne. 144 For Claude McKay, the Siki-Carpentier fight told
a rather different political story. Among those present at ringside was Blaise Di-
agne, representing Senegal as the first black deputy in the French National As-
sembly. The previous year he had attended Paris 's second All-African Congress,
chaired by W.E.B. Du Bois. At the first Congress in 1919, Diagne (who co-chaired
the event with Du Bois) had spoken against the Pan Africanism of Du Bois
and Marcus Garvey, arguing that French Africans were treated equally to French
citizens of European origin. In 1921, he walked out of the Congress rejecting its
separatist agenda. But the events surrounding the Siki-Carpentier fight, were,
McKay noted gleefully, a 'slap' to the 'black conservative deputy'. 'It is incon-
ceivable', Diagne said after the fight, 'that Siki could be deprived of his victory
simply because he is black.' 'The white man refused to accept the idea that the
black man can be equal to him physically or spiritually.' 145

AMATEURS AND PROFESSIONALS

Throughout the 1920s Parisian boxing was supported by the presence of a large
white American expatriate community, and as David Trotter argues, they were
as much a community of Americanists as Americans, living an image' that was
already well-established. 146 Most famous of the expatriate fight-goers was un-
doubtedly Ernest Hemingway, who, it seemed sparred with everyone and any-
one, and even occasionally with professional fighters for ten francs a round. In
1922, one of his regular partners, Henry Strater, painted him in a grey sweat-
shirt and dubbed the work the 'boxer portrait'. 147 In 1929, another expatriate,
Morley Callaghan, knocked him down and the two men fell out for good. Ac-
cording to Callaghan, after the event, Hemingway sadly confessed, 'my writing
is nothing. My boxing is everything.' 148

Hemingway's habit of discussing the writers he would like to 'beat' to be-
come 'champ' has become notorious, and, as will become apparent in future
chapters, every writer who wants to acknowledge his influence, does so in sim-
ilar terms. 149 Those he wrote about in his 1949 letter to Charles Scribner (Tur-
genev, Maupassant, and Tolstoy, who he was still 'squaring up to') were dead,
but during his time in Paris, Hemingway was not averse to a real or rhetorical
punch up with the living, with Pound, Miro and indeed pretty much anyone
else willing to raise their fists in his presence. 150 Hemingway was obsessed with
the way that champions succeeded one another, and strongly believed that once
a great champ had lost his crown, there was no reclaiming it. When he was
young and promising, this provided a useful metaphor for literary succession.
The great writers of yesterday, he constantly maintained, like the great fighters,
must give way to the new. In 1924 he complained to Pound that the authors

235

Ford Madox Ford was selecting for transatlantic review were the literary equiva-
lents of Jim Jeffries, dragged out of retirement for one last fight. 'The thing to do
with Ford is to kill him ... I am fond of Ford. This ain't personal. It's literary.' 151

Hemingway's teachers, Gertrude Stein and Sherwood Anderson, were also
literary equivalents of Jeffries, ripe for the symbolic kill. They had done their
work and could be admired as former champions, as long, of course, as they ad-
mitted their day was over. If they continued to want to compete, some drastic
Oedipal action was needed. In 1926, before publishing The Torrents of Spring, a
ruthless Anderson satire, he wrote to his friend justifying the book (his 'attempt
to sock on the jaw'). If the letter opens with pugilistic brio, it soon becomes anx-
iously convoluted: 'You see I feel that if among ourselves we have to pull our
punches, if when a man like yourself who can write very great things writes
something that seems to me, (who have never written anything great but am
anyway a fellow craftsman) rotten, I ought to tell you so.' 152 Anderson's reply
continued the metaphor. 'Come out of it, man. I pack a little wallop myself. I've
been middleweight champion myself. You seem to forget that . . . Did you ever
hear of Kid McAllister - the nonpareil - that was me'. 153 Judy Jo Small and
Michael Reynolds argue that this exchange of letters (which did not stop there)
'played a crucial role in shaping Hemingway's "The Killers" where a doomed
heavyweight fighter named Ole Andreson resignedly faces the inevitable.' 154
Hemingway's break with Gertrude Stein came a little later, when in their mem-
oirs of the twenties, each accused the other of stealing ideas. Hemingway said
that Stein 'only gave real loyalty to people who were inferior to her'. Of course,
he added, 'I always loved her very much and . . . never counter-punched when
she left herself wide open.' 155

In 1937 Wyndham Lewis recalled meeting Hemingway at his first visit to Ezra
Pound's studio in Paris, 'a great change from the dark Kensington quarters':

Having found his abode, I rang the bell. A great deal of noise was to be
heard but no one answered: therefore I pushed open the door, which
opened practically into the studio. A spendidly built young man,
stripped to the waist, and with a torso of dazzling white, was standing
not far from me. He was tall, handsome, and serene, and was repelling
with his boxing gloves a hectic assault of Ezra's. After a final swing at the
dazzling solar plexus Pound fell back upon his settee. The young man
was Hemingway. 156

To Lewis, Hemingway is a statue - 'dazzling white' and 'serene', and lacking
in mobility. This is fairly inoffensive, but three years earlier, Lewis had depicted
Hemingway as the quintessential 'dumb ox', an 'enthusiastic amateur of rude,
crude, naked force in men and women'. 157 To Hemingway, such an attack could
only be read (as indeed it was intended) as an attempt at a knockout blow, and,
30 years later, he responded in suitably pugilistic style with a rival account of the
scene in Pound's studio. Chapter Twelve of A Moveable Feast is about Ezra

236

Pound, 'always a good friend'. Two of its four-and-a-half-pages, however, are de-
voted to an attack on Lewis. Hemingway begins with an account of teaching
Pound to box and how he 'tried to make him look as good as possible'. Then
Lewis enters and the insults begin to fly. First of all, Lewis's appearance gets a
thorough battering: he looks 'like a character in the quarter', wears 'the uni-
form of the pre-war artist', and has a face like a frog; 'not a bullfrog' even, but
'just any frog'. A heavier punch follows - Lewis was 'hoping to see Ezra hurt' -
and then Hemingway finishes off the assault by highlighting his metaphor. 'I
watched Lewis carefully without seeming to look at him, as you do when you
are boxing'. The sentence then concludes with its knockout blow, 'and I do not
think I had ever seen a nastier-looking man'. 158

It was Pound, however, who was the primary target of Lewis's satire in 1937.
By boxing a man who looks like a statue in his own studio, Pound, Lewis suggests,
was trying to be both aesthete and man of action, that is, 'violently American'.
Lewis goes on:

The 'tough guy' that has made Hemingway famous, and the 'strenuous-
ness' of him of the Big Stick, are modes of the American ethos with
which Pound is perfectly in tune ... He exercises a sort of tribal attrac-
tion for his fellow-countrymen, over and above the effect of the glamour
of the poetic genius.

Both 'the glamour of poetic genius' and the masculine posturing of boxing are
merely forms of performance, and that is why, Lewis concludes, Pound is 'in
his element' when performing. 159 In 'Patria Mia' (1913), Pound had been equally
scathing of the '"school of virility"' which 'seems to imagine that man is differ-
entiated from the lower animals by possession of the phallus' and whose work
'reads like a Sandow booklet', and the Swinburnean 'gorgeous school', whose
aim is 'to name as many constellations and to encumber them with as many
polysyllabic adjectives as possible'. 160 Lewis, of course, wants to associate Pound
with both these cliched schools - swooning Kensington aestheticism, an d vulgar
American-in-Paris virility - and to imply that he's not much good at either.

Lewis had first associated Americanism with pugilistic ambition in his 1917
short story, A Soldier of Humour', collected in The Wild Body (1927). There the
narrator, Ker-Orr, 'a large blond clown, ever so vaguely reminiscent (in person)
of William Blake, and some great American boxer whose name I forget', con-
fronts a Frenchman who is trying to pass as an American in a railway dining car.

I fully expected to be forced to fight my way out of the salle a manger,
and was wondering whether his pugilistic methods would be those of
Chicago or Toulouse . . . But I had laid him out quite flat. My answer to
his final apostrophe was a blow below the belt: I was following it up by
vanishing from the ring altogether . . . l61

237

The manifestations of boxing metaphors in this passage are symptomatic. For
Ker-Orr - whose presence as protagonist and narrator links the stories gath-
ered in The Wild Body - is, in the relentless efficiency of his wildness, the closest
Lewis came to describing himself as a thoroughly modern pugilist-aesthete.
What is at issue in these stories is the protagonist-narrator's professional iden-

tity.162 j n ftl as ii n g an( j Bomhardiering, Lewis's description of Pound's studi
comes at the end of a passage reflecting on amateurism and professionalism in
writing, and these issues feed into the later scene. In moving from London to
Paris, Lewis suggested, Pound was not only trying to be American and mascu-
line like Hemingway, he was also emulating Hemingway's air of professional-
ism. 163 But such issues had preoccupied Pound for many years. In 'A Retrospect'
(1918), he rejected the opposition of amateur and professional in favour of one
between amateur and expert. 'It is certain that the present chaos will endure,'
he wrote, 'until the Art of poetry has been punched down the amateur gullet,
until there is a general understanding that poetry is an art and not a pastime;
such a knowledge of technique; of technique of surface and technique of con-
tent, that the amateurs will cease to try to drown out the masters.' 164

'Punching' also featured in a 1912 letter that Pound wrote to Harriet Mon-
roe, editor of Poetry, urging her to persevere with the magazine: 'we're in such
a beautiful position to save the public's soul by punching its face that it seems
a crime not to do so'. 165 What distinguished the expert (poet or boxer) from the
amateur was not simply a willingness to throw punches, but the dedicated study
of technique. Pound had developed this point in 'On Technique' (1911). The
essay begins by bemoaning the absence of an interest in technique among mod-
ern poets and contrasts this with the keen technical knowledge and interest dis-
played by a boxing audience. Pound imagines 'a contest between Jack Johnson
and the surviving "White Hope"', a contest with a great deal of money staked on
it. The sporting crowd, Pound notes, would not want impressionistic 'character
studies', but 'details' using precise technical terms such as left-lead' and
'counter'. 166 In later years, Pound was less inclined to suggest that poetry should
be 'punched' in the face or down the gullet of the public, but he did retain a
sufficient interest in boxers to be able to refer to them freely in a variety of con-
texts. Jack Dempsey is mentioned a couple of times: his comments on reading
are included in a discussion of 'tastes' in abc of Reading, and a g.i. song which
rhymes 'Dempsey 's mitts' with 'great big tits' is alluded to in The Pisan Can-
tos. 161 In 1941, Pound wrote to a colleague about the phrase 'the water-bug's mit-
tens', which he was eventually to use in a late Canto. 'If I were 30 years younger,'
he said, 'I would call 'em his boxing gloves.' 168

In 1911, the same year that Pound was pondering technique, his protege-to-
be, T. S. Eliot, returned to Harvard after a year in Paris, bringing with him all
sorts of European affectations. He carried a cane, hung a Gauguin Crucifixion on
his wall, embraced the elan vital of Henri Bergson and began taking boxing les-
sons. Conrad Aiken recalled that these lessons took place 'at a toughish gymna-
sium in Boston's South End, where, under the tutelage of an ex-pugilist with some

238

such monicker as Steve O'Donnell, he learned the rudiments of boxing, but also,
as he put it, "how to swarm with passion up a rope" - his delight in this attain-
ment was manifest.' 169 Steve O'Donnell had fought Peter Jackson in the 1880s,
and performed exhibition bouts with James Corbett in 1890s, before taking on
the job as Harvard University's 'Physical Culture and Boxing Instructor'. 170 Aiken
plays down the institutional affiliation to imply that Eliot is dangerously slum-
ming, but for worthwhile aesthetic effects. Aiken recalled Eliot arriving late one
day for their regular post-boxing meal bearing 'a magnificent black eye, a shiner
that did Steve great credit; it was really iridescent'. 'You will see me any morning
in the park / Reading the comics and the sporting page,' remarks the 'self-pos-
sessed' speaker of the second section of Eliot's 1910 poem, 'Portrait of a Lady'. 171
That reading bore fruit in many ways. 172 Eliot thought of Sweeney, for example,
as a 'man who in younger days was perhaps a professional pugilist, mildly suc-
cessful; who then grew older and retired to keep a pub.' 173

After the war, such Ivy League dandyish pugilism came in for much mock-
ery, and not only from Pound and Lewis. In John Dos Passos's Nineteen Nineteen
(1932), Blake Wigglesworth (known as Ned) is a Harvard aesthete who burns
incense in front of his Buddha and finds everything except drinking boring;
'whenever politics or the war or anything like that came up he had a way of clos-
ing his eyes and throwing back his head and saying Blahblahblahblah.' The only
time he comes to life is when he tells the story of an evening out with Barney, 'a
boxing instructor, if he didn't have a weak heart he'd be welter-weight cham-
pion of New England'. Hearing of all this, Ned's roommate, the politicized Dick
Savage, 'felt like smashing him in the face'. 174 The most fervent attacks on Ivy
League sportsmen were, however, reserved, for those who did more than dabble
in athleticism. The most damning of these would be Scott Fitzgerald's portrait
in The Great Gatsby of Yale football star, Tom Buchanan, whose 'cruel body' and
dodgy politics result in tragedy. 175

Technique, and professionalism, as Lewis had noted, were also a central pre-
occupation of Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises (1926) begins with a description of
Robert Cohn's amateur boxing skills (developed at Princeton and now exercised
in the gymnasiums of Paris) and we soon learn to equate this with his dilettante
dabbling in literature. Cohn has published a novel with 'a fairly good publisher'
and Jake notes that 'it was not really such a bad novel as the critics later called it,
although it was a very poor novel'. Now he is stuck on his second novel. Cohn is
contrasted first with Jake himself, a journalist who is at his happiest after 'a good
morning's work', and then with Bill Gorton, who has 'made a lot of money on his
last book and was going to make a lot more'. Gorton arrives in Paris from New
York where he has seen 'a whole crop of great light heavyweights. Any one of
them was a good prospect to grow up, put on weight and trim Dempsey'. The
suggestion is that Gorton is himself a literary contender, although his experience
of crooked prize-fighting in Vienna reminds us that how impure the profession
of boxing (and perhaps the profession of writing) really is. Much 'cleaner', from
Jake's point of view, is bullfighting. Bullfighting is aligned to boxing -Jake describes

239

a bull having 'a left and a right just like a boxer' - but, at its best, it is free from
the corruption that has tainted the more modern sport. Pedro Romero, the only
completely admirable character is the novel, represents the true artist. His 'work'
(neither he nor Jake call it 'sport' or 'art' or 'craft') is characterized by its 'sincer-
ity' (he does not 'simulate') and its 'absolute purity of line'. 'It was not brilliant
bull-fighting', Jake says, 'it was only perfect bull-fighting.' But true art can only
exist in what Jake characterizes as the primitive culture of Spain; elsewhere, all
that fighters or writers can do is try to work 'hard' and 'clean'. 176

A debate between amateurism and professionalism - in sport and in art -
is enacted again in Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night (1934), the story of Dick
Diver, a young psychiatrist who abandons his professional codes of behaviour
when he marries a young and beautiful patient. 177 The book is full of fights;
fights for honour, and fights for nothing. Dick is contemptuous of a young Eng-
lishman who tells him 'a preposterous story about a boxing match with his best
friend, in which they loved and bruised each other for an hour, always with great
reserve.' 178 Suffering from what he only partly humorously diagnoses as 'non-
combatant's shell-shock', Dick sees pointless conflict everywhere. It is impossi-
ble even to cash a cheque without running into the 'heavyweight champion of
the world'. After failing to escape Europe and his fate, Dick finds himself in
Rome, drunk and in a 'mock fight' of 'padded, glancing blows' with a taxi driver
and then, unfortunately, a policeman. When he returns home, his colleagues
discuss his bruises, speculating on his 'debauch' and his alibi of 'boxing on the
trans-Atlantic trip. The American passengers box a lot on those transatlantic
ships.' 179 But the fight that the crossing of the ocean represents is no sport.
Dick's surname, Diver, as many have noted, evokes his deeper and deeper
plunges into despair. It might also evoke what he has done in leaving America
and marrying the wealthy Nicole. The marriage, he believes, has meant the end
of his professional life. In order to save her, he has thrown his own fight; in box-
ing jargon, he has taken the money and taken a dive. 180

PUGILISTIC AESTHETICS

In the early twentieth century, the language of boxing provided experimental
artists with metaphors for talking about a range of issues from forceful assertion
to formal control, from the status of the individual character to the stance of an
audience or reader. Boxing represented dialectic; the primitive; controlled and
released energy; the moving body; and the body-as-machine. Just as impor-
tantly, it was not feminine and not sentimental and not refined. Best of all, the
boxing match, increasingly epitomized by the knockout blow, was instantly de-
structive. In all these different ways, boxing was modern.

A good place to start is with Futurism, which, as Marinetti proclaimed, was
an 'aesthetic of violence and blood' - an aesthetic, as many have pointed out,
drawn from a mish-mash of Social Darwinian and Nietzschean ideas. This is
point three of the 'Initial Manifesto of Futurism' (1909):

240

Literature has hitherto glorified thoughtful immobility, ecstasy and
sleep; we shall extol aggressive movement, feverish insomnia, the dou-
ble quick step, the somersault, the box on the ear, the fisticuff. 181

In the years that followed, Marinetti and others presented 'the box on the ear'
in a wide variety of settings. The 1917 film Vita Futurista, for example, included
a scene of Marinetti and Ungari boxing before breakfast, while one of Marinetti
and Masnata's 1933 'radio syntheses', 'Drama of Distance', juxtaposed eleven
seconds of a variety of sounds including a military march, a tango, road noise
and a boxing match. 182 Futurism was the latest in a long line of movements
which evoked the language of boxing in an attempt to be modern and to over-
throw academicism; what was new was an emphasis on dynamism and a vision
of the body as a fusion of the organic and technological. In its celebration of the
efficient machine and rejection of the 'maternal ditch', futurism also embraced
Nietzsche's anti-feminism.

Before long, the pugnacious tone of Marinetti's statements infected the lan-
guage of Futurism's admirers throughout Europe, from the Russian Cubo-Futur-
ists who proposed a 'Slap in the Face of Public Taste', to D. H. Lawrence, who
welcomed the 'revolt against beastly sentiment', to Mussolini, who reputedly de-
scribed punching as 'an exquisitely fascist means of self-expression'. 183 Less por-
tentous, but significant at the time, was a 1914 London brouhaha in which T. E.
Hulme came to the defence of the sculptor, Jacob Epstein, against an attack by
the Nietzschean art critic, Anthony Ludovici. 'The most appropriate means of
dealing with [Ludovici]', Hulme wrote, 'would be a little personal violence.' 184
The letters pages of The New Age were soon filled with suggestions on how this
might be enacted. A defender of Ludovici suggested that he might employ 'a
pugilist of Jack Johnson's size' to present his case, then Hulme could take him
on. Wyndham Lewis then entered the fray, arguing that Johnson would prefer
to fight for Hulme and Epstein's 'secular gods'. 185

But there was more to the Futurist (and Vorticist) evocation of boxing than
simply the assertion of masculine aggression against convention and sentiment.
Much of their language was drawn from Nietzsche's pronouncements about the
importance of opposition for progress and the need for self-assertion through
action rather than contemplation, and his quasi-thermodynamic theories about
discharging energy. For Nietzsche and his diverse followers, art derived from 'a
compulsion and urge to get rid of the exuberance of inner tension through mus-
cular activity and movements of all kinds'. 18

Movement of all kinds attracted the Futurists. 'We have lost the ability to
understand the life of the motionless statue,' declared the Russian poet Vadim
Shersheevich in the foreword to his 1916 collection of poems, Automobile Gait,
'but the movement of cholera bacilli at the time of an epidemic is comprehen-
sible and fascinating to us.' 187 In 1928, the Italian painter Aligi Sassu, responding
to the call for 'dynamism and muscular reform' in painting, declared that 'the
dynamic body is a fantastic creation of the artistic spirit'. And if painting needed

241

dynamized musculature, where better to find it than sports? 188 Sassu's early
paintings feature the mechanized dynamism of cycle and motor races, and the
human equivalent in boxing matches. (Not much earlier, George Bellows, a
painter coming from a very different tradition, declared, 'I didn't paint
anatomy; I painted action.' 189 ) What 'dinamismo' entails in paintings such as
Sassu's Pugilatori (1929) is the breaking up of form into parts (not dissimilar to
cubist representations of the body), but then an attempt to suggest that those
parts move at such high speeds as to make their boundaries indistinguishable
(illus. 61). Total dynamism, a 1928 Italian manifesto suggested, would lead to
the 'annihilation' of the body itself. Since human bodies (unlike automobiles)
could not reach the speeds required for total dynamism, the form of the body
remains in (a suitably Nietzschean) tension with its movement. Futurist paint-
ings of boxers and cyclists recall Muybridge's photographic sequences.

Primitivist notions of ritualized fighting and ego-less selves are among the
topics explored in the work of the Austrian novelist, and a rather different
reader of Nietzsche, Robert Musil. The eponymous Man without Qualities,
who we later learn is called Ulrich, is first described gazing out of his window
with the air of 'a sick man who shrinks from every strong physical need'. Yet,
immediately afterwards Ulrich crosses the room and hits a punch bag 'with a
hard, sudden blow that seemed not exactly in keeping with moods of resigna-
tion or conditions of weakness'. Throughout the novel, Ulrich's actions suggest
various habits, manners or characteristics, but none serve to define him. A few
chapters later, Ulrich attempts to fight 'three louts' in the streets. 'He resisted
the idea that the three faces suddenly glaring at him out of the night with rage
and scorn were simply after his money, but chose to see them as a spontaneous
materialization of free-floating hostility.' In a cinematic confusion of knees,
skulls and 'fists growing larger all the time', he is knocked out. The next day
he is found by a woman who offers to take him somewhere for help. In the taxi,
he offers her 'a lively defense of his experience'. Aware that 'the doings of the
body . . . were really too much in fashion', the meditative Ulrich first proposes
that:

The fascination of such a fight . . . was the rare chance it offered in civil-
ian life to perform so many varied, vigorous, yet precisely coordinated
movements in response to barely perceptible signals at a speed that
made conscious thought impossible ... at the moment of action . . .
muscles and nerves leap and fence with the T; but this T - the whole
body, the soul, the will, the central and entire person as legally distin-
guished from all others - is swept along by his muscles and nerves like
Europa riding the Bull.

Ulrich moves from a notion of 'the fight' as one in which two men confront each
other to one in which the conscious self, the T, is pitted in a losing battle against
the instinctual body (a mere collection of nerves and muscles). He goes on:

242

Basically . . . this experience of almost total ecstasy or transcendence of
the conscious mind is akin to experiences now lost but known in the
past to the mystics of all religions, which makes it a kind of contempo-
rary substitute for an eternal human need. Even if it is not a very good
substitute it is better than nothing, and boxing or similar kinds of
sports that organize this principle into a rational system are therefore
a species of theology, although one cannot expect this to be generally
understood as yet. 19 °

The mystical transcendence of the body described here recalls the paintings of
Musil's near-contemporary, Egon Schiele. Schiele's 1913 portrait of a fighter pres-
ents his awkward contorted body in a manner that evokes religious or perhaps
erotic martyrdom (illus. 97). In the 1913 Vienna of Musil's novel, however, a Vi-
enna charged with 'vague atmospheric hostility', Ulrich soon moves on to other
versions of theology. 191

The interest of Futurist boxing images did not lie only in the permanence, or
otherwise, of the self, but in the self's relation to another. What are the boundaries
between one self and another? What happens when one body almost merges with
another? For Wyndham Lewis, Futurism, which entailed a 'dispersal' of energy,
could not answer this question; in its place, he proposed the idea of the Vortex,
which compressed and retained energy. In his satirical 1930s description of
Hemingway and Pound quoted above, Hemingway is a statue and the action
between the two men is slow and stagey. In 1914, in the first issue of the Vorticist
journal, Blast, Lewis describes boxing rather differently. This is 'The New Egos',
one of twelve 'Vortices and Notes': 'According to the most approved contemporary
methods in boxing, two men burrow into each other, and after an infinitude of
little intimate pommels, one collapses.' 192 Here Lewis contrasts the contemporary
method with the 'old style' of boxing, one in which 'two distinct, heroic figures
were confronted, and one ninepin tried to knock the other ninepin over', an image
which recalls his definition of the 'comic type' as 'a failure of a considerable energy,
an imitation and standardizing of the self, suggesting the existence of a uniform
humanity, - creating, that is, a little host as alike as ninepins; instead of one
synthetic and various ego'.' 193 The modern style of boxing - which involved the
protagonists 'burrowing into each other' - was not comic and 'static', but rather
grotesque, dynamic and symptomatic of a wider modern phenomenon. 'We all to-
day,' Lewis wrote, '(possibly with a coldness reminiscent of the insect world) are
in each other's vitals - overlap, intersect, and are Siamese to any extent.' A
'uniform humanity' of comic ninepins gives way to 'dehumanization' ('the chief
Diagnostic of the Modern World'): 'the isolated figure of most ancient Art is an
anachronism'. The body becomes instead something that exists in multiple and
fluid forms, 'overlapping, intersecting' in the perpetual dynamism of insect-like
dances, fights and sex. 194 Lewis's 1914 painting Combat No. 3, in which a pair of
insect-like antagonists is transformed through combat into a Vorticist machine,
might almost be an illustration for this passage (illus 98). 195

243

Wyndham Lewis,
Combat No. 3, 1914.

In 1927, Lewis returned to boxing imagery and 'the religion of merging' in his
meditations on the 'history of the ego', or rather 'the extinction of the "thinking
subject"', and the rise, in its place, of the modern 'romance of action'. In both
narratives, Lewis evokes Jack Dempsey. First Dempsey appears as one of the
beneficiaries, and victims, of Schopenhauer's 'aimless' Will. It is the 'nonsensical'
Will, says Lewis, that has produced 'Charlie Chaplin, the League of Nations, wire-
less, feminism, Rockefeller'.

It causes, daily, millions of women to drift in front of, and swarm inside,
gigantic clothes-shops in every great capital, buying silk-underclothing,
cloche-hats, perfumes, vanishing cream, vanity-bags and furs; it causes
the Prince of Wales to become one day a Druid, and the next a Boy-
Scout; it enables Dempsey to hit Firpo on the nose, or Gene Tunney to
strike Dempsey in the eye, and the sun to be eclipsed. 196

Egon Schiele,

The Fighter, 1913.

The endless and random nature of such events makes what Lewis elsewhere calls
the 'gospel of action' seem particularly ridiculous. Men of action, like Dempsey,
live only 'in the moment, in moods of undiluted sensationalism'. How can their
behaviour be applicable to any other field of human behaviour?

If you applied the conditions and standards required for the flowering

245

of a Jack Dempsey to a Beethoven, say, you would be doing what is done
in a more general and less defined sense on all hands at this moment,
as a thousand different activities mystically coalesce in response to the
religion of merging, or mesmeric engulfing. 197

While passages like this seem to warn against the coming of fascism and its body
culture, when Lewis talks of the threat of 'mystical mass-doctrines', his target is
rather mass democracy's 'religion of merging', and its attendant consumer and
entertainment culture; the world as a 'gigantic clothes-shop' in which the 'gentle-
manly Robot' Tunney arbitrarily succeeds Dempsey as the hero of the day. 198

THE BOXING MACHINE

In 1925 Adrienne Monnier, who ran an avant-garde bookshop in Paris, attended
a concert in which the American composer George Antheil played his Ballet
Mecanique for the first time. In imagery that drew on her trips to the fights
with her partner, Sylvia Beach, and their friend, Ernest Hemingway, she described
his performance:

When he plays his music he is terrible, he boxes with the piano; he rid-
dles it with blows and perseveres furiously until the instrument, the
public, and he himself are knocked out. When he is finished he is red,
he sponges his forehead; he comes down from the ring with his fore-
head lowered, his shoulders rocking, his brows knitted, his fists still
clenched tight. 199

'Boxing with the piano', which Monnier describes as an intense physical engage-
ment, was a way of making the instrument sound less lyrical and more percus-
sive and mechanical. There is an antagonism, and we are to believe, productive
exchange of energy, between pianist and piano, just as there may be between
poet and typewriter. Sounding more mechanical, in this sense, also seemed to be
a way of sounding more modern. 200 According to Antheil himself, the very words
'Ballet Mecanique' were meant to evoke 'the spiritual exhaustion, the superath-
letic, non-sentimental period commencing "The Long Armistice"'. 201

The 'superathleticism' of boxing also represented a 'non-sentimental'
mechanical operation for Marcel Duchamp, who, incidentally, bore a striking re-
semblance to Georges Carpentier. (In 1924 Francis Picabia used a portrait of
Carpentier for the cover of the Dada journal 391, claiming it was a portrait of
Duchamp. 202 ) One of Duchamp's early studies for the nine-foot-high The Large
Glass, or The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23) was entitled 'The
Boxing Match'. 203 While the construction keeps the bride (on top) and her bach-
elors (below) apart, the notes, which Duchamp intended to be an integral part of
the work, shows how they might come together. Sketched out in 1913, reworked
as a photomontage in 1919, and included in a 1965 etching of The Large Glass

246

Completed, 'The Boxing Match' was never included in the construction, which was
finally left 'definitely unfinished'. 204

One of the most abstractly geometrical parts of the Large Glass, and one of
its more complex mechanical operations, 'The Boxing Match' consisted of arcs
and circles, 'presumably matching punches and swings'. 205 As Calvin Tompkins
notes, 'it shows a clockwork mechanism that causes two battering rams to move
up and down, loosening as they do the bride's clothes and causing them to fall.
All this does not take place smoothly but jerkily'. 206 Jean Suquet describes these
'rams' as being held by the bachelors above their heads like musclemen, to hold
up the horizon-garment of the Bride. The rams fall. The dress slips off- or at
least begins to.' Suquet goes on to discuss Duchamp's speedy repudiation of
'these sideshow musclemen and their rigged boxing match in favour of a fire (ig-
nited gas will 'burn with desire'), but it is interesting to consider what the box-
ing analogy added to his original story. 207 In various interviews, Duchamp
described the drawing as part of an attempt to 'get away' from 'personal style'
and 'retinal painting': 'that was the period when I changed completely from
splashing the paint on the canvas to an absolutely precise co-ordinated drawing;
and with no relation to artistic handiwork'. 208 As a style, 'mechanical drawing'
signalled the impersonal; as a subject matter, boxing, it seems, was intended to
do the same. But can a machine designed to strip the clothes from a woman ever
really be thought of as impersonal? Andre Breton described the Large Glass as 'a
mechanistic, cynical interpretation of love: the passage of woman from the state
of virginity to the state of non-virginity taken as the theme of an asentimental
speculation'. 209 The role of 'musclemen' and 'a boxing match' in this passage cer-
tainly confirms the 'asentimental' nature of Duchamp's view of 'love', but such
asentimentalism is hardly impersonal or even merely cynical. The exchange of en-
ergy between bride and bachelors is propelled by an inherent erotic aggression.

Aggressive anti-sentimentalism is also at work in Djuna Barnes's 1936 Paris
novel, Nightwood, a novel that presents gender and sexual identities as roles to
be performed mechanically, and love as a violent and 'bloodthirsty' business. 210
Jenny fights off her lover Robin by striking her repeatedly with powerful 'blows',
while the transvestite Dr O'Connor ('heavily rouged and his lashes painted')
lives in a room that is 'a cross between a chambre a coucher and a boxer's train-
ing camp'; he describes himself as 'an old worn out lioness, a coward in my cor-
ner'. Dr O'Connor tells the lovelorn Nora Flood that when a woman loves 'a
Sodomite', she often finds her lover 'has committed the unpardonable error of
not being able to exist' and ends up 'with a dummy' in her arms. That is, he
says, 'God's last round, shadow-boxing, that the heart may be murdered'. 211

DADA AND THE CRITICAL INSTINCT OF 'KNOCK-OUT'

'Every man must shout' and use his 'fists', announced Tristan Tzara in 1918; 'there
is great destructive, negative work to be done'. 212 Although developed largely in
reaction to Futurism, Dadaism retained much of its language and gestures. In

247

the manifestos which followed, fists are continually evoked as essential Dadaist
tools against establishment culture. That of 'Monsieur Aa The Antiphilosopher'
in February 1920 begins 'without the pursuit of I worship you / which is a French
boxer', and three months later, 'Monsieur Aa The Antiphilosopher Sends Us An-
other Manifesto' ends with the words 'Punch yourself in the face and drop dead.'
Tzara later described one of his plays as 'a boxing match with words'. 213

One of the things that the Dadaists adopted from Futurism was a fondness
for soirees, what would now be called happenings or performance art; occa-
sions in which, as Tzara put it, the 'vitality of every instant' could be affirmed.
In 1916 the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich staged a series of soirees negres. Tzara re-
called a typical evening:

Boxing resumed: Cubist dance, costumes byjanco, each man his own
bug drum on his head, noise, Negro music/ trabatgea bonoooooo 00
00000/5 literary experiments: Tzara in tails stands before the curtain,
stone sober for the animals, and explains the new aesthetic. 214

Dada's interest in boxing drew partly on a familiar primitivist ideology that
championed ritual over realism, and partly on a cabaret tradition in which box-
ing had long played a part, mingling with trapeze acts, jugglers and animal acts.
Both these elements are also present in German Expressionism, one of Dada's
targets. Max Pechstein's Boxer in the Ring (1910), for example, was one of a num-
ber of postcards by the Briicke artists recording cabaret acts ranging from can-
can dancers, jugglers, and trapeze artists to boxers (illus. 62). 215 While Pechstein
celebrated the popular and the primitive, he did not suggest that cabaret or the
circus would change the world. Dada, however, like Futurism before it, hoped
that the confrontational 'body events' on stage would spill out into the streets,
that the city would become the arena and life itself a revolutionary perform-
ance. 216 When, in 1923, Malcolm Cowley punched a Parisian cafe proprietor on
the jaw, he was surprised how impressed his Dadaist friends were. 217

As Dada spread across Europe, and evolved into Surrealism, boxing im-
agery continued to be used to express bold repudiation of convention. Paul Der-
mee presented 'Boxing without Tears' at the 1920 Paris Dada Festival and
Jacques Rigaut's 1929 surrealist autobiography includes the employment of his
American right hook'. 'What a peal of laughter at my mistress's terrified face
when, as she waited to receive a caress, I slugged her with my American right
hook and her body fell several feet away'. 218 From the early days of Dada, an al-
lusion to boxing was also intended to suggest an interest in dialectics. Picabia
and Rene Clair's film, Entr'Acte (1924) opens with fifteen seconds of white box-
ing gloves punching each other against a black background, before moving on
to present a seemingly random series of scenes and images. It is tempting to
read Andre Breton's 'poem-objets' in the same way. One includes a series of
handwritten phrases, such as 'these vague landscapes' and 'crouching in the
house of my heart', among an assemblage of a bust of a man, an oil lantern, a

248

framed photograph and toy boxing gloves. But while Entr'Acte deliberately frus-
trated attempts to provide a coherent reading, Breton struggled to create a sur-
real unity out of these 'contradictory conditions or phenomena'. 219

The Dadaist who intermingled the discourses of boxing and poetry most
fully and self-consciously was Arthur Cravan. Born Fabien Avenarius Lloyd in
1887, Cravan was the nephew of Oscar Wilde's wife, Constance, and wrote of
his affinity with his uncle, 'although our chest measurement differs'. 220 In the
tradition of his heroes Whitman and Rimbaud, Cravan ('the world's shortest-
haired poet') used boxing as a means to crater /e^owrgeoK. From 1912 to 1915, he
published six issues of a polemical journal called Maintenant, which became a
model for all subsequent Dada magazines. Mainly written by Cravan himself,
Maintenant featured articles attacking modern writers and painters, insulting
them about their physical as well as artistic shortcomings. 221 According to
Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia, it was his review of the 1914 Independents Exhibition
in Paris that 'made him famous'. The article offered 'a bit of good advice: take a
few pills and purge your mind; do a lot of fucking or better still go into rigorous
training: when the girth of your arms measures nineteen inches, you'll at least
be a brute, if you're gifted'. Cravan justified this kind of criticism by claiming in
Nietzschean terms that 'genius is nothing but an extraordinary manifestation
of the body', but insulting individual bodies was a risky business. He so offended
Marie Laurencin ('Now there's one who needs to have her skirts lifted up') that
her lover Guillaume Apollinaire had him arrested for defamation of charac-
ter. 222 'In its systematic provocation,' Roger Shattuck suggested, Cravan's writ-
ing 'resembles a literary transposition of boxing techniques'. 223 But Cravan's

'Johnson and
Cravan - and their
wives', The Soil,
April 1917.

249

were not just any boxing techniques; more precisely, as Mina Loy noted, 'the
instinct of "knock-out" dominated his critique'. 224 But more was needed to be
a true 'boxer-poet'.

In fact, Cravan's boxing had preceded his poetry. He took up the sport at six-
teen and in 1910 won the French Amateur Light Heavyweight Championship.
His hero, Jack Johnson, was, however, in a different league entirely. ('Ah! let me
laugh, laugh, but truly laugh, like Jack Johnson!', he once wrote). 225 Cravan,
who frequently asserted that he was 'ashamed of being white', befriended John-
son in Paris in 1916. Nina Hamnett recalled that he was often to be found 'spar-
ring with negro boxers at Van Dongen's studio on Thursday afternoons'; one of
those boxers was probably Johnson, who was posing for a portrait. 226 Soon the
two men came up with a scheme to make both some money (illus. 99). They
staged a fight in the Plaza de Toros in Barcelona, which only continued until
the sixth round because, as part of the deal, they needed to put on a good show
for the film cameras. The French poet Blaise Cendrars gave a lively, if inaccu-
rate account of the contest. 227 Cravan used his earnings to pay for a transat-
lantic steamer on which he impressed fellow passenger Leon Trotsky. 228 At the
end of 1918, he disappeared in bizarre circumstances off the coast of Mexico
and was never seen again. That mystery, and Mina Loy's enduring love for her
boxer-poet-husband soon became the stuff of legend. 229

COMRADES, DISCUSS RED SPORT'

In the late nineteenth century English boxing established itself in Moscow, and
while never popular there to the extent that it was in Berlin or Paris, the sport
had a certain following among the military. After 1917, however, boxing became
rather controversial. Immediately after the Revolution, there was support for
sports that would promote hard work and a strong defence. In November 1918,
the first Soviet boxing championship was held in Moscow, and despite 'starva-
tion, the cold, a typhoid outbreak and the Civil War', it attracted a large
crowd. 230 By the mid- 1920s, however, it was widely maintained that sports such
as wrestling and boxing encouraged dangerous competitive and individualis-
tic values. Although boxing was very popular at the time, with active gyms from
Moscow to Odessa, and foreign films such as The Boxer's Bride doing well at the
cinema, the first Trade-Union Games in 1925 excluded the sport, and the
Leningrad Physical Culture Council banned it. 231 In 1928, Vladimir Mayakovsky
wrote a poem called 'Comrades, discuss Red Sport!', in which he complained
that 'sport has not changed much as yet'. The poem ends with an exhortation
to sporting lads to pay attention to their political education as well as their bi-
ceps, for 'we need sportsmen who enlighten the masses'. 232

The 'hygienists' argued that sports depended on an instrumental view of
the body as a series of parts designed to perform specific function (bend, duck,
punch) while physical culture promoted a more harmonious and holistic de-
velopment. Whether boxing had a place in the new regimes was much debated.

250

In 1929 the Minister of Education and Arts, Anatoly Lunacharsky wrote an open
letter to the press supporting the sport. Not only did boxing involve 'the whole
nervous system, heart, blood circulation, the respiratory system and, in every
way, the muscles of the upper part of the body and the legs; it develops inven-
tiveness and accuracy . . . stamina, self-control, fearlessness, and courage more
than any other sport'. It was inaccurate, Lunacharsky maintained, to dub box-
ing an essentially bourgeois enterprise for 'even the fiercest bout teaches one to
regard one's opponent as a comrade with whom one has common cause'. 233
There was some sympathy for this view; Jack London was, after all, an extremely
popular writer in the Soviet Union. 234 In the place of competitive sports, how-
ever, the Proletkultists proposed collective exercise and lavish sports spectacles
(some parades mounted boxing rings on floats). 235 One of these spectacles, the
Moscow Spartakiada athletic competition of 1928 (named for the Roman slave
rebel Spartacus), was commemorated in a series of dynamic collage-based
posters and postcards by Gustav Klucis. By designing posters for films and
sports events, Constructivist artists such as Klucis and the Stenberg brothers
signalled their intention to bridge the gap between avant-garde art and prole-
tarian culture (illus. 63).

In general, the 1920s were 'years of physical culture or fitness . . . rather
than sport', a trend that inspired derision from the Cambridge-educated and
Berlin-based emigre, Vladimir Nabokov. 236 Nabokov was scathing about phys-
ical culture, 'in which everyone is condemned to do everything as one . . . not al-
lowing that anyone might be better made than his neighbour'. These words
were written in Berlin, where he lived from 1922 to 1937, and, according to his
wife Vera, 'taught many subjects . . . languages, tennis, boxing. And prosody,
prosody.' 237 For Nabokov, in 1925, play had an 'enticing, disturbing' quality en-
tirely absent from both Communist gymnastics and the German 'goose step'.
'What we feel in our muscles is the essence of play', he wrote, but watching
sports was also play. His essay ends with an account of Hans Breitenstrater's
defeat by the Spanish heavyweight Paulino Uzcudan and a lyrical vision of the
spectators leaving the stadium after the fight:

When we all emptied out on to the street in the frosty blue of a snowy
night, I was certain that in the flabbiest father of a family, in the most
modest youth, in the souls and muscles of all this crowd, which tomor-
row early in the morning will disperse to offices, to shops, to factories,
there was one and the same beautiful feeling, for the sake of which it
was worthwhile to bring together two boxers, a feeling of confident
sparkling strength, of cheerfulness, of manliness in the play of the in-
spiring boxers. And this playful feeling, perhaps, is more important
and purer than many so-called 'elevated pleasures'. 238

251

ONLY VIA THE SPORTS ARENA CAN WE APPROACH THE
THEATRICAL ARENA

Post-war European interest in American culture was accompanied, if not driven,
by a fascination with American economic practices and, in particular, with the
successes of Frederick Taylor's time-and-motion studies and their application to
factory production by Henry Ford. By the early twenties, Taylorism and Fordism
had become bywords for efficiency and rationalization in many different spheres.

While the application of Taylorism to sport is often discussed, the impor-
tance of sport for Taylorism is less well known. The Principles of Scientific
Management (1911) begins by asking how 'greater efficiency' can be achieved in
the workplace and, in particular, how workers can be encouraged to work at a
faster pace. Taylor notes that 'the English and American peoples are the greatest
sportsmen in the world', and when playing sport (baseball and cricket are his
examples) a typical workman 'strains every nerve to secure victory for his side.'
But 'when the same workman returns to work on the following day, instead of
using every effort to turn out the largest possible amount of work, in a majority
of cases this man deliberately plans to do as little as he safely can'. 239 How can
the worker be motivated to strive for productivity at work as well as in sports?
Taylor's answer drew on many of the rationalizing regulations that such meas-
ures as the Queensberry rules had already introduced; specifying the 'task' to be
done; learning to use 'strength to the very best advantage'; 'having proper sci-
entifically determined periods of rest in close sequence to periods of work'; in
short applying 'rigid rules of each motion of every man'. 240 These principles were
applied to many aspects of Soviet, as well as American and European, life in the
1920s. 'Production gymnastics' were performed in factories, and the Taylorized
performance of work movements was itself seen as a kind of sport. In the unalien-
ated labour of socialism, it was argued, work and leisure should fuse.

Taylorism also had an impact on the theatre. In 1905 Vsevolod Meyerhold,
previously known as an actor in Chekhov's plays at the Moscow Art Theatre,
had opened an acting laboratory. There, and later in St Petersburg, he devel-
oped a series of exercises for his students to perform as a way of revolutionizing
stage drama, moving it away from a psychological emphasis and breaking down
the gap between actor and spectator. The studio was closed by the revolution in
1917, but reopened in Moscow in 1921. Meyerhold reintroduced his St Peters-
burg exercises and renamed them 'bio-mechanics'. Meyerhold's newly Tay-
lorized exercises, 'by which each movement of the body' was to be 'differentiated
and made fully expressive', included a 'blow to the nose', and were taught along-
side gymnastics, juggling, fencing, ballet, tap dancing and boxing. 241 If during
this period, sport was increasingly presented as a form of theatre, theorists like
Meyerhold maintained that theatre should in turn learn from sport. 'Only via
the sports arena can we approach the theatrical arena', he declared in 1922. Re-
placing psychological theories, Meyerhold's methods sought to establish a more
objective basis for acting, based on an understanding of biology and mechanics.

252

The muscles and tendons of the actors were to be considered as comparable to
piston rods and cylinders.

One of Meyerhold's students was Sergei Eisenstein who, in 1921, drew heav-
ily on his principles for an 'agit-poster' of Jack London's short story, 'The Mex-
ican', the story of a young revolutionary who boxes in order to get money for
guns. Eisenstein was appointed by the First Workers' Theatre of the Proletkult
to produce scenery and costumes, and for both drew heavily on Cubism and
the circus. The climax of the agit-poster was the fight scene. The play's director,
Valeri Smishlayev, wanted to portray this through the reaction of the charac-
ters who were observing an event that was supposedly taking place off-stage.
Eisenstein, however, suggested that the fight be performed in front of the audi-
ence, in fact in the middle of the auditorium, as if it were taking place in a box-
ing ring. Although the theatre's firemen soon dismissed this suggestion,
Eisenstein later recalled the scene as important to the development of his ideas
about film. 'Here, my participation brought into the theatre "events" themselves

- a purely cinematographic element, as distinguished from "reactions to events"

- which is a purely theatrical element.'

We dared the concreteness of factual events. The fight was to be care-
fully planned in advance but was to be utterly realistic. The playing of
our young worker-actors in the fight scene differed radically from the
acting elsewhere in the production . . . While the other scenes
influenced the audience through intonation, gestures and mimicry,
[this] scene employed realistic, even textual means - real fighting, bod-
ies crashing to the ring floor, panting, the shine of sweat on the torso,
and finally, the unforgettable smacking of gloves against taunt skin and
strained muscles. 242

In the years that followed Eisenstein moved from theatre into film, and de-
veloped the theory of montage with which he is now identified. Montage was
also the method of Dziga Vertov, but Vertov remained interested in 'reactions
to events'. He argued that the new cinema should replace the multiplicity of
subjective reactions with an objective, collective response determined in ad-
vance by the artist or 'Cine-Eye'. In order to explain how this revolutionary ap-
proach might work, Vertov used the example of a crowd watching a boxing
match. Each spectator at the fight itself came away with different impression of
what had taken place, what Vertov dismissed as 'a series of incoherent impres-
sions '. In place of this, he wanted to subject 'the eye to the will of the camera'. The
camera would film 'the consecutive movements of those fighting' and present
them in such a way (montage 'in the most profitable order') that 'the relevant
materials' would be presented before the spectators and their eyes would be
'forced' to witness 'the consecutive details that they must see'. 243 The movement
of the Cine-Eye thus supersedes that of the fighters themselves; the actual
conflict in the ring is replaced by a cinematic assault on the audience.

253

A more sophisticated approach informed Eisenstein's third film, October
(1927), which told the story of the 1917 revolution, and included both actors and
documentary footage, a combination that Eisenstein called the 'played and non-
played'. In an essay on the film he used a boxing metaphor to describe the often-
discussed 'opposition' between these two modes of film-making, only to dismiss
it as a false contest.

When there are two contestants it is usually the third who is right.
In the ring now:
Played and non-played.
That means that justice lies with the third.
With the extra-played.
With cinema that places itself beyond the played and the non-played. 244

In 1921, boxing had appealed to Eisenstein as a sign of the real (the 'raw mate-
rial' and 'fact' of the non-played rather than the falsity of the played), but by
1928, he rejected opposition itself (what he called the 'agitational theatre of attrac-
tions') in favour of dialectics. 245 The model of the boxing match, in which one
contestant is always victorious, had been superseded by one that maintained
that both contestants could be accommodated in a productive synthesis.

Of course Meyerhold and his followers were not the only early twentieth-
century figures who challenged the verbal and psychological emphasis of film
and theatre by incorporating elements from the cabaret, the circus and the sports
stadium. Throughout the twentieth century, sport continued to provide a model
for theatrical performance, with the boxing ring providing an ideal space within
which dramatic conflict could be staged. The theatricality of boxing is apparent,
and much has been made, not least in this book, of the ease in which a boxing
match (the ultimate two-hander) can be made to express conflict. The tropes of
boxing have appealed to a wide range of playwrights and directors who reject
the verbal and psychological in favour of a theatre that is at least one of the fol-
lowing - physical, ritualistic, popular, scientific and impersonal, or violent. 246
The French mime Etienne Decroux, for example, took Georges Carpentier as 'the
motivating image' for his study of 'physical mime (tragedy section)', praising the
boxer's 'vigor and grace; strength; elegance; dazzle and thought; a taste for dan-
ger and a smile'. 247 Antonin Artaud, meanwhile, posited a connection between
the ritualistic purging of violence in a boxing match and in what he called the
Theatre of Cruelty. According to Artaud, the actor and athlete are doubles, the
only difference being that while the athlete makes 'muscular movements of phys-
ical exertion', the actor's efforts require 'affective musculature'. The actor must
'use his emotions in the same way a boxer uses his muscles.' 248

Bertolt Brecht was less interested in making actors like sportsmen than in
turning theatre audiences (as Pound, in 1911, had wanted to turn readers of
poetry) into sports spectators. His 1926 essay, 'More Good Sports', begins by
declaring, 'We pin our hopes on the sporting public'.

254

Make no bones about it, we have our eye on those huge pans of concrete
filled with 15,000 men and women of every variety of class and phys-
iognomy, the fairest and shrewdest audience in the world . . . The de-
moralization of our theatre audiences springs from the fact that neither
theatre nor audience has any idea what is supposed to go on there.
When people in sporting establishments buy their tickets they know ex-
actly what is going to take place and that is exactly what does take place
once they are in their seats: viz. highly trained persons developing their
peculiar powers in the way most suited to them with the greatest sense
of responsibility yet in such a way as to make one feel that they are
doing it primarily for their own fun. Against that the traditional theatre
nowadays is quite lacking in character. 249

The boxing fan, sitting smoking in a brightly lit hall, represented Brecht's ideal
spectator. Although the programme note for the 1928 Heidelberg production of
In the Jungle of Cities described the fight as a microcosm of class struggle, Brecht
originally conceived it as 'a fight for fighting's sake' to find out who was 'the best
man' - in other words, sport. The prologue informs the audience that it is about
to witness 'an inexplicable boxing match': 'Don't worry your heads about the
motives for the fight, concentrate on the stakes. Judge impartially the techniques
of the contenders, and keep your eyes fixed on the finish.' 250 Brecht hoped that
by behaving like a fight audience, the theatre audience would abandon its tra-
ditional Aristotelian concerns with character and motive. The boxing match,
in other words, exemplified what he termed 'epic theatre', a theatre which en-
courages the spectator to 'judge' the contents of the play objectively, and avoid
emotional identification with its protagonists or events. 'Instead of sharing an
experience the spectator must come to grips with things. ' 251 Brecht maintained,
as Pound had done, that the financial interest the boxing audience has in the
outcome of the fight makes it more astute to its workings. If only, both hoped,
something could similarly inspire poets and theatre audiences to pay attention
to technique. Brecht's solution was to remove all attempts at concealment and
mystification. Audiences should be encouraged to smoke as 'it is hopeless to
"carry away" any man who is smoking and accordingly pretty well occupied
with himself. In addition, 'the theatre must acquire qua theatre the same fas-
cinating reality as a sporting arena during a boxing match. The best thing is to
show the machinery, the ropes and the flies.' Theatrical lighting should be bright
and 'within the spectator's field of vision'. The spectator should see that
'arrangements have been made to show him something . . . No one would expect
the lighting to be hidden at ... a boxing match.' 'By these means,' Brecht con-
cluded, 'one would soon have a theatre full of experts, just as one has sporting
arenas full of experts.' 252 In the meantime, he would have been glad to note that
in 1928, a Berlin theatre postponed a premiere because it coincided with the
heavyweight title fight between Max Schmeling and Franz Diener. 253

A connection between boxing and modernity dominated rhetoric in the 1920s,
as it had in the 1820s. Both decades saw a flourishing of sport and of artistic ex-
perimentation in the wake of a major war. The language of boxing allowed for
the assertion of both masculine and national invulnerability. But important
changes in the nature of the sport had taken place in the hundred years that
separated Byron from Hemingway. While the Fancy had created a distinctive
and class-based male subculture, the 1920s saw sports stars become interna-
tional celebrities for both men and women. Class was less an issue than race, and
money was bigger than both. The nature of the contest had also changed. In
the early nineteenth century, the hero of the ring was the man who could endure
a beating for up to six hours; in the early twentieth century, it was the man who
could knock out his opponent in less than 60 seconds. But one thing that does
link the 1820s and 1920s is the short duration of the glory years. After Dempsey's
defeat and Tunney's retirement, many noted the end of an era. Nostalgia
returned to the language of commentators on both sport and art, and in 1949,
Jean Arp declared that the golden age of heavyweight modernism was over. All
that remained of its legacy were publicists and courtiers. It was now an 'era of
flyweight glory'. 254

256

Save Me, Jack Dempsey;
Save Me, Joe Louis

Boxing fans always like to imagine hypothetical contests: could John L. Sulli-
van have beaten Mike Tyson? How would Amir Khan have fared against Roberto
Duran? In the 1930s imaginary contests between Joe Louis and Jack Dempsey
were all the rage, and one forms the basis of Irwin Shaw's 1939 story, 'I Stand By
Dempsey'. Two boxing fans leave a Madison Square Garden disgusted with the
show. 'Not a bloody nose,' Flanagan said, 'Not a single drop of blood. Heavy-
weights! Heavyweight pansies!' The conversation switches to Joe Louis and
whether Dempsey 'in his prime' would have beaten him. Gurske thinks he
would, but Flanagan dismisses his fervour as the over-excitement of 'a little guy'
- 'a guy is under five foot six, every time he gets in a argument he gets excited'.
Finally Gurske snaps and throws a bottle at Flanagan, who lifts his friend into
the air by the collar and declares him a 'hundred-and-thirty-pound Napoleon'.
The story ends bizarrely with Flanagan laying Gurske over his knee and spank-
ing him. It takes 32 strokes before Gurske will say 'I stand by Louis' and con-
cedes that Louis would have beaten Dempsey in the second round. 1

Louis and Dempsey were talismanic figures for many Americans during the
Depression. In different ways, each man provided a focus for discussions of
failure and success, endurance and survival, for a sense that one might be lucky
or unlucky. The question of allegiance for one or other boxer was more compli-
cated than simply white and black, although that discourse was often relevant.
Dempsey was a figure from the past, the champion of the affluent twenties, strug-
gling to adapt to new circumstance; Louis, meanwhile, emerged from the heart
of the Depression and for many, seemed to suggest the promise of a new kind of
future.

Jack Dempsey remained a popular figure long after he lost the title to Gene
Tunney in 1927. This was partly due to the fact that, after Tunney's retirement
the following year, the heavyweight title changed hands rapidly (from Max
Schmeling to Jack Sharkey to Primo Camera to Max Baer to James J. Braddock)
with no enduring champion emerging until Joe Louis in 1937. (A. J. Liebling
dubbed this period 'the Dark Age' of boxing. 2 ) Dempsey, meanwhile, main-
tained and developed his public profile. After losing money in the 1929 crash

257

and through an expensive divorce settlement in 1930, he began fighting
exhibitions and refereeing, and in 1935 opened Jack Dempsey's 'gaudily meatish'
Restaurant, near Madison Square Garden, which, after moving to Broadway,
stayed in business until 1974. 3 During the economic boom of the twenties,
Dempsey's youthful experiences of poverty had made him seem exotic to many
Americans. He represented a rough-hewn relic of the frontier days, and was all
the more modern for his seeming primitivism. At the height of the Depression,
however, Dempsey's appeal shifted, as many more people felt that they were
living in a world where conventional rules no longer applied; novelist Jo Sinclair,
for example, described the Depression itself as 'getting slugged below the belt'. 4
No longer an intriguing anachronism, the Manassa Mauler became a repre-
sentative man.

Dempsey's final defeats form the basis of Horace Gregory's poem, 'Dempsey,
Dempsey', included in the influential 1935 anthology Proletarian Literature in the
United States. The poem begins by addressing the ex-champion as the 'failure
king of the usa', a model for all those who are down, but not yet out:

there's a million boys that want to come back

with hell in their eyes and a terrible sock

that almost connects.

They've got to come back, out of the street,

out of some lowdown, lousy job

or take a count with Dempsey.

But Dempsey cannot stop the 'big boss' who cuts their pay checks, Gregory sug-
gests; he cannot even earn his own. As the poem's desperation intensifies, the
final stanza recasts the enemy; the problem is not just 'the big boss' but those
who 'quit' the fight.

I can't get up, I'm dead, my legs

are dead, see, I'm no good,

they got me and I'm out,

down for the count.

I've quit, quit again,

only God save Dempsey, make him get up again,

Dempsey, Dempsey. 5

Throughout the thirties and beyond, Dempsey served as an iconic figure both
to those who identified with his losses and failures, and those who felt that they too
could one day be champion of the world, if only they worked hard enough. Two
photographs exemplify the conflicting aspects of his appeal. In the first, a touched-
up studio print from 1937, he is pictured with an eight-year-old in Philadelphia
supporting the United Studios campaign for boys' clubs - inspiring hope for the
future (illus. 100). In the second, from 1939, he appears at the State Penitentiary in

258

100

Jack Dempsey meets
eight-year-old John
Panulla at the
Germantown Boys
Club, Philadelphia,
1937-

Jack Dempsey
addresses prisoners
at the State Peniten-
tiary, Raleigh, North
Carolina, 1939. The
caption reads 'Many
of the men whom he
talked to have been
in prison since he
won his title.'

North Carolina; the ropes on the ring separating the boxer from the prisoners, but
also suggesting that the ring itself might be a kind of prison (illus. 101).

'i COULDVE BEEN A CONTENDER. I COULD VE BEEN SOMEBODY.' 6

In a 1933 sociological study of 'Americans at play', Jesse Frederick Steiner noted
a 'growing interest in amateur boxing'; an interest, he argued, which had been
stimulated by 'the Golden Gloves Amateur boxing contest sponsored by the
Chicago Daily Tribune and the New York Daily News'. Such events, he maintained,
'demonstrated that the sport can draw large crowds when conducted as a boxing
match and not as a prize fight'. 7 Steiner's comments suggest that the increased
appeal of amateur boxing was due to a sudden revival in sporting spirit, but mass
unemployment was probably a more significant factor. In 1933, 50 per cent of
Americans between the age of fifteen and nineteen were unemployed. Otis
L. Graham notes that, on average, young Americans waited two years to find
work after finishing school and 'about 25 percent never found employment until
the war'. 8 Considerable sums of public and charitable money were spent on
creating sports facilities for a population that suddenly 'had more leisure and
less money'. 9 Most contestants in boxing competitions did not view amateur
success as an end in itself. At the very least, as Barney Ross recalled, amateurs
won 'medals and trophies and watches which they could pawn for a few bucks':

Sometimes you'd get a box of shirts, sometimes, ties or socks, some-
times a pair of shoes. Whenever I won, I'd take my merchandise around
to the ghetto neighbourhood and sell it as a bargain. I used to get a
dollar for $2.95 shirts, a dollar for a box of ties and about two dollars
for eight- or nine-dollar shoes. 10

'Pawnshop fighting' was all very well, but the real goal was to turn professional
and earn some serious money. Steven Riess notes that during the thirties,
around 8,000 men boxed professionally, many more than ever before. 11 Only a
handful made a living at the sport.

Neighbourhood gyms and small boxing clubs often had fierce ethnic affili-
ations. Beryl Rosofsky, who, renamed Barney Ross, won the world lightweight
championship in 1932, and the welterweight title in 1934, began fighting ama-
teur bouts at Kid Howard's gym in Chicago's West Side. As his reputation began
to spread, Ross recalled, his 'pals and neighbours from the old neighbourhood
were all loyal to me and I was able to get a good crowd out for each fight'. When
he became the first Golden Glover to win a professional title, the whole of
Chicago seemed to adopt him. In his autobiography Ross presents his decision
to take up boxing as a rational career choice: a steady job at Sears Roebuck
would not satisfy his 'feverish desire to make a lot of money in a hurry', and Al
Capone and the other 'big gangsters' had turned him down. Ross justified his
choice of profession by saying that he needed to support his family after his

260

orthodox Jewish father was murdered in his shop. 'If Pa had lived,' he wrote, 'I
think he would have killed me before he ever would have permitted me to put
on a pair of gloves and climb into a ring.' 12 According to legend, Ross's mother
came to accept his boxing, sewed the Star of David onto his trunks, and on Fri-
day nights prayed for him at the synagogue before walking five miles to the sta-
dium to watch him fight. Ross retired in 1938, and after Pearl Harbor
volunteered for the Marine Corps. At Guadalcanal he was seriously wounded
trying to help a trapped scout patrol, and was awarded a Silver Star and the Dis-
tinguished Service Cross. After the war he became a staunch Zionist, smuggling
guns into Israel after 1948. Two films draw on part of Ross's story - Body and Soul
(1948) and Monkey on My Back (1957).

Thirties fiction and film is full of stories about dreams of individual suc-
cess, stories of escaping poverty and rebuilding the family fortunes through
sport or crime. Ross's employment choice (boxing or Al Capone) became em-
blematic, as the sportsman and the gangster were presented as related figures,
both advancing as best they could in a world that barred more conventional
routes. Once again Dempsey epitomized the fighter who could just as easily
have become a criminal. In 1937 Paul Gallico described him, rather floridly, as
the product of a 'hard rough world in which there was never any softness or any
decency ... I can see him as a surly, dangerous inhabitant of that spiteful nether
world, just on the borderline of the criminal.' 13 The 'borderline' professions of
prize-fighter and criminal were seen as glamorous alternatives to the breadline,
and, for some, they were interchangeable, not only with each other, but with a
new kind of movie star. 14 When Benny Lynch returned to Glasgow after win-
ning the world flyweight title in 1937, he was hailed as both the 'Jack Dempsey
of the small men' and the Gorbals Jimmy Cagney (illus. 102). 15

Robert Sklar argues that through his portrayals of boxers and gangsters,
James Cagney established a new 'cultural type': the urban tough guy - small,
wiry and street-smart, the product of the ethnic neighbourhoods of Chicago
and New York. 16 Cagney, in other words, was the Jack Dempsey of the big screen,
and Benny Lynch was not the only one to think of the two men as comparable
idols (illus. 103). Cagney first played a gangster in The Public Enemy (1931) and
a boxer in Winner Take All (1932). As gangster Tom Powers, he operates from an
office whose walls display pictures of John L. Sullivan, and he shows affection to
his mother and friends with repeated short-fisted jabs. The main difference be-
tween being a boxer and being a gangster seems simply to be where your
weapon is concealed. When Powers goes to get fitted for a suit, the dresser feels
his biceps. 'Oh sir,' he campily says, 'here's where you need the room - such a
muscle!' Powers, however, wants the extra room in his waistband - such a gun,
is what he's counting on. 17

The press was quick to praise the 'effortless authenticity' of Cagney 's per-
formances as both gangster and boxer. One review of Winner Take All concluded
enthusiastically that he 'carries with him a veritable smell of the shower room,
of sweating body and sodden leather'. 18 Nevertheless, a large part of the film is

261

about his character's misguided attempt to rid himself of the authenticating
marks of boxing, when he falls in love with a heartless 'society dame' called Joan
(Virginia Bruce). As soon as she tells him that he might be handsome (and hence
kissable) without his broken nose and cauliflower ear, he rushes off to a plastic
surgeon. Fixed up, he then rushes back to Joan, saying, 'I want to be just like
you want me, honey'. Joan, however, is not interested; as she later tells a friend,
'he's lost all the things that made him colourful and different; he's just ordinary
now, like any other man. And one thing I can't stand is bad grammar spoken
through a perfect Grecian nose.' 19 Joan is not the only one to reject the beautified
Jim. The boxing crowd don't like the defensive style he adopts to protect his
face and a newspaper headline accuses him of becoming a '"Powder Puff"
Boxer'. All is put right at the end when Jim fights for the championship, dam-
ages his face and returns to the arms of his original working-class girlfriend.
The film's reference to plastic surgery and powder puff boxers brings to mind
the era of smooth-faced silent screen lovers and in particular, Rudolph
Valentino. In evoking, but rejecting, that model, Winner Take All announced the
birth of a new kind of Hollywood leading man. 20

Cagney's sex appeal may have been sadistic and anarchic, but after 1932,
the films in which he appeared were often promotional vehicles for Franklin D.
Roosevelt's New Deal administration. Warner Brothers supported Roosevelt's
campaign and even laid on a special train to bring stars to his inauguration in
1933- 21 The first of Warner's overtly New Deal films was released later that year.
Although rather an ideological muddle, Heroes for Sale is determinedly optimistic

Fans watch as Benny
Lynch trains.

262

103

Publicity still
of James Cagney
as a boxer.

about the capacity of Americans to survive the Depression; as one character
puts it, 'it takes more than one sock on the jaw to lick a hundred and twenty
million people'. As if to illustrate this point literally, many subsequent Warner's
films involved socks on the jaws. In Winner Take All, a typical boxing melo-
drama, Cagney plays a worn-out fighter called Jim Kane. While in New Mexico
for a rest cure, he meets Peggy (Marian Nixon), a young widow who can't pay
her bills because the insurance company won't honour her husband's life in-
surance policy. Still in poor health, Kane offers to fight to pay her debt. Aaron
Baker argues that this sequence of events embodies the 'hybrid ideology' of both
the film and populism more generally: the community is to be redeemed by the
efforts of a rugged individualist who labours not just for his own good, but for
that of others. 22 The movie's emphasis on individualism is further bolstered by
the terms under which the fight takes place. Initially, Jim is told that the loser's
fee is $600, exactly the amount of Peggy's debt. But when the fight promoter

263

learns this, he worries that Jim won't fight seriously. 'What guarantee do I have,'
he asks, 'that you won't fold in the first round, just to get the loser's fee?' In-
stead, he proposes that the fight be 'winner take all' - $2,000 or nothing. The
initial terms of the agreement might be read as representing those of the New
Deal itself, including a measure of social insurance - a safety net of $600 for the
loser. This deal, however, introduces an element of risk for the promoter/state,
the risk that the fighter/worker will rely on the safety net and abandon the com-
petitive incentives of boxing/work. A 'winner take all' system shifts the risk
from the promoter to the fighter and represents laissez-faire capitalism at its
starkest. This part of Winner Take All is set on the Mexican border, where such
frontier economics were thought to flourish naturally.

The Mexican border was also the setting for King Vidor's 1931 box office
hit, The Champ, a film with a rather different ideological slant (illus. 106). If
Cagney's boxer is a model worker, Wallace Beery 's is a drunken layabout. Beery
stars as Andy, an ex-heavyweight champion who lives a dissolute life in Tijuana
with his young son Dink (Jackie Cooper). One day, Dink's mother Linda (Irene
Rich) reappears with her wealthy, hard-working second husband Tony (Hale
Hamilton) and they offer to take the boy away to 'a better life'. The film is very
sentimental about Andy's relationship with his son, and the separate all-male
world that they create together. Nevertheless, the final outcome - in which Andy
briefly pulls himself together and wins a fight, but dies shortly afterwards - was
the one test audiences preferred. Dink, they knew, would be better off with a
solid bourgeois life in the American heartland.

In both these early-thirties movies, boxing is portrayed as a business in
which you can succeed with sufficient hard work. In films made just a few years
later, however, hard work is hardly the issue as the business itself is shown to be
corrupt to its core. The tragic consequences of that corruption were the subject
of numerous noir films during the late 1940s - screenwriter Carl Foreman, for
example, described Champion as drawing 'a parallel between the prize fight busi-
ness and western society or capitalism in 1948'. 23 At the height of the Depres-
sion, a comic perspective was often more welcome. The Milky Way by Lynn Root
and Harry Clork, a Federal Theater production that was filmed in 1936, is a comic
fantasy about a Chaplinesque milkman who becomes middleweight champion. 24
The story is not one of talent rising to the top, but of financial dealings and de-
ception. The milkman, Burleigh Sullivan (Harold Lloyd), is persuaded to become
a boxer because he has embarrassed the current middleweight champion, whom
the press, erroneously, believe he has knocked out. A scheme is hatched to build
up the milkman's value over the course of six set-ups, and then to stage a sell-out
match with the champ. The milkman enters the contract because his employers,
the profit-driven Sunflower Dairy, want to send his sick horse to the knackers'
yard. The film's comic resolution comes with the introduction of charity into the
world of business. Burleigh, with six 'wins' under his belt, thinks himself a big
shot and walks around with a lion on a leash (a la Battling Siki). His girlfriend tells
him he has become a 'tiger' when he used to be a horse-loving 'humanitarian'.

264

Burleigh gets to redeem himself in the fight with the champ because the proceeds
will go to Mrs Winthrope Lemoyne's Milk Fund Charity, an obvious allusion to
Millicent Willson Hearst's Free Milk Fund for Babies. Everyone wins in this
scenario. Paramount Pictures also did well, promoting the film in conjunction
with the Borden Milk Company. Cardboard cutouts featuring Harold Lloyd were
placed over milk bottles. 25

While boxing was a popular sport in local gyms throughout America, box-
ing films of this period firmly locate the business of boxing in the heart of the
city (usually Manhattan) - the downtown urban centre provides the settings
both of the boxer's work (the changing room and the boxing ring) and that of
his leisure (the hotel room and the nightclub). The gangster-managers are very
much at home in this environment, but their fighters are brought in from else-
where, from the countryside or the working-class neighbourhoods that sur-
round the metropolitan centre. These two spaces - the country and the
neighbourhood - are presented as roughly equivalent. Boys from the country
are strong, wholesome, and easily, if only briefly, tempted. In Michael Curtiz's
Kid Galahad (1937), Ward Guisenberry (Wayne Morris) moves to New York,
home of 'fast-living spenders and punch-drunk gunmen', in order to earn
enough money to buy his own farm. After enduring a temporary 'diet of cigar
smoke and gymnasium fumes', he becomes champion, only to retire and marry
the farm-girl sister of his manager. Meanwhile, the rival gangsters (Edward
G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart) dispose of each other in a shoot-out. 26 In
Palooka (1934), the protagonist is happily selling eggs on his farm when his
strength is discovered by Knobby Walsh (Jimmy Durante), presumably en route
from one metropolis to another. The scrawny Knobby tries to persuade Joe
Palooka to come with him, saying, 'It ain't healthy living in the country. Why
look at me - raised on gasoline fumes and carbon monoxide, the picture of
vigorous vitality!' After a series of unsuccessful urban adventures, Joe too ends
up back on the farm with his rural sweetheart. 27

Other thirties films give cynical city boxers the chance to escape Babylon: in
Winner Take All, Jim and Peggy meet in the countryside and form the kind of au-
thentic relationship that neither found possible back in New York; in The Life of
Jimmy Dolan (1933), a prize-fighter (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr) accidentally kills a
man at a party and flees to a health farm for invalid children. Gradually, he be-
gins to lose his cynicism under the influence of the children and another pretty
girl called Peggy (Loretta Young). 28 Andrew Bergman argues that these films have
little to do with reality but set one myth, 'the shyster city', against another, 'the
country as an idyll'; the real state of the economy, he points out, is ignored ('why,
in 1933, go to a farm?'). 29 But although these films are not interested in the real-
ities of rural life, neither are they mere fantasies about cows and barns. The coun-
tryside itself is less important than the alternative, Utopian communities that
exist within it - Dr Betts's Rosario Ranch for asthmatic children and rundown
boxers in Winner Take All, or the reform school farms of The Life of Jimmy
Dolan and Boys' Town. These small, integrated communitarian ventures, like the

265

co-operative farm in King Vidor's 1934 film, Our Daily Bread or the migrant
workers' camp in John Steinbeck's 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath, are presented
as collective alternatives to the individualistic and pugnacious city. 30 In another
series of films, the urban hub is set in opposition to the romanticized working-
class neighbourhood, where cultural and ethnic, rather than physical, health is
the primary issue. 31 Both the farm and the neighbourhood are clearly defined
spaces and operate with clearly defined values centred around family bonds and
local solidarity; in contrast, the city (and this term is used to apply solely to the
urban centre) is an amorphous entity, represented either by limitless vistas or
by tightly enclosed spaces. Its values are those of impersonal capitalism.

The spatial mapping of the city versus the neighbourhood is particularly
clear in Golden Boy (1939), Rouben Mamoulian's film adaptation of Clifford
Odets's 1937 play (illus. 107). 32 Golden Boy was the most successful of Odets's
plays for the Group Theatre, itself an 'oasis' within a city that was dominated by
commercial theatre. 33 The film opens with shots of downtown Manhattan's sky-
scrapers before zeroing in on a sign advertising 'Tom Moody, Boxing Enter-
prises'. Moody needs $5,000 in order to pay for a divorce and remarriage to
Lorna Moon (Barbara Stanwyck); 'I see a penthouse in your eyes', he tells her.
No sooner has Moody discovered that his latest contender has been injured in
the gym than Joe Bonaparte (William Holden) appears, offering to take his
place. Joe phones home to tell his father he will be late, and we see Papa Bona-
parte (Lee J. Cobb) answering the phone. Papa's place of work and home could
not be more different. The Italian American Grocery is piled high both with
goods and with communal values: it is a meeting-place as well as a selling-place,
a bazaar as traditionally understood. More important, as the camera penetrates
to the living-quarters behind the shop and then lingers admiringly, is the seam-
less fit of public and private life. The apartment is a shrine to traditional, bour-
geois domestic comfort, stuffed full of chintz, doilies, velvet drapes, a painting
of the Virgin and child, and a gilt -framed photograph of Joe playing the violin
as a curly-haired child. Particular attention is given to this last image in con-
trast to representations of Joe as a close-cropped fighter (denuded of his Italian
hair as well as culture) on numerous mass-produced posters in Moody's office.
Joe is tempted away from his heritage by a desire for 'people to know who I am',
and also by Lorna, an ambitious 'girl from Newark'. She takes him up on to the
roof of a skyscraper to show him the open spaces of Manhattan. As he looks
down, she tells him that 'it's a big city and little people don't stand a chance', but
that he could make 'all that your carpet to walk on'. The film tells us that by
abandoning the neighbourhood - a place of cultured ethnicity - for the metro-
politan promise of celebrity, Joe has abandoned his identity; 'people' now know
his name, but he no longer knows 'who he is'. Nevertheless, this process is eas-
ily reversed - in the film, if not the play. After a hearty dinner Lorna is converted
and now tells him, 'you shouldn't be in the ring; you should be at home, with
your violin'. There are a few complications involving gangsters to iron out first,
but Joe takes her advice. The film ends with the couple held in the embrace of

266

Papa, as the camera shifts slightly to bring the painting of the Holy Family into
view behind them. 34 Papa's faded oriental rug is now all the carpet Joe and Lorna
need to walk on.

The ethnic neighbourhoods of Chicago provide the setting for much of
Nelson Algren's fiction, and there too the 'way out' offered by boxing is questioned.
In the Hemingway mould, Algren was also fond of the analogy between writers
and fighters. In 'Nonconformity' (1951), Algren quoted Georges Carpentier on
the fighter's need for 'viciousness' in order to argue that a writer needed simi-
lar qualities: 'the strong-armer isn't out merely to turn a fast buck any more
than the poet is solely out to see his name on the cover of a book, whatever sat-
isfaction that event might afford him. What both need most deeply is to get
even'. 35 'Getting even' was an impulse that Algren particularly associated with
Chicago, 'the very toughest kind of town - it used to be a writer's town and it's
always been a fighter's town'. 36 Hemingway provided a blurb for Algren's first
novel, Somebody in Boots (1935), saying you shouldn't read it 'if you cannot take
a punch'. Algren's subsequent works offer many punches; most directly, his last,
posthumously published novel, The Devil's Stocking, was about the incarcera-
tion of middleweight contender Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter.

Never Come Morning (1942), is set in the thirties and draws on many of
Warner Brothers' stock naturalistic plots and characters - the fallen woman,
the juvenile delinquent and the boxer. 37 It tells the story of Bruno Bicek and his
dream of becoming a boxing champion, and of how, turning 21, he instead ends
up in jail on a murder charge. 'If they had stayed in the Old World,' Mama Bicek
thinks, 'her son would have been a good son. There a boy had to behave him-
self or be put in the army.' 38 The local barber, and prime villain, Bonifacy, is
reminiscent of the grandmother in Yekl'm his incomprehension of 'young Poles
with a purely amateur enthusiasm for a wop outfielder or a Jew welterweight
. . . Life in the old world had been too hard to permit young men to play games'.
(What he can appreciate is the value of boxing, and gambling, as a way of mak-
ing money.) The neighbourhood boys also follow Yekl in compulsively adding
American nicknames to their Polish surnames - Bruno (a.k.a. 'Lefty'; 'Biceps';
'Powerhouse'; 'Iron-Man'; 'Killer') more compulsively than anyone. When
arrested on a murder charge, he proudly tells the police that he is 'a citizen', 'a
Polish-American citizen' and distinguishes himself from greenhorns who don't
speak English properly. Nevertheless, all the enmities in the novel are expressed
in terms of their Old World nationalities and loyalties - we don't know names,
just the Jew, the Mex, the Polack, the Litvak and the Greek. Only the idea of the
Great White Hope overrides these affiliations. In the fight that closes the book,
Bruno is aware that the crowd are applauding him simply for 'being white'. 39
Algren originally called his book White Hope, perhaps with a nod to the unpub-
lished novel that his friend Richard Wright was working on at the same time,
Black Hope A

Unlike the films discussed above, Never Come Morning does not romanti-
cize, or indeed ever leave, the confines of the neighbourhood. Algren does not

267

allow any moral or cultural alternative to Chicago's 'Little Polonia', an area
bounded triangularly, and tightly, by three streets - Chicago, Ashland and Mil-
waukee Avenues. Within the triangle are further confined spaces - the brothel,
the jail, the beer flat, the gang clubhouse, the poolroom, the barber shop (and
the bird cage within it), the police station, the amusement park, and the boxing
ring - each of which simply reinforces the enclosure of the others. The novel is
framed by two fight scenes. In the opening sequence, Casey Benkowski duti-
fully takes a dive and returns to the barber's shop. The final chapter rests on
whether Bruno will do the same. He doesn't, but his gesture of existentialist
heroism proves futile. The police are waiting to take him to prison, just one
more 'ropeless ring'. Algren uses these different places to create an insistently
interlocking network of symbols. 'The Triangle's my territory,' boasts Bruno,
and there is very little sense of the existence of a world, indeed of a city, beyond
the boundaries of its three streets. Identities are so local that characters intro-
duce each other by their street names ('Catfoot N.from Fry St', 'Bruno B.from
Potomac and Paulina', 'Steffi R. from by the poolroom'). 41 The wider world, the
wider city even, only really exists for Bruno and the fellow members of his gang,
the Warriors, through the magazines and movies that they consume. One of Al-
gren's sources may have been a long-running series of films about a gang vari-
ously known as the Dead End Kids, the East End Kids and the Bowery Boys,
films which emphasized the sociology behind the gangster myth and thus tried
to undermine its glamour. 42 These films were about saving street kids from a
life of crime, and in the muscular Christian tradition, a combination of religion
and sport often play a large part in the cure. In Angels with Dirty Faces (1938),
gangster Jimmy Cagney, just out of prison, is enlisted on to the basketball court
by Father Connelly (Pat O'Brien); in The Bells of St Mary's (1945), Father O'Mal-
ley (Bing Crosby) and Sister Benedict (Ingrid Bergman) both don gloves in order
to install discipline among their unruly charges. Spencer Tracy won an Oscar as
Father Flanagan in Boys' Town (1938), which was based on the true story of a
rural reform school which used boxing to produce 'sturdy young bodies and
stout young hearts' (illus. 104). The 'boxer-and-the-priest' movie is one of the
many genres parodically referred to by Nabokov in Lolita (1952). The plot of
one, told to Humbert by Charlotte Haze, is typical: 'The boxer had fallen ex-
tremely low when he met the good old priest (who had been a boxer himself in
his robust youth and could still slug a sinner).' 43

Unfortunately Bruno Bicek does not have a priest or a reformed gangster to
help him. He is obviously a keen movie-goer, however, and compares himself
and his friends to Cagney, John Barrymore and others. The only time in the
story that Bruno sees a movie, however, it is a boxing picture in a kinetoscope
arcade, 'a scarred and faded film of the Dempsey-Willard fight'.

With his fighter's heart and his fighter's mind, Bruno sensed the mind
and heart of the other. He watched Willard on his knees, swinging his
head like a blinded ox, and no spark of pity came to the watcher . . .

268

His fingers spread, resisting the urge to get in there for the kill himself.
He watched the referee standing Dempsey off, and that bothered both
Dempsey and Bicek. He turned the film as slowly as possible . . .
Dempsey was circling, circling, trying to get the beaten man on the
other side of the referee's arm. A warmth rose in Bruno: Jack was in on
the bum - one - two - left to the heart - right to the jaw - to the heart
- to the jaw - and his hand stopped cold on the film. There was noth-
ing before him but a cracked square of yellow cardboard and he was
sweating on his hands. 'We killed the bum fer life,' he assured himself,
'I'm a killer too.'

104

'Sturdy Young
Bodies and Stout
Young Hearts',
postcard of Father
Flanagan's Boys'
Home, Nebraska.

Algren employs several layers of irony in this passage. In the novel's closing box-
ing match, Bruno does become like his hero, Dempsey, when he metaphorically
'kills' his opponent, but the night after seeing the movie, he had already literally
killed someone, and it is for this that he is arrested as the final bell of his own
fight sounds. Identifying with Dempsey is a complicated business. Bruno is not
primarily interested in the boxer's David-versus-Goliath-like success; rather it is
his anger, his ruthlessness and his urge to 'prove himself at whatever cost that
appeal. 'No spark of pity came to the watcher', Algren comments. Identification
means experiencing another man's battles (indeed, another man's sadism) as
your own and in order to do this Bruno turns the fairground kinetoscope 'as
slowly as possible', adapting it to suit his own needs. Dempsey 's slow circling be-
comes the medium through which he experiences the self that he would like to
be (later, in jail, he is 'swamped by an image of himself: as though he had been
abruptly transplanted before a technicolor movie being reeled a little too fast'). 44
By the late thirties, the language of movie gangsters had become well-worn
cliche. Damon Runyon's 1937 palooka of a gangster Tobias Tweeney complains

269

that his wife wants to know why he cannot be a 'big gunman' like Edward
G. Robinson or James Cagney. 45 But while Runyon viewed such behaviour as
rather comical, others were less sanguine. James T. Farrell's trilogy Studs Lonigan
(1932-5) recounts the short, delusional life of a Chicago-Irish boy who is con-
stantly involved in a 'dream of himself '. This culminates in his death at the age
of 29, and a fevered death fantasy, in which hard-as-nails Studs imagines himself
walking 'along a strange city with a gun', as 'Al Capone Lonigan' and then 'enter-
ing a ring with two million people looking on', as 'Jack Dempsey Lonigan'. 46

For Marxist critics of popular culture, identification such as this was perni-
cious, not only because it distracted the masses from the realities of their own
lives, but because, by doing so, it made authentic choices and action impossi-
ble. In numerous naturalist novels of this period, those who succumb to the
allure of popular culture end badly. The tragedy of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and
Men (1937), for example, begins in mass-produced fantasies of movie and box-
ing glory. The son of a ranch boss in the Salinas valley, Curley is a Cagney-esque
lightweight' who has 'done quite a bit in the ring'; we hear that he 'got in the
finals for the Golden Gloves' and that 'he got newspaper clippings about it'. He
walks about the ranch with his fists clenched and slips into 'a slight crouch' at
the slightest provocation. His glance is 'at once calculating and pugnacious' and
he fights dirty with a 'glove fulla Vaseline'. His unnamed wife of two weeks,
meanwhile, is convinced she 'coulda been in the movies'; stuck on the ranch she
contents herself by 'giving the eye' to every man around. The dangerous conse-
quence of these fantasies is revealed when the couple encounters Lennie Small,
a simple-minded gentle giant who comes to work on the ranch with his friend
George Milton. The novella's tragedy lies less in Lennie's inability to control his
immense strength than in his lack of understanding of mass media conventions.
Lennie 'don't know no rules'. 47 He destroys, by failing to acknowledge them,
both Curley 's pretensions to be a Hollywood boxer and his wife's pretensions to
be a YioWyw oodfemmefatale. Readers in the thirties may have associated the
mentally slow but 'strong as a bull' Lennie with Primo Camera, who beat Jack
Sharkey for the heavyweight title in 1933. Gangsters Owney Madden and Dutch
Schultz stole much of Camera's money and it has been speculated that most of
his fights were fixed. 48 Unlike Camera, however, Lennie relies on a man whose
interest in his welfare is genuine. The ranch boss cannot understand this: 'what
stake you got in this guy?' he asks George. The antithesis of a fight manager try-
ing to make a buck, George, it seems, has 'no stake' in Lennie. The novella ends
bleakly with his acknowledgment that Lennie cannot live in 'society'. In a ges-
ture of love, George shoots his friend. 49

THE SET-UP

'I just got through triple-crossing a double-crosser', Knobby Walsh (Jimmy Du-
rante) cheerfully admits in Palooka (1934). Apparently, he was not alone. In
1931, J. F. Steiner complained that professional boxing had 'failed to free itself

270

entirely of the undesirable associations that have so long clung to it'. While it
had been hoped that legalisation would end boxing's links to crime, the con-
nection flourished. 'More than any other sport', Steiner notes, boxing 'has been
exploited for purposes of excessive financial gain by both its promoters and par-
ticipants'. 50 This was partly because it is relatively easy to fix a boxing match -
certainly much easier than fixing a baseball game which requires the co-opera-
tion of a whole team - and boxing, especially outside of New York, was virtually
unregulated until the 1950s. 51 For a large part of the twentieth century, the plot
twists of boxing fiction and film relied heavily on the many ways there were to
fix a fight. 52

Before legalization, boxing had largely been controlled by local politicians;
afterwards, Prohibition bootleggers and gangsters took over. Notable figures
in the twenties and thirties include Dutch Schultz and Owney Madden in New
York, Boo Hoo Hoff in Philadelphia, and AlCaponein Chicago. 'By the Depres-
sion,' Riess notes, 'the sport's connection with organized crime was an open se-
cret.' 53 In the middleweight division, Frankie Carbo ('Mr Big') held a virtual
monopoly from the mid-thirties until the late fifties, exploiting his close ties
with managers, matchmakers and promoters to fix fights at every level. One of
his most useful contacts was Billy Brown, matchmaker at Madison Square Gar-
den. Any fighter who refused to play along suffered greatly; a prime example
was Jake La Motta, the top middleweight contender from 1943 to 1947. After
years of being refused a shot at the title, La Motta accepted an offer to fight light
heavyweight, Billy Fox, managed by one of Carbo's men, Blinky Palermo. 54 For
$100,000 and the promise of a title shot, La Motta took part. But his naivete
proved his undoing. He refused to attack and protected himself so well that
when a technical knockout was awarded to Fox in the fourth round, the crowd
was convinced it was a set-up. An investigation cleared La Motta; he was fined
$1,000 and suspended for seven months for 'concealing an injury', which was
his excuse for a poor performance. He did not receive his title fight until 1949
(after paying $20,000 to champion Marcel Cerdan).

One of the first stories to explore the relationship between boxing and
organized crime was Ernest Hemingway's 'The Killers' (1927). 55 Two men show
up in a small-town cafe and hold the staff hostage as they wait for the man they
want to kill, Ole Andreson, a former heavyweight boxer. When Nick Adams,
who has been in the cafe, tells Andreson about the men, the boxer says that
nothing can be done to save him and turns his face to the wall. Little more than
a page of this eleven-page story is devoted to Nick's encounter with Andreson,
but it changes everything. The gangsters dub Nick 'bright boy', but the story
reveals how little he knows about power and powerlessness. In an attempt to
escape his revelation - that the heavyweight, the epitome of masculinity, is not
prepared to fight back - Nick decides to move on. 'I can't stand to think about
him waiting in the room and knowing he's going to get it.' As in the case of 'The
Battler' and 'The Light of the World', the story ends with Nick preparing to 'get
out of this town'. 56

271

If the dominant boxing setting of the 1920s was Madison Square Garden,
during the thirties, forties and fifties, crime writers such as Hammett and Chan-
dler, and so-called proletarian writers such as Algren and Farrell, focused on
low-level professional boxing as a setting within which to examine delusion and
corruption. If the dominant boxing motif of the twenties was the knockout, that
of the following decades was the set-up. Damon Runyon even created a whole
new vocabulary to describe fighters who accepted bribes: 'tank-fighter', 'ostrich'
and the ultimate shady character who 'folds up' easily, a 'parasol'. 'Of course all
the customers know very well that Chester is only fighting some parasol, for in
Philadelphia, Pa., the customers are smartened up to the prize-fight game and
they know they are not going to see a world war for three dollars tops'. 57

While Hemingway's fighter in 'Fifty Grand' gambled on a $25,000 profit,
James T. Farrell's Kid Tucker is willing to settle for $25. 'Twenty-five Bucks' (1930)
revisits the territory of Jack London's 'A Piece of Steak' by matching a 'never-
was of a palooka' with a young contender, but Farrell's naturalism, rejecting the
consolations of sentimental animalism, is much harsher than London's. Kid
Tucker's life comes to an end one evening after fifteen years of living 'in grease'.
Psychologically damaged by his experiences in the trenches of the First World
War and with a face 'punched to a hash', Tucker is usually paid simply to get
beaten. 'He earned his living by taking smashes on the jaw.' In a metaphor
that London would have approved of, Farrell says of Tucker's manager that he
prepared his fighters 'as cattle were fed for the Chicago stockyards'. On one
particular occasion, however, in order to make the bout look more authentic, he
is instructed to put up the pretence of a fight, 'or no dough'. But 'the war and the
prize ring had taken all the fight out of him', and Tucker cannot comply. At
the end of the bout, as he lies unconscious on the floor, the manager, determined
to prove the fight was 'on the level', makes a speech saying that he will not pay
Tucker. Instead the purse will go to 'the boy who puts up the best fight here this
evening' and the crowd can choose. But it does not matter. Tucker dies of a
cerebral haemorrhage without regaining consciousness. For the Marxist Farrell,
as for London, the manager and the members of the crowd (the manufacturer
and the consumers) are ready partners in an economic system in which the
individual boxer is mere labour, and as such expendable. 58

This is certainly the way things work in Personville, Montana - better
known as Poisonville - the setting of Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest (1929),
often described as the first 'hard-boiled' detective novel. An operative from San
Francisco's Continental Detective Agency is sent to Poisonville to investigate a
murder and clean up the town. Among the many poisons of the lousy burg'
that he encounters is its crooked prize-fighting.

We talked about the fights. Nothing more was said about me versus
Poisonville . . . [The gambler] even gave me what seemed to be a straight
tip on the fights - telling me any bet on the main event would be good
if its maker remembered that Kid Cooper would probably knock Ike

272

Bush out in the sixth round. He seemed to know what he was talking
about, and it didn't seem to be news to the others. 59

The Continental Op tries to persuade Bush not to go ahead with the fix, and
after much prevarication, Bush knocks out Cooper, an obvious 'palooka'. There
is a 'short silvery streak' from the balcony, followed by a thud. 'Ike Bush took his
arm out of the referee's hand and pitched down on top of Kid Cooper. A black
knife-handle stuck out of the nape of Bush's neck.' 60

This is a particularly dramatic ending, but the scenario that Hammett pres-
ents - in which the boxer defies the gangsters by refusing to throw the fight, and
then immediately pays for it with his health or his life - soon became a staple in
popular fiction and film. The plot often turned on the moment in which the boxer
realizes that he has been duped by the mob, his crooked manager or the night-
club singer who has been stringing him along. In more socially conscious films,
such Golden Boy and Body and Soul (1947), the death of a black man provides the
prompt. In Golden Boy, Joe Bonaparte's conscience revives when he kills the
Chocolate Drop Kid (James 'Cannonball' Green) in the ring. He leaves boxing
behind, telling the gangsters, 'you used me like a gun'. In Body and Soul, Charley
Davis (John Garfield) wakes up to the reality of his life when he finds out that
his black sparring partner, Ben Chapman (Canada Lee) has died - neither man
was told that Chapman had a blood clot. As Gerald Early notes in a different con-
text, there is 'a very simple and very old idea here, namely, that the black male is
metaphorically the white man's unconscious personified'. 61

Charley's story is told in flashback, following an opening sequence in which
he has agreed to throw a fight for $60,000. Although his mother has told him
to 'fight for something, not for money', Charley is seduced by the prospect of
lots of clothes, lots of money, lots of everything'. But after Ben's death, Charley
fights to win. When the gangsters complain, he is scornful. 'What can you do?'
he asks, 'Kill me? Everybody dies.' 62 Although Body and Soul was based on
Golden Boy (as well as the biography of Barney Ross), scriptwriter Abraham
Polonsky did not want to recreate Odets's original tragic ending or the film ver-
sion's saccharine family reunion. Director Robert Rossen had wanted to close
with Davis being shot by the mob, and falling into a barrel of garbage. Polon-
sky talked him out of this 'heroic' conclusion, arguing that it would be 'totally
against the meaning of the picture, which is nothing more than a fable of the
streets'. 63 Body and Soul ends with Garfield walking away with his girlfriend into
the sunset, seemingly unharmed by his insubordination.

Stories such as these celebrate individual rebellion against collective tyranny,
but where that tyranny lies is not always made clear. In the late forties, most
audiences concentrated on the corruption of the criminally connected prize-fight
world itself; just before Body and Soul's release, the New York district Attorney's
office launched an investigation of the La Motta-Fox fight. Today, however, the
film is more often considered as a parable of defiance against the House Un-
American Activities Committee, which only months later subpoenaed many of

273

those involved in its making. Rossen, who had been an active member of the
Communist Party, eventually offered other names to clear his own. Polonsky,
also a communist, refused to name names and was blacklisted, as was Garfield.

The redemptive power of resistance is depoliticized and mythologized in
Robert Wise's The Set-Up (1949). A third-rate boxer and his wife go to the iron-
ically named Paradise City for one last fight. (Paradise City Athletic Club is next
to a dance hall called Dreamland, and across the street from the Hotel Cozy.)
Stoker Thompson (Robert Ryan) is fighting a much younger, stronger man, and
everyone but him is aware that the fight is fixed. Everyone, including himself,
will gain if he loses. In the classic noir gesture of integrity and futile defiance,
when Stoker finds out about the set-up, he fights so hard that he wins. But his
victory is limited to the confines of the square circle. After he leaves the gym, the
gangsters work him over in the grim alley-way. 64 However Christ-like he is
(and we are not allowed to forget it), Paradise City is really just another name
for Poisonville after all.

The symbolism of the set-up was not confined to stories directly about the
fight game. When, in James M. Cain's 1936 novel, Double Indemnity, insurance
salesman Walter Huff conspires with Phyllis Nirdlinger to insure and then kill
her husband, he talks of their plan as a 'set-up'. Huff maintains that insurance
is itself a form of gambling. Billy Wilder 's 1944 film adaptation, with the conspir-
ators renamed Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson, further highlights the sport-
or game-like nature of the plan. 65 Dietrichson had been a college football player
and is now a keen devotee of baseball on the radio; his daughter Lola, mean-
while, plays checkers with her stepmother and talks of going roller-skating.
When she quarrels with her father, he describes Lola as 'a good fighter for her
weight' (and this is something she will prove to be after the murder has been
committed). Walter himself talks of the murder plan as something that should
be followed 'move by move', and later, believes that his immediate boss, Keyes,
is 'playing on our team' (the big boss, Norton, meanwhile, 'fumbled with the
ball'). Most relevantly, the living room of Walter's apartment is decorated with
four framed prints of nineteenth-century bareknuckle fighters. In the crucial
scene in which Phyllis arrives to secure and plan the set-up, the camera makes
sure that these prints are clearly visible. They are not images of fights, but of
solitary men in fighting pose, much as Walter had seen himself up to this point.
At the start Walter believes that by killing her husband, he is fighting for Phyl-
lis and the money. By the end of the film, aware that he has won neither, he
realizes that she is his real opponent, and in an embrace that is both sexual and
a boxers' clinch, they shoot each other. Of his life before Phyllis, Walter says there
were 'no visible scars'. The point of the film is not that he dies at the end, but that
he dies with the 'visible scars' of a man who has chosen the wrong fight. 66

The screenplay of Double Indemnity was written by Wilder and Raymond
Chandler, and it may have been Chandler's idea to compare the insurance inves-
tigator to a boxer. Certainly Chandler had made frequent use of boxing metaphors
in his 1939 novel The Big Sleep. Dressed in a 'powder-blue suit', Philip Marlowe

274

describes himself as the start of the novel as 'neat, clean, shaved and sober'; in
other words, 'everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be'. At this
stage, there is still a possibility of 'me versus Poisonville'. But things start to fall
apart only a page later when Marlowe meets his client's daughter, Carmen Stern-
wood, and she fails to recognize his carefully constructed and signalled identity.
Instead she notices that he is 'awfully tall' and when he jokes that his name is Dog-
house Reilly, she asks if he is a prize-fighter. 'Not exactly, I'm a sleuth,' he replies.
Being a sleuth, Marlowe suggests, is not exactly the same as being a prize-fighter,
but there is a similarity between the two professions. The prize-fighter analogy
works against the novel's earlier suggestion that the detective is a kind of knight. 67
While Sherlock Holmes could equate the chivalric and meticulous codes of
boxing to detective work, Marlowe does not really do much detection. 'I'm not
Sherlock Holmes', he tells Sternwood. 68 'Little methods of thought' are not what
being a modern sleuth, or a modern prize-fighter, is all about. All Marlowe can do
is take part in a series of dirty fights, double-crosses and set-ups.

If medieval codes of chivalry, and the English Queensberry rules, are obso-
lete in 'this rotten crime-ridden country', Marlowe still holds onto one rule, that
opponents should be equally matched. He makes frequent references to the rel-
ative sizes and weights of the men and women he encounters, but most of the
contests that he witnesses or participates in are mismatches. We assume Mar-
lowe is a heavyweight; at any rate, he is, as Carmen points out, 'awfully tall'.
(Chandler later described Marlowe as 'slightly over six feet and weighting] about
thirteen stone eight'. 69 ) Most of his opponents are either smaller than him or
homosexual, which seems to amount to the same thing. The only time Marlowe
doesn't fight at all is when he encounters a real boxer, Eddie Mars's bodyguard,
'an obvious pug, a good-looking pale-faced boy with a bad nose and one ear like
a club steak'. Compared to the boxer, Marlowe feels himself feminine: 'I turned
around for him like a bored beauty modeling an evening gown'. Shortly after-
wards, however, he is able to re-establish his masculinity when he takes on Carol
Lundgren, 'a very handsome boy indeed', and the lover of the dead 'queen',
Geiger. When Lundgren punches Marlowe on the chin, he backsteps and man-
ages to avoid being knocked down. 'It was meant to be a hard one, but a pansy
has no iron in his bones, whatever he looks like.' Marlowe tells Lundgren that
he won't fight with him - 'You're giving away too much weight' - but Lundgren
'wants to fight'. Each man has a different strategy: Marlowe takes Lungren's
neck 'in chancery'; Lundgren uses his hands 'where it hurt'; but there is a
moment in which 'it was a balance of weights'. 'We seemed to hang there in the
misty moonlight, two grotesque creatures'. On the threshold of what he de-
scribes as the 'poisonous room' in which homosexual sex and murder have taken
place, Marlowe feels himself momentarily a 'grotesque' creature too. Then he
finishes his opponent off, and starts to call him 'son'. 70

In the novel's final pages Marlowe is finally matched with two opponents
who equal him in size. The first is Eddie Mars's wife, Silver-Wig, who is 'tall
rather than short, but no bean-pole', and whose hair, under her wig, is short

275

and clipped, like a boy's'; the second is the confusingly purring but dog-like
Canino (Marlowe's nom de guerre is, of course, Doghouse). 71 The fight begins with
a warning scream from Silver-Wig, 'a beautiful thin tearing scream that rocked
me like a left hook'. When Canino fires his gun, Marlowe contemplates allow-
ing him to continue, just like a gentleman of the old school'. But he is no knight,
no Sherlock Holmes, and so he shoots 'four times, the Colt straining against my
ribs'. 72 (Walter Huff, in the novel Double Indemnity, experiences being shot as
'something hit[ting] me in the chest like Jack Dempsey had hauled off and given
me all he had'. 73 ) At the end Marlowe admits, over a couple of double scotches,
that he is 'part of the nastiness now'.

MEN 'TAKING IT' AND WOMEN WATCHING

In most Hollywood comedies of the thirties, it did not really matter if the boxer
won or lost as long as he got paid. In Cain and Mabel (1936), for example, Larry
Cain (Clark Gable) is about to clinch the match when he hears Mabel (Marion
Davis) calling out to him. He turns to look and is knocked out. 'Gee, Mabel, I lost
every penny I had in the world', he complains. 'Never mind,' she replies, 'I bet
on the other guy and I've enough for both of us.' In NothingSacred (1937), Wally
(Fredric March) and Hazel (Carole Lombard) decide to box so that Hazel will
seem tired enough to convince a doctor she has radium poisoning and therefore
deserve her free trip to New York (illus. 108). By the late 1940s, however, when
economic conditions were much better, such cheerful pragmatism no longer
seemed possible. 74

In her 1949 study of gender differences, Male and Female, the anthropolo-
gist Margaret Mead commented on the importance for American boys of a will-
ingness to fight. 'Both sexes are told not to fight, and then boys are watched very
anxiously, girls almost as anxiously, to see if they show signs of being quitters, of
not being able to take it.' 75 Boxing stories, in some way or another, are always
about the anxieties of boys and the ways in which they test and define their mas-
culinity. But at different times, different aspects of masculinity are foregrounded.
In the thirties, Clifford Odets's Joe Bonaparte clenched his fists and explained
that he became a fighter because 'I'd rather give it than take it'. 76 His aggression
was clearly motivated and comprehensible. By the late forties, however, the test
of manliness was not aggression - how much pain the boxer's body could inflict
- but endurance - how much it could withstand. Being able to 'take it' was now
all that one could expect of men. 77 In 1932, Kirstein had described Cagney's
appeal as lying in his portrayal of 'the delights of violence'; in 1947, John House-
man concluded an article on 'today's hero', saying that, 'in all history I doubt
there has been a hero whose life was so unenviable and whose aspirations had so
low a ceiling'. 78 The 'semi-conscious sadism' of the thirties gangster film had, in
other words, given way to the masochism of the forties film noir. 79

Sports films tend to be optimistic about individual or team efforts to suc-
ceed, even against extreme odds, andfilm noir generally stayed clear of sporting

276

stories. Boxing was an exception, since, as Andrew Dickos points out, 'the fight
game encompasses many key noir features - its urban roots, the corruption of
power and money and of the criminal element so often controlling it, and the
violence and near-narcotic dynamism intrinsic in its exercise'. 80 The three most
notable boxing noirs were Body and Soul, Champion and The Set-Up, although
many movies, from The Killers (1946) to The Big Combo (1955), effectively used
boxing settings to create an atmosphere of barely contained violence. 81

Although these films often presented themselves as 'socially conscious',
aiming to expose the brutality of boxing, they often seemed to relish the suffer-
ing that individual boxers endured. 82 In a 1949 essay attacking both the 'compul-
sion to grind away at a message' and the exaggerated degradation of most fight
films, Manny Farber argued that their real impetus often seemed to be 'a pure
imaginative delight in the mangling of the human body'. 83 This is apparent if we
consider the endings of Champion, Body and Soul and The Set-Up. Each con-
cludes, in seemingly traditional style, with the protagonist winning his big fight,
but in each case, this physical sporting victory is shown as hollow rather than
glorious. As I suggested earlier, the ostensible 'message' of these films is that
some kind of spiritual or moral transcendence of the body is not only possible
but absolutely necessary. It might be argued that in their rejection of the cult of
the body these films, like Raging Bull some 30 years later, are the antithesis of the
typical sports movie. However, the camera's lingering attention to the endurance
as well as the 'mangling' of the human body, like the attention given by Renais-
sance artists to the crucified Christ, inevitably undermines the intentions of the
artists: an asserted rejection or transcendence of the physical is always going to
be less memorable than an all-too-present physicality. Body and Soul's final
image is of Charley and his girl walking respectably down the street together;
after a final fight, he has left boxing and crime behind. The images that we
remember, however, are those from the fight itself- Charley's spirited refusal to
stop fighting and his bloodied, battered face, which cinematographer James
Wong Howe shot with a handheld camera. Even more memorable is the final
scene of Champion, in which Midge Kelly (Kirk Douglas) dies alone in his dress-
ing room after a severe beating in the ring. 84 The scene parallels an earlier one
in which a well-oiled Douglas, a 'quartzlike, malevolent show-off' according to
Farber, preened as he trained. While generally disapproving of the film's senti-
mentality, Farber found the death scene 'unbearably moving'.

While scenes such as this put late-forties boxing films firmly into the cate-
gory of the male weepie, it is worth remembering that the most important spec-
tators within the films are always women. 'Boxing movies may describe the
world of men and male values,' noted Ronald Bergan, 'but it is the women in the
background that give them meaning.' 85 From the male point of view, the mean-
ing of women is relatively straightforward and, in these films, largely negative:
life would be simpler without them. Nevertheless, as the title of a 1939 Kenneth
Patchen poem puts it, 'Boxers Hit Harder When Women Are Around'. 86 In the
early twentieth century, representations of women spectators at men's boxing

277

matches signalled a fascination with unabashed male display and active female
choice in matters of sex. By mid-century, women were still seen as choosing,
but the men seemed more anxious about being judged. Much of this anxiety is
manifest in misogynist portrayals of women as sexual predators, femmefatales
- lustful, cruel, bloodthirsty and, most of all, only really interested in hard cash.
'They're all alike', complained Midge in Ring Lardner's story 'Champion',
'Money, money, money'; a view supported by Bruno, in Never Come Morning:
'Dames don't care if a guy's puss is pushed in, so long as they ain't no dent in his
wallet'. According to Jim Tulley's bruiser, 'the women who marry fighters, God
save my ragged soul, are often crueler than the managers'. 87

Women did not fare much better in the movies. In Golden Boy, Lorna (Bar-
bara Stanwyck) tells the naive Joe (William Holden) that she only likes men
'who reach for a slice of fame': 'do it', she urges, 'bang your way to the mid-
dleweight crown. Buy that car, give some girl the things she wants.' Lorna, as we
have seen, is reformed by her exposure to Italian family life, but mostfemmes
fatales, and most boxers, are not so lucky. Perhaps the most relentless explo-
ration of what happens to a boxer when he hooks up with a bad girl is Robert
Siodmak's The Killers (1947). The film begins with a fairly faithful adaptation of
Hemingway's short story of the same title: the Swede (Burt Lancaster) is seen
lying on his bed, passively awaiting his killers despite having muscles that ac-
tively strain his vest. While Nick Adams never learns why the Swede has given
up, the film introduces an insurance investigator to delve into his past and solve
the puzzle of his downfall. 88 The solution lies with torch-song singer Kitty (Ava
Gardner); in Frank Krutnik's words, 'a lustrous incarnation of 1940s Hollywood
eroticism'. 89 It is Kitty, we gradually learn, who has unmanned the Swede, who
has transformed him from a prizefighter, the epitome of active masculinity, into
a prone and passive figure lying on a bed.

Many noir films and novels rely on a clear distinction between bad girls and
good girls, the ones who reject blood-soaked money and tell their men to stay
at home. Good women shield their eyes at ringside, and really good women lis-
ten, wincing, to the radio at the hearth. Occasionally, in extremis, they appear at
ringside to steer their men back to the true path. In Spirit of Youth (1938), Joe
(Joe Louis) deserts his hometown sweetheart, Mary (Edna Mae Harris) for a
cabaret singer called Flora (Mae Turner); finally awarded a shot at the title, Joe
fights listlessly until Mary appears at ringside to urge him on. Body and Soul
presents the competing influence of three women on Charley Davis: the film
was advertised as 'The story of a guy that women go for!' (illus. 109). The bad
girl, Alice (Hazel Brooks), who snuggles up in her fur coat and yells for him to
kill his opponent, has no chance against the combined strength of Charley's
Jewish mama (Anne Revere) and his neighbourhood girlfriend, Peg (Lilli
Palmer). Peg leaves Charley when she sees him being corrupted, but returns
when he defies the gangsters and shows that he's really a mensch after all.

Men may do the fighting, but stories like this suggest that without the guid-
ing moral influence of a woman, they have no idea what is worth fighting for.

278

The male desire for glory is frequently declared to be rather pathetic. When, in
The Set-Up, Stoker Thomson tells his wife that he's just a punch away from suc-
cess, Julie counters mercilessly, 'Don't you see, Bill, you'll always be one punch
away'. She refuses to use the ticket that he has bought her and in a dramatic
scene rips it up and throws it over a bridge (we are encouraged to think that she
is contemplating suicide, but that is hardly believable - unlike her husband,
she is not prone to self-destruction). Throughout his fight, Stoker looks towards
Julie's seat - in section C, row four - but it remains empty. From the other seats,
stereotypically bad women shout out 'kill him', let him have it'. While Stoker
is boxing, and afterwards, while he is being beaten up by the gangsters whose
set-up he has refused to honour, Julie has been warming soup on the hot plate
at the Hotel Cozy. Finally she sees him staggering out of the alley and rushes to
his side. The religious symbolism of the film continues when she holds him in
a classic pietd shot - he has become the fallen Christ. 90 But what is she? Stoker,
hardly able to speak, gasps out that he had won that night. Looking at his broken
hand, Julie smiles beatifically and says 'we've both won.' He has won his integrity,
but lost his career, physical prowess and, it might be argued, his masculinity;
certainly she has won control of their future. 91

A rather more complex take on women as boxing spectators can be found in
John Steinbeck's 1937 story, 'The Chrysanthemums', which, like Of Mice and Men,
is set in the Salinas Valley. Steinbeck once described Salinas as a town dominated
by a 'blackness - the feeling of violence just below the surface'. Although there
were many forms of entertainment in town, he recalled, 'easily the most popular'
was evangelist 'Billy Sunday in boxing gloves fighting the devil in the squared
ring'. 92 'The Chrysanthemums' is the first in a collection of stories which explore
the dark enclosure of the town and its valley. The first sentence announces entrap-
ment - 'The high grey-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the
sky and from all the rest of the world. On every side it sat like a lid on the moun-
tains and made of the valley a closed pot' - and the story proceeds, in good nat-
uralist fashion, to explore the forces contained within that closed pot. Most
tightly constrained is Elisa Allen, the wife of a rancher, who tends her chrysan-
themums, although their stems 'seemed too small and easy for her energy'. A
chicken-wire fence divides her flower garden from the rest of the farm, and her
conversations with her husband tend to take place with this fence between them.
Critics have tended to read Elisa's flower garden as a symbol of repressed sexu-
ality. Some argue that her husband is keeping her fenced in; more convincingly,
Stanley Renner suggests that she represses her own physicality: she will not even
garden without gloves. 93 The story then introduces a tinker, a 'big' man with 'cal-
loused hands', whom she invites into the garden and to whom she gives a
chrysanthemum in a different kind of pot ('the gloves were forgotten now').
When her husband comes home, he tells her that she looks 'different', 'strong
and happy'. They decide to go to town for dinner; on the way, she sees the plant
abandoned on the road - despite his talk, the travelling man was only interested
in the pot. The story is rather insistent on the sexual meaning of gardens and

279

flower pots. More relevant here is the way that Steinbeck links these to boxing.
('Sex is a kind of war', he later claimed. 94 ) At the start of the story, Elisa's hus-
band had joked about going to the fights. 'Oh no', she said breathlessly. 'No, I
wouldn't like fights.' Later, after seeing the tinker's cart and her rejected flower,
she asks her husband, 'Henry, at those prize fights, do the men hurt each other
very much? ... I've read how they break noses, and blood runs down their chests.
I've read how the fighting gloves get heavy and soggy with blood.' Several words
used here link back to moments earlier in the story - the reference to 'gloves' re-
calls Elisa's own pair, and 'heavy' resonates with Henry's comment, just a few
lines earlier, that 'we get so heavy out on the ranch'. The prize-fights, of course,
take place in a fenced-off square that echoes Elisa's garden, the flower beds within
it and the Salinas Valley itself. So what is Steinbeck suggesting? Elisa, it seems, has
the sexual energy and potential violence of a boxer, but, until that day, she has not
allowed a real opponent into the ring with her. Having finally done so, and hav-
ing even gone bareknuckled, she herself has now been badly bloodied. Bemused,
Henry offers to take his wife to watch the fights, but all her own fight has gone.
'She relaxed limply in the seat . . . She turned up her coat collar so he could not
see that she was crying weakly - like an old woman.' 95

'jOE LOUIS IS THE MAN'

Chapter Two of The Autobiography of Malcolm X begins with 'the greatest cele-
bration of race pride our generation had ever known': 'On June twenty-seventh
of that year, nineteen thirty-seven, Joe Louis knocked out James J. Braddock to
become the heavyweight champion of the world.' More than two decades had
passed since a black American had held the title.

In the wake of this victory the thirteen-year-old Malcolm Little followed his
brother to the gym. But while Philbert was 'a natural boxer', Malcolm was not.
Pretending he was older he signed up for a bout with another novice, a white boy
called Bill Peterson; 'I'll never forget him.'

I knew I was scared, but I didn't know, as Bill Peterson told me later
on, that he was scared of me, too. He was so scared I was going to hurt
him that he knocked me down fifty times if he did once.

He did such a job on my reputation in the Negro neighbourhood
that I practically went into hiding. A Negro can't just be whipped by
somebody white and return with his head up to the neighbourhood,
especially in those days . . . When I did show my face again, the Ne-
groes I knew rode me so badly I knew I had to do something.

... So I went back to the gym, and I trained - hard. I beat bags and
skipped rope and grunted and sweated all over the place. And finally I
signed up to fight Bill Peterson again.

The rematch was no better:
280

The moment the bell rang, I saw a fist, then the canvas coming up, and
ten seconds later the referee was saying 'Ten!' over me. It was probably
the shortest 'fight' in history . . . That white boy was the beginning and
the end of my fight career. 96

It is interesting to consider why Malcolm X included this story in his Autobiog-
raphy. Most straightforwardly, it seems that he was illustrating the impact of
Louis in the late thirties - 'Every Negro boy old enough to walk wanted to be the
next Brown Bomber' - and demonstrating his own tenacity. More importantly,
however, the story allows him to compare the roles of black men, and black
leaders, in the 1960s and in the 1930s, where 'sports and, to a lesser extent, show
business, were the only fields open to Negroes, and when the ring was the only
place a Negro could whip a white man and not be lynched.' Malcolm X's auto-
biography is all about the unexpected places in which he has been able to 'whip
a white man', and the suggestion is that if he had been good at boxing he would
not have become an exceptional leader. 'A lot of times in these later years since
I became a Muslim, I've thought back to that fight and reflected that it was
Allah's work to stop me: I might have wound up punchy.' 97 Nevertheless, the
qualities that made him train 'hard' and go back for a second shot at Peterson
are also, it is suggested, the qualities which made him the man he became. 98

Born in 1914 in Lafayette, Alabama, Joe Louis Barrow moved with his fam-
ily to Detroit's Black Bottom when he was twelve. 99 According to legend, his
first boxing lessons were paid for with money his mother had given him for
violin classes, and, when he began to fight, he dropped his surname to deceive
her. 100 Louis trained at the Brewster gym, where he met local businessmen John
Roxborough and Julian Black (both men dealt in real estate and Roxborough
also ran Detroit's numbers racket, while Black ran a casino). While keen to man-
age Louis, neither man had any experience in boxing, so they enlisted the help
of veteran trainer Jack Blackburn.

After winning the light heavyweight championship at the (unsegregated)
Detroit Golden Gloves competition in 1933 and 1934, Louis turned professional.
By the time he was twenty he had a record of twelve wins and no losses, and
was starting to get noticed. Eventually Roxborough, Black and Blackburn de-
cided that he would have a better chance at securing high-profile fights with
white fighters if he also had a white manager, and in particular, one with the
right connections. Mike Jacobs was employed by the Hearst organization and
was therefore the most powerful promoter in the States; the 'pugilist-infested
stretch' of 49th Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue was dubbed 'Jacobs'
Beach'. 101 Jacobs joined the three-man management team in 1935, and subse-
quently had a major influence on the direction of Louis's career. Jacobs collected
half the profits from Louis's fights and reduced Roxborough and Black to figure-
heads. 102 Because of this, Jacobs has been demonized. Louis's biographer, Chris
Mead, for example, described Louis as 'getting into bed with a rattlesnake', while
Jean-Michel Basquiat's 1982 painting St Joe Louis Surrounded By Snakes depicts

281

the boxer in the pose of the Renaissance sacra conversazione, with Blackburn on
his right, laying a supportive arm on his leg, and a hooked-nosed Jacobs, as a
money-grubbing Judas on the left. 103 Louis recalled Jacobs more generously:

If it wasn't for Mike Jacobs I would never have got to be champion. He
fixed it for me to get a crack at the title, and he never once asked me to
do anything wrong or phony in the ring ... He made a lot of money
through me, but he figured to lose, too. 104

The key to success in 1930s America, Roxburgh and Jacobs realized, was for
their fighter to behave in a manner as unlike Jack Johnson as possible. Roxbor-
ough laid down seven rules for Louis to follow. White America had been offended
by Johnson's marriages to white women, so Louis agreed only to be photographed
with black women. White America had been offended by Johnson's flamboyance,
so Louis was to appear low key and unexpressive. He was never to gloat over a
fallen opponent. He was never to get a speeding ticket. In short, he was to be, at
all times, 'a credit to his race', blameless and bland. 105 As Langston Hughes put it,

'They say' . . . 'They say' . . . 'They say' . . .
But the gossips had no
'They say'
to latch onto
for Joe. 106

Years later Louis admitted, 'I was just as vain as Muhammad Ali; I just had to be
more discreet about it.' 107

Louis's professional career was notable not simply for its brilliance - he re-
tained his title for nearly twelve years - but because of what else was going on
during those particular twelve years, 1937-49. Louis fought a lot of white men
during that time, and each fight represented something slightly different. For
Richard Bak, he is 'unquestionably the greatest metaphor the American prize
ring has ever produced'. 108

Louis's first metaphorical contest took place at Madison Square Garden in
1935, just a few months after the Harlem riots. His opponent was Primo Cam-
era, the Italian former heavyweight champion who had famously been pho-
tographed by Edward Steichen giving the Fascist salute. Camera was a huge
man and the press portrayed him as symbolic of the quarter of a million Italian
troops poised to invade Ethiopia. The Washington Post printed a cartoon of the
fighters with enormous shadows (representing Haile Selassie and Mussolini)
behind them, and the New York Sun featured Louis kicking a boot called Cam-
era, while a similarly small figure named Ethiopia stood next to a giant map of
Italy. The Sun's caption asked, 'can the king of Abyssinia, descendant of King
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, do on a big scale in Africa what Joe Louis did
on a small scale in Yankee Stadium?' 109

282

Louis was not well known before the fight, but overnight he became
famous. While Jack Johnson's celebrity was tied up with the development of
film, and Muhammad Ali would later been seen as the saviour of television
boxing, Louis's status as a national hero was associated with the spread of radio
during the thirties. 110 Autobiographies of the period (by blacks and whites)
almost invariably contain an account of listening to one of his fights. 'We'd be
all crowded around the radio waiting to hear the announcer describe Joe knock-
ing some motherfucker out,' recalled Miles Davis. 'And when he did, the whole
goddamn black community of East St Louis would go crazy'. 111 Maya Angelou
describes a crowd gathering in an Arkansas store to listen to radio coverage of
the Louis-Carnera contest. Every piece of commentary brings forth a reaction
from the listeners, as they imagine what is happening in the ring. When it seems
Louis might be going down, Angelou reports:

My race groaned. It was our people falling. It was another lynching, yet
another Black man hanging on a tree. One more woman ambushed
and raped. A Black boy whipped and maimed . . . This might be the
end of the world.

105

Louis on the cover

of The Crisis, June

1935-

The wider meanings of the fight are clear to everyone there. When the commen-
tator reports, 'They're in a clench, Louis is trying to fight his way out', Angelou
notes, 'some bitter comedian on the porch said, "That white man don't mind
hugging that niggah now, I betcha."' And she herself 'wondered if the announcer
gave any thought to the fact that he was addressing as "ladies and gentlemen"

all the Negroes around the world who sat sweat-

THE

CRISIS

UNIONISM OUR ONLY HOPE

9y Frank R, Cr9li.w«lttt

RELIGION AND THE RACE PROBLEM
By J^lin Mr Ce«M<

SHARECROPPERS DROP COLOR LINE
By W*rH H, Kodctrt

ing and praying, glued to their "master's voice".
Louis's eventual victory proved glorious: 'peo-
ple drank Coca-Colas like ambrosia and ate
candy bars like Christmas'. But Angelou, writ-
ing in 1969, was also conscious of the limita-
tions of this moment. As the crowd dispersed,
she notes that 'those who lived too far had made
arrangements to stay in town'. 'It wouldn't do
for a Black man and his family to be caught on
a lonely country road on a night when Joe Louis
had proved that we were the strongest people
in the world.' 112

In the months that followed his defeat of
Camera, Louis-mania flourished in diverse
quarters. In June, the journal of the respect-
able naacp, The Crisis, gave its seal of approval
by putting him on the cover (illus. 105). 113 In
September, Richard Wright (who had listened
to Louis's defeat of Baer on the radio in a

283

South Side tavern) wrote in the communist New Masses of Chicago's black
population filling the streets as 'a fluid mass of joy':

Four centuries of oppression, of frustrated hopes, of black bitterness, felt
even in the bones of the bewildered young rose to the surface. Yes uncon-
sciously they had imputed to the brawny image of Joe Louis all the balked
dreams of revenge, all the secretly visualized images of retaliation and he
had won! . . . From the symbol of Joe's strength they took strength. 114

Although he came from Detroit, Harlemites quickly claimed Louis as one of
their own. Badly hit by the Depression, Harlem was still the symbolic centre of
black American life, and as Ralph Ellison later recalled, 'a place of glamour'.

Those were the days of the swinging big bands, days when the streets
of Harlem were filled with celebration every time Joe Louis knocked
somebody out in the ring, days when we danced the Lindy at the Savoy
Ballroom, and nights when new stars were initiated on the stage of the
Apollo Theater. 115

When Louis beat Max Baer, the Sao Tomense poet Francisco Jose Tenreiro wrote
that 'Harlem opened up in a wide smile', while little girls skipped and sang of
Louis's 'socking' and Baer's 'rocking' as the 'dream of a viper'. 116

While waiting for his title chance against Jim Braddock, Louis took on a
number of ex-world champions, the most prominent of whom was Max Schmel-
ing. Schmeling had come touted by Goebbels and Hitler as an exemplar of
Aryan racial superiority (although Hitler was supposedly pleased to point out
that Schmeling's manager, Joe Jacobs, was an American Jew, and hence 'Ger-
many is not anti-Jewish' 117 ). Boxing was important to Hitler, and in Mein Kampf,
he had emphasized its role in training the youth of Germany:

It is regarded as natural and honourable that a young man should learn
to fence and proceed to fight duels right and left, but if he boxes, it is
supposed to be vulgar! Why? There is no sport that so much as this one
promotes the spirit of attack, demands lightning decisions, and trains
the body in steel dexterity . . . If our entire intellectual upper crust had
not been brought up so exclusively on upper-crust etiquette; if instead
they had learned boxing thoroughly, a German revolution of pimps,
deserters, and such-like rabble would never have been possible. 118

In the years leading up to the war, Max Schmeling's every fight became a test
case not only for Hitler's racial theories (German Jews had not been allowed to
box professionally for some time) but also for the potential might of the German
army. 119 In 1933 Schmeling had been defeated by Max Baer (whose Jewishness
was questionable, but who often fought with a Star of David on his shorts), and

284

iheAmerican Hebrew described the defeat as 'a huge joke at the expense of "Herr
Hitler"' whose 'Nazi theory of Nordic superiority' had been made 'ridiculous'. 120
On 19 June 1936, however, Schmeling fought and beat Louis in twelve rounds.
He had picked up Louis's only weakness as a fighter - a tendency to hold his left
hand too low. Any fighter who circled to his left could defeat him, a jealous Jack
Johnson had predicted, and he proved right. The American had been the 10-1
favourite. Johnson, however, had bet heavily on Schmeling and, after the con-
test, walked down 125th Street, waving his wad around. 121 (Johnson was also
involved in the search for a white hope to defeat Louis: 'it's a commercial affair
with me', he explained. 122 )

The Nazi journal Das Schwarze Korps declared that 'Schmeling's victory was
not only sport. It was a question of prestige for our race', and Goebbels used
the fight footage in one of his most successful propaganda films, Max Schmel-
ings Sieg-Ein Deutscher ('Schmeling's Victory, A Germany victory'). More than
three million Germans saw the film in its first month. 123 (The Berlin Olympics
began just six weeks later.) Meanwhile, Der Weltkampf wrote that France, Eng-
land and 'white North America' should also celebrate the victory which had
'checked the arrogance of the Negroes and clearly demonstrated to them the
superiority of white intelligence'. 124 At least one American paper, the New
Orleans Picayune, agreed. A columnist cheerfully wrote of Louis's defeat, 'I guess
this proves who really is the master race.' 125

For blacks, Louis's defeat was made worse by the fact that it had taken place
on Juneteenth, Emancipation Day. 126 Hundreds wept in the streets of Harlem,
and Francisco Jose Tenreiro declared that 'The gong of the bell / Hangs in the
air, screaming / The negro's defeat.' 127 Marcus Garvey, meanwhile, blamed
Louis, accusing him of laziness, selfishness, and lack of racial pride. 'Schmeling
knew that he had the responsibility of satisfying a watching and waiting Ger-
manic world', but Louis, 'as is customary to us', 'thought only of himself ': 'We
hope Mrs Louis will not think hard of us, but we think Joe got married too early
before securing his world championship.' 128 'Don't be a Joe Louis' was a popu-
lar expression that summer and John Dos Passos wrote to his friend Ernest Hem-
ingway, asking him what had happened to his 'little chocolate friend Joey Louis?
Matrimony? Dope? Disease? Or is Hitler right?' 129

On 22 June 1937 Louis's redemption began. Twenty-two years after Jess
Willard had defeated Jack Johnson, Joe Louis broke the colour line in the heavy-
weight championship for good by defeating Jim Braddock, the 'Cinderella
Man'. 13 " The fight had been difficult to secure and Louis's manager, Mike
Jacobs, finally agreed to pay Braddock, and his manager Joe Gould, 10 per cent
of Louis's earnings for a decade. The Baltimore celebration was witnessed by
British journalist Alistair Cooke. Cooke and a friend were attending a Fats
Waller show in 'darktown', when 'far off from somewhere came a high roar like
a tidal wave'. 'It was like Christmas Eve in darkest Africa ... for one night, in all
the lurid darktowns of America, the black man was king. The memory of that
night has terrified and exhilarated me ever since.' 131 The Daily Worker was less

285

Conradian: 'The Negro people,' it declared, 'are going to smack Jim Crow right
on the button like Louis hit Braddock.' 132

But the real championship fight, and the fight that turned Louis into a
potent symbol for white as well as black America, was the 1938 S chmeling rematch
(illus. 110). 133 In the lead up to the contest, Franklin D. Roosevelt reputedly
invited the boxer to the White House, felt his muscles, and said, 'Joe, we're de-
pending on those muscles for America.' 134 Louis did not disappoint. After only
124 seconds he knocked out the 'sagging Teuton', the 'Nazi Nailer'; 'people who
had paid as much as $100 for their chairs didn't use them' and many radio
listeners who had not quite settled down for the fight said they missed it
altogether. 135 'It was a shocking thing, that knockout,' reported Bob Considine,
'short, sharp, merciless, complete'. 136 'Hitler's pet,' wrote Richard Wright,
looked like a soft piece of molasses candy left out in the sun.' 137 Nevertheless,
Louis and Schmeling embraced. 'They both smiled,' noted Considine, 'and could
afford to - for Louis had made around $200,000 a minute and Schmeling
$100,000.' (Later, to salve opinion back in Germany, Schmeling claimed he
had been fouled.)

In Harlem, 500,000 blacks took to the streets, saluting each other with Nazi
salutes and shouting 'Heil Louis!' 'One joyous Negro passed it on to another
and finally Seventh Avenue looked like a weird burlesque of Wilhelmstrasse
in Berlin - staggering, yelling, singing, jumping, dancing, hugging, men and
women jutting out their hands to one another in mock Nazi salute.' 138 In
Georgia, things were slightly different. Jimmy Carter recalled hearing the fight
on the family radio which had been propped up on the window sill so that their
black neighbours could listen to it without entering the house. At the end of the
fight, 'there was no sound from anyone in the yard, except a polite "Thank you,
Mister Earl"', offered to Carter's 'deeply disappointed' father.

Then, our several dozen visitors filed across the dirt road, across the
railroad track, and quietly entered a house about a hundred yards away
out in the field. At that point, pandemonium broke loose inside that
house, as our black neighbours shouted and yelled in celebration of
the Louis victory. But all the curious, accepted proprieties of a racially-
segregated society had been carefully observed. 139

Like the victory of the black American runner Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin
Olympics, Louis's triumph had a powerful political impact. 140 For whites, Amer-
ican democracy had straightforwardly defeated German fascism. For blacks,
however, Louis was primarily a 'race hero', fighting in (as well as for) Jim Crow
America. Marcus Garvey now argued that Louis's punches were 'typical of our
race in true action': Joe had 'had time for reflection and for the appreciation of
the responsibility our race has placed on his shoulders'. 141 Richard Wright noted
the political potential of the 'High Tide in Harlem' that Louis's victory inspired
and tried to balance the claims of democracy vs. fascism with those of black

286

American racial justice.

Carry the dream on for yourself; lift it out of the trifling guise of a
prizefight celebration and supply the social and economic details and
you have the secret dynamics of proletarian aspiration. The eyes of
these people were bold that night. Their fear of property, of the armed
police fell away. There was in their chant a hunger deeper than that for
bread as they marched along.

For the communist Wright, this was a moment of potentially revolutionary
significance. With Louis as a rallying point, the black proletariat might break
out of the confines of their own square circle and recognize 'that the earth was
theirs . . . that they did not have to live by proscription in one corner of it'. 142

When Jack Johnson entered the ring in Reno in 1910 the band played 'All
Coons Look Alike to Me'; in 1938, 'The Star-Spangled Banner' introduced Louis.
After 1938, white newspaper cartoonists finally abandoned Sambo stereotypes
to portray Louis in a flattering light. 143 Louis's nicknames proliferated as fast as
his product endorsements. As Eugene McCartney noted in a 1938 scholarly
article, Alliteration on the Sports Page':

Brown Bomber has finally emerged as his most popular name, but only after
knocking out a score of others: Alabam Assassin, Black Beauty, Brown Be-
hemoth, Brown Bludgeon, Brown Embalmer, Dark Destroyer, Dark Dyna-
miter, Detroit Demon, Detroit Devastator, Detroit's Dun Demon, Jarring
Joejoltingjoe, Licorice Lasher, Michigan Mauler, Ring Robot, Sable Sphinx,
Sepia Slasher, Sepia Sniper, Tan Thunderbolt, Tan Thunderer, Tan Tornado,
Wildcat Warrior. 144

Louis's reputation as an ail-American hero was consolidated in 1942 when
he risked his title against Max Baer and donated his winnings (approximately
$70,000) to the Naval Relief Fund to help the families of those who had died at
Pearl Harbor. 145 Paul Gallico declared that Louis ('Citizen Barrow') represented
nothing less than 'simple good American integrity', perhaps forgetting that in
1935 he had dubbed him a 'calmly savage Ethiopian.' Many blacks were less
happy about Louis's support of the discriminatory and oppressive Navy policies.
After Walter White, Secretary of the naacp, expressed the hope that Louis's
patriotic actions would stir the American Navy toward desegregation, the Office
of War Information and the War Department made statements insisting that it
was necessary to the war effort to 'de-emphasize our many long standing inter-
nal dissensions'. 146 But the war simply highlighted those dissensions. In the
May 1941 issue of The Crisis, labour leader A. Philip Randolph had called for a
mass march on Washington to protest against employment inequalities in the
National Defense industries, arguing that the present situation was 'a blow
below the belt'. Six days before the scheduled march, Roosevelt issued an order

287

barring racial discrimination in the defense industries, and Randolph cancelled
the march. The effectiveness of the threat of nonviolent direct action had been
demonstrated. 147

After the fight, Louis enlisted and became a spokesman and recruiting agent
for the army. In May 1942, he made a speech saying, 'We gon do our part, and we
will win, because we're on God's side.' This immediately became a popular prop-
aganda slogan, featuring on a recruitment poster with Louis and his gun. 148 Clau-
dia Jones of the Young Communist League used the same image for the cover of
a 1942 pamphlet, Lift Every Voice for Victory! (illus. 133). 'All victories won on the
"home front" against discrimination today,' she argued, 'are inseparable from
the struggle to defeat Hitler.' 149 Louis also appeared in a couple of propaganda
films, including This is The Army (1943) - featuring an Irving Berlin song that
urged the fashionable to 'take a look at Brown Bomber Joe' to find out what 'the
well-dressed man in Harlem will wear' - and the groundbreaking The Negro Sol-
dier (1944). 15 ° The film begins in a church where the black congregation listens
to a young preacher, who departs from his prepared text to consider the contri-
bution of blacks in the military. The preacher (played by Carlton Moss, who also
wrote the script) begins by evoking Joe Louis's 1938 defeat of Schmeling. A news-
reel clip of the fight is then shown with the preacher's words as a voiceover:

In one minute and 49 seconds an American fist won a victory. But it
wasn't a final victory. No, that victory's going to take a little longer and
a whole lot more American fists. Now those two men that were
matched in the ring that night are matched again, this time in a far
greater arena and for much greater stakes.

The scene then shifts to Louis and Schmeling in training - Louis in uniform
running through the countryside with his comrades, and Schmeling jumping
out of a plane, learning to be a parachutist. In Germany, men are 'turned into
machines', the preacher says; in America, he implies, even black men are at one
with nature. The sermon continues:

This time it's a fight not between man and man but between nation
and nation, a fight for the real championship of the world, to deter-
mine which way of life shall survive - their way or our way. And this
time we must see to it that there is no return engagement for the stakes
this time are the greatest men have ever fought for. 151

The film goes on to tell the story of black involvement in the American army
since the Revolution. Although the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln are briefly
mentioned, slavery is not. 152 In 1945, Louis was awarded a medal by the Legion
of Merit. 'White America found it easier to give Joe Louis a medal than to inte-
grate the army,' notes Chris Mead, 'easier to write an editorial praising Joe Louis
than to hire a black reporter.' 153 Louis was not unaware of the political

288

hypocrisies at play. Of his fights with Schmeling, he said, 'White Americans -
even while some of them still were lynching black people in the South - were
depending on me to k.o. Germany.' 154

In 1946, Louis returned to boxing but he was not as strong or as fast as he
had been. He knocked out Billy Conn again - coining the slogan, 'He can run,
but he can't hide' - and won three other fights, including two with Jersey Joe
Walcott, before abdicating his title in 1949. However, because he needed money
to pay taxes - the irs demanded a reported $1.2 million in back taxes, interest
and penalties - he returned to the ring. In 1950 he lost a one-sided decision to
Ezzard Charles and retired for good the following year when Rocky Marciano
knocked him out in front of a national television audience. Broke, Louis turned
to wrestling and refereeing and, following several stays in hospitals for cocaine
addiction and paranoia, he became an 'official greeter' at Caesars Palace in Las
Vegas. He died in 1981 at the age of 66 and was buried in Arlington National
Cemetery; Max Schmeling, who had become a good friend, was one of the pall-
bearers. Between 1937 and 1949 Louis defended his title 25 times, setting records
for any division in the number of defences and longevity as a continuous world
champion. Both records still stand.

For all that white America eventually embraced him, it was as a 'race hero'
that Louis flourished. 155 For some, he was simply the best-known black man in
America. In November 1938 Frank Byrd described trying to write an article on
a Harlem prostitute called Big Bess for the Amsterdam News, but being told by
the night deskman that his job was simply 'to tell me when Joe Louis gets some,
and if the Brown Bomber likes it . . . Sidney said an Amsterdam reader could not
care less whether Lenox Avenue Bess really had a heart; they'd read about her
if Joe Louis said so'. 156 For others, the Louis phenomenon merited proper aca-
demic analysis. In their seminal sociological study Black Metropolis (1945), Clair
Drake and Horace R. Cayton noted that from 1933 to 1938 Louis had more front-
page mentions (80) in the Chicago Defender than anyone else; Haile Selassie
came a poor second with 24 mentions. 157 In Negro Youth at the Crossways (1940),
E. Franklin Frazier reported Louis's popularity with high school students: 'Joe
Louis', Frazier wrote, 'enables . . . many Negro youths and adults in all classes
to inflict vicariously the aggressions which they would like to carry out against
whites for the discriminations and insults which they have suffered.' 158

Louis soon became a quasi-religious figure, and in 1941 even Time maga-
zine dubbed him 'a black Moses, leading the children of Ham out of bondage'. 159
There are many examples of Louis being evoked in these terms, but none more
poignant than a story told by Martin Luther King in Why We Can't Wait:

More than 25 years ago, on one of the southern states adopted a new
method of capital punishment. Poison gas supplanted the gallows. In
its earliest stages a microphone was placed inside the sealed death
chamber so that scientific observers might hear the words of the dying
prisoner to judge how the victim reacted in this novel situation. The

305

LiftEmyVoke-

133

Cover of Lift Every
Voice for Victory!
by Claudia Jones
(1942).

OR VICTORY!

134

Two Champions.
Postcard based on
a photograph of
Joe Louis and
Martin Luther King
taken at a benefit
for the March on
Washington, 1963.

first victim was a young Negro. As the pellet dropped into the container,
and the gas curled upward, through the microphone came these words.
'Save me Joe Louis. Save me Joe Louis. Save me Joe Louis'. 160

Writing in 1963, King described this cry as 'bizarre and naive', and claimed that
it had now been replaced by 'a mighty shout of challenge': the loneliness and
profound despair of Negroes in that period', a despair manifest in the belief
that 'not God, not government, not charitably minded white men, but a Negro
who was the world's most expert fighter, in this last extremity, was the last hope'
had finally been 'replaced by confidence' in the possibility of real political
change (illus. 134). l61 During the sixties, another 'expert boxer' would come to
represent political change, but at the height of the Depression, the dying pris-
oner was not the only American to believe that Louis was a Christ-like figure, the
'New Black Hope', the 'one Negro white men respect'. 162 After Louis beat Baer
(in the first million-dollar gate since Dempsey), Richard Wright wrote that the
feeling on the streets of Chicago 'was like a revival': After one fight really, there
was a religious feeling in the air. Well, it wasn't exactly a religious feeling, but it
was something, and you could feel it. It was a feeling of unity, of oneness.' 163

The religious aura surrounding Louis meant that he was highly flexible as
a political symbol. 164 Ironically, Louis's success in a sport that epitomized per-
sonal struggle and achievement was often used to harness support for political
struggles that rejected individualist aspiration in favour of collective action. In
1942, Louis appeared in propaganda for the us Army; in 1946 he agreed to act
as the honorary national chairman of the communist-linked United Negro Vet-
erans of America, and was honoured (along with Duke Ellington and Frank
Sinatra) by New Masses, the journal in which Richard Wright had dubbed him
political 'dynamite'. 165 Along with movie stars such as Humphrey Bogart and
Rita Hayworth, and performers such as Frank Sinatra and Benny Goodman,
Louis could be found 'supporting Spanish Loyalists, raising money for anti-fas-
cist refugees, playing benefits for Popular Front politicians, and promoting
themselves in the Daily Worker'. 166 In July 1947 The Worker reported the pres-
ence of Louis and Sinatra, along with Edward G. Robinson and Harpo Marx, at
a benefit for an inter-racial hospital. 167

Novels of, and about, the 1930s and '40s abound with references to Louis
and his capacity for political inspiration. V. S.Naipaul's The Mimic Men (1967)
is set partly on the British-governed Caribbean island of Isabella. Ralph Singh,
writing his memoirs in London, recalls a visit to the home of a black school-
friend, Bertie Browne, in the early forties. 'On one wall, ochre-colored with white
facings, there were framed pictures of Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Haile Selassie,
and Jesus.' Only a few years later, Browne becomes a 'black folk-leader', active
in the island's struggle for independence. 168 A radio broadcast of Louis's 1941
fight against 'new White Hope', Billy Conn, is the stimulus for a prison rebellion
in Lloyd L. Brown's 1951 novel, Iron City. For protagonist, Lonnie James, whose
initials reverse those of the champion, each of Louis's victories has been 'a good

307

sign'. On the night of the Conn fight, however, Louis seems to be struggling and
the prison resounds with the sound of 'kill that nigger! ' The guards turn the
radio off, but the prisoners protest:

turn on the radio! turn on the radio! It was savage now, not plead-
ing, and it seemed as though the granite walls would shatter from the
pounding beat of the chant . . . Everything was in that outcry - the beat-
ings, the Hole, the graft, the senseless rules, crooked cops, crooked
judges - everything.

The guards give in and switch the radio back on. The fight is over, 'but the inmates
would still hear the solemn announcement, the winnah and still heavyweight
champion of the world - jo-o-oe louis] The prisoners fight back against the
guards, just as Louis had fought against Conn, but there is an important difference
in the two battles. Louis's victory had been an individual achievement, but that of
the prisoners was a collective act. In the following chapter those same prisoners
gather together to support Lonnie James's appeal against the death penalty. Louis's
individual victory sparks collective action, and Brown links the fight to the Ger-
man invasion of the Soviet Union (which took place just a few days later). 9

But not everyone agreed that race heroes such as Louis could be effective as
political models. Langston Hughes's poem 'To be Somebody' (1950) describes
a little boy 'dreaming of the boxing gloves /Joe Louis wore' but for him there is
no 'knockout' merely 'Bam! Bop! Mop!' 'There's always room,' the poem con-
cludes, 'They say, / At the top.' 17 ° A similar irony informs Chester Himes's first
novel If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), written
in the wake of Louis's support of the segre-
gated American Navy. Robert Jones, who
works in a California shipyard, has been
raised up - 'We made you a leader of your
people, such as Joe Louis, the prize fighter,
Marian Anderson, the singer, and others.
We had confidence in you.' - only to be
brought down, by a false accusation of rape.
Jones says he doesn't want to fight, but he
dreams constantly of killing. The novel ends
when he joins the army. 171

While Joe Louis, or his reputation, crop
up in a wide variety of novels, the form of ex-
pression most often associated with him was
undoubtedly the blues (illus. 135). 172 Within
weeks of his 1935 defeat of Camera, songs
about the fighter were being released all over
the country. The first was Texan Joe Pullum's
'Joe Louis is the Man', which praised him

135

'Joe Louis is
the Man': Advert-
isement for Decca
records, 1935.

H(r» *n f*ur (ft*! wepdi tittflttVtd Eft J*i Umli, (f.r f u»n
l+inbfr, lUN «ur fcrt fir Ihi Ehimpl*niMp. fit iur« u fl*i thju

Cfi7i — -0* Lou!* 1 i The Man nil J Putin' (II u« — Vqc*
Wf I PUno Ace. J« Fullum . 5fc

I 1*1 Vtwil-GuJt. A** r Cwl MarUn . , ifc

T11C — Jp* Louli Chint and Baby O j Mini — Vac. Qrrfr,
I I lif ac«, Geori* D*w*y Wuhbgtan S*c

Qftjlft — 1« Lfliin Stfutt In J H*'» [n Tti* Ring Doing
M^TlV Tfc* S*m, Old fhlni— V«*l with Onh, Atr.
Suuf by M*mphJi iiiaait , ... ^ i*c

308

less as a fighter than as a devoted son, while nine days later Memphis Minnie
McCoy recorded the 'Joe Louis Strut' and 'He's In the Ring (Doin' the Same Old
Thing)', a wonderful evocation of Joe's promise amid Depression hardship.

I wouldn't even pay my house rent

I wouldn't buy me nothing to eat

Joe Louis said 'Come take a chance with me

I'll bet I put you on your feet.'

Soon every victory was being celebrated, and even Louis's 1936 defeat by
Schmeling was debated, most notably in a calypso by The Lion and Atilla: 'I
wouldn't say it was dope or conspiracy, / but the whole thing look extremely
funny to me.' 173 By the end of the thirties Louis was established as the greatest
blues hero since John Henry, and literary figures such as Langston Hughes and
Richard Wright joined in. In 1940 the naacp Hollywood Theatre Alliance Negro
Revue included a skit about Louis, which had as its climax Hughes's song 'Amer-
ica's Young Black Joe', a parody of Stephen Foster's 'Old Black Joe' (1861). Old
Black Joe was a slave dreaming of leaving the cotton fields for heaven:

I'm coming, I'm coming
For my head is bending low
I hear their gentle voices calling
Old Black Joe.

Young Black Joe is also 'comin',

But my head ain't bending low!

I'm walking proud! I'm speaking loud!

I'm America's Young Black Joe! 174

In 1941 Richard Wright's attempt, 'King Joe' (with music by Count Basie), was
recorded by Basie's Orchestra, with Paul Robeson 'singing the blues for the first
time in his life' (Jimmy Rushing stood by his side to beat time). 175 'Wonder what
Joe Louis thinks when he's fighting a white man,' Wright asked, 'Bet he thinks
what I'm thinking, cause he wears a deadpan.' 176

JOE LOUIS VS. JACK JOHNSON

Joe Louis's enormous popularity did not mean that Jack Johnson was entirely
forgotten. 177 If white fight fans liked to compare Joe Louis and Jack Dempsey,
blacks pitted Louis against Johnson. The comparative experience of the two
black heavyweight champions was also evoked as a barometer of the changing
position of black Americans more generally. Richard Wright's first novel, Lawd
Today, presents a Joycean day in the life of a Chicago South Side post office

309

worker called Jake Jackson. 178 The day is 12 February 1937, Abraham Lincoln's
birthday, and the novel draws parallels between the Civil War, boxing, and Jack-
son's daily struggles. At one point, Jake overhears part of a radio broadcast: 'In
the latter part of 1862 Meade and Lee sparred and feinted cautiously for an open-
ing to deal a telling blow.' It is also some months before Louis won the title, but
the men at the post office think Louis will never be allowed to become cham-
pion. 179 After discussing Louis's 1936 defeat by Schmeling, they reminisce about
Johnson's acts of defiance and the riots that took place in the wake of his victory
over Jeffries. The Civil War is not over; the battling continues. Wright's choice
of name for his protagonist seems deliberately ironic. Jackson is no hero, but a
gullible and pathetic drunk whose only blows are directed at his wife. The novel
ends with a knockout of sorts: she smashes a glass over his head and he falls
into a drunken sleep.

A comparative reading of the careers of Jack Johnson and Joe Louis is also
important to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952). The novel enacts a debate be-
tween the two great black heavyweight champions of the first half of the twen-
tieth century, and considers each in turn as a model for the black writer in
America. Ralph Ellison was born in the year before Johnson lost his title, in 1914,
the same year as Joe Louis Barrow. If by the 1940s the colour line in heavyweight
boxing had gone for good, it remained firm in what might be called heavyweight
writing. When, in 1963, Ellison wanted to complain that Irving Howe's essay,
'Black Boys and Native Sons', was a 'Northern white liberal version of the white
Southern myth of absolute separation of the races', he did so in the language of
the boxing commentator: '[Howe] implies that Negroes can only aspire to contest
other Negroes (this at a time when Baldwin has been taking on just about every-
one, including Hemingway, Faulkner, and the United States Attorney General!),
and must wait for the appearance of a Black Hope before they have the courage
to move.' 180 Ellison repeatedly rejected the idea of a black-only tradition, assert-
ing strongly the influence of writers such as Eliot, Joyce, Hemingway and Twain
upon his work. 'While one can do nothing about choosing one's relatives,' he
maintained, 'one can as an artist, choose one's "ancestors".' Richard Wright
was, in this sense, a 'relative'; Hemingway an 'ancestor'. 181 This is an interesting
and much-discussed distinction, but within both words, 'relative' and 'ances-
tor', I would suggest, another nestles - 'opponent'. Ellison goes even further in
his determination to throw off the influence of Wright, when he maintains in the
same essay: 'I did not need Wright to tell me how to be a Negro or to be angry
or to express anger -Joe Louis was doing that very well.' 182

Ellison's metaphor of the writer as fighter recalls his 'ancestor'/ opponent
Hemingway's famous 1949 letter to Charles Scribner in which he claimed to be 'a
man without any ambition, except to be champion of the world'. 183 As Heming-
way took on all-comers, living or dead, Ellison wanted to be seen as taking on all-
comers, black or white. Ellison wanted to be considered 'a real contender' and
part of that involved demonstrating the ambition necessary to be thought so. But
while Hemingway's only ambition was 'to be champion of the world', Ellison

310

extends the fighterly metaphor, and makes it more precise and, in a way, more
problematic. Wright may have given him faith 'in his ability to compete', but Joe
Louis had taught him how 'to be a Negro ... to be angry ... to express anger'. 184

Invisible Man is a book full of 'bouts with circumstance', in and out of the
boxing ring, bouts which are repeatedly presented as commentaries on ques-
tions of verbal expression and communication. 185 How much is writing, or
boxing, Ellison asks, about 'expressing anger' or indeed any other form of self-
expression or self-assertion? How much are both simply about performing? The
best-known fight in the novel comes in its opening chapter, in the battle royal
scene, which was first published as a short story. 186 The battle royal (which only
featured blacks) was a popular form of boxing event in the early twentieth-
century south, and was often the opening event on a boxing card. Most often, bat-
tle royals involved adolescent boys, who, often blindfolded and sometimes with
one arm tied behind their backs, would compete to be the last one standing.
'Manufactured disunity among blacks was the barely concealed plot,' Andrew
Kaye argues, 'redolent of the old days on the plantation.' 187 In Ellison's novel, the
protagonist has been invited to speak before 'a gathering of the town's leading
white citizens' - the crowd will 'judge truly [his] ability' and it will be a 'triumph
for [the whole black] community'. In fact what happens is that several black boys
his age are forced to watch a dance performed by a naked white woman with 'a
small American flag tattooed upon her belly', and then are blindfolded and made
to fight each other before scrambling for the coins that are their 'reward'. 188 Ini-
tially ten boys are involved, but soon the number is reduced to two: Invisible
Man and Tatlock. 189 When Invisible Man suggests, 'Fake it like I knocked you
out, you can have the prize,' Tatlock replies, I'll break your behind'. 'For them?'
the narrator asks. 'For me, sonofabitch!' 190 Unlike his opponent, Invisible Man is
convinced that a fight between black men in front of a white audience cannot be
a genuine competition, and certainly not 'sport'. Budd Schulberg's description
of boxing as 'show business with blood' is reinforced here, and throughout the
novel, by references to the circus (the white woman, the unattainable prize, is
described as a circus kewpie doll). 191 But Invisible Man's awareness that his ex-
pected role is as an entertainer does not extend to the speech he is about to give.
Indeed, during the fight, he can only think of his speech, and despite the humil-
iation he is suffering, of impressing the white audience. The fight is thus a com-
mentary on that imminent verbal performance. 192

In numerous interviews Ellison spoke of the battle royal episode as a type
of initiation rite involving acceptance of white supremacy, a version of the ini-
tiation fights that he would have read about in Richard Wright's autobiogra-
phy, Black Boy (1945). 193 Like Invisible Man, Black Boy is structured around a
series of flights and fights. The most striking fight comes in Chapter Twelve in
which Wright describes working in an optical factory in Memphis, a city he had
hoped would be more enlightened than his native Jackson, Mississippi. Two in-
cidents disabuse him of this belief. First, he witnesses the transformation, for a
mere 25c, of one of his most intelligent co-workers, the 'hardheaded, sensible'

311

Shorty, into 'a clown of the most debased and degraded type'. This is merely
the prelude to his own degradation. Worn down by insistence, Wright is goaded
to fight Harrison, who works for a rival company, for $5 apiece. When Wright
objects, arguing that 'those white men will be looking at us, laughing at us', Har-
rison is dismissive: 'What have we got to lose?' Wright's acknowledgment of
having nothing to lose is what makes him both willing to take part in a perform-
ance designed to 'fool them white men', and so physically angry that he cannot
help going beyond the performance and hurting Harrison.

The shame and anger we felt for having allowed ourselves to be duped
crept into our blows and blood ran into our eyes, half blinding us. The
hate we felt for the men whom we had tried to cheat went into the
blows we threw at each other.

Afterwards, Harrison and Wright avoid each other. 'I felt that I had done some-
thing unclean, something for which I could never properly atone.' The symbol-
ism of this fight is the antithesis of the glorious defeat of Covey, or Camera, or
Schmeling. Wright and Harrison fight in the spotlight ('a bright electric bulb
glowed above our heads') but it is not that of Madison Square Garden. If the
'white folks formed a kind of superworld', black folks operate in the under-
world. The performance takes place 'in the basement of a Main Street building'
before an all-male, all-white audience. 194

Perhaps the most obvious point to note about Ralph Ellison's version of the
rite is the gap between the narrator's retrospective understanding of its
significance and the understanding of his adolescent self. Invisible Man (as a
young man) does not realize what is going on, and so the novel repeats the rite
of initiation, again and again, through a series of real and metaphorical fights.
The repetition is so insistent that the chapters of the novel begin to seem less like
episodes in a picaresque adventure than rounds in a boxing match. I want to
concentrate on two particular episodes and consider how attention to the box-
ing allusions can aid in their interpretation. 195

In Chapter Three, Invisible Man takes the college benefactor Norton, upset
and in need of whisky after his encounter with Trueblood, to a bar called The
Golden Day. Many have noted the allusion to the title of Lewis Mumford's 1924
pioneering study of the American Renaissance, and argued that Ellison is tak-
ing issue with Mumford's lack of attention to slavery. 196 But there is another al-
lusion at the beginning of the chapter. When the narrator approaches the bar,
he overhears a man describing the 1910 Johnson-Jeffries fight in a virtuoso
blend of anatomical detail, invective and graveyard humour. The description
ends with the phrase, 'Naturally, there was no other therapy possible.' 197 The
allusion to the 'Golden Day' of American literature is thus complicated by an
allusion to the day (4 July no less) when the Man with the Golden Smile chal-
lenged assumptions of white supremacy. The fight the men recall is one which
was not simply, as in the case of the battle royal, a performance, but a genuine

312

victory- an effective form of 'therapy'. 198 Here, however, black power manifests
itself as stylistic barroom bravado in what seems to be an imitation of the pub
scene in Joyce's 'Cyclops', where Alf Bergan and Joe Hynes discuss the recent
Keogh-Bennett bout. 1 "

At this stage, the narrator is unable to grasp the possibility of any kind of
bravado, as becomes clear in the remainder of the chapter. This scene is fol-
lowed almost immediately by a real fight when the veterans turn on their atten-
dant, and give him some 'therapy'. The narrator says of the men in the bar that
they 'hooted and yelled as at a football game', or, we might add, a boxing match.
He describes feeling 'such an excitement that I wanted to join them' and his
chance to get involved comes soon after, when he goes looking for Norton, hid-
ing under the stairs. His response, when confronted close-up with a white man,
is, however, far from that of Jack Johnson:

some of the milling men pushed me up against him and suddenly a
mass of whiteness was looming up two inches from my eyes; it was only
his face but I felt a shudder of nameless horror. I had never been so
close to a white person before. In a panic I struggled to get away. 200

The competing rhetoric of fighting and the circus (both structured perform-
ances) and running (a refusal of structure or a recognition of its absence) are
here, and throughout the novel, set up as alternatives. 201 They come together
again in one of the final scenes in the book. Shortly before the riots which end
the novel, the narrator comes across a huge woman with a beer barrel, sitting
on a milk wagon and singing:

If it hadn't been for the referee,
Joe Louis woulda killed
Jim Jeffrie
Free beer!!

In the song she confuses Joe Louis (a credit to the race) with bad Jack Johnson. 202
By substituting the names, Ellison seems to be suggesting that despite the 'dead-
pan', Louis is carrying on Johnson's work, work that the heavyweight woman also
participates in as, with her 'enormous hand[s]', she 'sends quart after quart of
milk crashing into the street'. But although this action, and the riots that follow,
are intended to be a form of 'therapy', the reference to the circus (she is like a tipsy
fat lady in a circus parade'), reminds us again that therapy is also a performance. 203
Invisible Man proper concludes with the narrator plung[ing] down' a man-
hole as once again, he runs away, this time from two white men with baseball
bats. 'I was just fixing to slug the bastard,' one says. Underground, he finds him-
self 'beyond the point of exhaustion, too tired to close my eyes.' The fight,
though, is not over. He has not been knocked out. He is in 'a state neither of
dreaming nor of waking, but somewhere in between'. And it is in this state, and

313

under the influence of marijuana and Louis Armstrong's 'What Did I Do to Be
So Black and Blue', that he tells the story of the yokel and the prize-fighter:

Once I saw a prize fighter boxing a yokel. The fighting was swift and
amazingly scientific ... He hit the yokel a hundred times while the yokel
held up his arms in stunned surprise. But suddenly the yokel, rolling
about in the gale of boxing gloves, struck one blow and knocked sci-
ence, speed, and footwork as cold as a well-digger's posterior. The smart
money hit the canvas . . . The yokel had stepped inside of his oppo-
nent's sense of time. 204

Invisible Man is here 'outside of time' but what I suggest he (and Ellison) learn
through his 'hibernation' is how to step 'inside': how to fight differently, how to
become the yokel inside of modernism.

A possible way of reading the epilogue then is that Invisible Man decides to
get up and go back to the fight, before he is counted out. In the final pages, the
narrator acknowledges, with an ironic nod to Hemingway, that 'it's "winner take
nothing" that is the great truth of our country or any country', and recognizes
that although 'there's still a conflict within me', now 'I am invisible, not blind'.
What he calls the 'victory of conscious perception' has been won. 205 If we read
the novel as a kiinstlerroman, we can see that the progress 'from ranter to writer'
is also one from bodily inarticulacy and blindness - represented by the blind-
folded boys in the battle royal - to a disembodied articulacy. 206 Yet this very
disembodiment is still imagined in terms of bodies. Invisible Man's version of
Stephan Dedalus's dedication to 'silence, exile and cunning' is yet again to talk
about boxers.

With these questions in mind, I want to return to Ellison's comparison of
writing and fighting and how it might enable a consideration of style and form.
Asserting frequently that 'technique' was what was needed 'to free ourselves', El-
lison asked where that 'technique' could be learned. 207 His customary answer was
that it lay in 'vernacular idiom in the arts'; indeed there, 'lessons are to be learned
in everything from power to elegance'. When challenged in an interview with
the claim that 'the black masses are uninterested in elegance', he responded (in
terms that recall Weldon Johnson on Jack Johnson 50 years earlier):

Elegance turns up in every aspect of Afro-American culture, from ser-
mons to struts . . . Aesthetically speaking, when form is blended suc-
cessfully with function, elegance results. Black Americans expect
elegance even from their prizefighters and basketball players and much
of the appeal of Jack Johnson and Joe Louis sprang from the fact that
each was as elegant as the finest of ballet dancers. 208

Connecting the world of sport and that of art for Ellison is not simply the bring-
ing together of 'power' and 'elegance', although this combination is important.

Sport and art could also be seen as related forms of 'symbolic action', to use
Kenneth Burke's term. 209 Ellison was a close friend of Burke and was very inter-
ested in his anthropological understanding of literary works as forms of rit-
ual. 210 Burke's critical method, which drew on psychoanalysis, Marxism and
linguistics, as well as anthropology, repeatedly stressed the importance of under-
standing the effect the work of art has on the reader. 211 What the work is in
itself is less important than what it allows its author to express and its audience
to experience. 212 'All action', Burke proclaimed, 'is poetic'; the only difference
being that 'some people write their poems on paper, and others carve theirs out
of jugular veins.' 213 Or, as Ellison reworked these ideas, some 'act' 'poetically'
by boxing, others by writing novels. It was high praise indeed, therefore, for
Ellison to recall Wright as 'a Negro American writer as randy, as courageous,
and irrepressible as Jack Johnson'. 'We literary people', he went on, should
always keep a sharp eye on what's happening in the unintellectualized areas
of our experience.' 214 Bringing together novels and boxing, or Keats and the
carving of jugular veins, does more, however, than simply initiate a form of
cultural studies based on performativity. Boxing is 'show business with blood;
in acknowledging the show business in Burke's theory, and in the fiction of
Wright and Ellison, we should not forget the aggression, the desire for thera-
peutic blood-letting, which both enact.

In recent years, the tendency has been to regard Ellison as a quintessential
fifties liberal - and thus a figure of deadpan complicity. 215 But a fuller under-
standing of what boxing meant to him would suggest that there was more of
the Johnsonian golden grin in Ralph Ellison than the Louis deadpan. 216 Ellison
himself said as much in a 1956 letter to Albert Murray:

with writing I learned from Joe and Sugar Ray (though that old danc-
ing master, wit, and bull-balled stud, Jack Johnson is really my mentor,
because he knew that if you operated with skill and style you could rise
above all that being-a-credit-to-your-race-crap because he was a credit
to the human race and because he could make that much body and
bone move with such precision to his command all other men had a
chance to beat the laws of probability and anything else that stuck up
its head and if he liked a woman he took her and told those who didn't
like it to lump it and that is the way true studs have always acted). 217

315

io6

Poster advertising The Champ (1931).

A COLUMBIAFILM

107

Poster advertising Golden Boy (1939).

SEE THE BIG FIGHT!

P1MARCH

r^T'i A. ItilMlP t 1

BJw

NOTHING
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WJIirilt CDITHDIir

108

Poster advertising Nothing Sacred (1937).

100

Tfie StOTy OT a, JUy th#t tiOmZ n gO fer*J Poster advertising Body and Soul

(1947)-

JOHN GARFIELD Wtf. ^JT
LILL1 PALMER Q j^S^

HAZEL BROOKS mm --SZTtI

/? m-riW «a4tteu**t/t,»r THE EHTEMSE STUDIOS

ii^erty 5

a>;

Louis vs. Schmeling on the cover
of Liberty magazine, 25 June
1938.

ITS HVEHGt I M IFia-Hr Wi* t» iHri SduMfag by JOE LOUS
I'd K> IT ACMK-taw I Wi KbkL 0«r la* k, MIX SGHMBMG
HOW I UKf» ITKME W«-» Udi br *■*•» mi OinHin

Benny Andrews, The Champion, 1968.

New GIs in Vietnam:
commanding them
in the old way is out

Look out-
he's back

A different
Muhammad Alt
returns

to the ring

'Look out - he's back', cover of Life, 9 November 1970.

113

Cover of Sports Illustrated, 28 October 1974: 'The Fight in Africa'.

114

Andv Warhol, Muhammad All: Hand on Chin, 1977.

Cover of Ntozake Shange, Float Like a Butter-
fly, with illustrations by Edel Rodriguez (New
York, 2002).

Poster advertising When We Were Kings
(1996).

Poster advertising a.k.a. Cassias Clay
(1970).

MAILERBAL

U.WEATHERB1

118

Elliott Pinkney (with
the assistance of
Sam Barrow and
Lloyd Goodney),
detail of Visions and
Motions, 1993.

119

Harold King, cover
of W. J. Weatherby,
Squaring Off: Mailer
v, Baldwin (1977).

Sylvester Stallone in
Rocky (1976).

121

Cover of Superman
vs. Muhammad Ali,
dc Comics (1978).

Eduardo Arroyo, Direct Panama, 1984.

123

Keith Haring,

Boxer, 1988.

125

Godfried Donkor, Financial Times Boxers, No. 2, 2001, collage on paper.

L- JCFF PETER JNLwm XAIVHIE « DAMON

JACKSON GOLJDBUJVI BERG LOVTTZ FOXX VUPOTANS

THE GREAT W H ITE HYPE

An overrated cimmp.

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77zf Grarf Wfa'fe Wy/>e poster, 1996.

127

Christy Martin on the cover of Sports Illustrated, 1996.

WOMEN ANNIE LEIBOVITZ

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128

Annie Leibovitz, poster advertising Women exhibition, Washington, dc, 1999-2000.

129

Battle of the Blues,

vol. 4, album cover,

1959-

130

Emma Amos,

Muhammad Ali,

1998.

131

Peter Howson,
Boxen, 2002, pastel
on paper.

132

Paul-Felix Montez,
The Gloves, 2006,
model for a 70-foot
sculpture of steel
and bronze gloves
above granite,
shown at the 21st
Century Las Vegas
Monuments exhibi-
tion, Las Vegas.

King of the Hill, and Further
Raging Bulls

Many of the first experiments with television (as with cinema) focused on sport-
ing events. The 1936 Olympic Games was watched by 15,000 viewers stationed
at 27 'tv locales' throughout Berlin; the following year, the bbc covered the
Oxford and Cambridge boat race; and in May 1939, the American nbc broadcast
footage of a college baseball game. Two weeks later, Lou Nova's defeat of Max
Baer at the Yankee Stadium became the first televised heavyweight boxing
match. Sport provided the new medium of television with a ready-made cast
of stars, and provided numerous events to fill out the initially sparse schedules
of the networks. 1

Boxing proved as amenable to early television as it had to early cinema.
Until post-war developments brought larger screens, close-ups, slow motion,
colour and instant replays, team sports like baseball were not easy to follow on
television - the field was too big, the players too dispersed, the ball too small and
too fast-moving. Boxing, however, with its well-lit enclosed setting and cast of
only two, was ideal for the tv screen, and during the late forties and early fifties,
the sport became 'television's darling', with prime-time fights broadcast almost
every evening. 2 In 1950, only 9 per cent of American homes had tv, and most
men watched the fights in neighbourhood bars (illus. 136). By 1955, however,
55.7 per cent of homes had sets, and commentators marvelled at the very idea
of sport being available 'from a sofa!' 3 Television, one journalist remarked, 'has
all the impact of one of Marciano's punches', but he was sorry when it 'tossed
Joe Louis right into our living room on his back'. 4

If memoirs of the thirties tended to depict the family gathered around the
radio listening to reports of Joe Louis, those of the fifties repeated the scene but
substituted television and Rocky Marciano or Sugar Ray Robinson. 5 'The most
vibrant memories I bear from my childhood,' writes Gerald Early, 'are of my
uncles crowded around a very small black-and-white television, drinking beer
and watching the Gillette Friday-night fights'. 6 Henry Louis Gates, meanwhile,
describes how his home town of Piedmont, Virginia, 'was transformed from a
radio culture to one with the fullest range of television, literally overnight'.
'What interracial sex was to the seventies, interracial sports were to the fifties.

316

BwaJg 8

136

'Joe's Tavern',

The Ring, April 1959.

137

Advertisement for
Pabst Blue Ribbon
and Wednesday
Night Fights, The
Ring, July 1956.

138

Advertisement for
'tv Fights', The Ring,
February 1955.

Except for sports, we rarely saw a colored per-
son on tv.' 7

Boxing's success as a television sport
was partly due to the fact that the structure
of a bout -three-minute rounds separated
by one-minute intermissions - seemed cus-
tom-made for advertising. The two main
sponsors during the fifties were Pabst Blue
Ribbon beer, associated with cbs's Wednes-
day night fights, and Gillette razors, the pro-
moter of nbc's Friday night Cavalcade of
Sport (illus. 137). 8 These products suggest
that the market mainly consisted of men,
but boxing was often promoted as family
entertainment. The cover of the February
1955 issue of tv Fights magazine, for example, imagines a white-collared fan
being joined by his wife and son to watch the boxing; inside an article explains
'How women score tv fights' (illus. 138). The idea of boxing entering the domes-
tic sphere inspired mid-twentieth-century cartoonists as much as it had their
nineteenth-century equivalents. A recurrent claim was that the 'live' fights
that took place in suburban sitting rooms were better viewing than those on
screen (illus. 139).

Boxing commentators were quick to note the impact that the new medium
was having on the sport, and most of their conclusions were negative. Sports-

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writing itself was offered as an alternative
to 'this ridiculous gadget called television':
writers such as John Lardner and A. J.
Liebling (both in The New Yorker) sug-
gested that both boxing and what might
be called boxing belles lettres were endan-
gered species in need of careful preserva-
tion. Between 1947 and 1951, Lardner
published a series of essays entitled 'That
was Pugilism', vividly evoking the era of
his father, Ring Lardner, as a time of wild
adventures and idiosyncratic figures.
'Things are not the same in the wake of the
Second World War,' he complained, 'The
fighters are more businesslike; their train-
ing camps are respectable and dull . . .; the managers and "characters" on the
fringe of the show are organized and syndicated.' 9

Liebling saw his essays as a direct response to 'the anticipated lean aesthetic
period induced by television'. His unlikely model for the rearguard defence of
boxing was Pierce Egan, whom he declared 'the greatest writer about the ring
who ever lived'. The Sweet Science, a collection of Liebling's New Yorker pieces,
was, he declared, an 'Extension of the great historian's Magnum Opus'; the
title itself is a phrase of Egan's. The Regency commentator is evoked and praised
as the Herodotus, the Holinshed, the Edward Gibbon (among others) of the
English prize ring, while Boxiana is dubbed its Mille et Une Nuits. 10 Liebling's
concern, like Egan's, was as much with the subculture of boxing as with the
sport; in mid-century America, he felt that both were under threat. But, unlike
newspaper columnists such as Dan Parker and Jimmy Cannon, he was not
interested in exposing mobsters or the machinations of corporate interests. 11
Instead, The Sweet Science offered itself as an elegy to the last of boxing's pictur-
esque oddballs and to 'the verbal dandyism of Egan'. 12 As Fred Warner points
out, few readers who encountered Liebling's work in The New Yorker cared much
about boxing. They accepted 'exposure to a brutal and alien sport because they
loved good prose'. 13 Liebling's writing is often witty and always digressive, and
he worked hard to charm and flatter his readers with frequent allusions to
literature and art. Floyd Patterson, after his defeat of Archie Moore, is described
as being in the position 'of a Delacroix who has run out of canvas'. 14 The New
Yorker, as Robert Warshaw pointed out in 1947, 'has always dealt with experience
... by prescribing the attitude to be adopted toward it'. 15

Much as he deplored television's devotion to 'the sale of beer and razor
blades', Liebling's objections extended beyond commercialization. In an essay
called 'Boxing with the Naked Eye', he argued that the experience of watching
boxing was much diminished by television, and that you could only have a 'feel-
ing of participation' by being there in the stadium. 'For one thing', he quipped,

139

Cartoon in The Ring,

April 1956.

318

140

Rocky Graziano and
Lou Stillman out-
side Stillman's Gym,
from Somebody Up
There Likes Me: My
Life So Far (New
York, 1955).

'you can't tell the fighters what to do. This was partly an expression of snob-
bery, a feeling that the aficionado was being ousted by the 'big and silly televi-
sion audience', and one that sat easily among The New Yorkers advertisements
for imported whisky and Spode dinnerware 'for the hard-to-please'. 'The masses
are asses,' an old fighter called Al Thoma told Liebling, 'There are no connois-
seurs. The way most of these guys fight, you'd think they were two fellows hav-
ing a fight in a barroom.' 17

More importantly, Liebling argued that by creating a monopoly on boxing,
television had fundamentally distorted the nature of the sport. First of all, the
live audience was severely diminished (ticket sales at Madison Square Garden
were down by as much as 80 per cent). Furthermore, he maintained, 'the clients
of the television companies, by putting on a free boxing show almost every night
of the week, have knocked out of business the hundreds of small-city and neigh-
bourhood boxing clubs where youngsters had a chance to learn their trade and
journeymen to mature their skills'. One of Liebling's most famous (and most
Egan-like) coinages was to dub the famous New York gym, Stillman's, the 'Uni-
versity of Eighth Avenue'. 18 This proved the unlikely prompt for a scene in Stan-
ley Donen and Gene Kelly's 1955 musical satire, It's Always Fair Weather. Fight
manager Ted Riley (played by Kelly) arranges to meet television executive,
Jackie Leighton (Cyd Charisse), at the gym. Arriving early, she is instructed in
the history of the place - 'Why these old walls are as steeped in tradition as the

ivy-covered walls of Harvard! '-before join-
ing the residents in a song-and-dance trib-
ute to their 'alma mater', 'Stillman's, Dear
Old Stillman's' (illus. 140). 19 But these high
educational standards were under threat.
Television's constant demand for fresh box-
ers resulted in the closure of many of the
small clubs in which the sport's traditional
apprenticeship had taken place. Mean-
while, 'the peddlers' public' was asked to
believe that 'a boy with perhaps ten or
fifteen fights' was a 'topnotch performer.'
On occasion, this could prove fatal. In 1954,
for example, Ed Sanders died after being
knocked out in the eleventh round of a tele-
vised bout, his ninth professional fight. 'In
more normal pre-television times,' noted
Liebling, 'a fellow out of the amateurs
would spend three years in four-, six-, and
eight-round bouts in small clubs before
attempting ten.' 20 More tv deaths fol-
lowed. In 1963, Davey Moore died after be-
ing knocked out by Sugar Ramos, inspiring

319

LETS FACE IT

protest songs by Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs.
The previous year, Benny Paret had died a
week after having been knocked uncon-
scious by Emile Griffith during the world
welterweight title fight. Many tuned in to
abc to see the final, fatal punches via a new
replay system.

The story of boxing (and indeed of
most sports) from the early nineteenth
century onward has been one of gradual
transformation into mass-market enter-
tainment. Each new technological devel-
opment (film, radio and television) has
brought a larger audience to individual
contests. These changes in method of
consumption have, at every stage, been
accompanied by changes in methods of

production - in the supply and control of boxers and fights. Television signalled
the biggest shift (illus. 141). After 1950, if an up-and-coming boxer wanted a
chance at a title, it was no longer enough to hook up with the manager who hap-
pened to have connections at Madison Square Garden (as Dempsey and Louis
had done). 'Commercial-driven televised bouts promised riches beyond the
rewards possible from ticket sales in even the biggest arenas', recalls Truman
Gibson. 21 A member of the newly established International Boxing Club (ibc),
Gibson, along with Jim Norris and Arthur Wirtz, became one of the most pow-
erful boxing promoters of the fifties. As Gibson later told the Senate Subcom-
mittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, 'during the period 1950 to 1959, practically
all of the championships in the major weight categories were staged by one or
the other of our organizations or in conjunction with our television presenta-
tions'. 22 The boxing world was still closely tied in with that of organized crime,
although Gibson maintains it was often 'more a matter of appearance than sub-
stance'. 23 Nevertheless, forties operators such as Frankie Carbo and Blinky
Palermo were still around, and fights were still routinely fixed. 24 More impor-
tantly, the ibc (popularly known as 'the Octopus') needed 'a plentiful supply of
fighters': 'a hundred fights a year required us to come up with four hundred
fighters', Gibson reckoned; two for each 'main event' and two waiting in the
wings in case of a quick knockout. 'Television ruled us . . . We didn't care
whether managers or promoters cozied up to Carbo or warred with him.' 25

If the 'fight racket' remained 'the swill barrel of sports', as sportswriter
Jimmy Cannon had declared in 1948, this suited Hollywood very well. 26 After
1950, however, noir fatalism gradually gave way to a reformist zeal more famil-
iar in the social-problem cinema of the Depression. Consider, for example, Elia
Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954), in which Marlon Brando played Terry Mol-
loy, a washed-up prize-fighter who famously thinks he 'coulda been a contender',

HE DOESN'T LOOK GOOD ON TV.

141

Cartoon in The Ring,

1951-

320

142

Advertisement for
The Harder They Fall,
1956-

WHY?.

THE HARDER

THEY FALL

BDBSIIIOIUJ/INSIULIHD

the 'next Billy Conn'. Terry finally gets his big fight in the real world, when, after
much soul-searching, he decides to expose the underworld infiltration of the
longshoremen's union and to confront a mob leader directly. 'Everybody's got
a racket', he says; the 'hawks' always prey on the 'pigeons' down below. 27 Fifties
boxing films (like many other Cold War dramas) tend to suggest that the worst
possible thing to be is an 'organization man' - never mind whether the organi-
zation is the mob, the union, the Communist Party or the army. 28 By contrast,
the free man is 'inner directed', to borrow another term from fifties sociology,
and his integrity often derives from saying no. 29 In James Jones's From Here to
Eternity (1951; filmed in 1953), Private Prewitt, having once blinded a man in the
ring, refuses to join the regimental boxing team. 'I don't see why a man should
fight unless he wanted to,' he tells the disbelieving captain. 'A man has to decide
for himself what he has to do.' 3 °

The Harder They Fall (1956), based on Budd Schulberg's 1947 novel, focused
on the culpability of Eddie Willis (Humphrey Bogart in his final role), a has-been
sportswriter who, in order to get 'a bank account', becomes the press agent for
Toro Moreno (illus. 142). Loosely based on the thirties heavyweight, Primo Cam-
era, the gigantic Moreno can hardly put two punches together. Although it seems
that size is still everything, the days in which all that a set-up needed was a
crooked manager and a willing fighter are long gone; Willis is just one of many

employees hired by Nick Benko (Rod
Steiger) to steer Moreno towards a lucra-
tive title fight. There are lots of manage-
ment meetings and the talk is always of
'business'. When his wife, Beth, objects to
the nature of this business, Eddie responds,
'You sell a fighter, you sell soap. What's the
difference?' The question is repeated sev-
eral times, but the answer is always the
same. We are never in doubt that by be-
coming Nick's publicity agent, Eddie has
made a deal with the devil. In order to build
Moreno's reputation before the big fight in
New York, Eddie uses every trick he can
think of, including touring the country in
a garishly painted bus (a gimmick that Cas-
sius Clay later copied). These traditional
methods are fine, but as Nick points out,
the introduction of 'coast-to-coast telecasts'
has made publicity much easier. 31 (At one
point, Beth watches a fixed Californian
fight at Benko's comfortable home in New
York - the whole family gather around the
set, and Nick's little girl watches from his

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321

knee. 32 ) Everyone describes Eddie as 'a good man', and at first he thinks he can
be so simply by adjusting the system a little bit - by making sure Moreno's 'tank
fighters' are paid directly; by helping them look good' to save their pride. Even
after a man dies in the ring, he persuades Toro to keep going so that they can
both get the final pay-off. But, after a careful consideration of the cooked books
reveals Toro's share of the million-dollar gate to be a measly $49.07, Eddie quits.
In the final scene, he threatens to expose Nick in a series of muckraking articles.
'People still know how to read,' he says. 'The people, the people,' mocks Nick,
'The little people, they sit and get fat and fall asleep in front of the television set
with a belly full of beer.' But Eddie, like Schulberg, and Liebling, believes that
the integrity of the individual's written word can triumph over the opiate power
of the television freak show. The film ends as he sits down at his battered old
typewriter, and the camera closes in on the sentence he types: 'Professional box-
ing should be banned even if it takes an Act of Congress to do it.' 33

As the decade drew to a close, boxing's appeal for television began to
diminish. In 1952, fight-nights attracted 31 per cent of the prime-time audience; by
1959, their share had shrunk to 11 per cent. There were several reasons for this.
Most important was the fact that viewers now had considerably more choice in
their viewing, including in 1956, Rod Serling's play Requiem for a Heavyweight,
welcomed as an 'indictment' of a 'so-called sport'. 34 Boxing itself was losing its
appeal. After Rocky Marciano retired in 1956, his successors (Moore, Patterson,
Johansson and Liston) did not attract the same support from the sponsors, net-
works or viewers. Prolonged congressional hearings highlighted boxing's links
to organized crime, and reports of fighters dying from injuries sustained in the
ring (nineteen in 1953) further sullied its image. 35 In 1959, Carbo was sent to jail
and the Supreme Court declared the ibc to be an illegal monopoly; the follow-
ing year, nbc announced that it was dropping its Friday night fights. It was not
until Cassius Clay emerged on the scene that television boxing revived.

AMERICAN DILEMMAS

The difference between a history of boxing and a history of the cultural represen-
tation of boxing becomes apparent if we consider the part played in each by
Sugar Ray Robinson (illus. 143). While Sugar Ray is revered by many as the all-time
best 'pound-for-pound' fighter, he never became a cultural symbol in the way that
Johnson, Dempsey, Louis or Ali did. This is both partly because less attention is
paid to welter- and middleweights (he fought as both), the fact that during the late
forties and fifties there was no obvious story to be told about his victories. 36 Sugar
Ray Robinson is a kind of interregnum figure in the history of culturally and
politically significant boxers, between Louis (whom he idolized) and Ali (who idol-
ized him). Welterweight champion from 1945 to 1951, he reinvented himself as a
middleweight and won the title five times between 1951 and i960. In 1957, as Maya
Angelou notes, he 'lost his middleweight title, won it back, then lost it again, all
in a matter of months'. Angelou uses Robinson's status as an on-again, off-again

322

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143

Sugar Ray Robinson
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champion as a metaphor for 'the maze of
contradictions' that was the civil rights
movement in the late fifties. 37 Out of the
ring, the contradictions continued. Sugar
Ray set up numerous businesses on
Harlem's Seventh Avenue, and he and his
stylish wife, Edna Mae, were dubbed 'the
Prince and Princess of Harlem'. In 1953,
however, the couple moved to the white sub-
urb of Riverdale and their dream home was
featured on the cover of Ebony magazine.
Well-known for his processed hair, pink
Cadillacs, and appearances on the Ed Sulli-
van Show, Sugar Ray Robinson was also of-
ten outspoken about racial discrimination. 38
The fifties may have witnessed the first
moves towards desegregation, but boxing
fans (and therefore tv networks) still
wanted to see interracial contests. Robin-
son's most publicized fights were a series
of six (between 1942 and 1951) against Jake
La Motta. Because of Martin Scorsese's
film, RagingBull, La Motta is now better remembered than his rival, but Robin-
son, 'the matador', won all but one fight. At the weigh-in for the last round of
the 'bitter feud', Arna Bontemps noted (in a biography intended for children)
that the men 'exchanged nostalgic remarks': '"Jake, I made you," Ray kidded. "I
done all right for you," the Bull chuckled.' 39 Ten rounds later, however, La Motta
conceded that 'the black bastard' had given him 'about as bad a beating as I've
ever had'. 40 These remarks were not quoted by Bontemps.

Another awkward but powerful puncher who appealed to white fans was
Rocky Marciano, 'the archetypal working-class stiff from blue-collar Brockton'. 41
After defeating the aging Louis on national television in 1951, Marciano became
the 'white hope' of the Southern press, while sportswriters in the North merely
noted that 'it would be a change-of-pace to have a white boy on top after all
these years'. 42 Because of his slugging style, Marciano was frequently described
as 'the new Dempsey' and considered 'good for boxing' - a phrase which Rus-
sell Sullivan translates as 'black champion versus Great White Hope made dol-
lars and cents'. 43 Although the majority of title-holders since the thirties
(including Louis and Sugar Ray) had been black, their challengers were usually
white; 'promoters rarely offered the same money for bouts against equally tough
black challengers'. 44 As a plausible white hope, Marciano had a relatively
straightforward passage to a title shot. From 1952, when he took the champion-
ship from Jersey Joe Walcott, to 1956, when he retired undefeated with a record
of 49 wins, he was largely matched against black opponents. 45 The vacant title

323

was filled when the 21-year-old Floyd Patterson beat Archie Moore to become
the youngest ever heavyweight champion. The era of white vs. black heavy-
weight fights seemed to be over, except for a brief interlude in 1959 and i960,
when Patterson fought the Swedish boxer, Ingemar Johansson (he lost the first
and won the second). 46 The attention given to those fights suggests the sym-
bolism of black vs. white boxing was still very much alive.

The novelist Harvey Swandos wrote an essay about the first Patterson-
Johansson fight for a new literary journal called Noble Savage (where it appeared
alongside 'And Hickman Arrives', an extract from Ralph Ellison's unfinished
second novel). 47 For Swandos, the fight had 'no racially symbolic overtones'.
'The position of the American Negro,' he maintained, 'has changed so greatly
that it is no longer necessary for a Negro heavyweight champion to be a hero to
his people; when he is beaten it is no longer inevitable that the defeat will be re-
garded by Negroes as a racial setback (or by whites as a white conquest).' In this
'new era', boxers should no longer consider themselves 'Walking Symbols'. 48
John Lardner's 'That Was Pugilism' series in The New Yorker also located racial
prejudice firmly in the past. For Lardner, the success of Louis, and then Patter-
son, had put racism, and thus the concept of the 'white hope', to rest. 49 Noting
the crowd's support (both in cheers and bets) for Patterson in 1959, Liebling
concurred: 'I felt a warm glow of gratification - we were a solid patrie, where
American citizenship meant more than race or color'. 50 Unsurprisingly, black
commentators responded rather differently to the story of Patterson and
Johansson, a story that many felt did still carry 'racially symbolic overtones'. In
1970 Addison Gayle Jr recalled the fight as emblematic of the daily struggles of
men like himself. Gayle tells the story of a humiliating incident in which he was
refused a job because of his race, but like the ex-heavyweight champion, I was
on my feet searching for another job less than fifteen minutes after absorbing a
crushing blow to my psyche. 51 A more radical interpretation of Patterson's sym-
bolism was offered by Eldridge Cleaver. Whites, he argued, 'despised' Johansson
for knocking out Patterson because it contradicted their image of the 'black
man as the Supermasculine Menial'. 52

After i960, interracial fighting increasingly took place in the realms of white
fantasy. Although Esquire magazine liked to imagine Dempsey defeating the
current crop of black boxers, fight fans were mostly faced with a choice between
two black boxers. 53 This could be problematic for blacks as well as whites. Ollie
Harrington's popular comic strip character Bootsie complains to his wife as
they watch television: 'why don't the naacp make 'em stop usin' cullud boys to
fight one 'nother. Don't they realize that causes a whole lot of confusion 'mongst
us fight fans?' (illus. 144) 54 When Patterson fought Johansson, black fans had no
trouble picking sides, but when he took on Sonny Liston, they faced what James
Baldwin called a 'terrible American dilemma'. Whether or not Baldwin was con-
sciously evoking Gunnar Myrdal's classic 1944 study of 'the Negro Problem and
Modern Democracy', An American Dilemma, the problem he identified was one
of political stance. 'I feel terribly ambivalent, as many Negroes do these days,'

324

144

A cartoon by Ollie

Harrington.

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Baldwin wrote, 'since we are all trying to decide, in one way or another, which
attitude, in our terrible American dilemma, is the most effective: the disciplined
sweetness of Floyd, or the outspoken intransigence of Liston'. 55 That choice was
particularly acute in the midst of the Civil Rights struggles of 1962, and not
every black intellectual opted for Baldwin's ambivalence. LeRoi Jones saw it as
a 'simple conflict'.

"They" painted Liston Black. They painted Patterson White . . . Which
way would the black man go? ... A lot of Negroes said Patterson. (That
old hope come back on you, that somehow this is my country, and
ought'n I be allowed to live in it, I mean, to make it. From the bottom
to the top? Only the poorest black men have never fallen, at least tem-
porarily, for the success story.) A lot of Negroes said Liston. 56

If Patterson was a model of integrationist politics -Jones described him as a
'black Horatio Alger, the glad hand of integration' and Norman Mailer dubbed
him 'a liberal's liberal' - Sonny Liston, with his prison record and mob

325

connections, was boxing's 'ultimate bad ass' - 'the big black negro in every white
man's hallway', said Jones; 'Faust', said Mailer. 57 In a telling echo of Roosevelt's
meeting with Louis before the second Schmeling fight, Kennedy invited Patter-
son to the White House and reputedly told him, 'you've got to beat this guy'. 58
Unable to fulfil his President's wishes, Patterson was knocked out by Liston
(who outweighed him by more than 25 pounds) in the first round. 'Before the
referee could count to ten,' William Nack wrote, 'Liston had become a mural-
sized American myth, a larger-than-life John Henry with two hammers, an 84-
inch reach, 23 knockouts (in 34 bouts) and 19 arrests'. 59 The 1963 rematch did
little to change anyone's perceptions. Some objected to Liston because of his
connections with the mob. Other were more concerned that he was an unsuit-
able role model for black America at a time when the news was filled with images
of non-violent freedom marchers being swept away by fire hoses and attacked
by police dogs. Martin Luther King saluted Patterson for joining the 'bruising
combat' endured by the protesters in Birmingham, Alabama. 60 After winning
a fight in 1961, Archie Moore too had announced his support for the Freedom
Riders: he planned to donate a significant amount of his purse to their cause
and use the rest to buy a life membership of the naacp. 61 But when a white re-
porter asked Liston why he had not gone to Birmingham, the boxer replied, 'I
ain't got no dog-proof ass.' 62 By 1970 Liston was dead, in mysterious circum-
stances, from an overdose. Joe Louis was a pall-bearer at his funeral.

A NEW HERO COMES ALONG'

In March 1962, A. J. Liebling went to see Cassius Clay, then preparing to fight
Sonny Banks. Although uncertain about the young man's power, Liebling admit-
ted that his 'skittering style' was 'good to watch', and that the 'poet' had a certain
'talent': 'Just when the sweet science appears to lie like a painted ship upon a
painted ocean, a new Hero, as Pierce Egan would term him, comes along like
a Moran tug to pull it out of the doldrums.' 63 Around the same time, Clay intro-
duced himself to Malcolm X at a Nation of Islam rally. 'He acted as if I was sup-
posed to know who he was', Malcolm recalled, 'So I acted as though I did. Up to
that moment, though, I had never even heard of him'. 64

The rise of Cassius Clay, and his transformation into the now legendary figure
of Muhammad Ali, is well-known and amply documented. The legend begins in
1954 when the twelve-year-old Cassius fought the boy who had stolen his brand-
new bicycle. Along came Joe Martin, a policeman whose sideline was teaching
boxing at a local gym. Persuaded to join, Clay was not obviously talented, but Mar-
tin recalled that 'the little smart aleck' was 'easily the hardest working kid I ever
taught'. 65 Six years later, he won a gold medal at the Rome Olympics. When Clay
was asked by a Russian reporter to comment on segregation, he answered that
America, the 'best country in the world', would sort it out. 66

Clay soon became known as a boxer of rare speed and agility, with a knack
for skilful combinations of punches. His fondness for extravagant bragging and

326

prophesy also singled him out as an entertaining performer. In 1962 Liebling
dubbed him 'Poet and Pedagogue', and described his habit of reciting while
doing sit-ups - 'he is probably the only poet in America who can recite this way.
I would like to see T. S . Eliot try.' 67 Liebling joked about Clay's 'career as a poet'
from the start, even while acknowledging the commercial value of 'self-adver-
tising' through rhyme. Perhaps, he joshed, it was wrong to consider the present
age as 'one of mediocre culture': 'Could Paul Valery have filled the VeT d'Hiv . . .
or Keats Her Majesty's Theatre?' 68 The joke continued in 1963, when Clay
released an album I Am the Greatest!, with jacket notes by modernist poet
Marianne Moore (who compares him to Sir Philip Sidney and describes him
as a 'master' of alliteration, concision and hyperbole). 69 Moore had already
written a sonnet with Clay, alternating one line each. He speedily produced
rhymes while she hesitated with hers until finally he took over and finished
within a couple of minutes. Describing him as a 'defender of poesie', she entitled
the poem 'Much Ado About Cassius'. 70

Whether he was prophesying his opponent's doom in rhyme, posing with
The Beatles or creating 'pop culture in the ring', American tv audiences found
Clay 'totally loveable'. 71 A popular good-looking youngster with a clean back-
ground', the sportswriters enthused; he was not only 'precisely what the stricken
fight industry needed', but 'the perfect American ambassador to the world'. 72
In 1972, Budd Schulberg looked back at this time as one of innocence. 'Imagine,'
he told his readers, 'a time before the Bay of Pigs, before Dallas, before Watts,
before the attempted Americanization of Indochina, before assassination
became an annual horror' and so on. 73 Imagine, in other words, a time before
the fall, before Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali.

In the months leading up to his title fight with Liston, rumours circulated
about Clay's involvement with the Nation of Islam. He had first attended a Nation
meeting when he was seventeen, while participating in a Chicago Golden Gloves
tournament in 1959. With his brother Rudolph, he attended meetings secretly
for the next three years, believing that if his membership of the organization was
known he 'wouldn't be allowed to fight for the title.' 74 Until he became champion,
the Nation's inner circle was equally keen to remain at a distance. Although
Malcolm X quickly and astutely recognized Ali's potential value for the organiza-
tion, he and his followers were chastised for 'fool[ing] around with fighters'. 75

Founded in the 1930s, the Nation of Islam adopted many of the themes and
practices of early twentieth-century Christian racial uplift - laying great empha-
sis on thrift, propriety, industry and temperance, but recasting them in terms
that had only a tangential connection to mainstream Islam. 76 It recruited most
successfully in prisons and among the poorest communities of black America.
Despite its anti-white rhetoric, the Nation was less interested in confrontation
than in persuading American blacks to reject the 'slave' ways of 'the so-called
Negro' (including the 'filthy temptation' of sport) and to situate themselves in-
stead within a separate, and international, framework. 77 'Self-determination'
meant abandoning the goals of integration and establishing independent

327

educational, economic and political, as well as religious, structures. 'I know how
to dodge boobytraps and dogs,' Clay told reporters after the Liston fight, 'I
dodge them by staying in my own neighbourhood. 78

Relations between the charismatic Malcolm and the Nation's leader, Elijah
Muhammad, had been gradually deteriorating when, in December 1963, against
explicit orders, Malcolm made a scathing remark about the assassination of
President Kennedy, characterizing his murder as just another case of the 'chick-
ens coming home to roost'. He was immediately suspended from his public
speaking position, a punishment that was originally set to expire in 90 days,
but later became 'indefinite'. 79 Malcolm's decision to visit Clay's Miami train-
ing camp in January 1964 was a conscious act of defiance.

As Clay waited to fight Liston, he was given a lot of advice. Sugar Ray Robin-
son instructed him to think like a matador (as he had done with the Raging
Bull); Malcolm, meanwhile, suggested that he prepare for 'modern Crusades -
a Christian and a Muslim facing each other with television to beam it off Telstar
for the whole world to see what happens!' 'Do you think Allah has brought
about all this', Malcolm asked, 'intending for you to leave the ring as anything
but the champion?' 80 Although Liston was the 7-1 favourite, and, as Early points
out, 'an unusually inappropriate symbol for either Christianity or the West',
Clay was convinced that he was destined to become champion. 81 And on 24 Feb-
ruary 1964, he did.

After the fourth round Clay complained of stinging in his eyes, and it was
suggested that Liston had put something on his gloves. Then, at the start of the
seventh round, Liston stayed on his stool, claiming that his shoulder was in-
jured and that he could not get up. Many suspected a fix, but despite numerous
investigations, nothing was proven - 'a result,' observes Sammons, 'that can be
attributed more to a lack of commitment than to the circumstances'. 82 Ali won
the 1965 rematch easily again - knocking Liston down in the first round with
what he called an 'anchor punch', a quotation from Jack Johnson via the elderly
vaudevillian, Stepin Fetchit, now a Muslim and part of his retinue. For most
fans, however, it was not merely a fix but a 'flaunted fix'. 83 Even the poets com-
plained when Liston 'sat down / wobbly as a dowager'. Jay Meek quoted the
bartenders who reputedly announced:

Next time he's gonna fight some fruit
from a garbage scow on the Atlantic.
Out there he can really take a dive. 84

With Clay champion and 'the most famous Black Muslim in the country',
the Nation's leaders put their reservations about boxing on hold. The organiza-
tion had found 'a new star, another powerful drawing card', and, Michael
Gomez argues, this directly contributed to Malcolm's 'expendability'. 85 After
the fight, the leadership approached Clay directly, and took the unusual step of
bestowing on him 'his divine name rather than a simple X'. 86 This was a great

328

honour, but it also served to distinguish him from Malcolm and reflected the
Nation's desire to shift to a less threatening stance'. 87 Ali gave a press conference
and famously declared himself 'free to be what I want'. 88 In response, Edward
Lassman, president of the World Boxing Association, chastised him for 'setting
a very poor example to the youth of the world', while Joe Louis set aside his
deadpan to predict that the new champion would 'earn the public's hatred'.
'The way I see it, the Black Muslims want to do just what we have been fighting
against for a hundred years.' 89 Martin Luther King, however, congratulated Ali
on his victory. 90

On 6 March, at Elijah Muhammad's insistence, Ali broke with Malcolm, and
two days later, Malcolm formally broke with the Nation. 91 Ali's choice of Elijah
Muhammad over Malcolm was the subject of much debate. Floyd Patterson, for
example, argued that he was 'trapped', while LeRoi Jones attributed the decision
to Ali's lack of political sophistication: 'He is still a "homeboy", embracing the
folksy vector straight out of the hard spiritualism of poor negro aspiration.' 92

From the start, the noi recognized Ali's potential, and not just in Amer-
ica. 93 In the spring of 1964, the new champion was sent on a month-long tour
to Ghana, Nigeria and Egypt, attracting extensive press coverage and consider-
ably larger crowds than either Elijah Muhammad or Malcolm X had ever done. 94
While in Ghana, Ali coincided with Malcolm X, but he refused to acknowledge
his former friend. 95 Malcolm nevertheless continued to associate himself with
the boxer, mentioning him frequently (and always as Clay) in speeches and
lectures. The most important was an April 1964 address in Detroit, now famous
as 'The Ballot or the Bullet', which attacked many of the goals and strategies of
the Civil Rights Movement. While Martin Luther King had advocated 'meeting
physical force with soul force' through peaceful demonstration based on prayer
and song, Malcolm declared himself a 'black Nationalist Freedom fighter' and
announced that it was 'time to stop singing and start swinging.' 96 'Cassius Clay
can sing. But singing didn't help him to become the heavyweight champion of
the world. Swinging helped him become the heavyweight champion.' Later, Mal-
colm described his quarrel with Elijah Muhammad as resulting from being 'kept
from doing something' about white racist attacks; the equivalent, he said, of
being put in the ring with Liston or Clay. 'No, don't tie my hands, unless you're
going to tie up their hands too.' 97

Ali's hands (or at least his box office drawing power) had themselves been
tied up by his change of name and religion. After the 1965 Liston rematch, he
fought Floyd Patterson who promoted the fight as a 'moral crusade' (the Cross
vs. the Crescent, part 2) and insisted on talking about 'Clay'. Ali responded by
dubbing him 'rabbit' and 'white America' and beating him severely. What some
saw as a 'spectacle of cruelty' lost him further support, although Eldridge
Cleaver declared the result 'symbolic proof of the victory of the autonomous
over the subordinate Negro' and declared Ali the first 'free black champion', the
'black Fidel Castro of boxing'. 98 A useful corrective to the hyperbole of both the
sportswriters' disgust and Cleaver's allegory is Patterson's own account of

329

events. At a press conference before the fight, Ali reputedly interrupted a bout
of 'screaming and bragging' to whisper, 'You want to make some money, don't
you Floyd? You want to make lots of money, don't you?' 99

Seriously in debt, the following year Ali launched a series of 'humpty-
dumpty fights against humpty-dumpty fighters', most of which took place out-
side of America. 100 As Malcolm had predicted, the Telstar satellite allowed 'the
whole world to see' Ali's fights, and they paid well. Most lucrative was a match
with Henry Cooper (the first world heavyweight title to be held in Britain since
1908). 'Hundreds of millions were going to see it on their screens in places like
Tokyo, Bangkok, Dortmund, Mexico City and Beunos Aires,' marvelled Cooper;
'it was a fantastic thought.' 101

A MUSLIM ST SEBASTIAN

In 1966 the Pentagon launched Project 100,000 to induct men like Ali who had
previously been rejected. Although Defence Secretary Robert McNamara claimed
this was to assist the 'educationally disadvantaged', the Defense Department
later conceded that the programme was introduced simply because the army
needed to enlist more men. When his application for conscientious objector
status on religious grounds was refused, Ali declared that, regardless, he would
follow the example of Elijah Muhammad who had served a three-year jail sen-
tence for refusing the draft during the Second World War. 102 'I'm a member of
the Black Muslims, and we don't go to no wars unless they're declared by Allah
himself. I don't have no personal quarrel with those Viet Congs.' 103 In April 1967,
Ali's title was withdrawn and in June, a Texas jury convicted him of violating the
Selective Service Laws and awarded the maximum sentence, five years in prison
and a $10,000 fine. The conviction was finally overturned in 1971.

These events resonated with both the anti-war and the burgeoning Black
Power movements, and Ali became a hero for both. In July 1967, just a few days
after the city erupted in riots, the National Conference on Black Power met in
Newark. Among many conference resolutions was one to boycott all sponsors
of television boxing until Ali's title was restored. 'Why', wonders historian Jerry
Gafio Watts, 'was such an inconsequential issue brought up at a conference for-
mulating national black priorities?' 104 But while a boxing title may in itself be
politically inconsequential, and while most black radicals viewed the Nation of
Islam with some scepticism after Malcolm X left, Ali himself was widely ad-
mired as a symbol of militancy. The Black Power Movement was less concerned
with the processes of mainstream politics than in exerting a direct influence in
schools and universities, the media and the sports industry. If, as Debbie Louis
has argued, the Movement's success was largely a consequence of its ideolo-
gical vagueness, Ali's case, which easily served as a rallying point for activists
with very different agendas, was a gift. 105

The stripping of Ali's title became one of the pivotal events in what soci-
ologist/activist Harry Edwards termed 'the revolt of the black athlete'. A generation

330

earlier, athletes such as Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens and Joe Louis had simply
fought for sports to be integrated; now, Edwards argued, black athletes and their
spokesmen should consider the terms of their inclusion. He questioned the lack
of black involvement in team captaincy, management and coaching, reflecting on
what happened to athletes after they retired. 'Participation without power' was
not enough; black athletes should be leaders and spokesmen . . . rather than
puppets and dupes'. 106 The revolt reached its apotheosis in the Olympic Project
for Human Rights, which sought to boycott the 1968 Mexico City games. Once
again, one of the first demands was that Ali's title be restored. Around this time,
comparisons between the 'castration' of Ali and Jack Johnson began to be made.
For Edwards, however, there was a clear difference between the two men. While
Johnson was a 'classic, tragic loser', he said, Ali was nothing less than 'a god'. 107

Because of his stand on Vietnam, Ali also became the 'White Liberal Hope'
of the anti-war movement, a position that was enhanced by his 1968 college
lecture tour and appearance alongside Dr Spock and H. Rap Brown at the 1967
Peace Action Council. 108 For ex-champions such as Louis, Tunney and 'slacker'
Dempsey, the involvement of the heavyweight champion in an anti-war move-
ment was insupportable. 109 But for anti-war activists, Ali's participation both
encouraged the conviction that refusing to fight could be more manly than
going, and challenged the lily-white' image of the New Left. 110

Ali's 'martyrdom' (rather than, say, 'rebellion') became a common theme in
New Left discourse; his situation enabling a timely revival of the old story in
which 'the black male is metaphorically the white man's unconscious
personified.' 111 Budd Schulberg wrote of Ali's having 'received into his beautiful
black body' all the 'poisoned arrows' of the decade: 'Wounded by all those
arrows of our social misfortune, he refused to die.' 112 'When Cassius Clay be-
came a Muslim,' echoed George Lois, 'he also became a martyr'. Membership
of a 'counterrevolutionary organisation that basically endorsed ... a bourgeois
fantasy of regeneration through respectability' had turned Ali into a hero of the
left; now conversion to Islam made him the perfect model for Christian symbol-
ism. 113 Lois (who designed covers for Esquire magazine and who had famously
cast Sonny Liston as Santa Claus) decided that Ali should be photographed as
Botticini's St Sebastian for the April 1968 cover. At the studio, I showed him a
postcard of the painting to illustrate the stance,' Lois recalled, 'He studied it
with enormous concentration. Suddenly he blurted out, "Hey George, this cat's
a Christian!" . . . Before we could affix any arrows to Ali, he got on the phone
with . . . Elijah Muhammad.' 114 After Ali had explained the painting 'in excru-
ciating detail' and Lois had endured a lengthy theological discussion' with the
Black Muslim leader, the project was given the go-ahead. The cover was later
reproduced and sold as a protest poster. In 2005 the American Society of Mag-
azine Editors ranked the image third in the top ten magazine covers of the last
40 years. 115

A rather less glossy version of Ali's martyrdom, but one no less informed by
Christian iconography was Benny Andrews's mixed-media collage The Champion

33i

(1968) (illus. 111). The boxer is depicted sitting on a corner stool, with a towel
'made of a piece of rumpled and pigment-stiffened cloth' draped over his head. 116
His glazed look and mashed-up face (made-up of appropriately rough layers of
plastic, glue and resin) recalls the classical 'pugilist at rest', but Andrews's cham-
pion stares back at the viewer. 117 Drawing on Ali's political struggle and the fate
of Joe Louis, at that time receiving treatment in a Colorado psychiatric hospital,
the painting, Andrews said, was about 'the strength of the black man, the ability
to persevere in the face of overwhelming odds'. 118

The Nation of Islam, unsurprisingly, had no desire to portray Ali as either
a victim or a martyr. His photograph regularly appeared in Muhammad Speaks
but always as 'physically strong, pious, and devoted to Elijah Muhammad'. 119

As disenchantment with the war and opposition to the draft became more
prevalent, support for Ali also grew. In 1967, the majority of black soldiers felt
that Ali 'had given up being a man' when he refused to be inducted; by 1970, 69
per cent approved of his decision. 120 Among white liberals, Ali benefited from
the fact that the 'intensely brooding, beautiful black rebel' had become the lat-
est thing in 'radical chic'. 121 Panthers appeared on the Johnny Carson Show, cul-
tural nationalists sold their novels to Random House, and in November 1969,
Esquire's cover once again campaigned on Ali's behalf- an assortment of lumi-
naries (from Dick Cavett to Elizabeth Taylor) pointed a finger at the camera, de-
manding Ali's 'right to defend his title'. 122 The following month Ali appeared (for
seven nights) as a militant black leader in the Broadway musical Buck White}' 11
The highlight was his rendition of Oscar Brown Jr.'s song, 'It's All Over Now,
Mighty Whitey'.

In 1970, Ali was granted a boxing licence in Atlanta to fight Jerry Quarry
(illus. 112). While the Governor of Georgia called for a boycott of the fight and
some tried to enlist Quarry as a white hope, the audience at the closed-circuit
television screening at Madison Square Garden cheered Ali's victory. 124 Amer-
ica was divided and once again the boxing ring provided a space for allegory. In
March 1971, three months before the Supreme Court overturned his draft-evasion
conviction, Ali took on champion Joe Frazier in the first of what would become
a 'heroic trilogy' of fights between the pair. Once again political opposition -
this time, 'law-abiding pragmatism vs. quixotic ideology' or 'radical chic' vs.
Agnewian angsf - was expressed in terms of race and style. 125 Ali was Black
Power's white dancer ('Nureyev') and Frazier, the white man's primitive ('Cal-
iban'). 126 This, anyway, was the kind of thing that white commentators such as
Schulberg and Mailer wrote. But Gwendolyn Brooks, doyenne of the Black Arts
Movement, and author of 'Black Steel', a poem specially commissioned for the
official fight programme, refused to play the game. 'Black Steel' celebrates the
'roaring-thing' of both fighters, 'the Uttermost of Warriors in the world', and
demands only that 'black love survive the Calculated Blaze'. 127 Boxing aficiona-
dos felt that by fighting Frazier, Ali was finally facing a real test (the Liston fights
were suspect; the others not really challenging enough), and after fifteen hard-
contested rounds, they concluded that he was no longer a 'magical untried

332

Prince'. 128 Ali's defeat, it seemed, made the story even better. By losing, by get-
ting hit, yet remaining on his feet until the end of the contest - in other words,
by resembling La Motta more than Sugar Ray - Ali had shown that he had
'heart' as well as talent. 129 'He was a man,' Mailer declared. 'He could bear moral
and physical torture and he could stand.' 130

In 1973, Frazier lost his title to George Foreman and a few months later he
was defeated by Ali (by decision) in a $25 million Madison Square Garden re-
match. The following year, Ali signed to meet Foreman for a title fight in Kin-
shasa, Zaire (illus. 113). The event was the brainchild of Don King, who
promoted it as a celebration of black political and economic independence: A
fight between two Blacks in a Black Nation, organized by Blacks and seen by
the whole world; that is a victory for Mobutism.' 131

Again the politics were complicated - King was exploiting black America's
interest in all things African, but it was not clear that the newly independent
government of Mobutu, installed with the help of the cia and already an op-
pressive 'cult of the king', deserved such a boost. King promised Ali and Fore-
man $5 million each; Mobutu guaranteed the sum out of Zaire's treasury. 132 In
any case, what King dubbed 'the Rumble in the Jungle' was 'an event impossi-
bly rich for the imagination'. 133 Ali, the self-proclaimed champion of Pan-
Africanism, would fight a man who, on winning a gold medal at the 1968 Mexico
City Olympics, had defied the clenched-fisted Black Power protests by waving
an American flag and calling for 'United States Power'. 134 Foreman was the most
powerful heavyweight Ali had encountered since Liston, and it was thought that
Foreman would win easily. Ali's unexpected victory (mythologized in Norman
Mailer's The Fight and Leon Gast's When We Were Kings) is famous as his 'most
cerebral' or trickster-like - by lying back on the ropes and protecting his head
until Foreman tired himself out, he claimed to have invented a new technique,
the 'Rope-a-Dope'. 135 In fact, it was a classic defensive strategy and, for Jose Tor-
res, what was most admirable was Ali's subsequent skill in 'patenting' it as his
own. 136 In the eighth round, Ali knocked Foreman out. The photograph of the
knockout has, as Charles Lemert notes, become 'one of the iconic images in all
of sports': Ali towers above the fallen Foreman, fist cocked, holding back the
final punch that in being withheld asserted Ali's reserve of prowess and, one
must add, aesthetic taste.' 137

Ali's third and final meeting with Frazier took place in 1975 in the Philip-
pines. Dubbed the 'Thrilla in Manila', it is sometimes cited as the greatest fight
in boxing history. Although both men were 'dinosaurs', the fight went fourteen
rounds until finally Frazier was unable to continue. 138 Ali later described the
fight as the 'hardest' of his life, the 'deadliest and most vicious', and the tenth
round as the 'closest thing to dying I know'. 139 For Joyce Carol Oates, Ali-Frazier
1 . . . and Ali-Frazier 111 . . . are boxing's analogues to King Lear- ordeals of un-
fathomable human courage and resilience raised to the level of classic
tragedy'. 140 Aired live to paying subscribers via satellite by hbo, the Manila fight
was also the 'breakthrough event' that launched the cable industry. 141

333

Ali continued to fight for another six years. In 1978, he lost and then re-
gained his title for the third time in two fights with Leon Spinks. 142 Retiring in
1979, he returned in 1980 to be carried through eleven rounds by Larry Holmes
(it was, said Sylvester Stallone, like watching an autopsy on a man who's still
alive'). 143 When, the following year, Ali fought Trevor Berbick, a tremor (later di-
agnosed as Parkinson's Syndrome) was already noticeable.

FROM GREATEST TO G.O.A.T.

In 1975, in the wake of the Rumble, Ali published his autobiography, The Great-
est: My Own Story. Although the jacket credits Ali 'with Richard Durham', the
book's authorship is more complicated. The managing editor of the Nation of
Islam's newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, but a Marxist rather than a Muslim,
Durham taped Ali's conversations with a variety of people, and sent the tapes
to Random House. Toni Morrison, a senior editor there, used the tapes to con-
struct a book. Finally Herbert Muhammad approved the text, which is full of
praise for his role as Ali's 'other self'. 144 A 'self-consciously political construct'
- one in which, for example, Malcolm X is written out except for a mention of
the threat posed by his 'people' - The Greatest is still often treated as the defini-
tive account of Ali's life. 145

The book begins in 1973, with Ali returning to Louisville after his defeat by
Ken Norton, and ends with his victories against Foreman in Kinshasa and
Frazier in Manila - a structure which Gerald Early reads as representing more
than simply an upward trajectory. For Early, the book is a version of 'Odysseus
returning home from the black male exile'. 146 When Ali overhears someone say-
ing 'Norton beat that nigger!', the book's theme is introduced: the racism of
'White America' is what motivates Ali. 'Only this morning,' he notes, 'Norton
was a "nigger" like me. But tonight he's The Great White Hope'. The story of
Jack Johnson (the 'ghost in the house') is evoked throughout. 147

The Greatest treats boxing as at best a suspect activity (a recurrent 'nightmar-
ish image' is of 'two slaves in the ring' before their masters) and focuses on Ali's
experience as a 'freedom fighter' in the 'real fighting ring, the one where freedom
for black people in America takes place'. 148 At the heart of the story is Ali's reli-
gious conversion and refusal of the draft; what the narrative needs to do is
explain how Ali came to make these decisions. Two incidents in particular are
singled out as shaping the development of his political consciousness. The first
is the story of his reaction to the 1955 lynching of the fourteen-year-old Emmett
Till. A close-up of Till's battered face had appeared in Jet magazine and Ali
describes the effect of seeing 'his head . . . swollen and bashed in, his eyes bulging
out of their sockets, and his mouth twisted and broken'.

I felt a deep kinship to him when I learned he was born the same year
and day I was. I couldn't get Emmett Till out of my mind, until one
evening I thought of a way to get back at white people for his death. 149

334

In the story that follows, Ali and his friend, Ronnie, walked to the railway sta-
tion where they saw a poster of Uncle Sam. After hurling stones at the poster,
they place some shoe rests on the track and later watch as a train is derailed.
Two days later, Ali returns to the scene and looks again at the image. He con-
cludes the story, 'I always knew that sooner or later he would confront me, and
I would confront him.' 150

The next key story concerns Ali's brief 'holiday as a White Hope' following
the i960 Olympics. Ali describes himself as immediately wary of the role that
was being thrust upon him: 'Of course I understood they would prefer that the
White Hope be white. But, Hopes having come upon hard times in boxing, I
could see they would settle for a Black White Hope . . . until a real White White
Hope came around.' 151 Disillusion comes quickly. Back in Louisville, while wear-
ing his medal, he is refused entry to a Louisville restaurant. In disgusted re-
sponse, and 'feeling tight and warm as though the bell had rung for the round,'
Ali says he threw his medal in the Ohio river. 152 By 1967, Ali is firmly established
as both the '"Jack Johnson" of [his] time', and a Pan-African statesman. 153

Like Alex Haley's Roots, the bestselling book of 1976, The Greatest presents
the story of a powerful black man who survives hardship to come good in Amer-
ica but never forgets his African origins. Both Ali and Haley use slavery as a
metaphor for the experience of American blacks long after Emancipation, both
confess that, prior to visiting the continent, their knowledge of Africa was de-
rived from 'Tarzan movies', and both experience their return as a 'peak experi-
ence'. 154 In his review of Roots, considering the passage in which the baby Kunta
Kinte is told his name, James Baldwin reinforced the connection. 'Even way up
here in the 20th century,' he wrote, 'Muhammad Ali will not be the only one to
respond to the moment that the father lifted his baby up with his face to the
heavens, and said softly, "Behold - the only thing greater than yourself".' 155

For all The Greatest's talk of Ali's estrangement from white America, white
America was appreciating and buying into Ali like never before. Ronald Bergan
describes the 1977 film adaptation (featuring Ali as his 22-year-old self, James
Earl Jones as Malcolm X, and George Benson singing 'The Greatest Love of AH')
as 'rather like an extended commercial advertising a renowned and well-loved
product'. 156 Ali's commercial potential was also apparent to the master of pop
iconography, Andy Warhol. In August 1977, Warhol visited Ali's training camp
in order to photograph him for a series often silk-screen portraits of athletes
(illus. 114). Victor Bockris recorded the event and quoted Ali's delight that 'white
people gonna pay $25,000 for my picture!' 157 Warhol found Ali boring but very
handsome. 158 For Mike Marquesee, Warhol's portrait marks 'the moment of
symbolic appropriation, the transition of Ali from a divisive to a consensual
figure'. 159 By the time Ali lit the torch to open the Atlanta Olympics in 1996
(accompanied by loudspeakers broadcasting Martin Luther King's T have a
dream' speech), the transformation was complete. During the games he was
given a replacement gold medal to replace the one he'd purportedly thrown into
the Ohio River. 160 When We Were Kings, a film of the 1974 'Rumble', was released

335

later that year, followed by Michael Mann's bio-pic, Ali, starring Will Smith, in
2001. In 1999, bbc viewers awarded Ali 'Sports Personality of the Century', and
in 2001 Sports Illustrated noted that Ali commanded $100,000 (more than any
other retired athlete) for a single public appearance. 161

Marquesee argues that the 'Ali offered up for veneration in the 1990s' is a
'mere caricature of the original', a postmodern pastiche stripped of all political
meaning. 162 But Ali's protean political usefulness never really ended. The sub-
ject of illegal fbi surveillance for a decade, in 1975 Ali accepted an invitation to
the White House as part of Gerald Ford's attempt to 'heal the wounds of racial
division, Vietnam and Watergate'. 163 In 1976, he campaigned for Jimmy Carter,
who sent him to Africa to gather support for a boycott of the Moscow Olympics.
On a visit to the ussr in 1978, Ali described America as the 'best country in the
world' (the exact phrase he'd used in i960): it was almost as if the past eighteen
years hadn't happened. 164 In 1980, he supported Ronald Reagan's presidential
campaign and in 1990, flew to Iraq to try to secure the release of the American
hostages held by Saddam Hussein.

The shift in Ali's political positioning was connected to changes in his reli-
gious affiliation. After Elijah Muhammad's death in 1975, the Nation of Islam
split. Ali chose to remain with Wallace D. Muhammad, who reinvented the
organization along more orthodox Islamic lines, renaming it the American Mus-
lim Mission, rather than following Louis Farrakhan who revived the old-style
Nation. After the World Trade Center attack in 2001, Ali appeared on national
television as the 'exemplary African-American Muslim' and declared that 'Islam
is peace. It's against killing, murder and the terrorists and the people who are
doing that in the name of Islam are wrong. And if I had a chance I'd do some-
thing about it.' 165 In December 2001 he made a short film designed to persuade
America's Muslims to support the war effort and the following year visited
Kabul. 166 He was awarded the Presidential Medal by George W. Bush in 2005.

Ali has also become a kind of New Age spiritual guru; his Parkinson's Syn-
drome merely adding poignancy to his story. God, he claimed, was keeping him
'humble' and showing him that 'I'm just a man, like everybody else.' 167 Recent
years have seen the publication of books on Ali's life lessons' by his daughters
Hana and Laila, as well as Ali himself. 168 He is also frequently evoked in inspi-
rational books aimed at young people, and features in the memoirs of those
who claim to have been inspired by his example (illus. 115). l69

Memoirs form the basis of Leon Gast's 1996 film When We Were Kings. The
soundtrack features Wyclef Jean's 'Rumble in the Jungle', a song which follows
the nationalist argument of The Greatest, to suggest that the fight represents an
attempt 'to reconnect 400 years' and that the film is a way to 'give love . . . / To
the man who made the fam' remember when we were kings'. Wyclef ends by
connecting the past to the present moment in which 'we need a ghetto Mes-
siah'. The film itself, however, is purely nostalgic. While Foreman and Ali appear
in the 1974 footage, we don't learn what they remember of the fight (or, indeed,
what any Zairians thought of the occasion). 170 Instead, Gast intercuts scenes

336

145

'Ali, Now and Then';
cover of Esquire,
October 2003.

from the fight and its buildup with the recollections and primitivist interpreta-
tions of Norman Mailer and George Plimpton. 171 As Julio Rodriguez points out,
this means that the 'we' of the title mostly refers to the old sportswriters and, by
extension, Gast whose cinematography, he suggests, is as lustful' as Mailer's
talk. 172 The film was advertised by a poster featuring a close-up of Ali's sweat-
drenched face; his lips are slightly open and his eyes narrowed in concentration
(illus. 116). The image suggests that Ali has transcended his previous movie per-
sonae, both that of boxer and that of political symbol, and become a work of
primitivist art (illus. 117).

Ali also remains a promising resource for academic discussion. For cultural
critics such as Grant Farred, he is more than a 'cultural icon', he is a 'vernacular
intellectual'; someone whose 'physical actions . . . are indistinguishable from
his cerebral contemplations' and who, by changing his name, 'narrativizes him-
self as postcolonial figure'. 173 Farred has high standards for Ali and suggests, for
example, that by fighting in Jakarta without 'speaking out against the Indone-
sian genocide,' the boxer 'compromised himself ideologically'. 174 Ali's self-con-
fessed prettiness has also been the subject of much speculation. On the simplest
reading, when Ali announced, 'I am the prettiest thing that ever lived', he was
simply making the classic boxer's boast of avoiding his opponent's gloves - 'I
don't have a mark on my face'. 175 Ishmael Reed, however, worried that 'when

he refers to himself as "pretty" he might
mean his Caucasian features' - a thesis
that was supported by Ali's habit of den-
igrating his opponents with racial in-
sults. 176 More recently, Ali's prettiness
has been read as a sign of late twentieth-
century 're-gendering' or 'cross-gendered
wholeness'. 177

As the new century began, Ali and his
managers consolidated the 'brand' in a
series of new ventures (illus. 145). In 2004,
Taschen Books published a limited edition
'tribute' to Ali entitled g.o.a.t. - the
acronym of 'Greatest of All Time'. The vol-
ume exemplified excess in every respect -
twenty inches squared, it numbered 800
pages, weighed 75 pounds, and retailed
at $3,000. The first 1,000 copies (the
'Champ's Edition' at $7,500) contained
four silver gelatin prints by Howard Bing-
ham and a self-assembly plastic sculpture
by the master of kitsch consumerism, Jeff
Koons. The following year, the Muhum-
mad Ali Center, an interactive 'museum,

thAnnivgrsary

337

peace, and conflict resolution center', assumed a central role in the regeneration
of the still segregated city of Louisville and in April 2006, Ali sold 80 per cent of
the marketing rights to his name and image to the entertainment rights firm ckx
for $50 million. 178 A statement purportedly from Ali announced that the move
will 'help guarantee that, for generations to come, people of all nations will un-
derstand my beliefs and purpose'. 179 In June, his corporation took advantage of
the latest moral panic (childhood obesity) to launch g.o.a.t. snacks, shaped like
punch bags and boxing gloves, and meant to be eaten in seven 'rounds' through-
out the day. 180

Ali has always been very astute about his ability to appeal to diverse con-
stituents - to pretty girls 'because I say things that attract them'; to 'redneck white
folks' who want to see 'the nigger' get 'a whoppin'; to 'black militants that don't like
the whites'; to long-haired hippies, because I don't go to war'; to Muslims 'be-
cause of the name Muhammad Ali' and, finally, to 'the Israelis, who don't get along
with the Muslims'. 'So you add it all up,' he once said, 'I got a helluva crowd.' 181

In the remainder of this chapter, I look in greater detail at the appeal and
challenge of Ali's celebrity for some of that crowd - first the Black Arts Move-
ment; then Bob Dylan and Norman Mailer. Finally, I consider three 'white hope'
tales: Rocky, Raging Bull and the comic book, Superman vs Muhammad Ali.

'say it loud - i'm black and i'm proud'

Drawing variously on aesthetic, entrepreneurial, religious and therapeutic dis-
courses, the aims and ambitions of late sixties and early seventies black cultural
nationalism were constantly being debated and reformulated. At times it
seemed that what unified its various agendas was simply blackness and, as
Amiri Baraka later said, 'that meant many things to many people'. 182 Neverthe-
less, three dominant themes emerged: self-determination, pride and masculin-
ity. 183 'Black is beautiful and it's so beautiful to be black', read the student
placards; 'say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud', sang one-time boxer James
Brown; 'I am the greatest,' declared Muhammad Ali; 'We're the Greatest,'
echoed the Alabama Black Panthers' bumper stickers. 184 These assertions were
backed up by what Vincent Harding remembers as an extraordinary burst of
cultural activity.

Conventions and conferences on Black history, music, art, politics and
religion were meeting almost weekly. New journals, new institutions,
new African and Islamic names seemed to rise up continuously in a pe-
riod of tremendous Black energy and creative force. It was a time of
renaissance far more powerful than the celebrated period of Harlem's
rise in the 1920s. 185

Essential for many of these activities was the recovery of 'cultural roots', which
were largely conceived in terms of the example provided by individual achieve-

338

ment. 186 When Sonia Sanchez asked, 'who's gonna give our young / blk people
new heroes,' there was no shortage of offers. 187 'Rip those dead white people off
/ your walls,' instructed another poet, Jayne Cortez, and in their place, she
urged, erect 'A Black Hall of Fame / so our children will know / will know and
be proud'. 188 While the most popular subject was undoubtedly Malcolm him-
self, 'the epic hero of our struggle', heroes were found far and wide - in tradi-
tional folklore (Railroad Bill, Shine), black history (Nat Turner, Frederick
Douglass), contemporary popular culture (Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and
James Brown) and sports (Muhammad Ali and Jack Johnson). 189 Ali may have
chosen Elijah Muhammad over Malcolm X, but it is Malcolm beside whom he
is commemorated in literary, musical and visual Halls of Fame.

The representation of heroes was the driving force behind much activity in
the visual arts. In 1967 the Organization of Black American Culture (obac), in-
tent on producing an art work that would be in, as well as of, the community,
created the 'Wall of Respect' on an abandoned building in inner-city Chicago.
Influenced by the heroic murals of Aaron Douglas, as well as the Mexican and
wpa traditions, the Wall was intended 'to inspire the South Side black commu-
nity with faces of black success, creative genius, and resistance' - faces that in-
cluded Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, John Coltrane, Nina Simone and, standing
victorious in the centre of a bay window, Muhammad Ali. 190 After the mural
was featured in Ebony magazine, further walls of respect, as well as 'truth', 'con-
sciousness' and 'dignity', were produced all over the country, creating numer-
ous 'Black Museum[s] in the inner city'. 191 Today 'motivational' murals featuring
Ali and others remain a frequent sight on the walls of schools and youth centres
all over the United States. In 1993, for example, Elliott Pinkney (with the assis-
tance of Sam Barrow and Lloyd Goodney) created Visions and Motions for the
Community Youth Sports and Arts Foundation in Los Angeles (illus. 118).
Designed 'to encourage young people', it 'depicts men and women who had
visions to become great and then set about setting those dreams in motion'. 192
One of those men is Muhammad Ali.

Jack Johnson also became a popular subject for commemoration. 193 After
1966, parallels began to be drawn between Ali's refusal of the draft and subse-
quent ban from boxing, and Johnson's 1910 conviction under the Mann Act. Jack
Johnson seemed 'tailor made' for a 'generation looking for forceful, independ-
ent leaders'. 194 But although Ali asserted that his exile from boxing was 'history
all over again', different political and social issues were at play. 195 Johnson was
considered dangerous because he challenged the caste system in and out of the
ring. White women and white hopes were largely irrelevant to Ali's career,
except as a way of making money; he espoused racial separatism. It seemed, how-
ever, that if Ali was not going to be a Joe Louis, then he had to be a Jack Johnson,
as if these were the only possibilities. Johnson was represented in many different
ways by both black and white artists. The Young Jack Johnson (1967), one of sev-
eral 'hero portraits' by Reginald Gammon, draws on an often-reproduced photo-
graph of Johnson standing with folded arms and staring directly at the camera.

339

Gammon's painting emphasizes the boxer's musculature and challenging look,
and surrounds him with bands of red, black and green, the Black Nationalist
colours. 196 Raymond Saunders's series of mixed media portraits of Johnson took
a very different approach. Saunders disrupts the figurative representation of
Johnson by overlaying it with Abstract Expressionist paintwork and a collage of
tickets and other documents. Saunders was very critical of the Black Art Move-
ment and, in a privately printed pamphlet, Black is a Color (1969), argued against
an aesthetic based on 'perpetual anger'. 'For the artist,' he said, 'this is aesthetic
atrophy'. 197 Nevertheless, it is hard not to see political intent in Saunders's choice
of Johnson as a subject and in his mode of representation. In one painting, John-
son's head is cropped and his arms obscured by red paint. The painting is dom-
inated by his white-trousered legs with his crotch as its focal point. 198

In 1967 Howard Sackler wrote a play, The Great White Hope, closely based on
Johnson's newly reissued autobiography. James Earl Jones, who played Jefferson
(the Johnson character), claimed that his performance was partly based on
observations of Ali, and when he stepped down from the role, it was suggested
that Ali himself could take over. 199 Although he needed work and said he loved
the 'Jack Johnson image', Ali refused the part. 200 He may have emulated the role
of 'the nigger white folks didn't like', but, he
added, 'a black hero chasing white women
was a role I didn't want to glorify'. 201 Keen
to appeal to the increasingly lucrative
young black audience, Twentieth Century
Fox decided to film the play and gave it a
comparatively large budget. 202 The release
of The Great White Hope coincided with
Ali's return to the ring, and, as publicity for
both, he was happy to spar with Jones for
photographers. 'If you just change the time,
date and details, it's about me!' he said. 203
The film, however, was unpopular with
both blacks and whites. Blacks disliked
the 'glorification of a black man's love of
a white woman' and the fact that more
time was spent considering Johnson's
final defeat than his victory over Jeffries
(dealt with rapidly in close-ups of Jones
laughing and punching). White audi-
ences, meanwhile, resented the film's 'all-
purpose accusation and rhetoric' and
'guilt-mongering advertising campaign':
the posters read, 'He could beat any white
man in the world. He just couldn't beat all
ofthem!'(illus.i46). 2 ° 4

146

Poster advertising
The Great White
Hope (1970).

He could beat any white man

in the world-
He just couldn't beat alt of them.

The Great White Hope

Slarriiljj jjrriH*. Earl Jpnes. Jhiih Alys^nciHr

todmd by Lnmm furwi Duteua by Mwm (tin
Suwwuin ty HowjkI SkLIp ijjri «i hd put

JViultJ ■■< ■**, *W* 1

340

The following year, a feature-length documentary Jack Johnson, directed by
Jim Jacobs and produced by William Cayton, was shown at the Whitney Mu-
seum. 205 Today the film, which presents Johnson as a prototype Black Power
activist, is largely remembered for its Miles Davis soundtrack. Davis's score
makes no attempt to be historical; rather, he marries his jazz horn with the rock
influences of electric bass and guitar. 206 Davis felt the score fitted the movie
'perfectly' - his aim, he said later, was to make music that Jack Johnson could
have danced to, music that had a 'black rhythm', that was 'black enough'. 207
Davis had been a keen amateur boxer since his youth, and had idolized Sugar
Ray Robinson. 208 The black subcultures of boxing and jazz had traditionally
overlapped, and while musicians tapped in to the masculine mythology of the
prize-fighter, boxers wanted to be thought of as stylish and artful. 209 Percus-
sion and dancing skills, both of which required a sense of rhythm and timing,
were particularly transferable to the ring. 210 Sugar Ray had begun as a tap
dancer, imitating Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson; later he played drums with his friend
Max Roach. 211 While both activities depended on constant practice until they
became 'instinctive', as well as 'science and precision', what makes a great boxer,
Davis maintained, is the same thing that makes a great musician - a distinctive
style. While working on Jack Johnson, Davis was sparring regularly and he
claimed to have written the piece with 'that shuffling movement boxers use' in
mind. 212 But Johnson's influence was more than stylistic. In his sleevenotes for
the 1971 album A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Davis said that 'Johnson portrayed Free-
dom' - 'His flamboyance was more than obvious. And no doubt mighty Whitey
felt "No Black man should have all this." But he did and he'd flaunt it.' 213 Davis
wanted his album to be seen as a comparable gesture of stylish masculine flam-
boyance, a reproof to 'white envy'. 214

The comparison of Ali to Johnson was often situated in the context of dis-
cussions about the relationship between the Black Arts Movement and the
Harlem Renaissance. For Ishmael Reed, for example, the 'glamorous, sophisti-
cated, intelligent, international, and militant' Ali not only represented the 'New
Black of the 1960s', but was an obvious successor to the 'New Negro of the
1920s'. 215 The status of Ali in the Black Arts Movement was, however, just as
complicated as that of Jack Johnson in the Harlem Renaissance 40 years earlier.
In the twenties, debates focused on whether Johnson was a suitable role model
for the aspirant middle classes. Was the heavyweight championship the best
'measurement' of black progress? asked James Weldon Johnson. Would an in-
terest in sport distract blacks from the importance of education? wondered
W.E.B. Du Bois. In Chapter Five, I argued that one way to reconcile the celebra-
tion of a sports hero with a belief in the importance of artistic achievement was
to consider boxing as itself an art form or analogous to art. In the late sixties, de-
bates about Ali's suitability as a role model had a slightly different emphasis. The
rhetoric of Black Power tended to associate proper blackness with proper mas-
culinity. 216 There was much talk of 'emasculation' and 'eunuchs', while numer-
ous works debated the 'price of being a black man in America', and the nature

34i

of 'black masculinity', which was defined in essentialist terms. 217 'The question
for the black critic today,' declared LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal in 1968, is 'how
far has the work gone in transforming an American Negro into an African-
American or black man?' 218

One way of considering this question (and its possible answers) is to read
it as emerging from the debates that followed the American publication of Franz
Fanon's work. Fanon's books provided a framework within which many intellec-
tuals and activists located the condition and consciousness of black American
men (again women are largely ignored). It became commonplace to speak of
Black America as an internal colony and its literature as 'a literature of com-
bat'. 219 In Black Skin, White Masks (first published in English in 1968) Fanon
considered 'the singularly eroticised' body of the black athlete as an example
of the association of 'the Negro' with 'the biological'. In a word-association test
conducted on 'some 500 members of the white race - French, German, English,
Italian', he inserted the word 'Negro': 'Negro brought forth biology, penis,
strong, athletic, potent, boxer, Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Senegalese troops, savage,
animal, devil, sin.' 220 But Fanon wanted to do more than simply expose white
stereotyping; he wanted black men to think about themselves differently. In
order to be truly free, he argued, they must actively resist being locked into'
their bodies. 221 These themes were elaborated in Eldridge Cleaver's 1968 essay
Allegory of the Black Eunuchs', an extended complaint that 'the white man
wants to be the brain and he wants us to be the muscle, the body'. 222

As reigning heavyweight champion, Ali was, of course, the ultimate per-
former of a 'slave sport', the ultimate representative of the 'singularly eroticised'
Body, the biological essence. 'The Heavyweight Champion of the World is, most
of all, a grand hunk of flesh,' wrote Ishmael Reed, 'capable of devastating phys-
ical destruction when instructed by a brain, or a group of brains. He may be
brilliant, but even his brilliance is used to praise his flesh.' 223 Writers such as
Cleaver did not, however, want to forego the male body. If racism had 'negated
masculinity' by separating brain and body, Black Power must bring them to-
gether again. It was just a question of emphasis. While whites such as Norman
Mailer celebrated Ali's athleticism and laughed at his poetry and philosophy,
Cleaver and LeRoi Jones took Ali's excellence as a boxer largely for granted and
concentrated on his out-of-ring activities: first, as loud-mouthed Clay because,
after all, it takes at least a bird-brain to run a loud-mouth, and the white man de-
spises even that much brain in a black man', and then, even better, as Ali, the
man-of-principle who sacrificed his considerable physical assets for his be-
liefs. 224 Of course, the loud-mouth-become-political icon would scarcely have
been worth celebrating if he did not also remain beyond doubt the incarnation
of masculinity. Side-stepping Ali's profession was made much easier by the fact
that between 1967 and 1970 - the height of the Black Power Movement - he was
not boxing at all.

In his 1962 address to the American Society for African Culture, LeRoi
Jones argued that America had not yet produced a legitimate Negro art', with

342

the result that Jack Johnson remained a 'larger cultural hero than any Negro
writer'. Boxing (or more precisely, the symbolism of Johnson's career) and
music assumed a 'legitimacy of emotional concern' that literature had been
unable to achieve. 225 This legitimacy, or authenticity, was the one thing that
white culture could not steal. White blues singers may sing the same words
as their black counterparts but, Jones maintained, the songs were not the
same. 'It is a different quality of energy they summon. The body is directly
figured in it.' Similarly, he went on, 'a white man could box like Muhammad
Ali, only after seeing Muhammad Ali box. He could not initiate that style.
It is no description, it is the culture.' 226 The white appropriation of black
style was a much-discussed subject. 227 Ishmael Reed wrote extensively about
the way in which American art depended on 'a secret understanding that
the oppressor shall always prevail and make off with the prizes, no matter
how inferior his art to that of his victims'. 228 For the black artist to survive,
Reed argued, he must emulate such 'conjure men' as Railroad Bill, Nat
Turner, Malcolm X and Jack Johnson, all of whom resisted attempts to steal
their magic. 229

LeRoi Jones also alluded to Johnson and Ali in his attempts to create a lit-
erature that, he said, would reflect the 'singular values' (often conceived in emo-
tional or bodily terms) of black life. His 1964 poem, 'Black Dada Nihilismus', for
example, is an attempt to create an aesthetic based on medieval alchemy, Egypt-
ian astrology and the exorcising 'black scream', as well as a tribute to a series of
exemplary rebels and entertainers who include Johnson. 230 Three years later,
Jones prefaced a short story about space invaders searching for jazz records in
Newark with the following poem:

Can you die in airraid jiggle

torn arms flung through candystores

Touch the edge of an answer. The waves of nausea

as change sweeps the frame of breath and meat.

'Stick a knife through his throat,'
he slid
in the blood
got up running toward
the blind newsdealer. He screamed
about 'Cassius Clay', and slain there in the
street, the whipped figure of jesus, head opened
eyes flailing against his nose. They beat him to
pulpy answers. We wrote Muhammad Ali across his
face and chest, like a newspaper of bleeding meat. 231

The narrator of the poem seems uncertain about his position is relation to the
violent attack. The mob is both a 'they', who beat the man to a paper-like pulp,

343

and a 'we' whose number includes a 'newsdealer' and who transform the pulp
into a 'newspaper of bleeding meat'. We don't know anything about the victim
of the mob other than the fact that he screams the name Cassius Clay and, to the
ambivalent narrator, becomes a Christ-like martyr. But that, it seems, is all we
need to know. The 'news' that needs to be conveyed is that Clay is now Ali. That
shift (mirrored the following year when Jones changed his name to Amiri
Baraka) is of course the shift from the rhetoric of Civil Rights to that of Black
Power; from 'We Shall Overcome' to 'Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker!' 232
In aesthetic terms, this move meant rejecting a poetry of reflection and ana-
lysis for one of immediacy and direct expression: 'reflect never did shit for any
of us. Express would. Express. Now Now Now Now Now Now.' 233 But there was,
however, only so far that an aesthetic based on the 'Black scream' could go, and
by the late sixties, in works such as 'It's Nation Time' or Black Fire, an enor-
mously influential anthology that he edited with Larry Neal, Baraka returned to
his earlier emphasis on cultural nationalism. 234

Neal's introduction to Black Fire argued that the Black Arts Movement must
learn from the mistakes of the Harlem Renaissance which, he said, had failed to
'address itself to the mythology and the life-styles of the black community' and
had not spoken 'directly to black people'. 235 By 1970, Neal had begun to evoke
Ralph Ellison as an alternative model; Ellison's work displayed a complex appre-
ciation of 'the aesthetic all around . . . preachers, blues singers, hustlers, gam-
blers, jazzmen, boxers, dancers, and itinerant storytellers'. It was not enough,
Neal maintained, simply to name heroes; black literature must recognize the
diverse sources of its strengths and singularity - in boxing, music, politics and
religion. There was no need to invent a new black aesthetic; one simply had to
locate it. 236

Ostensibly an essay on the 1971 Ali-Frazier fight, 'Uncle Rufus Raps on the
Square Circle' is Neal's masterclass on the black aesthetic. 237 Its epigraph is the
prize-fighter versus yokel passage from Invisible Man, and its barroom setting
alludes to the Golden Day scene in Ellison's novel. Uncle Rufus suggests Uncle
Remus, and there are also mentions of minstrel shows, Jelly Roll Morton, and
Melvin B. Tolson's epic poem, Harlem Gallery. The story-cum-essay's most
important models, however, are the barber shop and barroom debates of Ollie
Harrington's Bootsie comic strip and Langston Hughes's Simple stories - both
of which were syndicated in black newspapers. 238 Set in a Harlem bar, Hughes's
stories generally featured a conversation between the middle-class narrator,
Boyd, and Jesse B . Semple or Simple, a working-class 'race man', on topics rang-
ing from politics and history to music and sport. 239 Introduced as a boxer-
turned-minstrel-performer, and a friend of 'the real John Henry', Uncle Rufus is
the embodiment of black culture and history, the conscience of his race.
Although Larry, the narrator, just wants to talk about Ali-Frazier, Uncle Rufus
takes him through the history of black boxing - from Molineaux to Johnson to
Battling Siki to Joe Louis - all of whose fights he seems to have witnessed. 'I once
saw two slaves beat each other to death,' he says. At this point (two pages into

344

the story), the naturalistic conversation is interrupted by an italicized para-
graph (in the style of Invisible Man) in which a first person narrator describes the
fight - 7 am inside of a bull of a man named Silas'. 240 Rufus then carries on as if
this scene has been spoken aloud, 'You got the right idea son.' Larry has begun
to learn something about his history; in Ellison's terms, has 'stepped inside of
his opponent's sense of time.' Rufus then moves on to consider boxing and
music as comparable expressions of 'rhythmic style', and compares Ali to riffing
'body bebop' and Frazier to slow 'stomp-down blues'; in other words, a reformu-
lation of the prize-fighter and the yokel. 241 In suggesting the varieties of black
styles, Neal provides a corrective to the seemingly inevitable translation of every
stylistic contest between blacks (from Liston vs. Patterson to Ali vs. Frazier) into
one between black and faux white. For someone like Mailer (or indeed Jones or
Cleaver), there only ever seems to be one legitimate black style, one legitimate
black winner. Rufus's final lesson for Larry, and one that requires a full under-
standing of black history and culture, is that it is possible to celebrate very
different styles.

Celebrating his boxing style, Neal does not extend his analysis to Ali's other
contributions to black popular culture (illus. 147). Others, however, were eager
to claim him as a 'modern mass communication comedian' in the tradition of
Langston Hughes, and to argue, further, that being a 'good black poet in the '60s',
meant capturing his 'rhythms ... on the page'. 242 The late 1960s and '70s saw a
proliferation of studies defining the 'specific rhetorical devices and linguistic pat-
terns inherent in Black verbal style', and the ways in which they informed the

147

Muhammad
Ali, Float Like a
Butterfly, Sting Like
a Bee, c. 1979.

345

new black poetry. 243 Particular attention was paid to 'Black verbal rituals', such
as the dozens, toast, signification, and call-and-response. Most relevant to a con-
sideration of Ali is the rhyming, boasting narrative tale known as the toast (what
Kimberley Benston and Henry Louis Gates later punned as 'trope-a-dope'). 244
The 'overriding theme' of the toast, argued Geneva Smitherman, was 'the om-
nipotence of Black folks as symbolized in the lone figure of the black hero. Full
of braggadocio, [the Toast-Teller] is always talkin bout how bad he bees, and his
boasting consumes a good portion of the Toast's content.' 245

Since Homer's Epeios declared himself the greatest, fighting and boasting
have always gone together, and in 1934 Zora Neale Hurston identified both as
fundamental 'Characteristics of Negro Expression'. 246 'Threats', Hurston main-
tained, are integral to fighting, and 'a great threatener must certainly be con-
sidered an aid to the fighting machine'. 247 Ali's every fight was aided by threats
(he preferred to call them predictions), and hyperbolic boasts. His first 'cam-
paign poem' (and in 1975 still his favourite) begins, 'It started twenty years
past. /The greatest of them all was born at last.' The imagery of 'Feats of Clay'
is predictable ('I'm strong as an ox and twice as tough'), but Ali was soon to
invent narratives, metaphors and boasts which do not look out of place
alongside the work of Black Arts poets. 248 Compare, for example, Ali on stage
in 1964,

I am so modest I can admit my own fault.

My only fault is I don't realise how great I really am.

with Nikki Giovanni's 'Ego Tripping', published in 1970:

I am so hip even my errors are correct.

I cannot be comprehended except by my permission. 249

Or, consider these two dream visions:

Last night I had a dream. When I got to Africa, I had one hell of a rum-
ble. I had to beat Tarzan's behind first for claiming to be King of the
Jungle. I done something new for this fight. I done wrestled with an al-
ligator. That's right. I have wrestled with an alligator. I done tussled
with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail.
That's bad! Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospi-
talised a brick! I'm so mean I make medicine sick!

I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Ezzard Charles
of the Chisholm Trail. Took up the bass but they
blew off my thumb. Alchemist in ringmanship but a
sucker for the right cross. 250

346

The first is Ali-as-Davy-Crockett, speaking to the press before fighting Foreman
in 1974; the second, a verse of Ishamel Reed's often-anthologized poem 'I am a
Cowboy in the Boat of Ra', a modernist interweaving of Egyptian, Christian and
West African mythology narrated by a shape-shifting narrator (cowboy-cum-
jazz-musician-cum-boxer). 251

What Reed admired about Ali's verse was the way in which, like Reed him-
self, he supplemented the standard folk repertoire with characters drawn from
television and comic books. 252 Ali was particularly keen on space imagery. Be-
fore fighting Liston, he recited a poem predicting that his powerful punch would
lift his opponent 'clear out of the ring' and into space. After describing the audi-
ence's restlessness and the referee's anxiety about whether or not to start the
count, Ali continues the story:

But our radar stations have picked him up

He's somewheres over the Atlantic.

Who would have thought

When they came to the fight

That they'd witness the launching

Of a human satellite.

Yes, the crowd did not dream

When they put down their money

That they would see

A total eclipse of the Sonny. 253

After the second Liston fight, Ali declared himself 'the astronaut of boxing'
(compared to Joe Louis and Dempsey, who were 'just jet pilots') and he often
spoke of his ambition to become champion of the universe, defeating 'slick
shiny-headed green men' from Venus or Mars. There was, Ali admitted in 1965,
'one problem': 'they might not let me on that ship ... I'm going to contact Mar-
tin Luther King and see if he can integrate those ships because they will send
two men on the planet and I want to be the first coloured one.' 254 These re-
marks provided the starting point for Raymond Washington's 1969 poem,
'Moon bound'. The only way 'black folks going to the moon', Washington jokes
bitterly, is if it proves unfit for human habitation but good for growing cotton.
Then, 'Stokely on the moon / Muhammad Ali on the moon / Rap on the moon
. . . white folks / going to send blackfolks to the moon / whether they like it
or not'. 255

The ability to translate a 'tendency to boast and brag' into a successful career
as a 'celebrity' poet, rapping in 'Black style' with 'Black exaggerations', is the sub-
ject of John Oliver Killens's 1971 satire, The Cotillion. But even Killens's narrator,
Ben Ali Lumumba, wearies of those who aspire to a 'world of total Blackness'
and the way in which 'the competition went on and on, never ending, to deter-
mine the World Individual Champeenship of Blackness'. 256 Black Arts' 'cham-
peenship' competitions took place in cafes, theatres, little magazines and small

347

presses all over America. Meanwhile, Muhammad Ali was introducing 'black
oral rhyming culture into the mainstream' world of network television. 257

Ali's involvement with television began almost as soon as he started boxing.
One of the attractions of the Columbia police gym in Louisville was the fact that
the club fights were televised in a Saturday night show called Tomorrow's Cham-
pions. ('I watch you all the time on tv,' the girl who first kissed him is reputed
to have said. 258 ) When he turned professional, commentators declared that he
was 'made for' television and that television 'seemed to be invented' for him. 259
Ali himself later wrote about the importance of television in the development
of his style inside and outside of the ring. Inside, he had 'hated the sight on tv
of big, clumsy, heavyweights plodding' and so determined to be 'as fast as light-
weight'; outside, he had seen the theatrical entrances of the wrestler Gorgeous
George, and realised that 'if I talked even more, there was no telling how much
money people would pay to see me'. 26 °

In 1908, Jack London drew on a long tradition that Jessie Fauset dubbed 'the
black American as a living comic supplement' and cast Jack Johnson in the role of
'clown', claiming that 'his face beamed with all the happy, care-free innocence of
a little child'. 261 Nearly 50 years later, a Newsweekpoll revealed that the most pop-
ular stereotype that whites held about blacks was that they laugh a lot'. Some
worried that Ali, who laughed and smiled more in public in a week than Joe Louis
did in his entire life', simply confirmed that view. 262 But however much he smiled,
Ali was acutely aware of the possibilities of television, using it as a tool to be ex-
ploited for his own ends (financial and otherwise). 263 Never mind the ring - every
chat show, press conference and weigh-in became a space for oratory as well as the-
atre. 1 liked being who I was,' he once said, 'because they would put me on televi-
sion and when I say, "I'm the greatest, I'm pretty," that means that little black
children and people who felt like nothing say, "We got a champion"'. 264

TWO NICE JEWISH BOYS IN THE AGE OF ALI

During the 1960s neither Norman Mailer nor Bob Dylan much liked discussing
their middle-class Jewish upbringing. Instead both adopted a variety of popu-
lar American outlaw personae, including those of fighter and fight fan. 265

Dylan's first public association with boxing came in 1964 when he wrote
'Who Killed Davey Moore?', a reworking of 'Who Killed Cock Robin?', about the
death of a young black boxer and the refusal of his manager, the referee, and
the anonymous mass of gamblers, boxing writers and spectators to admit any
responsibility. All are players in 'the old American game', and all, Dylan sug-
gests, are to blame. 266 In 1976, Dylan took up the cause of another black boxer-
victim, Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter. Once a middleweight contender, Carter had
been convicted for three murders in 1967 and 1976 and, despite several appeals,
had been in prison ever since. In 1974 Carter published his autobiography, The
Sixteenth Round, and his case quickly became a cause celebre. 267 Nelson Algren
moved to Paterson, New Jersey, to research the case (his fictional version, The

348

Devil's Stocking, was published posthumously), while George Lois, designer of
Esquire magazine covers, established a trust fund for legal expenses. Lois per-
suaded celebrities from Burt Reynolds to Muhammad Ali to add their support.
'I know you all came here to see me, because Bob Dylan just ain't that big,' Ali
told a largely white audience at the Madison Square Garden benefit concert,
but 'you've got the connections and the complexion to get the protection'. 268
Dylan's 'Hurricane' tells the story of Carter in cinematic detail, before conclud-
ing, 'To see him obviously framed / Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to
live in a land / Where justice is a game.' 269 The first retrial ended with Carter's
reconviction; he was finally freed after a further trial in 1985, and in 1993 be-
came the first boxer to receive an honourary championship belt.

In 1964 and in 1976 Dylan was able to write 'finger-pointin" songs like
'Davey Moore' and 'Hurricane' with equanimity: in fact 'Hurricane' became the
centrepiece of the Rolling Thunder Revue, a tour which self-consciously tried to
conjure up the good 'old days' of 'civil rights rallies down in Mississippi'. 270 In
the intervening years, however, Dylan was often anxious about being labelled
as spokesman for any particular cause. This anxiety first manifested itself in a
1964 album which offered to reveal Another Side of Bob Dylan. In a song entitled
'I Shall Be Free No. 10', Dylan announces that he is 'just average, common', no
'different from anyone'. Soon, however, he is imagining himself as a contender
for the heavyweight crown. Protesting about Davey Moore in the Guthrie-Ochs
tradition is abandoned in favour of a performance as Cassius Clay, with Dylan
determined 'to match the Louisville Lip rhyme for rhyme, boast for boast.' 271

I was shadow-boxing earlier in the day

I figured I was ready for Cassius Clay

I said "Fee, fie, fo, fum, Cassius Clay, here I come

26, 27, 28, 29, I'm gonna make your face look just like mine

Five, four, three, two, one, Cassius Clay you'd better run

99, 100, 101, 102, your ma won't even recognize you

14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, gonna knock him clean right out of his spleen. 272

Dylan's self-mockery manifests itself in both the ridiculousness of his giant-
killing rhetoric and the casual improvisation of rhyming 'clean' with 'spleen'
(and later 'poet' with 'blow it').

In 1969, Simon and Garfunkel released a single called 'The Boxer' which
was 'widely interpreted' as being about Dylan's career up to 1969. 273 Unsuccess-
ful in the folk community ('I come looking for a job, but I get no offers'), Dylan-
the-boxer ends up succumbing to what Simon calls the 'come-ons from the
whores on Seventh Avenue', that is, the bosses of Columbia Records. Eventu-
ally, everything falls to pieces when the protagonist finds that he has 'squan-
dered [his] resistance on a pocket full of mumbles'; in other words, his singing
voice has become unintelligible and his lyrics less concerned with 'resistance'
than with surreal juxtapositions and obscure allusions. The final line of 'The

349

Boxer', on this reading, acknowledges that the protagonist, although beaten
down, remains 'a fighter by his trade'. In 1970 Dylan recorded the song on Self
Portrait, an album of covers in which he again questions the idea of a fixed and
knowable identity. The album was a self-conscious attempt to send out what
he would later call 'deviating signals'. 274 'The Boxer' is only one of many per-
sonae at play here, and Dylan further undermines any claim to identifying the
singer with the song by recording it on two simultaneous but discordant tracks.

The boxer-motif recurred in 2004 when Dylan published the first volume of
his memoirs, entitled Chronicles. The book begins with his arrival in New York in
1961. John Hammond, of Columbia Records, had introduced Dylan to publisher
Lou Levy, and the story opens with Levy taking the singer to dinner at Jack
Dempsey's Restaurant, a restaurant whose slogan was 'Love Matches are made
in heaven, Fight Matches are made at Jack Dempsey's' (illus. 148). (It is also the
place where Michael Corleone goes to meet his father's rival in Mario Puzo's The
Godfather, a meeting that will transform him into a gangster. 275 ) When Levy in-
troduced Dylan to Dempsey, the great champion mistook the young man for a
fighter. '"You look too light for a heavyweight kid, you'll have to put on a few
pounds. You're going to have to dress a little finer, look a little sharper - not that
you'll need much in the way of clothes when you're in the ring - don't be afraid
of hitting somebody too hard."' 276 Dempsey is quickly put right about Dylan's
profession, and the story moves on. Why does Dylan begin his story here? Cer-
tainly it's true that signing contracts with Levy and
Hammond was the beginning of his success, but
something additional seems to be implied. Dylan -
always seeking to appropriate new identities in order
to be 'true to [him]self ' - seems to relish Dempsey's
mistake and to take on his advice. 277 Much of the
book is about becoming famous and working out
how to live in the public spotlight, naked in the ring.
It is also important that Dylan meets Dempsey,
Depression hero of the white working class, and not
some other boxer. To be mistaken for a boxer by
Dempsey (the Woody Guthrie of his sport) is tanta-
mount to being acknowledged by Guthrie himself,
'the starting place for my identity and destiny'. 278

After quickly achieving celebrity, Dylan devotes
most of his chronicles to an account of his resistance
to it, to feeling 'like a piece of meat that someone
had thrown to the dogs'. 279 Halfway through the
book, he tells another boxing story - that of Jerry
Quarry's fight against Jimmy Ellis in 1967.

Jimmy Ellis was a 'take the money and go
home' kind of guy - boxing was a job to

148

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Dempsey's Restau-
rant, Broadway,
New York, 1955.

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350

him, no more no less. He had a family to feed and didn't care about be-
coming a legend . . . Jerry Quarry, a white boxer, was being touted as the
new Great White Hope - an odious designation. Jerry . . . wanted no
part of it. The white vigilante groups who came to cheer him didn't
move Quarry ... he wouldn't accept their bigoted allegiance and resis-
ted the dementia swirling around him. 280

'I identified with both Ellis and Quarry,' Dylan concludes, 'and drew an analogy
between our situations and responses to it.' Like Ellis, 'I too had a family to feed'.
The analogy with Quarry is rather odder. 'I wasn't going to acknowledge being
an emblem, symbol or spokesman', he says, as if representing folk music or the
New Left was equivalent to being a symbol for white supremacism.

Like Dylan, Norman Mailer did everything he could to break free from his
childhood self, 'the one personality he found absolutely insupportable' - in his
case, that of the 'nice Jewish boy' from Brooklyn rather than Minnesota. Being
a nice Jewish boy meant being gentle, clean, and above all, 'modest' - 'he had
been born to a modest family, had been a modest boy, a modest young man,
and he hated that, he loved the pride and the arrogance and the confidence and
the egocentricity he had acquired over the years'. 281 While Dylan alluded to
journeymen boxers such as Ellis and Quarry to express his distaste for celebrity,
Mailer sought only 'the greatest', a title that he applied seriously to Ali and less
seriously to himself. 'Champ' was just one of many 'half-heroic and three-quar-
ters comic' advertisements for himself that Norman' or 'Mailer' cultivated. 282
In The Armies of the Night (1968), for example, he noted the instability of his
speaking voice at the Pentagon demonstration against the Vietnam war; how,
without any plan, his accent shifted from Irish to Texan, from 'Marlon Brando's
voice in The Wild One' to some 'Woo-eeeee's and grunts' which showed 'hints of
Cassius Clay.' Eventually he tried 'to imitate a most high and executive voice', but
that too came out as 'shades of Cassius Clay'. 283 Mailer's versions of American
masculinity are elaborately constructed masquerades, many of which, he
acknowledges, are the result of a 'wretched collaboration with the multimillion-
celled nausea machine, that Christ-killer of the ages - television'. 284 Even as he
asserts a hyper-masculinity, Mailer's deadpan humour underlines its anxieties;
even as he cultivates celebrity, he attacks the means by which it is produced.

Mailer's writing is obsessed with America, both in reality and as an idea.
'The grandson of immigrants', he said that he could never really be an American;
he could, nonetheless, 'have a love affair with America', and occasionally even
feel like an American'. 285 In order to do this, Mailer (not unlike Abraham Cahan
60 years earlier) had to find both an appropriate subject matter and an appro-
priate language or style. From the mid-fifties onward, boxing played a part in
both. 286 This is not to say that, like Cahan and others, he was interested in the
ways in which a subculture (and its slang) could represent a nation. For Mailer,
America' and 'boxing' were much less concrete than that. Instead the boxing
match provided a 'metaphor' of the 'schizoid' nature of 'modern life', a useable

35i

structure within which to explore many of the violently felt debates of Cold War
America: debates about sex, gender, sexuality and race, about vitalism and the
death wish, about literary style, and, all too often, about literary rivalry. 287 1 will
say a little about these different debates, but really they are all the same. Mailer
presents every concept in absolute and rather abstract terms: an essential mas-
culinity is pitted against an essential femininity, an idealized heterosexuality con-
fronts a mythical homosexuality; imaginary 'blacks' encounter imaginary 'whites'.
The continuing clash of one against each other is what constitutes 'existential pol-
ities', and 'form' is 'the record of a war ... as seen in a moment of rest'. 288 In fiction
then, Mailer's characters became the embodiments of opposing positions which
need to be argued through; in non-fiction, he favoured the q&a in which he could
have 'a rousing club fight' with an interviewer, or sometimes enter the 'arena' with
an imagined alter ego. 289 And sometimes genres - in particular, fiction and history
- argue with each other. 290 'The element which is exciting, disturbing, nightmar-
ish perhaps, is that incompatibles have come to bed'. 291

If all relationships have the same dialectic structure, then it makes equal
sense to use the language of sex to describe boxing - the first fifteen seconds of
a fight are equivalent 'to the first kiss in a love affair' - and the language of box-
ing to describe sex. 292 For the narrator of 'The Time of Her Time' (1959), boxing
provides a grammar for 'the language of bodies', while the 'dialectic' of sex stages
conflicts between Jewishness and non-Jewishness, high culture and low culture,
and even the competing therapeutic claims of Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm
Reich. 293 If conflict is the model for the relationship between men and women,
men additionally face an internal battle between heterosexuality and homosex-
uality (women don't seem to have this problem). The brutal outcome of the
1962 fight between Emile Griffith and Benny (Kid) Paret is said to dramatize
the 'biological force' with which men disavow their inherent homosexuality. 294
Paret had taunted Griffith with homophobic remarks at the weigh-in and dur-
ing the fight, and Griffith responded by beating him to death. 295 For Mailer,
this is an example of the ring not doing its usual job of containing and control-
ling (or sublimating) sexual desire. 296 Since Ali and Frazier can 'kiss' as long
and hard as they like inside the ring, they have no need to do so elsewhere. Nor
do they need to kill each other.

The boxing ring also enacts and thus contains another conflict that Mailer
sees as fundamental to American culture, one between blacks and whites. Again
his definitions recycle familiar essentialist stereotypes: whites are civilized, sophis-
ticated, cerebral, literate and literary, while blacks are primitive, illiterate, 'phys-
ically superior', attuned to the 'pleasures of the body', and fluent in its
language. 297 James Baldwin (and many others) complained about Mailer's ten-
dency to see 'us as goddam romantic black symbols'. 298 While this is undoubt-
edly true, it is not surprising - Mailer sees everyone and everything symbolically.

Mailer first started to think about literary style in relation to boxing in the
mid-fifties, when he sought out a new and more 'muscular' style for his third
novel, The Deer Park. It is the story of an Irish-American orphan called Sergius

352

O'Shaughnessy who before the story begins had 'boxed [his] way into the mid-
dleweight semi-finals of an Air Force enlisted man's tournament' and therefore
into flying school. 2 " O'Shaughnessy goes first to Hollywood where the produc-
ers are initially dismissive ('I didn't even know the athlete could read') and then,
when he gets depressed (becoming 'a boxer without a punch'), to Mexico. There
he plans to learn to be the 'first great and recognized American matador', but
finally he gives up his novel on bullfighting as 'inevitably imitative' of Heming-
way. 300 O'Shaughnessy's crisis of confidence reflected that of his creator; on
receiving the proofs, Mailer decided The Deer Park needed substantial revision.
He would abandon the novel's 'poetic style', rip up its 'silk', smash its 'porce-
lain', create a first-person voice 'bigger' than himself, and think much more
closely about pace. 301 That bigger voice and controlled pace would restore the
book's punch. 302

Mailer's next book was, he later said, 'the first one to be 'written in what be-
came my style'. 303 Advertisements for Myself (1959) spanned Mailer's career to date
and included stories, essays, interviews and drafts of The Deer Park; there are two
contents lists and one offers the book as a 'biography of style'. Mailer opens the
book by declaring his arrival as a major American writer, an identity which, it
seemed, required both a new style and a new persona. 'I started as a generous but
very spoiled boy, and I seem to have turned into a slightly punch-drunk and ugly
club fighter who can fight clean and fight dirty, but liked to fight.' 304 If fighting
(clean and dirty) was part of that style (the making of an American), so too, it
seemed, was an obsession with celebrity culture and one's own place in it. Even
while working on his fourth novel, An American Dream, Mailer was shifting
toward an 'enormously personalized journalism' which would explore the 'dream
life of the nation' as embodied in the iconic figures of John F. Kennedy, Marilyn
Monroe and Muhammad Ali. 3 ° 5 Kennedy was first. Mailer believed that 'Super-
man Comes to the Supermarket', which presented Kennedy as a Brando-like 'per-
sonality', was the 'act of propaganda' that won him the election. JFK was not a
boxer, but, exploiting the fact that the convention was held in a sports arena,
Mailer described him and his brother Bobby as fighters, 'hungry' to take on
totalitarianism at home and abroad. More generally, the essay established the
method that Mailer would use in his subsequent pieces on Griffith and Paret,
Liston and Patterson, Ali and Frazier - a method that is said to have kick-started
the decade's revival of the long, digressive essay. 306

The sixties and seventies are often thought of as a 'kind of golden age in
magazine writing'. 307 Despite Liebling's fears, television had not destroyed
idiosyncratic sports reporting; instead it whetted the public's appetite for
stories about 'the public figures whom they had just seen flash on the screen'.
Reporters who, in another era, had worked on a piece for a day or two, now spent
up to two months honing them for up-market men's magazines such as Esquire
or Playboy. And by writing journalism that 'read like a novel', Tom Wolfe ar-
gued, the New Journalism 'would wipe out the novel' and become 'literature's
main event'. 308

353

Mailer's first 'existential' boxing essay was 'Ten Thousand Words a Minute',
ostensibily about the Liston vs. Patterson fight, but also covering Griffith vs.
Paret, Mailer's own 'club fight' with William Buckley, and his ongoing 'quarrel'
with James Baldwin. All of these feed into a Lawrentian meditation on the anti-
Establishment 'religion of blood'. Mailer clearly wanted the essay to be regarded
as much more than a sports report, and he devotes quite a lot of space to dis-
missing the traditional sportswriter as someone who endlessly rehashes tired
statistics for stories that come out like oats in a conveyor belt'. The fight re-
porter is also compared to a tailor taking measurements, a welfare officer offer-
ing 'facts', or, the ultimate insult, 'an old prizefight manager, which is to say, . . .
an old cigar butt.' If traditional hurried journalism is mere 'chores', then the
new, 'enormously personalized' and carefully crafted, journalism (Mailer an-
nounced that he'd spent seven weeks on the article) is a creative art more wor-
thy of a boxer than a fight manager. 309

For all that Patterson and Liston might represent on Mailer's political and
'psychic seismograph' - Art vs. Magic; Love vs. Sex; God vs. the Devil - the two
men are described in very similar and conventionally stereotypical terms. Pat-
terson, when bad, is the 'dreamy Negro kid who never knew the answer in class';
when good, 'a jungle cat', jumping from his tree to 'swipe at a gorilla swinging
by on a vine'. Liston too is both an animal and a child - his eyes remind Mailer
of both a 'halfway reptile and sleepy leopard' and 'beautiful colored children,
three or four years old'. The essay ends in a comic scene in which the drunken
Mailer (having defeated Buckley and 'buried' his quarrel with Baldwin) offers to
arrange a Patterson-Liston rematch. '"Listen," said I, leaning my head closer,
speaking from the corner of my mouth, as if I were whispering in a clinch.'

Out of Liston's eyes stared back the profound intelligence of a profound
animal. Now we understood each other, now we could work as a team.
'Say,' said Liston, 'that last drink really set you up. Why don't you go
and get me a drink, you bum.'

'I'm not your flunky,' I said.

It was the first jab I'd slipped, it was the first punch I'd sent home.
He loved me for it. The hint of a chuckle of corny old darky laughter,
cottonfield giggles peeped out a moment from his throat. 'Oh sheet,
man!' said the wit in his eyes. And for the crowd who was watching, he
turned and announced at large, 'I like this guy'.

A knowing exchange of insults allows Mailer to stop being an analytic,
metaphor-driven liberal and become the kind of person (a hipster, a White
Negro, a real American, a real man) whom Liston, the epitome of all these
things, understands and likes. The moment soon passes, but Mailer can leave
the conference feeling 'not too unclean'.

It would be 1971 before Mailer wrote another essay on boxing. 'Ego' (later
collected as 'King of the Hill'), an account of the first Ali-Frazier fight, is a much

354

more tightly focused on its subject than its predecessor. Much more than either
Liston or Patterson, Ali was the epitome of the existential hero, a man whose life
was a work of art and who embodied 'the very spirit of the twentieth century.'
Mailer is concerned with exploring the self-contained dialectical struggle at the
heart of 'America's Greatest Ego': the fact that 'the mightiest victim of injustice
in America' was also 'the mightiest narcissist in the land' proved that 'the twen-
tieth century was nothing if not a tangle of opposition'. 310

The essay is also, again, partly about writing, and in particular about style.
Boxing is imagined as a kind of writing, a 'dialogue between bodies'. The white
style is simple, clumsy and masculine; 'close to rock' and with 'guts'. The black
style is 'complex', 'tricky' and feminine. Since all the 'dialogues between bodies'
that Mailer describes take place between two black boxers, his dialectic requires
him to suggest that, on each occasion, one black boxer has a 'white style'. Joe
Frazier, as 'the greatest brawler of them all', thus becomes 'the white man's
fighter' while Ali, 'the greatest artist of pugilism' with 'the exquisite reflexes of
Nureyev', is feminized. Mailer tries to emulate the 'conversational exchange' be-
tween these two bodily styles in the body of his essay. For the heavy relentless
boxing style of Frazier, he uses long steady sentences (sentences that tire you to
read aloud), punctuated with bursts of onomatopoeia:

Frazier went on with the doggedness, the concentration, the pumped-
up fury of a man who has so little in his life that he can endure torments
to get everything, he pushed the total of his energy and force into an ab-
solute exercise of will so it did nor matter if he fought a sparring part-
ner or the heavy bag, he lunged at each equally as if the exhaustions of
his own heart and the clangor of his lungs were his only enemies, and
the head of the fighter or the leather of the bag as it rolled against his
own head was nothing but some abstract thunk of material, not a thing,
not a man, but thunk! thunk! something of an obstacle, thunk! thunk!
thunk! to beat into thunk! oblivion.

The speed and variety of Ali's punches, on the other hand, are translated into a
prose of short rhythmic units, of constantly changing similes and metaphors:

he played with punches, was tender with them, laid them on as delicately
as you would put a postage stamp on an envelope, then cracked them in
a riding crop across your face, stuck a cruel jab like a baseball bat held
head on into your mouth, next waltzed you into a clinch with a tender
arm around your neck, winged out of reach on flying legs, dug a hook
with a full swing of a baseball bat hard into your ribs, hard pokes of a jab
into the face, a mocking flurry of pillows and gloves, a mean forearm cut-
ting you off from coming up to him, a cruel wrestling of your neck in a
clinch, then elusive again, gloves snake-licking your face like a whip.

355

For Mailer, the triumph of the fight's end is that Ali has somehow managed to
combine both white masculine endurance (he could stand) and black feminine
grace (he could dance). 311

The Fight, Mailer's final meditation on the 'vortex' of heavyweight boxing,
borrows more than its title from Hazlitt. 312 Like Mailer, Hazlitt found the oppo-
sition of boxing a useful metaphor for discussing a wide variety of subjects, but
especially style. The boxing match detailed in 'The Fight' is presented as a clash
between an English style of solid empiricism and a rapid, skilful French style
(although both fighters are English). In the various battles I have described here
Mailer reworks these stylistic oppositions - he just gives them different names.
Hazlitt 's solid English style becomes 'white' style (even when employed by black
fighters), while the artful French style becomes the hipster style of both 'real'
blacks and 'white Negroes'.

Hazlitt once wrote of prose style that 'every word should be a blow: every
thought should instantly grapple with its fellow'. In The Fight stylistic variation
is expressed almost wholly through an ever-shifting repertoire of metaphors
and similes, presented here as the equivalent of punches. 313 This is a risky strat-
egy, for much of the time, when describing the training process or early rounds,
Mailer mimics the fighters' boredom and lack of imagination by restricting his
imagery to the most banal and predictable formulations: Foreman is a 'sleepy
lion', an 'ox', a 'child'; working on the heavy bag, he's like a 'sledgehammer hit-
ting a tree' or 'steamhammer driving a channel of steel into clay'. Ali is no more
interesting: on the speedbag, he's like a 'potter working his wheel'; after run-
ning, he's an 'overheated animal'. 314 Like the boxers, Mailer is reserving his best
work for the main event.

The fight itself is presented in three chapters, comparable, Mailer says, to
the three acts of a play, another metaphor that he borrows from Hazlitt. During
the first two rounds (Chapter Thirteen), the metaphors remain fairly dull. The
boxers are again likened to animals (bulls, pumas and tigers) and their punches
compared to gun shots. Occasionally, something more interesting occurs - Fore-
man's head, for example, is described as a rivet under a riveting gun - but Mailer
acknowledges that two rounds have felt like eight because he has been 'trying
to watch' (that is, write) with the 'fighters' sense of time'. 315 During Chapter
Fourteen (rounds three to five), Foreman's effort increases and Mailer ups his
figurative game to match - Foreman boxes 'like a bricklayer running up a lad-
der', his legs are like wheels with a piece chipped out of the rim'. 316 Ali holds
back but occasionally he (and therefore Mailer) unleashes something unex-
pected - a punch from the ropes is like a housewife sticking a toothpick in a
cake to see if it is ready'. The chapter's title 'The Man in the Rigging' refers to
Ali's rope-a-dope, but also to Melville's Moby-Dick (a novel he'd mentioned ear-
lier in the essay). If Foreman is the whale, and Ali is Ahab, then, Michael Cowen
suggests, Mailer becomes Ishmael, the observer who has 'climbed the mast into
a squall of magical forces'. 317 In the final three rounds of the fight (the final act,
the final chapter), Foreman continues to fight in the same fashion and so Mailer

356

continues to describe him in the routine language of artillery fire and bulls. Ali,
however, surprises with a range of unexpected shots, the consequences of which
Mailer expresses in elaborate metaphors. As Foreman struggles to cope with
Ali's punches his legs begin to 'prance like a horse high-stepping along a road
full of rocks'; when Ali finally hits the decisive blow, he falls to the floor, like a
six-foot sixty-year-old butler who has just heard tragic news'. 318

Hazlitt's 'The Fight' began with the narrator-protagonist keen to escape the
sentimental complications of daily life. Mailer is similarly keen for diversion,
but, in his case, the disappointing love affair is not with a woman but with him-
self. His thoughts have been 'mediocre' and repetitive, like everyone else's'. At
51, he is feeling old. Moreover, his love affair with the Black soul, a sentimental
orgy at its worst' had not held up under several 'seasons of Black Power'. All of
these feelings are expressed in the language of indigestion and constipation. 319
Hazlitt travelled companionably to the heart of the country, discussing Cob-
bett and Rousseau en route; Mailer flies Pan Am to Conrad's 'Heart of Dark-
ness' in Vachel Lindsay's 'Congo', and on the return journey, plays dice with the
air stewardess. 320 Both men experience a 'restoration of being' through jour-
neys to watch boxing. But while Hazlitt ends by acknowledging the ephemeral
achievement of both the boxing match and his essay, Mailer wants more, noth-
ing less in fact than the restoration of the title 'champ among writers'. 321 The
book plays with various versions of magical thinking, but all are designed to
the same end - 'the powers of regeneration in an artist'. Ali works magic on
Mailer by showing him that regeneration is possible; set against his example is
that of Hemingway, whose suicide fourteen years earlier haunts the book. 322

Mailer wrote many pieces on Hemingway, who remained for him the rep-
resentative American, the model for hard-won manliness as well as (not coin-
cidentally) authorial stardom. 323 On Mailer's reading, Hemingway's notion of
writers competing for an elusive championship belt seems not so much an act
of macho posturing as one of psychic compensation. Mailer adopted and
developed this metaphor at some length, with additional pathos. For while
'Punching Papa' faced the likes of Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Steinbeck, Farrell and
Faulkner, the second half of the twentieth century had not, Mailer thought, pro-
vided opposition of similar quality. In the age of Malamud, Pynchon, Bellow,
Cheever, Updike and Vidal, he felt it was no great claim for him to say, I'm going
to be the champ until one of you knocks me off'. 324 If Hemingway was compa-
rable with Ali, Mailer declared himself merely the 'Ezzard Charles of the heavy-
weight division'. 325

Leaving Hemingway behind (if not actually beating him), Mailer rejects the
modernist credo of technique (which he dismisses as mere 'craft', 'a grab bag of
procedures, tricks, lore, formal gymnastics, symbolic superstructures, method-
ology in short' - the kind of thing he elsewhere identified with light and mid-
dleweight fighters) in favour of an 'exist entially' informed prose (the writer, like
the heavyweight, aware that he is 'the big toe of God'). 326 While the great writ-
ers of the twenties worried about lean prose style, the 'great writer' of the sixties

357

was more concerned with keeping his 'consciousness in shape' and not letting it
get 'flabby'. 327

For all Mailer's talk of style, he is ultimately less interested in boxing as a
way of explaining the processes of writing than in the fight as a metaphor for
the public life of the writer. Byron had dismissed 'quarrels of authors' as an
inferior form of sparring, mere evidence of 'an irritable set'. 328 Mailer, how-
ever, believed that regular spats with other male writers was an essential part
of 'keeping in shape'. Asked by an interviewer whether he let anyone see his
work in progress, Mailer replied, 'I do it the way I box: I pick my sparring part-
ners carefully. Usually I'll box with people who are so good that I'm in no dan-
ger of getting hurt because they consider it obscene to damage me. Or I'll box
with friends where we understand each other and are trying to bring out the
best in each other as boxers. The same thing with an early stage of a manu-
script.' 329 Once a book was published, however, the gloves came off and the
real competitive business of being a writer began: at parties, during marches
and (a sign of the times) on television. 330

Sparring on television, it seemed, made a proper celebrity fighter, even if the
show in question was Saturday Night with David Frost rather than the Gillette
Sport Cavalcade -for 'maybe', Mailer wrote, 'he had never been as aware before
of all America out there . . . a million homes tuning [in].' 331 And if Frost is imag-
ined as Henry Cooper - 'David had come at him like a British heavyweight
mauler, no great skill, but plenty of shove' - then it seems to follow that Mailer
is the Ali of on-the-couch guests. 332 (And like Ali, Mailer is pleased to note how
'telegenic' he is - 'he appeared even better on tv, he thought, than in the mir-
ror'. 333 ) The chat show provided the ideal forum for literary quarrels which
Mailer easily and repeatedly refigured as boxing matches. After an appearance
with Nelson Algren, he concludes that 'two middleweight artists had fought a
draw'. 334 His much-publicized quarrel with Gore Vidal on The Dick CavettShow
in 1971 was a less satisfactory affair. Sharing the couch with the two men was
Janet Flanner (whom Mailer accused of being 'Mr Vidal's manager' instead of
the 'referee'); at the end of the Show, Cavett asked the audience to let us know
who you think won'. 335

The most interesting of Mailer's 'quarrels with authors' was that with
James Baldwin (illus. 119). The two men became friends in 1956, and, Morris
Dickstein argues, the 'precedent' of Baldwin's long, digressive essays, which
interwove autobiographical, philosophical and political meditations, made
'Mailer's own breakthrough thinkable'. For Dickstein, Advertisements would
not have been possible without the example of Baldwin's 1955 Notes of a Native
Son, while The Armies of the Night was 'quite deliberately' Mailer's version of
The Fire Next Time. 336 Not that Mailer acknowledged these debts. Instead he
dismissed Baldwin as 'too charming a writer to be major' and his writing as
'noble toilet water'. 337 In 1961 Baldwin responded to this undisguised homo-
phobia (and to 'The White Negro') by publishing an essay, 'The Black Boy
Looks at the White Boy', which parodies both Mailer's 'boxer mannerisms' and

358

his conflation of boxing (and, by inference, black men) with sex. 338 What, in
other words, we are invited to ask, does Mailer mean when he says he wants to
'slug' his friend? 339 Baldwin designates the essay a love letter' and describes
Mailer as both 'charming' and, in the way he jabs his 'short, prodding
forefinger', faintly ridiculous. Their 'circling around each other' expresses a
fear that 'the other would pull rank', but also the fact that they liked' but could
not understand one another. 340

The following year, both men were commissioned by men's magazines to
cover the Patterson-Liston fight and both ended up writing essays that are
partly about their own quarrel. Mailer openly notes that the empty ringside
seat between Baldwin and himself reflected the 'chill' that had come between
them - 'Not a feud, but bad feeling'. But all is resolved when Patterson is
knocked down - 'in the bout's sudden wake', he is pleased to acknowledge,
they 'buried' their quarrel. Mailer is, however, unable to let things be. When
Baldwin asks after his sister, he replies, 'why didn't he consider marrying her,
quick as that, which put me one up on old Jim again, and we shook our writer's
hands'. 341 Baldwin is less direct, merely mentioning that his 'weird and vio-
lent' depression was due to having had 'a pretty definitive fight with someone
with whom I had hoped to be friends'. His personal depression is, he suggests,
linked to a depression about the subject matter which he found himself writ-
ing about. Boxing had very different connotations for Baldwin than it did for
Mailer (and this was something that his friend did not seem able to appreciate).
In 'My Dungeon Shook', Baldwin wrote of the need of 'every Negro boy' to find
'a "thing", a gimmick, to lift him out, to start him on his way'. Before he became
a writer Baldwin chose the church, but he explained that that was partly be-
cause he saw few other options in the Harlem of his youth. 1 could not become
a prizefighter,' he wrote; 'many of us tried but very few succeeded. I could not
sing. I could not dance. I had been well conditioned by the world in which I
grew up, so I did not yet dare take the idea of becoming a writer seriously'. 342
Elsewhere he cited the fact that his 'first hero was Joe Louis' as evidence of the
way in which the 'Negro children of [his] generation' had been limited and
'controlled by white America's image' of them. 343

'There aren't many ways to describe a fighter in training,' Baldwin begins
his account of Patterson vs. Liston, 'it's the same thing over and over'. But what's
worse for him than banality is the recognition that boxing is simply another
version of white boys looking at black boys and seeing 'only the Negro they
wished to see'. 344

It doesn't appear to have occurred yet to many members of the press
that one of the reasons their relations with Floyd [Patterson] are so fre-
quently strained is that he has no reason, on any level, to trust them,
and no reason to believe that they would be capable of hearing what he
had to say, even if he could say it.

359

If Baldwin admires Patterson as 'the least likely fighter in the history of the
sport', then, as Early notes, Baldwin was the least likely' person to write about
it. 345 This identification may have been in Baldwin's mind ten years later when,
recalling his success with The Fire Next Time, he noted, 'I was, in some way, in
those years, without entirely realizing it, the Great Black Hope of the Great
White Father.' 346

GREAT WHITE HOPES AND HYPES

In the midst of the 'Ali-mania' of the late seventies, it was perhaps not surprising
that stories about white boxers flourished. Consolatory tales of Anglo-Saxon tri-
umph had first become popular in 1909, after Jack Johnson assumed the mantle
of heavyweight symbolism. Apart from an interlude of Dempsey-mania in the
twenties, it became increasingly difficult to imagine white boxing in terms of tri-
umph. For the rest of the century, the only thing that white boxers symbolized
was stubborn endurance, a belief that survival is more admirable than victory.

In Chapter Four, I outlined a model of the naturalist story as one of a rapid
rise to a biological peak, followed by a long decline into age and exhaustion.
Most of life, on this model, is the story of decline. What Philip Fisher terms the
'chronicle of subtraction' was, I suggested, particularly appropriate for stories
about the short careers of boxers. 347 For example, Leonard Gardner's ironically
titled 1969 novel Fat City (filmed by John Huston in 1972) presents the decline
of 29-year-old Billy Tully alongside the rise (in a minor way) of eighteen-year-old
Ernie Munger. By the story's end, it is clear that Ernie's life is assuming the same
shape as Billy's. In On the Waterfront, Terry Malloy famously complains to his
brother that he was unable to reach his 'peak' 'that night at the Garden', the one
night when he 'coulda been a contender'. But even Terry never doubts that he
was always going to go 'downhill' after that. For a boxer, victory is always tem-
porary. 'Only . . . defeat is permanent'. 348

If RagingBull (1980) were ever remade to follow the lines of a conventional
naturalist plot, Jake La Motta's peak would be identified as the night he defeated
Marcel Cerdan to become middleweight champion. This is certainly how La
Motta himself describes it in his autobiography: 'There can't be a high any
higher than being a world's champion,' he notes, before adding 'and - though
I didn't recognize it then - 1 was on my way to my lowest low.' 349 Scorsese's film
pays very little attention to the highest high (and indeed has La Motta complain
about his small hands and how he'll never be able to fight Joe Louis, 'the best
there is'). 35 ° The championship fight is over in minutes and the next scene jumps
ahead a year to present an overweight La Motta at home, eating a hero sandwich
as he tries to get the tv to work. No longer a compelling bodily spectacle on the
screen but mere spectating body - the film suggests that it is inevitable to be
one or the other - his distended stomach blocks the picture. All that is left of the
hero is the sandwich. The closest the film comes to providing a 'peak' is the fight
in which La Motta loses his title to Sugar Ray Robinson. That peak is achieved

360

through the fetish of La Motta's blood, a kind of holy water. We see him sponged
down with blood-infused water and receive a punch that splatters the ringside
spectators in slow-motion sweat and blood. This is both a familiar indictment
of the atavistic crowd (including, of course, the cinema audience) and a debased
holy blessing. The fight was stopped in the thirteenth round, with La Motta still
on his feet and declaiming, 'I never went down. You never got me down.' 'If this
scene cannot be interpreted as an instance of erectile pride,' quips Allen
Guttmann, 'then Dr. Freud labored in vain.' 351 Robinson (Johnny Barnes) inci-
dentally has no lines in the scene or indeed the whole film. He is simply there
so that Jake can stand up to him.

The naturalist chronicle of subtraction becomes, in La Motta's case, a
chronicle of addition, as he (or rather DeNiro in the apotheosis of method act-
ing) puts on 55 pounds. 352 This is hardly surprising since, as Steven Kellman
notes, more of the movie is set in kitchens and restaurants than in the ring. 353
From the start, we see both versions of La Motta: in his prime -the Bronx Bull
entering the ring in a leopard-skin robe and complaining about an overcooked
steak and threatening to eat his neighbour's dog; and in his decline - a 'fat pig'
performing in a nightclub, a 'fucking gorilla' bothering teenage girls. When he
smashes his head against the prison wall, and yells 'I'm not an animal', we don't
believe him. While Fat City, Rocky and even Jack London's 'A Piece of Steak' qual-
ify their meaty mysticism with accounts of the economic or psychological fac-
tors that lead men to plot their lives in bodily terms, Raging Bull serves it raw. 354
'Jake is an elemental man,' said Scorsese. 355

If the story told by Raging Bull proper is unrelenting, the film's narrative
frame suggests a way out. The final title (on a black screen) is a biblical quota-
tion from John, 9: 24-26, which ends, All I know is this: once I was blind and
now I can see.' Connecting Jake as a 'sinner' to Jesus Christ, this instructs us to
reinterpret what we have just seen as a story of 'redemption through physical
pain, like the Stations of the Cross, one torment after another'. 356 But if the
bloody fight with Robinson becomes a version of the crucifixion, it is hard to
locate a risen or redeemed La Motta - unless we think redemption can be
signified simply by an awkward hug with his brother and a rote recitation of 'I
coulda been a contender' in the debased setting of the nightclub, a church whose
creed is simply 'that's entertainment'. 357 Indeed that scene ironically recalls the
film's opening sequence during which (in between segments of the opening
credits) La Motta is seen shadowboxing languidly to the strains of the inter-
mezzo from Cavalleria rusticana. 358 The camera stays outside the ring and ob-
serves the distant and solitary boxer through three thick ropes. This is a
transcendent world, a dream world without messy relationships, a world in
which the boxer in his monk-like robe can be truly an artist; no longer an enter-
taining, bloody bull but, finally, a dancer like Sugar Ray or Ali. But lyricism and
Christianity can only exist outside of the film's narrative. Within the story, we
remain fully immersed in the secular, Darwinian world of La Motta's pointless
pain. There is no progression from body to soul.

361

Clearly attracted to the naturalism of mid-century boxing films, Scorsese did
not simply want to copy it. Rather, Raging Bull both emulates and strives to disrupt
the style of the many films that it quotes and borrows from: The Set-Up (a bloody
gum-shield dropping to the canvas); The Harder They Fall (sweat knocked off a
boxer's face); The Quiet Man (the pop of flashbulbs accompanying the memory of
a fatal bout); The Day of the Fight (a through-the-boxer's-legs camera angle). 359
Scorsese was determined that each fight scene should have a 'different aura', and
to that end endlessly varied the camera angle, movement and speed (sometimes,
cinematographer Michael Chapman noted, he shifted from 24 frames per second
to 48 frames per second to 96 frames per second and back to 24 within a single
shot.) 360 Against these rapid temporal shifts, the choreographic rhythm of the
fights is created by a soundtrack of photographers' exploding flash bulbs and pow-
erfully amplified punches which not only acts like 'scoring music' to what we see,
but makes it even more surreal and abstract. 361 Raging Bull's stylized and operatic
naturalism signals its auteur's mastery and transcendence of the B-movies he
quotes. 362 'To call it a boxing picture is ridiculous,' Scorsese said. 363

The most emphatic stylization comes through the film's photography, de-
signed to make it look like a tabloid' from the forties or fifties. 364 This was the
heyday of stroboscopic photography - a method of freezing action at 1/3, oooth
to 1/30, oooth of a second through the explosive illumination of stroboscopic
speed lighting. Weegee made the technique famous, but it was also used to
startling effect by Charles Hoff in his sports pictures for the New York Daily
News. Hoff 's pictures document the exact and decisive moment in which a
blow is landed, and as such were often used as evidence in controversial cases.
They also record the precise, if momentary, distortions to the face of the
punch's recipient, creating a realism of a particular grotesque and abstract kind
- one that says this particular 1/30, oooth of a second is the moment that
counts. Such concentration on the instant runs counter to the naturalist nar-
rative which characteristically describes gradual decline by means of an accu-
mulation of increasingly sordid detail. It is also a 'reality' that is heightened
and stylized by stark flash lighting effects. Announced as signifying an adherence
to a particular kind of gritty truth, this kind of black and white photography
(as used by Hoff in the Daily News and Chapman in Raging Bull) inevitably
aestheticizes and mythologizes - reducing the murky palette of life to images
of clear-cut tabloid contrast.

Sylvester Stallone first got the idea for Rocky in 1975. He was unemployed
and feeling sorry for himself when he saw a journeyman fighter called Chuck
Wepner take on Muhammad Ali. 'I identified with Wepner,' Stallone later said,
'the guy is going to get hammered.' Wepner had been working in a series of
menial jobs until Don King (in the guise of 'equal opportunity employer') trans-
formed him into a lucrative white hope. 365 Against all expectations, Wepner
managed to knock down Ali in the ninth round and stay standing to the end. 366
Stallone went home and hammered out the first draft of Rocky in three days.
Originally, Rocky was retired, but Stallone was easily encouraged to make him

362

still an active fighter. 'I thought, "Let me try to make this a redemptive thing."
And I tried to work this Christ symbol, this religious overtone'. 367

If Raging Bull presented the foundation of redemption in bloody defeat,
Rocky suggests that it begins in reinvention-through-hard-work, a Protestant
American myth epitomized by Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick (1868). Early in the
book, Alger makes plain how indebted he is to fairy tales of transformation such
as Dick Whittington or Cinderella. When Dick is given a new set of clothes by
his benefactor, he looks in the mirror and exclaims, '"that isn't me, is it? . . . It
reminds me of Cinderella, when she was changed into a fairy princess."' 368 Rein-
vention starts by changing one's appearance by changing one's clothes. Cin-
derella needed a new dress before she could leave the kitchen and go to the ball.
Dressed in his new suit, Dick can move in very different circles than he had in
his rags. For the boxer, however, physical transformation must take place at a
more fundamental level - that of the body itself. Filmed in blockbuster 'bright
colours, strong reds and blues' (complained Scorsese), Rocky is a pure example
of such a fairy tale. 369

Walking the streets of South Philadelphia in a vaguely comical hat, Rocky
Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) is 'just another bum from the neighbourhood',
but unlike all the others, he is given the fairy-tale chance of fighting the World
Heavyweight Champion, Apollo Creed (played by Carl Weathers in a thinly
disguised caricature of Muhammad Ali). 37 ° Most of the film focuses on the
training process, on Rocky 's willing effort to transform his body and his life.
This is not confined to the gym, and we see him pounding meat in the local
abattoir, and running through the neighbourhood, the local Italian commu-
nity literally behind him (illus. 120). 371 Presumably Apollo Creed has the
backing of the black community, but we never see any local popular support
for him - he is presented simply as the product of corporate (i.e. false and
ugly) America.

Apollo Creed's great crime, the film suggests, is assuming that he repre-
sents America - he enters the title fight dressed as Uncle Sam and on his float
adopts the garb and pose of George Washington crossing the Delaware. But he
is an illegitimate Uncle Sam, not only because he is black, but because, with-
out any suggestion of a political or religious affiliation, he is made to represent
both greedy capitalism and the savvy and articulate (for which we are encour-
aged to read glib) values of the counterculture. 372 Rocky - an inarticulate boy
from 'the neighbourhood' - is really what 'the land of opportunity' wants to be
all about. He is both white ethnic - the 'Italian Stallion' - and American:
indeed, while Creed's race excludes him from 'true' Americanness, Rocky is
uniquely qualified by his ethnicity (Italian, 'not that white'). 373 His very name
aligns him to the great Italian-American champions of the fifties - Graziano
and, the last great white heavyweight', Marciano (whose picture hangs on his
wall). 374 'You know you kinda remind me of the Rock?' Rocky 's trainer, Mickey
(Burgess Meredith) says at one point. 'You move like him and you have heart
like he did.'

363

Fantasies of the Rock's return had begun in the late sixties, when Murray
Woroner, a Miami boxing promoter and radio producer, fed details of Ali's and
Marciano's records into a computer and asked it to predict a winner. The com-
puter decided that Marciano (equipped with 'a boxing style edited down to its
bare essentials') would knock out the stylish Ali in the thirteenth round.
Woroner then persuaded the two men to enact the 'superfight' on film. 375

By 1976, however, Ali had regained his title and so all that could be asked
of Rocky is that he regain his pride (and that of the country) by 'going the dis-
tance'. 376 A self-conscious bicentennial fantasy, Rocky is set in the city of the
Founding Fathers, Philadelphia, but for all the shots of the museum steps, the
film's nostalgia is for a national spirit based on local values. As in the boxing
films of the 1930s and forties, those values are embodied in the fighter's neigh-
bourhood girlfriend. Unconcerned that he has not won, Rocky 's only impulse
at the end of the fight is to call out Adrian'.

If Raging Bull and Rocky were fantasies of white indestructibility (and griev-
ance) in the face of superior black talent, Neal Adams and Dennis O'Neil's
Superman vs. Muhammad Ali (dc Comics, 1978) offered a different kind of con-
solation. 377 Ostensibly a tale of 'the fight to save earth from star-warriors', it is
really a black-and-white 'buddy' story in the tradition of James Fenimore
Cooper's classic American frontier novel, The Last of the Mohicans (1826). 378 Just
as Natty Bumppo must go to the woods and learn the soon-to-be-lost Indian
ways (from Chingachgook) before he can take on the alien French, so Superman
must absorb Ali's 'native skills' before he can defeat the alien 'Scrubb'. The story
begins with Clark Kent, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen walking through an 'inner-
city ghetto' in 'downtown Metropolis' - they are, we are told, 'as out of place as
they look'. They no longer seem to be employed by the Daily Planet but a tv
network and they are looking to record an interview with Ali. Eventually they
find him shooting hoops and 'moving among the neighbourhood youth with
casual ease'. 379 The unlikeliness of Ali being there is ignored; this is, we are sup-
posed to believe, his 'natural' setting. Suddenly the playground is invaded by an
alien messenger. The Scrubb nation threatens to take over the earth if its labo-
ratory-created abysmal brute, Hun'Ya, can defeat the greatest champion of the
earth. Ali and Superman both offer their services, and they agree to hold a fight
to decide who should take on Hun'Ya. It is this fight that is featured on the cover
- and in many ways, the alien invasion is simply an excuse to stage it (illus. 121).
Before they can compete, Ali agrees to train Superman (who has his superhu-
man powers deactivated for the occasion). A page is devoted to a demonstration
of Ali's best punches and Superman finally concedes that 'I never realized that
there is so much to ringmanship. It's more than adding fist to face.' The big fight
attracts a huge crowd - 'intelligent beings from a thousand worlds' undertake
'the most massive migration in the history of the universe' to be there - while
millions more, 'in the far corners of the universe', watch courtesy of the 'inter-
stellar television network', with Olsen providing the commentary. It soon be-
comes apparent that, like Rocky in the sequels, Superman 'has copied Ali's

364

fighting style to a "t"!'- they are like 'mirror images of each other', Olsen says.
'How strange it must be for Ali be fighting ... to well . . . himself!!' 380 Natty
Bumppo has learnt his lesson well.

Ali, however, is still the greatest fighter and in the later rounds, Superman
gets badly beaten. 381 Like Rocky (and Jake La Motta), he won't 'fall down'; since
the alien referee refuses to intervene, Ali finally refuses to continue. The story
then moves on to Ali's fight against Hun'Ya, whose Foreman-like strength forces
Ali to reprieve the 'rope-a-dope' (the fight also recalls the mythic battle of Amy-
cus and Polydeuces). Ali seems to be weakening when the alien Emperor Rat'Lar
comes to his corner and offers him a deal - 'if your governments agree to deed
the peoples of earth to us as our slaves, we will spare them!'. The word 'slave' is
enough to ignite Ali and he finally knocks Hun'Ya out of the ring (in a pastiche
of Bellows's Dempsey and Firpo). The 'universe goes wild', but Rat'Lar won't
accept the victory. All seems to be lost.

At this point Superman comes back into the story. The defeat and injuries
he sustained in the Ali fight were, it turns out, part of a cunning plan. Disguised
as Ali's black trainer, Bundini Brown, Superman is free to roam the universe.
'The man of steel' dispatches the alien armada, and the comic's final double-
page frame shows him shaking hands with Ali, who acknowledges that 'We are
the Greatest!' 382

Superman's liberal credentials can be traced to his creation in 1938. The in-
vention of two Jewish artists, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Superman, it has been
suggested, is perhaps Jewish too. 383 He's certainly a foreigner, an alien from
Krypton, an immigrant who has to be taught 'truth, justice and the American
way' by the rural Yankee Kent family. Passing successfully (if anxiously) as the
chisel-featured wasp, Clark Kent, he fought rapacious capitalists and Nazis
throughout the thirties and forties. 384 It is, perhaps, not surprising therefore to
find him making the familiar liberal move of putting on blackface in order to
save the earth. Superman vs. Muhammad Ali is nothing if not liberal. The fight
attracts the creme of multicultural American celebrities (172 are depicted on
the cover, accompanied by a who's who), and television viewers who are not just
multicultural but multi-planetary. The tv commentator tells them that 'on
earth, we don't show our intentions by fighting with our neighbours, but by
showing what good friends we can be!' 385 He also explains that Superman is
wearing his cape because otherwise 'many of our alien spectators wouldn't be
able to tell the fighters apart! Except for subtle changes in hue, all humans look
exactly alike to them.' 386 Intended as a dig at racist stereotyping, this remark
nevertheless encourages us to think about the ways in which the story, like The
Last of the Mohicans, distinguishes between its heroes. Ali's greatness lies in his
perfection of a human skill (fighting) very much associated with the past. Super-
man needs to learn this skill and use it, much as Natty Bumppo had to learn
the tactics of survival in the wild. But when things come to the crunch, when he
needs to defeat Magua, Natty Bumpo rises above the level of the Indians he had
thus-far been emulating. Reaching for his rifle, he tells Chingachgook, 'I leave

365

the tomahawk and knife to such as have a natural gift to use them.' 387 In the
limited confines of the ring, Superman may have had to learn from Ali, but fists
are finally not enough for the battles of space and time. Those require both
superhuman powers and a superior human intelligence ('Got to think!! Got to
think!!' reads one frame). As his ability to manipulate sophisticated technology
reveals, Superman, not Ali, is 'the man of tomorrow'. Here at least, there is no
'Black Superman'. 388

366

Conclusion

No one would call the last decades of the twentieth century a golden age of boxing.
There have been some great fighters - Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Thomas
Hearns, Marvin Hagler, Julio Cesar Chavez, Oscar De La Hoya and Roy Jones Jr
stand out - but the general feeling is that the sport is in decline. 1 This is particularly
true of the heavyweight division. 2 Who today can name the heavyweight cham-
pion of the world? And if so, which one? Twenty years ago things seemed different.

At first the story of Mike Tyson promised to be one of Hollywood simpli-
city - a fourteen-year old black boy with a Brooklyn 'Dickensian childhood' is
taken in hand, and to the country, by a kindly old white man (Cus DAmato,
already famous for making champions of Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres); the
old man experiences a new lease of life before sadly dying, and, eighteen months
after turning professional, the bad boy becomes the youngest-ever heavyweight
champion of the world (illus. 149). 3 Boxing fans assured each other that the post-
Ali slump was over. A terrible beauty is born', declared Joyce Carol Oates. 4

Tyson's early record was impressive: winning eleven first-round knockouts
in fifteen fights in 1985; straight wins and the wbc title in 1986; and ten months
later, unifying the various strands of the heavyweight championship. 5 Tyson hit
his peak the following year when he knocked out the previously undefeated
Michael Spinks in the first round of his title defence. Soon afterwards, however,
'it all started to go wrong'; the story switched genres. 6 In 1990, Tyson lost his
title to the little-regarded Buster Douglas; two years later, he was convicted of
the rape of a beauty queen and served three years in prison. 7 Even before the
trial, Robert Lipsyte predicted that Tyson would become a 'symbolic character
in various morality plays, a villain-victim of the Gender War, the Race War, the
Class War, and the Backlash Against Celebrity Excess'. 8 Some spoke of Tyson's
'tragedy' and described his new manager Don King as the 'Iago' who had
fuelled the paranoia of an insecure Othello. 9 Others compared Tyson to Richard
Wright's Bigger Thomas, doomed from the start. 10

But Tyson's story was not over. On emerging from jail, his knockout style
and 'dependably shocking' behaviour made him once again a huge box-office
draw. 11 After all, as Ellis Cashmore notes, 'the Tyson of the imagination [did]

367

not have to win rounds' or even fight decent opponents. 12 By the mid-nineties,
boxing accounted for more than half of all pay-per-view programming, with
Tyson again participating in the most successful single event - his November
1996 fight against the 'Christian Warrior', Evander Holyfield. Approximately
1.65 million households paid $49.95 each to watch and the fight grossed more
than $80 million. 13 In their rematch the following year, Tyson bit off a piece of
Holyfield's ear, to the delighted horror of the media. 14 Nevada revoked his
licence for a year and fined him $3 million (actually only 10 per cent of his fee). 15
No longer heroic or tragic, Tyson was now seen as a character in a horror movie:
an 'ogre', a 'prehistoric creature rising from a fearful crevice in our collective
subconscious', or maybe just Hannibal Lecter. 16 As he acted out scenes from his
favourite movies - ear-biting threats from Raging Bull, pigeon-fancying from
On the Waterfront -he seemed to believe in the persona he had so carefully cre-
ated. 17 After a series of losses and injuries, he announced his retirement from
boxing in 2005. In October 2006 he began a world tour of exhibition fights.

In 1987, Joyce Carol Oates had predicted that Tyson would be 'the first
heavyweight boxer in America to transcend issues of race'. 18 This did not prove
to be true. Many of the gains of the Civil Rights movement were eroded during
the eighties and, as Jesse Jackson observed, racism of various sorts became 'fash-
ionable again'. 19 When Don King staged a 'coronation' for Tyson, Time maga-
zine described the champion as a jewel-encrusted King Kong. 20 Much as it had
in the 1910s, the dramatization of racial conflict meant money; only now it was
a black promoter who dredged up white hopes. In 1982, King achieved great

368

149

Mike Tvson (2000).

success with a much-hyped but ultimately one-sided fight between Larry
Holmes and Gerry Cooney, whom he marketed relentlessly as a white hope. A
similar occasion was staged to celebrate Tyson's release from prison in 1995.
His 89-second, ten-punch demolition of Peter McNeeley generated $63 million
gross, and inspired the Hollywood satire, The Great White Hype (illus. 126). 21
The eighties also saw a substantial increase in the geographical and cultural gap
between the black middle and working class. In inner-city ghettos, conditions
sharply deteriorated and sociologists began to speak of a black urban 'under-
class', immured in crime and drugs. 22 Tyson's emergence coincided then with
what Cornel West described as a new nihilism in black America, a nihilism
which led to a revival of sixties-style Black Nationalism. 23 From the start King
used its rhetoric and imagery to promote his star. As Tyson became 'public
enemy' and the hero of hip hop culture, the black middle class distanced itself
from his image. Some complained that 'we all have to live him down every day;
we can't exult in, say, Colin Powell without having to address Mike Tyson', while
others argued that 'progress' could be measured in the fact that the boxer's
behaviour was 'a disgrace - but only to himself.' 24

None of this was likely to change the minds of the doctors who, since the
early 1980s, had embarked on a sustained, international campaign to abolish
both amateur and professional boxing. Prompted by a new spate of ring deaths
and growing evidence of short- and long-term neurological damage, the medical
profession spoke out, condemning the sport as 'a throwback to uncivilized man'
and urging their colleagues not to participate in its management. 25 But it was
not only uncivilized man who kept on boxing. Despite new evidence of boxing's
dangers, increasing numbers of women took up the sport. 26 The breakthrough
for professional women's boxing came in 1995 when Christy Martin fought
Deirdre Gogarty on the undercard of the Tyson-Bruno match in Las Vegas. The
main event was a desultory affair and sportswriters focused, with relief, on the
competitive and exciting women's contest. Martin appeared to much acclaim on
the cover of Sports Illustrated; inside, photographed with a vacuum cleaner, she
said that she was 'not out to make a statement about women in boxing . . . This
is about Christy Martin' (illus. 127) 27 Since 1996, a small number of professional
women boxers have made a name for themselves. Some, like Lucia Rijker, came
to boxing from the martial arts; others, like Laila Ali, Jacqui Frazier and Freeda
Foreman, capitalized on their famous names and often fought each other. The
language used to describe these celebrity fixtures was either humorously patron-
izing - Laila Ali was 'a manicurist on a mission' who 'stings like a butterfly' - or,
more usually, spitting with moral outrage. 28 The New York Post described the $2-
million fight between Ali and Jacqui Frazier as a 'perversion', while the London
Daily Mail complained that the debut of 'fat girl' Freeda Foreman meant that
boxing finally had reached the (long-anticipated) 'depths of depravity'. 29 When,
in 1998, Jane Couch won her legal challenge against the British Board of Boxing
Control's refusal to issue licences to women, the British Medical Association
spoke of a 'demented extension of equal opportunities'. 30 Male sportswriters

369

tended to agree. 'Would it have made any difference,' Harry Mullan asked, 'if
more of the spectators were women? Perhaps. It is the edge of sexual voyeurism
which heightens my discomfort'. 31

Sexual voyeurism is probably the main reason why women's boxing has
flourished as vigorously in Hollywood as anywhere else. Since Barbra Streisand
played coach to Ryan O'Neal's contender in The Main Event (1979), there have
been scores of films about women boxers, coaches, and managers. 32 They range
in style from soft-porn to comedy - Romy and Michele prepare for their high
school reunion, the equivalent of the big fight, by attending boxercise class. 33
Most, however, tout a feel-good feminist message and simply substitute a boy
for a girl in a conventional plot. In Blonde Fist (1991) and Knockout (2003), girls
fulfil their father's thwarted ambitions by winning a belt; in Girlfight (2000),
The Opponent (2000) and Honeybee (2002), they dispense with their abusive
boyfriends both in and out of the ring. 34 Singers such as Christina Aguilera and
Pink regularly dress up as boxers to suggest that they're feisty and feminist and
in control, an image that advertisers also use to sell a variety of products from
deodorant with 'a different kind of strength' to vitamins with 'extra punch'.

Several women amateur boxers have published memoirs which explore
'what happens when you transpose generic female motivations and confusions
into the boxing ring'. 35 Kate Sekules, for example, reports that she had no prob-
lem fighting men, but had to work hard to overcome her reluctance to hit other
women, while Leah Hager Cohen describes how boxing helped her to come to
terms with anorexic and suicidal impulses and, finally, allowed her to fuse 'erotic
and aggressive impulses' (a la Melanie Klein). 36 In 1999, Annie Leibovitz chose
an image of a naked woman in boxing stance (with red gloves and a feminist
text painted on her blacked-up body) to advertise an exhibition of photographs
of American women at the millennium (illus. 128).

But just as women put the notion of the gym as a male sanctuary to rest, so
men reasserted it in the familiar terms of Rooseveltian strenuousness. 37 Partly
due to the popularity of Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 novel and David Fincher's 1999
film adaptation, Fight Club, white-collar boxing has flourished in recent years. 38
While the story presents the spread of bare-knuckle fight clubs as the first step
to anarchism, the real life (and usually gloved) versions tended to advertise their
socially stabilizing function. 39 'We thought that if people had boxing matches,'
one teenager was quoted as saying, 'they could get it out instead of killing peo-
ple in schools, or whatever.' 40 Fincher's film was also evoked as a model when, in
August 2000, an American promoter introduced 'executive sparring' into a
British context. At an event organized in the heart of the City, London's financial
district, a group of hedge-fund managers and it specialists fought it out before
an audience of 2,000. 41 Soon men too were writing memoirs of the psycholo-
gically therapeutic benefits of their experiences as 'modern-day Corinthians'. 42

If then, in recent times, boxing has not entered a new golden age, neither
has it shown any signs of disappearing. The same could be said of the boxing
story. Alessandro Baricco's City (1996) is about a thirteen-year-old boy who

370

invents a boxing story whose plot and characterization are borrowed from a
hundred 'black-and-white movies'. 43 Asked why he wrote about boxing, Bar-
icco replied that the sport had 'everything' a writer might want: 'it's all very well
telling yourself that Jack London has already done it. Sooner or later you fall for
it.' 44 Writers, film-makers and artists have continued to fall for it, and not always
in the name of postmodern pastiche. Boxers crop up in sculptures and paint-
ings, installations and performances, in books for toddlers and teenagers, and
in films and novels of every genre, from romance to the detective story to fan-
tasy. 45 Boxing metaphor is endemic, in fiction, poetry, art and journalism, and
in commentary on almost every other sport.

In describing this material I have had to be highly selective. My aim is less to
offer a comprehensive survey than to propose further lines of enquiry. Contem-
porary cultural uses of boxing, like those explored in previous chapters, fall into
three broad, overlapping, categories: dialectical, iconographic, and naturalist.
Artists and writers who use boxing dialectically are most interested in the sport
as a metaphor for opposition: the performed fight between two people drama-
tizes an interaction between points of view or ideas. Those who use boxing icono-
graphically are more interested in considering the symbolism of boxing's
personnel and paraphernalia -that is, interpreting the meaning, and exploiting
the aura, of the ring, gloves and mouthguards as well as individual boxers and
fights. Finally, boxing lends itself to the naturalist desire to imagine formlessness,
decline, damage and mortality. The naturalist boxer is not an icon but a piece of
matter - his authenticity evident in his sweat, bruises and blood. In what fol-
lows, I will briefly discuss a range of examples of each of these methods.

THE DIALECTICS OF BOXING

Many times boxing is evoked simply as an assertively masculine way of express-
ing competition or even collaboration. In 1988, for example, Andy Warhol and
Jean-Michel Basquiat's joint exhibition was famously promoted by posters pre-
senting the two artists as fighters engaged in interracial and intergenerational
fisticuffs (illus. 150). 46 And when the subject of literary rivalry comes up, few
resist the temptation to talk about championship bouts with Hemingway or
Mailer. In Charles Bukowski's 'Class', the writer-narrator enters the ring with
'Ernie'. After boxing like Sugar Ray' and hitting like Dempsey', he knocks Papa
out. 'Nobody wins them all,' he tells the older man, 'Don't blow your brains
out.' 47 Max Apple's 1976 short story Inside Norman Mailer' imagines a bout
between the young aspiring author and his mentor for the literary heavyweight
title. 48 (Apple later said that the story contained 'one of the best lines I've ever
written': 'I was describing all that prize-fighting stuff and then I said, "You've all
seen it - imagine it yourself!" That was a wonderful shortcut because I didn't
want to write five pages describing prize-fighting.' 49 ) From Hemingway to
Mailer to Apple and Bukowski, a fairly straightforward genealogy of masculine
ego (an imitation of the 'series of punches on the nose' said to connect John

37i

150

Michael Halsband's
photograph of Andy
Warhol and Jean-
Michel Basquiat as
boxers, 10 July 1985.

L. Sullivan to Lennox Lewis) is being mapped out as well as mocked. 50 But what
happens when a woman wants to join in? Joyce Carol Oates is not known for
ego; indeed her cultivation of 'invisibility', the stereotypical female position, is
much commented upon. 51 Her 1987 essay On Boxingwas praised for its refresh-
ing avoidance of 'hot competitive drive' and she herself has dismissed Heming-
way's 'equation of masculinity with greatness in literature'. 52 Nevertheless, Oates
too has used boxing to think about her career as a writer and she too has felt the
need to raise her fists to Mailer. She was not, however, simply concerned with
status. 53 More precisely Oates wanted to challenge the widely held assumption
of female incomprehension of boxing, and by extension ofmenperse. 54 ln pub-
lished extracts from her journal, she notes that while Mailer would be unable to
consider the sport 'through a woman's eyes', she can easily imagine what it must
mean 'through a man's eyes'. 'Am I being too self-assured?' she hesitates,
momentarily, before concluding, 'I'd like to eat Mailer's heart - is that it!' 55 Only
by absorbing the male/Mailer perspective into the female perspective could
Oates finally write, she claims, as a genderless 'aficionado'. 56

Even more competitive than writers, jazz musicians have often compared
themselves to fighters. Battles of the bands were a notable feature of the turn-

372

151

Posters advertising
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puted, New York,
2006.

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of-the-century New Orleans jazz scene and carried on into the swing and bebop
eras, when the music press pitted bop against traditional jazz 'with the zest of
boxing promoters'. 57 Jam sessions or cutting contests between individual mu-
sicians were also frequently imagined as fights: from the twenties, when a
'southpaw' called Seminole 'dethroned' Count Basie, to the alternating solos of
tenor saxophonists Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray in the late forties. 58 Gor-
don and Gray's most successful albums were called The Chase and The Hunt,
but remembering them later, producer Ross Russell adopted the less rural
image of a 'contest between evenly matched boxers of contrasting skills, a
Dempsey against a Joe Louis, a Marciano against a Muhammad Ali'. 59 Observ-
ing his twelve-year-old brother Lester's eagerness to join in such contests, Lee
Young said, 'he really wanted to see who was the better man; it would be just
like a prize fighter or a wrestler'. 60 'You defended your honour with your instru-
ment,' recalled Duke Ellington. 61

In Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison compares Louis Armstrong's ability to 'bend'
the military trumpet into a 'beam of lyrical sound' to a prize-fighter who dis-
rupts an existing rhythm by slipping 'into the breaks'. 62 Boxing, in other words,
has its equivalent to the 'true jazz moment' of improvisation, which Ellison else-
where defines as springing 'from a contest in which each artist challenges the
rest'. 63 In Chapter Nine, I considered Miles Davis's improvisation-as-boxing in
Jack Johnson, but twenty years earlier Babs Gonzalez used Charlie Parker's 'Or-
nithology' (itself an outgrowth of 'How High the Moon') as the starting point for
'Sugar Ray', a track which celebrated the boxer as the epitome of 'cool'. 64 In

2003, Matthew Shipp recorded an album
in which his own free jazz piano 'boxed'
with the experimental rap of Antipop
Consortium. 65

Prize-fighting imagery is not restricted
to jazz. Volume three of the 1959 Battle of
the Blues series presented two musicians in
dinner jackets and boxing gloves; volume
four retained the boxing motif, expressed
on the cover by an image of two smiling
women in bathing suits and gloves (illus.
151). Meanwhile, Jamaican reggae (born at
the height of Ali's fame) has often imagined
'soundboy killings' between rival djs as
boxing matches. 66 In 2004, Beenie Man de-
clared himself 'King of the Dancehall', a
title his 2006 album Undisputed seeks to
uphold (illus. 151). 6y The Jamaican Dj-ing
battle and blues boasts in turn provide
models for the seemingly endless con-
ma frontations of rap. 68 Numerous songs have

/*.

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373

been devoted to proclamations about the mc's prowess, his rival's uselessness
and/or homosexuality, and their 'rhyme for rhyme, word for word, verse for
verse' battles. 69 Big Daddy Kane disses his opponent as a 'featherweight' whose
rhymes won't earn points; Coolio announces that 'the championship belt is what
I taste and claim'; Sticky Fingers proclaims himself a 'heavyweight (and still
undisputed)'; and Q-Tip complains that his hands are blistered from tightly hold-
ing the mic that knocked out his opponent. 70 Too often, laments George Nelson,
hip hop turns itself into a new version of the battle royal - 'young African-
American men bashing each other for a predominantly white audience'. 71

Rivalry is not the only way in which the dialectics of boxing functions. Often
it expresses a more complicated relationship between 'polar opposites'. 72 The scope
of the encounter (as well as the medium in which it is expressed) varies consider-
ably. The oppositions might be cultural or conceptual, political or stylistic, pure-
ly abstract or deeply personal. Senam Okudzeto's Long Distance Lover (1999-2000),
for example, places delicately painted boxers on British Telecom phone bills reveal-
ing calls from London to Ghana and the United States. 'The idea', Okudzeto said,
'is that you see a person in argument with herself. The two figures represent conflict-
ing opinions, ideologies and identities within the same psyche.' 73 Elsewhere box-
ing is used to dramatize a sexual encounter or fantasy. John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom
masturbates to thoughts of a 'hefty coarse Negress' with 'big cocoa-colored breasts'
which 'swing into his face like boxing gloves with sensitive tips'. 74

Boxing provides just one of many overwrought images for Updike. For other
writers, however, it reflects an enduring preoccupation with duality and conflict.
Joyce Carol Oates's fiction is populated by twins and doubles - the ego and the
alter-ego; the good girl and the bad girl; the public self and the private self. 75
Enid Maria Stevick, the protagonist of You Must Remember This (1987) is atypi-
cal Oates 'double personality' - both a 'nice Catholic girl' who plays the piano,
and a bad girl who has an affair with her half-uncle, Felix, an ex-boxer. 76
Throughout the novel, their relationship is figured as a competitive boxing
match. The story begins with the fifteen-year old swallowing a bottle of aspirin
after Felix tries to break off the relationship with a slap to her face - 'she hadn't
seen it coming and her head knocked against the side of the window and for an
instant she was stunned, astonished'. 77 Her suicide attempt, however, provides
the counterpunch that their relationship/fight needs. Felix now recognizes that
they have a 'blood bond as if between two men who'd fought each other to a
draw'. 78 He finds this much more satisfying than his initial rape of Enid, her
body then merely offering 'some small unwitting resistance'. 79 The 'blood bond'
between Enid and Felix is broken when she forms an alternative bond by getting
pregnant and then by having an abortion.

Felix gave up boxing when the 'joy of the body' was overtaken by a realiza-
tion (again in the form of an unanticipated punch) that 'he was going to die'.
Enid's bodily education (a progression of suffering from rape to attempted
suicide to abortion) is also compared to a series of unexpected, and near-deathly,
blows. 80 At the same time as Oates asserts the incommensurability of gender,

374

she argues that pain and the fear of death provide a level playing-field on which
men and women can compete. The masculine world (epitomized by boxing)
and the feminine world (epitomized by reproductive and sexual trauma) seem
comparable in the amount of suffering each entails. Ultimately, however, Oates
believes that women cope much better than men with that suffering. 81 You Must
Remember This ends with Enid winning a scholarship to music college and Felix
being beaten to death in the toilets of a diner.

The frequently interchangeable categories of boxing and sex also appeal to
artists less interested with pitting an essential masculinity against an essential
femininity than with exploring oppositions within these categories. 82 Occasion-
ally, the relationship is reciprocal - in Rita Mae Brown's Southern Discomfort,
one woman tells another that love means 'you're in my corner and I'm in yours',
while Keith Haring's shiny red and blue steel Boxers (1988) thrust their arms
symmetrically through one another's bodies (illus. 123) - but usually a balance
of power is at stake. 83 Judith Halberstam, for example, argues that the figure of
the woman boxer, the 'raging bull dyke', epitomizes the 'masculine woman', the
kind who prefers to 'give than to take'. 84 Tony Kushner, meanwhile, uses an
allusion to the Brown Bomber in his play Angels in America (1990-93) to explore
political tension within the gay community of eighties New York. At first
Reaganite Joe and liberal Louis find their ideological disputes sexy - Joe tells
Louis that 'Freedom is where we bleed into one another. Right and Left' - but
eventually their arguments turn serious and physical. 85

In writing by men, a series of familiar fantasies recur: aristocrats eulogize
working class toughs; white men dream about black men; soft men desire hard
men; and Jean Genet writes poems to his 'thief-boxer', a 'muscled rose'. 86 Usually
thought of as an elegy for the 'belle epoque' before aids, Alan Hollinghurst's The
Swimming-Pool Library (1988) exposes the power relations involved in such
fantasies. The narrator, Will Beckwith, and the man he works for, Lord Charles
Nantwich, belong to 'that tiny proportion of the population that . . . owns almost
everything' and who therefore treat the world like a 'great big public school'.
Public school provides a model for the homosocial, and mostly homosexual,
London that Will inhabits. Swimming (in the West End Corinthian Club) is the
book's central metaphor for the escape and freedom offered by that world;
boxing (in an East End Boys' Club) provides a contrasting image of the violence
it can contain. 87

Nantwich's love of boxing began during his Edwardian schooldays at Win-
chester College. He then became a colonial administrator in the Sudan (where
he developed a passion for young black men) and on his return to London, set
up a club in Limehouse to teach 'rough boys' how to box. 88 The link between his
boxing and colonial interests is encapsulated in the portrait of a beautiful black
man he keeps on the wall of his London house. The man Will identifies as 'an
eighteenth-century colonial servant' turns out to be the boxer and trainer Bill
Richmond, who had boxed with Byron. Will is happy to note how times have
changed since Nantwich went to prison for soliciting, and indeed since Byron's

375

day, but Hollinghurst also wants to draw attention to the ways in which times
haven't changed. Will visits the boxing club and admires a boy with 'pink and
gold colouring like my own' (and also like the inmate of a penitentiary as imag-
ined by Genet') fighting a black boy. He is 'moved' by the occasion, finding an
'innocence' in it. He admires the 'careless fondness' with which the golden boy
embraces his opponent at the end. This 'little manly world', he suggests, is 'in
some ideal Greek way' maintained with 'an ethos of sport rather than violence'.
In the wider world, Will knows that fights degrade and damage (a view that is
confirmed when he is beaten up by 'sexy' skinheads on the street), but he likes
to think that the homosocial worlds he inhabits are different. Hollinghurst,
however, encourages his readers to notice the gap between Will's interpretation
of events and his descriptions. For an occasion intended to symbolize Greek
sportsmanship, the boys club fight is a rather gruesome affair. The white boy
hits the black boy with a 'vicious jab' and the spectators are said to have heard
'a strange, squinching little sound, as of the yielding of soft, adolescent bone
and gristle'. Will notices that the white boy's glove, raised in victory, is smeared
with 'the bright trace of blood'. Nevertheless, he goes on to talk of innocence and
tenderness. 89

In other 'little manly worlds' (many of which are described as hot and en-
closed, like a boxing ring), the encounters between men are also often violent
and described in terms that recall the Limehouse fight. Arthur, a young black
boy from the East End, takes refuge in Will's West End flat and turns the heat-
ing up. Torn between 'disgust' and a desire to 'save' Arthur, Will initiates sex.
This takes the form of 'a few seconds brutal fumbling' accompanied by Arthur's
'shouts of pain'. Once more, Will is 'moved'. Later he has sex with working-
class, ex-boxer Phil at a hotel called the Queensberry (Wilde's adversary was
also the man who established the modern rules of boxing). There, in a 'small
bed' which reminds him of school, he again takes sexual 'command' and again
his passion is 'almost cruel'. Will bites Phil's lips 'brutally' until they bleed and,
at one point, their 'skulls cracked together quite painfully'. Phil, despite his
'hard' body, is 'powerless'. Mapping the history of gay oppression in Britain,
The Swimming-Pool Library also exposes forms of oppression within the public-
school version of gay culture. 90

While Hollinghurst contrasts the violence of boxing with the meditative
activity of swimming, Douglas Oliver compares it to meditation itself. 'The Jains
and the Boxer' is a poetic dialogue between the 'unending harmlessness' of Jain-
ism and the boxer's desire to punch 'harm into harm in sadistic rhymes'. This
is partly autobiographical (Oliver trying to reconcile the memory of his 'schiz-
ophrenic' boyhood spent reading and boxing) but mostly a matter of poetics
and philosophy. What Oliver wants to do is find a way of expressing the relation-
ship between continuity (poetically, the 'brief interval' in which 'the vowel con-
tinues unharmed') and violent change (in poetic terms, the 'purity' of the vowel
is 'destroyed by a diphthong glide or a consonant.') 91 Julio Cortazar had other
concerns. For him, the novel and the short story are the contenders. Either

376

might triumph, but 'the novel would win by points and the short story by a
knockout'. 92 Yet another debate about aesthetics informs R. B. Kitaj's 1992
painting Whistler vs. Ruskin (Novella in Terre Verte, Yellow and Red) , a reworking
of Bellows's Dempsey and Firpo. 93 Reviewing Whistler's Nocturne in Black and
Gold: The Falling Rocket in 1877, John Ruskin famously wrote that he'd 'never ex-
pected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in
the public's face'. 94 Whistler brought a libel suit against Ruskin and won,
although the judge only awarded him a farthing in damages. By presenting the
quarrel in terms of both a famous boxing painting and a famous boxing match
Kitaj is inviting viewers to think about his painting as a 'novella', a story about
characters that Victorian viewers like Ruskin might have enjoyed. By drawing
attention to the painting's colours, however, Kitaj seems to be siding with
Whistler and the purely aesthetic gaze. The painting includes a self-portrait as
the referee.

Dada's boxing pranks also continue to influence artists interested in shock
and repudiation. One of Guy Debord's heroes was Arthur Cravan, whose aes-
thetic of pugilistic provocation informs Debord's conception of 'detournement',
or the 'mutual interference of two worlds of feeling'. 95 Debord's 1952 film,
Hurlements enfaveur de Sade {Hurls for Sade), juxtaposes scenes of riots, battles
and a boxing match, while Guy Debord: Son Art et Son Temps (1994) includes
footage from the 1916 Cravan vs. Johnson newsreel. 96 In 1972, meanwhile, as
part of the Documenta 5 exhibition, Joseph Beuys established an Information
Office for the 'Organisation for Direct Democracy Through Referendum'. For
100 days he discussed the nature of democracy with visitors. During the course
of these debates, his pupil Abraham David Christian invited him to take part in
a 'Boxing match for Direct Democracy' and this became the exhibition's closing
event. Beuys fought on behalf of direct democracy while Christian represented
delegated democracy. Another of Beuys 's pupils, Anatol Herzfeld, acted as ref-
eree and afterwards reported that Beuys had won on points. His 'direct hits'
had established the case for direct democracy. 97 For Debord and Beuys (as for
Tzara and Cravan), the punch provides a metaphor for unmediated address; it
represents that which cannot be faked, and as such, is the obverse of the 'soci-
ety of the spectacle'. When Beuys wanted to attack television culture in 1966, he
staged a performance in which he punched himself in the face in front of a felt-
covered television set. 98 Since then, and for similar reasons, performance artists
and art galleries have periodically staged boxing matches. 99

For the American novelist Philip Roth, the very idea of direct and authen-
tic address has always been suspect. Nevertheless, on occasion, he too has relied
on descriptions of punches to make his point. In Chapter Six, I considered Roth's
trips with his father to see fights at Newark's Laurel Garden and his adolescent
obsession with Jewish boxers. 100 Later he reflected that boxing was a 'strange
deviation from the norm' of Jewish culture and 'interesting largely for that rea-
son'. 101 Boxing imagery crops up throughout Roth's fiction as a way of describ-
ing the contradictions of his childhood and beyond. On the one hand are bouts

377

between Jewish and Gentile identities (dramatized through his father's interest
in watching Jews fight men of other ethnicities); on the other, is the contest be-
tween different versions of a Jewish-American childhood (the Jewish 'norm' vs.
the 'strange deviation' of boxing).

The first kind of competition (Jews vs. Gentiles) is enacted in Roth's first
novel, Portnoy's Complaint (1969). There the Jew is the narrator, Alex Portnoy,
and his opponents, a variety of Gentile girlfriends. First Alex draws a parallel be-
tween the 'rough' and unsatisfying 'hand-job' he has received from Bubbles
Girardi and the exploits of her brother 'Geronimo' Girardi in the Hoboken box-
ing world. Soon boxing provides a way of expressing the fact that sex is less
about the girls than their 'backgrounds - as though through fucking I will dis-
cover America'. So, weighing 170 pounds, 'at least half of which is undigested
halvah and hot pastrami', and wearing 'black pubic hair', Alex 'The Shnoz' Port-
noy takes on Sarah Abbott Maulsby, 114 pounds of 'Republican refinement',
wearing 'fair fuzz'. 102

Fighting the goyim is 'clear', a 'good, righteous, guilt-free punch up'. 103 Con-
tests between the 'mirrored fragments' of Jewishness are more complicated. 104
This second kind of bout is staged in The Ghost Writer (1979). There the narra-
tor Nathan Zuckerman finds himself arguing with his father at a New York
intersection about whether he is the 'kind of person' who would write a story
making fun of Jews like his family. 'I am, he says; 'You're not', his father says,
shaking him 'just a little'.

But I hopped up onto the bus, and then behind me the pneumatic door,
with its hard rubber edge, swung shut with what I took to be an overly
appropriate thump, a symbol of the kind you leave out of fiction. It was
a sound that brought back to me the prize fights at Laurel Garden,
where once a year my brother and I used to wager our pennies with one
another, each of us alternating backing the white fighter or the colored
fighter . . . What I heard was the heartrending thud that follows the
roundhouse knockout punch, the sound of the stupefied heavyweight
hitting the canvas floor. And what I saw was . . . my bewildered father,
alone on the darkening street-corner by the park that used to be our
paradise, thinking himself and all of Jewry gratuitously disgraced and
jeopardized by my inexplicable betrayal. 105

What Nathan hears (the heartrending thud that reminds him of Laurel Garden)
and what he sees (his neatly dressed father and the 'park that used to be our
paradise') are of course at odds. One childhood memory is set against another,
as are the two interpretations of Nathan's short story. His father thinks the story
is about 'one thing and one thing only . . . kikes and their love of money'; Nathan
retorts, 'I was administering a bear hug'. Love vs. Hate. Neither man concedes
to the other at that New York intersection. 'Nor was that the end,' begins the
next paragraph.

378

The Ghost Writer was the first in what would become a trilogy of novels fea-
turing Nathan Zuckerman; novels which continued to debate what kind of
writer, what kind of Jew, what kind of man he should be. After an interval writ-
ing other works, Roth returned to his alter ego in 1997 for a second trilogy of
novels. Nathan now became the chronicler of the central 'historical moments in
postwar American life': late-sixties radicalism, the McCarthy witch hunts of the
fifties, and their equivalents in the late-nineties 'culture wars'. 106 Each novel also
tells the story of an athlete. 'Swede' Levov is 'our household Apollo', a Jew who
is 'as close as a goy as we were going to get'; Ira Ringold is a six-foot six-inch Jew
who looks like a prize fighter; Coleman Silk is black but passes successfully as
both a Jewish classics professor and a Jewish boxer. 107 1 don't have space here to
discuss the trilogy's sustained (and rather Nietzschean) classicism except to
note that an 'aura of heroic purity' surrounds each of these men and that each
is also marked with an all-too-human stain. 108

In American Pastoral, high school sports represent the golden goyische
image which post-war Jews like Zuckerman fear and desire. In I Married a Com-
munist, Roth narrows his focus to boxing and uses it as a metaphor for the
various 'fights' - with received wisdom, 'tyranny and injustice', their employers
and wives, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and, finally, old age
- that Murray and Ira (Iron Man) Ringold undertake. 109 Zuckerman too is
drawn into the fight. Because of his association with the Ringolds, he fails to
get a Fulbright scholarship. 'I wuz robbed,' he later jokes to Murray - a boxing
allusion that both men would surely recognize. In 1932, when Max Schmeling
lost his title to Jack Sharkey by a dubious decision, his Jewish manager Joe Jacobs
famously protested 'We wuz robbed'. 110

The Ringolds are an inspiration to Nathan not only because of their size
and athletic 'strenuousness', but also because they represent to him the possi-
bility of 'forceful, intelligent manliness', the possibility of being an 'angry Jew'
and having 'convictions'. They teach him that it is possible to talk about politics,
boxing and books in the same way. 'Not opening up a book to worship it or to
be elevated by it or to lose yourself to the world around you. No, boxing with the
book.' 'The Ringolds were the one-two punch promising to initiate me into the
big show, into my beginning to understand what it takes to be a man on the
larger scale.' 111

I Married a Communist has something of the Socratic dialogue about it -
with Nathan as the young acolyte sitting at the feet of a series of books and 'men
to whom I apprenticed myself'. 112 At college, he is introduced to another
teacher, Leo Glucksman, who offers an alternative perspective to that of the
Ringolds. If they believe in the (heterosexual) power of the word to change the
world, he is a (homosexual) advocate of art for art's sake - 'You want a lost cause
to fight for? Then fight for the word.' 113 Nathan fluctuates. Ultimately, he rejects
the 'zealotry' or 'purity' of any one position - associated with Leo and also with
Ira's hardline communist mentor, Jack O'Day - for an uncertainty that he shares
with the flawed Ira. 114 Late in the novel, he recalls Murray acting out Macbeth,

379

another story about manliness and betrayal, for his high school class. The most
memorable lines come from an exchange between Malcolm and Macduff: 'Dispute
it like a man,' orders Malcolm; 'I shall do so,' replies Macduff, 'But I must also feel
it as a man.' 115 The 'dichotomies' of the heart, its 'thousand and one dualities', are,
Nathan concludes, what makes us human and alive. ll6 To find a situation in which
there is 'no antagonism', we have to look to the stars; in other words, we have to die.

Coleman Silk, in The Human Stain, also inspires Zuckerman. If the Ringolds
are 'extra fathers', Silk is an extra big brother. Although they only meet as old
men, it transpires that they grew up less than five miles apart and nearly coin-
cided in after-school boxing classes. 117 The connection is reinforced by the game
Roth seems to be playing with their names - the story of a black man - coal man
- presented in parallel to that of a Jewish - Zucker or, with more boxing conno-
tations, Sugar - man. (In I Married a Communist, Nathan had sought guidance
from irate Ira, a.k.a. 'Iron Man', and Glucksman, or Lucky Man). 118 If the Sugar
Ray Robinson association seems stretched, it might be worth noting that the
boxer was commonly known as Smitty. 'Call me Smitty,' began Roth's 1973 The
Great American Novel. It would hardly be surprising to find the much-pseudo-
nymed Roth emulating the typical prize-fighter's penchant for inventing names.
Coleman's ring name is 'Silky Silk', smooth and slippery in the ring and in life. 119

'My impulse,' Roth once said, 'is to problematize material ... I like when
it's opposed by something else, by another point of view.' 120 In The Human Stain,
the material to be problematized is that of fixed identity (in particular racial
and ethnic identity) and the impulse to present it in opposition is considered
through the metaphor of the counterpunch. Coleman may believe that 'self-
discovery - that was the punch to the labonz' (after all, says Nathan, that's the
'drama that underlines America's story') - but his whole life has been based on
playing a part. 121 As a young man Coleman had been a keen boxer, and in
particular, a counterpuncher, a style that Zuckerman believes he also adopts
outside of the ring.

All the other kids were always blabbing about themselves. But that was-
n't where the power was or the pleasure either. The power and pleasure
were to be found in the opposite, in being counterconfessional in the
same way you were a counterpuncher . . .

The culture (the 'other kids') requires the declaration or exposure of an overtly
marked identity. It jabs Coleman with its demand for confession. He replies by
'slipping the punch' and offering, in return, a counterlife - an identity that is nei-
ther black nor white, but Jewish. One 'impersonates best the self that best gets
one through'. 122

Zuckerman too is concerned with impersonation. He freely admits that his
version of Coleman Silk's life is a fiction and one that he is constructing with his
own preoccupations in mind. Is the story so much about boxing simply because
Zuckerman has put a framed photograph of Coleman as a 'boy boxer' on his

380

writing desk? 123 But there are different styles of boxing. The main lesson that big
90-year-old Murray Ringold taught Zuckerman was how to achieve a 'state of
ardorlessness'; in him, 'human dissatisfaction has met its match', Zuckerman
notes with awe. He concludes that 'the man who first taught me how you box with
a book is back now to demonstrate how you box with old age'. The lesson that the
70-year-old Silk teaches the now impotent, continent and deeply depressed Zuck-
erman is quite different. He is all ardour, all 'allure' and dancing 'magnetism', a
counterpuncher. A 'goat-footed Pan', Silky Silk dances Nathan back to life. 124

Coleman's favourite book is the Iliad and throughout Zuckerman's tale he
adopts many Homeric roles: after the death of his wife, he is 'adrenal Achilles'
('they meant to kill me and they got her instead'); with Faunia, his 'Helen of
Troy', he is Paris. 125 Most importantly, however, he plays Patroclus to Zucker-
man's Achilles. Wearing on his shoulders the armour of both Zuckerman's Jew-
ishness and 'sexual rapacity', Coleman had taken Zuckerman's place on the
battlefields of the American culture wars. 126 In his honour, funeral games must
be performed. Standing at Coleman's graveside, he confesses, 'I was completely
seized by his story . . . and then and there, I began this book.' 127 Zuckerman
does not stage an athletic contest (an imitation of military combat) but, with the
photograph of the boy boxer on his desk, writes a counterpunching novel (the
form which he believes best imitates the 'antagonism that is the world'). 128 Like
the funeral games, art can sometimes seem to defy death. Zuckerman goes to
hear the pianist Yefim Bronfman. Another boxer-type, 'conspicuously massive
through the upper torso', Bronfman plays 'with such bravado as to knock mor-
bidity clear out of the ring'. 129

THE ICONOGRAPHY OF BOXING

Today much of the visual representation of boxing capitalizes on, or interro-
gates, the symbolic resonance of specific individuals, objects and events. Certain
fights have a particularly powerful resonance or aura - a 'uniqueness' that can
only be understood by saying 'I was there', or 'I knew someone who was there',
or, at the very least, 'I remember where I was when it happened'. 130 Every box-
ing fan can name the special fights - from Louis vs. Schmeling to the Rumble in
the Jungle, memorialized by one man in Don DeLillo's White Noise (1984) as 'the
southernmost point I've ever brushed my teeth at'. 131 In White Noise, boxing
matches and rock concerts mark historical milestones in individual lives; in
DeLillo's more portentous Underworld (1997), sports events become 'measures
of the awesome' and represent the possibility of a communal history. Under-
world begins with an iconic baseball game - the Giants' defeat of the Dodgers
in 1951. DeLillo imagines Russ Hodges, the radio 'voice of the Giants', antici-
pating the game ahead and feeling lucky because 'something big's in the works'.

But he finds himself thinking of the time his father took him to see
Dempsey fight Willard in Toledo and what a thing that was, what a

381

measure of the awesome, the Fourth of July and a hundred and ten
degrees and a crowd of shirtsleeved men in straw hats, many wearing
handkerchiefs spread beneath their hats and down to their shoulders,
making them look like play-Arabs, and the greatness of the beating big
Jess took in that white hot ring, the way the sweat and blood came mist-
ing off his face every time Dempsey hit him. When you see a thing like
that, a thing that becomes a newsreel, you begin to feel you are a carrier
of some solemn scrap of history. 132

Hodges, and DeLillo, following Walter Benjamin, want to mark a sharp dis-
tinction between the experience of the thing itself and that of its mechanical
reproduction (here, the newsreel). But it may also be possible to think of the
kind of aura that did not only survive mechanical reproduction but flourished
because of it, through the star-making technologies of film, television, video
and dvd. Perhaps we could speak of an after-aura in the same way that we speak
of an after-image. DeLillo himself only knows the Dempsey-Willard fight
through a 1919 film. The after-aura of the Rumble in the Jungle (and two other
Ali fights) was the subject of Paul Pfeiffer's video installation The Long Count
(2000-2001) in which the boxers themselves have been removed from the
footage. As the ropes bulge and bounce back, we sense their ghostly presence. 133

Hip hop's interest in boxing is usually an attempt to tap into the much-
mediated after-aura of heavyweight heroes. Occasionally, rappers talk of 'knock-
ing niggers out like Jack Dempsey' or Rocky Balboa, but most compare
themselves to either Ali or Tyson. 134 Allusions to Ali tend to refer to his reputa-
tion as a stylist, both as a boxer and as a prototypical punning, rhyming and
boasting rap artist. 135 Ali's status as Greatest or g.o.a.t. is also one that many
rappers want to emulate, and many rhyme 'Manila' with descriptions of them-
selves as a 'killer' or claim that they too could 'float like a butterfly / sting like a
bee' (rhymed with mc). 136 In the ever-more-hyperbolic world of rap lyrics, the
butterfly's floating has been superseded by helium and the bee's sting replaced
by the pique of the scorpion or Tabasco. 137 More seriously, Chuck d of Public
Enemy (a group that has been described as 'rap's conscience') instructed black
'entertainers and athletes' to follow Ali's example and use their celebrity to in-
spire, uplift and talk about 'the untalked about'. 138

If Ali suggested skill, grace and political commitment, Tyson represented
both the possibility of instant stardom and the endurance of a 'fierce, reckless
fury'. That is why Tyson, rather than any single musician, says Nelson George,
'embodied hip hop' in the eighties. 139 Tyson's name is mentioned in 'scores of rap
records' over the last 30 years, ll Cool j declared himself 'bad' - like Tyson icin'
I'm a soldier at war', while Will Smith in his self-mocking Fresh Prince persona
boasted 'I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson'. 140 The 'perfect fighter for the mtv gen-
eration', Tyson also became a popular figure in music videos and computer
games. 141 Just after his release from jail in 1995, he appeared as himself in Black
and White, James Toback's film about hip hop culture's attraction for wealthy

382

white teenagers. Tyson appears as a guru for the black rappers (Wu-Tang Clan)
and a sexual magnet for the white tourists (played by Brooke Shields, Robert
Downey Jr and Claudia Schiffer). 142

Nelson sees a parallel between the progression of Tyson's career and that of
hip hop itself. After 1990, he maintains, both lost their way: a process that
culminated in Tupac Shakur's murder on leaving a Tyson fight in 1996, and in
Tyson's biting a piece of Holyfield's ear, 'a testament to the impatience and un-
focused rage that often mar contemporary black youth culture'. 143 In 1998, ll
Cool j (responding to an attack on his reputation by Canibus, featuring Tyson),
released 'The Ripper is Back', a homophobic attack on 'that convicted rapist'
which demanded to know what the 'Ear Biter taught you', and in 2002, Motion
Man boasted of his ability to attack 'human flesh like I'm Tyson or Jeffrey
Dahmer'. 144 Since then Roy Jones Jr (title holder in every division from middle
to heavyweight) has released two rap albums, which, his website says, try to
promote a 'positive lifestyle'. In the first, he introduces himself, 'I'm Roy Jones
. . ./ the legend . . . you found one.' 145

The iconography of boxers has also been important for Spike Lee, whose
film -making career has its roots in the eighties revival of Black Nationalist rhet-
oric and imagery, particularly the idea of the 'Wall of Respect'. School Daze
(1988) opens with a montage of still photographs of familiar figures - from Dou-
glass to Jesse Jackson to Louis and Ali - accompanied by the spiritual, 'I'm Build-
ing Me a Home'. 146 Walls of respect also play an important part in Do the Right
Thing (1989), the story of a summer day on a single block in Bedford-Stuyvesant,
Brooklyn. 147 The film asks what the 'right thing' to do might be, but gives no
simple answer. The old 'American dilemma' (assimilation vs. separatism; peace-
ful struggle vs. violent self-defence) is expressed in quotations from Malcolm X
and Martin Luther King that end the film, and in the two large knuckle rings
inscribed with the legends love' and 'hate' worn by a character called Radio
Raheem (Bill Nunn). 148 At one point we see him rapping while shadow-boxing,
thrusting first love and then hate at the camera. 149 As the action moves inex-
orably toward the riots with which the film ends, Lee provides what has been de-
scribed as an almost Brechtian commentary through the music that emanates
from the streets (jazz, blues, soul, rock, funk, and most insistently, Public
Enemy's 'Fight the Power'), and through images on the street walls. 150 These
images include graffiti, signs and advertisements for numerous products and
events; the camera describes them carefully, using them to reflect on the narra-
tive action. 151 One image that is frequently passed, and significantly lingered
upon, by the camera is a mural of Mike Tyson performing a right hook (next to
a piece of graffiti instructing voters to 'dump' New York Mayor Koch). 152 A huge
billboard of Tyson, 'Brooklyn's own', looms above Sal's Famous Pizzeria in coun-
terpoint to the Italian-American Hall of Fame (featuring Sinatra, DiMaggio and
DeNiro) that decorates the interior. Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) wages a
campaign for black heroes to be represented in the pizzeria since blacks are the
main customers, but Sal won't listen. As Buggin' tries to persuade the local kids

383

to boycott the pizzeria, Sal (Danny Aiello) does a DeNiro-as-La Motta impres-
sion and the camera shifts to the image of Tyson. 153

Raging Bull is an important point of reference for Do the Right Thing in sev-
eral ways. 154 The two squabbling brothers, Vito (Richard Edson) and Pino (John
Turturro), recall Jake and Joey La Motta, and the opening credits allude to the
famous shadow-boxing credit sequence in Scorsese's film. But while Robert
DeNiro dances operatically to the strains of Cavalleria rustina, Tina (Rosie Perez)
performs a hip hop boxing dance to 'Fight the Power', a track that Tyson him-
self used for his entrances. 155 This allusiveness is one of the ways in which, as
Andrew Ross suggests, the film signalled a deliberate 'challenge to the reign of
Italian-American figures as the favored, semi-integrated ethnic presence in
Hollywood film'. 156 Lee said much the same in a 1991 interview in which he
spoke about the necessity of black people 'owning stuff', because then 'you can
do the hell what you want to do'. 157 In 2006 he was said to be at work on a film
(written with Budd Schulberg) about the Louis-Schmeling fights. 158

In some ways, Lee seems to think that all black American men (whatever
their profession) are boxers. In Jungle Fever (1991), the issue is interracial sex. A
playful curbside argument between married architect Flipper Purify (Wesley
Snipes) and girlfriend Angie Tucci (Annabella Sciorra) about 'whose people'
produced the best fighter (Ali or Marciano, etc.) turns into an affectionate spar-
ring match. Two policemen arrive and point a gun to Flipper's head. For the
protagonist of She Hate Me (2004), sex is like boxing not because it involves
black vs. white, but because you get paid for it. John Henry Armstrong is
named for two black heroes - the mythical John Henry whose portrait (with
hammer) hangs on his wall, and thirties welterweight champion Henry Arm-
strong. After he loses his job as an executive in a corrupt biotech company,
Armstrong establishes a career as a sperm donor for lesbian couples. We see
him in training for the task (running up stairs, eating vitamins, etc.) and when
prospective customers come to his apartment they sit under a twelve-foot por-
trait of Joe Louis. 159 Later he and his friend wonder how much Ali's sperm
would cost.

The memorialization of heroic individuals also remains the starting point
for much recent work in the visual arts, much of which explores the nature of
commemoration itself. 160 Carrie Mae Weems's 1991 series of golden rimmed
decorative souvenir plates, Commemorating, includes one in which Ali is thanked,
alongside Malcolm X and murdered Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers, 'for
providing the vision', while Emma Amos's series of portraits of The Hero reworks
the African custom of printing commemorative fabrics to honor leaders and
important people'. 161 Amos's Muhammad Ali (1998), a painting on the back of
a boxer's robe bordered in woven African fabric, celebrates his status as a
Pan-African, as well as personal, hero (illus. 130). l62

Elsewhere, the celebration of heroes has proved less straightforward. Con-
sider, for example, the controversy surrounding Robert Graham's Monument to
Joe Louis, a 24-foot-long horizontal forearm with clenched fist suspended within

384

152

Robert Graham,
Monument to Joe
Louis at the intersec-
tion of Jefferson and
Woodward Avenues,
Detroit, 1986; two-
ton, 24-foot-long
cast bronze arm and
fist suspended
within a pyramid of
steel beams.

a pyramid of steel beams, which was unveiled in 1986 (illus. 152). Some thought
the sculpture evoked the Black Power fist of the sixties, while others complained
that it reduced Louis to a mere function or fetish, one that, in addition, had phal-
lic associations. 163 Much recent work by black artists uses the figure or idea of the
boxer to examine such reductions. Depersonalization is the critical intention
rather than simply the consequence of Godfried Donkor's Financial Times Boxers
(2001) and Danny Tisdale's 1991 series Twentieth Century Black Men (subjects in-
cluded Rodney King and Buster Douglas). Both adapt the Warholian serial por-
trait, taking as their starting point a pre-existing image and multiplying it
repeatedly. The individual figure is thus transformed into a mechanically and, it

385

could be argued, traumatically reproduced commodity- something that Donkor
reinforces by using the Financial Times as his grid (illus. 125). l64

The ambiguities of sports iconography and commemoration were also im-
portant to Jean-Michel Basquiat. No individual is represented in Famous Negro
Athlete (1981); the work consists solely of the title, with a drawing of a baseball
below and a crown above. Basquiat's critics have had trouble deciding whether
he is being serious or ironic. 165 His use of the word 'Negro', however, surely sug-
gests a sardonic tone, as does the fact that there is no 'famous' athlete. While
Famous Negro Athlete # 47 (1981) features a crowned man, he too is unnamed.
But does the crown that Basquiat attaches to these words simply reflect a de-
sire to confer a long-denied 'regal status on the black man'? 166 Or is the cham-
pionship crown simply another brand, like Blue Ribbon, sponsors of boxing,
whose beer bottle top also recurs in Basquiat's iconography? Is Basquiat com-
menting on the 'Black male body's history as property, pulverized meat, and
popular entertainment', an identity presented as particularly American in Per
Capita (1981), in which another boxer, this time haloed, holds up a burning torch
in the manner of the Statue of Liberty? 167 Here too, the boxer is unnamed, ex-
cept by the brand of his shorts, Everlast. In 1982, however, Basquiat produced
a series of paintings commemorating specific boxers (depicted by a roughly
sketched mask or skull-like face) with crowns -Jersey Joe Walcott, Jack Johnson,
and Untitled (Sugar Ray Robinson). The only uncrowned figures are Joe Louis (he
has a halo in St Joe Louis Surrounded by Snakes, a very different work from the oth-
ers) and Ali, since in the painting he is still Cassius Clay and not yet champion. 168

The various objects and practices which transform fighting into boxing
(ring, gloves, punch bags, brand names) have also become popular with Pop-
meets-Conceptual artists concerned with the 'processes and productions of
signification } 69 Aiming to reduce boxing to its structural essence and to demys-
tify that essence, such works nevertheless often re-mystify or fetishize their
chosen objects. 170 For Roderick Buchanan, five bean bags, each of which corre-
sponds to the pre-match weight of a soon-to-be-knocked-out boxer, suggests
Deadweight (2000), while Glenn Ligon and Byron Kim's Rumble, Young Man,
Rumble (1993), consisting of two suspended canvas punchbags carefully sten-
cilled with extracts from Ali's autobiography to emphasize the words 'white'
and 'battle', evokes the legibility of race'. 171

Boxers themselves tend to fetishize gloves, hanging replicas from keyrings
and car mirrors, and wearing miniatures as earrings, cufflinks and necklaces - a
custom that has its origin in the Golden Gloves competition, named for the minia-
ture golden glove awarded to every champion. One of the most poignant moments
in Rocky 1^(1990) is when, in a flashback, we see his trainer Mickey give him 'the
favorite thing that I have on this earth', a golden glove necklace, once Rocky
Marciano's cufflink. I'm givin' it to you and it, it's gotta be like a, like an angel on
your shoulder see?' Now retired, Rocky passes on the talisman to Rocky Jr. For
Paul-Felix Montez, gloves are the key to boxing, the 'impact point' of offence and
defence, and as such were the obvious choice to represent the sport in a series of

386

'21st century Las Vegas Monuments'. 172 (Gambling is represented by dice and
singing by microphones.) The Gloves is planned as a 70-foot-tall sculpture, in which
a stainless steel glove and a bronze glove 'touch' vertically (as before the first and
fifteenth rounds of a fight) above a black granite pool (illus. 132).

While Montez's heavyweight gloves reach to the sky, David Hammons's
Champ (1989) hangs down (illus. 124). One of many works by Hammons to use
salvaged rubbish, Champ consists of a tyre's deflated inner tube with a red glove
at either end. The irony implied by the title of Benny Andrews's 1968 collage of
rumpled cloth, The Champion (discussed in the previous chapter) is taken a step
further. Here the 'champ' is nothing more than a piece of limp rubber and
gloves, 'an emblem of deflated hopes and the certainty of going nowhere fast'. 173
Gary Simmons and Satch Hoyt also associate boxers with their gloves primarily
to suggest their status as commodities. Simmons's white gloves Everforward
(1993) argues for the continuing power of white capitalism behind the punch,
while Hoyt's series of figures made of miniature leather gloves and set in fight-
ing stances - named Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Floyd Patterson and Jack
Johnson - has the collective title, DonKingDom. 174

The ring has also lent itself to numerous works on the meaning of boxing
and boxers. For Keith Piper, the ring is a place in which debates about different
versions of, and attitudes toward, black masculinity are staged. Four Corners: A
Context of Opposites (1995) consists of a square 'ring' each side of which contains
a video projection of a black heavyweight boxer and the attitude he adopted
toward, or provoked from, a white audience: Jack Johnson is Consternation;
Joe Louis, Conciliation; Ali, Contravention; Tyson, Confirmation. 175 For Thomas
Kilpper, recovering forgotten names was more urgent than interpreting their
meanings. Kilpper created The Ring (2000) in a soon-to-be-demolished office
building (once a major boxing venue; see illus. 74) in Southwark, London. He
carved a 400-square-metre woodcut of a boxing ring with a surrounding audi-
ence in the parquet of the building's tenth floor, then hung 80 portraits (twenty
of which featured boxers), printed on a variety of found materials, on washing
lines above. 176 While The Ring sought to memorialize both the site and its inhab-
itants, Jane Mulfinger and Graham Budgett's A Grey Area (1995) expresses the
transience of boxing fame by presenting the names of various champions em-
bossed into a mixture of plasticine and astro-turf. 177 Alix Lambert used more
enduring materials in her 2005 sculpture, Wild Card - an empty cement and
steel ring containing only a corner stool and discarded pair of cast bronze gloves
- but she seemed to be saying much the same thing, that we don't remember in-
dividual fighters for long. 178 Finally, Gary Simmons's 1994 Step into the Arena
(The Essentialist Trap) - a full-size boxing ring in which dance-step patterns are
placed on the floor and tap shoes hang over the ropes - is less interested in com-
memorating individuals than in making a point about the continuing restriction
of black men to the parallel industries of sport and entertainment. 179

I began this section with the fight in which Jack Dempsey won the heavy-
weight title, and end it with the fight in which he tried, and failed, to regain it.

387

While DeLillo was concerned with Dempsey as the focal point of a communal
memory, James Coleman's Box (ahhareturnabout) (1977) tries to recreate the
experience of fighting Dempsey. Coleman wants to know what it must have felt
like to have been Tunney. He is, in other words, interested in both the icono-
graphy and what might be called the phenomenology of boxing. 180 His critics
have argued about which is more important to the piece. 181 Box consists of a
continuous seven-minute loop of film, consisting of fragments from the 1927
footage of Tunney 's title defence against Dempsey. This is spliced with black
leaders (perhaps to suggest 'momentary blackouts'), and accompanied by a
soundtrack of words and phrases 'syncopated to evoke the beat of a heart and/or
the jabs of a punching glove'. The film was projected in a dark 'tunnel-like space'
to create the feeling of 'inhabiting the skull of the boxer'. 182 The subtitle of the
piece is said to refer to Tunney 's state of anxiety, a never-resolved since end-
lessly repeated moment of crisis, because Jean Fisher argues, 'at that moment he
was both "champ" and "not-champ".' 183 The work explores the relationship
between Tunney as a familiar visual icon (expressed in the visual fragments of
the fight) and a version of some unknown 'inner' or 'real' Tunney (expressed in
the auditory fragments that accompany the images). This 'inner Tunney' is of
course as much a dramatic creation as the outer since Coleman himself wrote
the script in which Tunney meditates on Irish nationalism and colonial history.

THE NATURALISM OF BOXING

In 1991, the former Smiths frontman Morrissey performed his first full-length solo
concert in Dublin's National Stadium. That it was a boxing venue was appropri-
ate for during the next few years Morrissey became increasingly interested in
boxers as emblems of a threatened white working-class Englishness. For all its
hyper-masculine glamour, that Englishness is never about winning. It's about
embarrassment and humiliation, about losing in front of your home crowd' and
wishing 'the ground / would open up and take you down'. 184 Morrissey 's wistful
talk of going down draws on naturalism's perennial narrative concern with small-
town losers rather than world champions, and old, worn-out fighters rather than
the young and up-and-coming. If naturalists consider the young, it's to imply that
they too will soon be old and worn-out, or to have them be hit with the unlucky
punch that fate had in store for them. 185 Boxing, they conclude, is a 'cruel sport
characterized by shattered bodies, broken dreams and hopeless futures.' 186

Since the 1890s, the life of a boxer has been taken to exemplify the span or
trajectory of a human life. Both might be expressed in terms of 'the distance'. For
Rocky, going the distance just means holding on until the end of a single fight,
but the distance can also be measured in terms of a whole life or career. Carlo
Rotella uses the term to compare the 'resilience' of his Sicilian grandmother to
that of similarly 'old-school' boxers. If, as he suggests, life sets 'regeneration'
against 'exhaustion', exhaustion always ultimately wins. 187 The difference be-
tween the downward trajectory of biology and that of boxing is simply speed.

388

Rotella's grandmother was still going strong into her 80s; his boxers were
finished in their 30s. After one fight too many, the narrator of Thorn Jones's
story 'The Pugilist at Rest' thinks that he's 'grown old overnight'. 188

If the arena represents the peak of performance, if not always triumph, the
gym is the place of promise and decline, both a factory production line and a
kind of 'second home', a refuge for kids in need of a kind but firm parent, and
a place 'where men are allowed to be kind to one another' without a 'shadow of
impropriety' or 'question of motive'. 189 'Part of what I'm falling in love with,' Kate
Sekules writes of Gleason's Gym, 'is the thing my presence here will help sub-
vert; that is, boxing as it used to seem - an arcane testosterone ghetto, photo-
genic and romantic, adoringly treated in black-and-white'. 190 In Clint Eastwood's
film Million Dollar Baby (2004), the arrival of Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank)
initially threatens to upset the homeliness of the gym, but not for long. Frankie
(Eastwood) and Eddie (Morgan Freeman) find that gaining a daughter is not that
different from gaining a son. 191 In stories like this, problems begin when you have
to leave the safe womb-like world of gym and enter the less-controlled worlds of
either the arena (which proves the death of Maggie) or life itself. Thorn Jones's
story 'Sonny Liston was a Friend of Mine' ends when Kid Dynamite realizes that
boxing is 'over' and that the 'real world, which had seemed so very far away all
these years, was upon him'. He knows, however, that the 'thing' that has made
him good in the gym is the 'very thing' that will make life outside 'impossible'.' 192

Of course life outside the gym means different things to the protagonists of
the stories considered above and to middle-class memoirists and artists. For
the latter, the journey from the healthclub to 'authentic' Gleason's repeats the
story of descent described by nineteenth-century investigators into the slums,
and they linger lovingly on its squalor and, particularly, its sounds and smells. 193
Boxers breathe and grunt through suspended speakers as a soundscape accom-
paniment to Satch Hoyt's 2003 installation piece Inside Out, consisting of 350
used mouthpieces and 44 handwraps encased in a plexiglass and steel metal
box. 194 Arlene Shulman complements her black and white photographs of the
Times Square Gym with a detailed written description of its 'beaten and broken
chairs' and 'soiled canvas held together by peeling tape'. 'The ceiling sagged, its
floor creaked, the moldy shower stank,' and most noticeable of all, the place
'stank of damp leather, lockers stuffed with forgotten, sweaty clothes, and per-
spiration that stuffed your nose and clung to your clothes'. 195

For many, such scents provide an olfactory reminder of the land of their
fathers, the 'irretrievable past' of the (usually white) industrial working class.
Robert Anasi, for example, finds in Bernie's gym, 'a fragment of an old San
Francisco, the blue-collar city of the longshoreman's general strike'. 196 The gym
is a part of a past in which men worked with their hands, and in which a
'mashed-in mug, all rough and ugly' meant 'heart'. 197 Craig Raine's poem A
Hungry Fighter' imagines his father in 1932, with only a 'featherweight of white-
ness' to sell, both training (where 'juice erupts in tiny sacs / like smallpox
through the vaseline') and losing his title challenge. 'The gym is rubble now', he

389

notes, a 'bathos of bricks', and all he can do, he says, is gaze at his father's relics
(vest, licence, cup) longer than someone in love'. 198 In fact, he does something
more. Raine included the poem in Rich, a 1984 collection which presents a dia-
logue between the idea and experience of being 'rich' (the title of part 1) and
that of being 'poor' (part 3). His father's world, he sentimentally concludes, was
the rich one.

A fascination with the stories and settings of decline is usually accompa-
nied by a fascination with the signs of that decline or damage in the material of
the boxer's body itself. Prettiness may represent sustained success - Ali, Leonard
and de La Hoya were not hit repeatedly on the nose, eye or ear - but the accu-
mulation of visible scar tissue nevertheless has its own aura, serving as a badge
of courage and endurance as well as defeat. 'I never got busted-up bad or noth-
ing,' Scrap confides in F. X. Toole's story 'Frozen Water'; 'Nose be broke enough
so I don't hardly have a nose, and one eye droop because of cuts and the dead
nerve in the lid, but nothing serious'. 1 " Lit cinematically from above and viewed
from below so that his forearms seem enormous slabs of meat, the bare-knuckle
fighter in Peter Howson's drawing Boxen (2002) transcends his scraggy neck
and desperate eyes and becomes a monstrous monument (illus. 131). 2 °° And
when a group of retired fighters appear at a charity event, Carlo Rotella imag-
ines the crowd being 'transported' to 'a mythical era' by the 'time and damage
tallied' in their faces. 201

Sometimes a fascination with bodily damage seems more akin to a
grotesque pornography than to expressionist mythology, the bloody and de-
tachable bits of the body offering an enduring 'secret pleasure' to both white-
collar memoirists and naturalist novelists. 202 Noticing some 'purple and red
bruises' on her knuckles, Lynn Snowden Picket reaches for a Polaroid camera be-
fore stroking 'each bruise with reverence'. 203 Or consider Breece D'J Pancake's
'scrapper', who wishes he could knock out his opponent's eye 'and step on it, to
feel its pressure building under his foot . . . pop', but instead finds he has bitten
off part of his own tongue. 204 Or this description of a fight between two small-
time Arizona boxers, from Luis Alberto Urrea's In Search of Snow:

[Castro's fist] came down like an ax blow, straight into the top of Turk's
head. Crack, The skin of Turk's scalp blew open like an egg yolk. Snot
flew from his nose. He fell to his knees. The room was silent. Mike saw
a flake of tooth on Turk's lip. Blood cascaded off Turk's head, filling his
ears and eye sockets . . . Ramses Castro leaned over him and said, 'You
lose, asshole.' 205

When Mike Tyson bit Holyfield's ear, it was widely agreed that he had failed to
recognize that what he was being paid to do was simply perform violently. But
while descriptions of eyeballs, snot and flakes of teeth are not meant to intrude
into the fantasy worlds of Las Vegas or television, in stories such as these, detailed
accounts of 'the body turned inside out' announce that what is offered is real. 206

390

The hard, muscled body of the gym and the 'theatrical dressing' of 'gaudy shorts'
and 'pompous entrances' are, such works imply, merely temporary constructions;
the 'twitching body on the stretcher' is what boxing is 'all about'. 207 This is cer-
tainly the view of the medical associations that call for the sport to be banned.

To accept that the 'essence' or 'basic fact' of boxing is 'the fact of meat and
body hitting meat and bone' is to reject, or at least downplay, the intricate con-
ceptual and iconographic constructions that surround it. 208 'It takes constant
effort,' writes Rotella, 'to keep the slippery, naked, near-formless fact of hitting
swaddled in layers of sense and form.' 209 While art (by definition) can never
wholly discard 'swaddling', artists often claim to have devised methods that allow
them to get 'near' formlessness. When Cindy Sherman described Larry Fink's
black and white boxing photographs as provoking a reflex 'to duck a punch or
avoid a spray of sweat', she was offering him the highest praise - there was, she
suggested, no aestheticizing layer' between reality and image. 210 This is not a
new claim. Artists and writers keen to detach themselves from academic or
artificial styles have, from the earliest times, associated the low' activity of box-
ing and, in particular, the abject body of the injured boxer with an aesthetic or
ethos of waiting-to-be-recovered authenticity. Of course, authenticity is always a
fantasy, but it's a necessary and fruitful fantasy. This kind of naturalism always
occurs as a reaction (a counterpunch, we might say) to an existing, often over-
worked, paradigm. In classical times, the counterpunch was choosing to depict
bruises in bronze rather than muscles in smooth marble; in the early nineteenth
century, it meant slipping some flash slang into a lyric poem; in the early twen-
tieth century, it meant preferring the sports arena to the theatre. To evoke boxing
is always to dissociate oneself from the sentimental, the refined and the femi-
nine. The ideology of boxing is always masculine, even when adopted by women.
Today this means opting for black and white (rather than colour) photography,
for plain (rather than figurative) language, and for a 'carnal' ethnography in place
of an abstract sociology. 211

Like boxing itself, art and literature about boxing thrive on the back and
forth of dialectic: naturalism vs. iconography; the raw vs. the cooked. And while
this binary opposition is itself an 'artificial creation of culture', it is one which
culture cannot resolve. 212 At its most cooked, boxing remains raw; at its most
bloody, it can still tell a story. Although, as Sonny Liston pointed out, it's always
the same story - the good guy versus the bad guy - new versions of good and bad
are forever forthcoming. Throughout its long and eventful history as a sport, box-
ing has remained unfailingly eloquent. At the beginning of the twenty-first cen-
tury, our appetite for its stories remains undiminished.

;!9l

References

Introduction

1 Albert Camus, 'The Minotaur, or The Stop in Oran' (1954),
in Lyrical and Critical Essays, ed. Philip Thody, trans. Ellen
Conroy Kennedy (New York, 1970), p. 123.

2 Quoted in John Eligon, 'Even in Defeat, Jones Remains Cen-
ter of Attention', New York Times, 3 October 2005, Section D,
p. 5-

3 Plato, Protagoras, trans. W.K.C. Guthrie (Harmondsworth,
1956), p. 73. See also Plato, Gorgias, trans. Walter Hamilton
(Harmondsworth, i960), pp. 34-5; Debra Hawhee, Bodily
Arts: Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient Greece (Austin, tx,
2004).

4 Gary Wills, 'Muhammad Ali' (1975), in I'm a Little Special:
A Muhammad AH Reader, ed. Gerald Early (London, 1999),
p. 166.

5 When We Were Kings, dir. Taylor Hackford and Leon Gast
(1997).

6 A.J.Liebling, The Sweet Science (1956) (Harmondsworth,
1982), p. 5. On the endemic nostalgia of boxing commenta-
tors, see A. J. Liebling, 'The University of Eight Avenue',

A Neutral Corner (New York, 1990), p. 31.

7 Philostratus, Gymnasticus, in Waldo E. Sweet, Sport and
Recreation in Ancient Greece: A Sourcebook with Translations
(Oxford, 1987), p. 223.

1 The Classical Golden Age

1 Philostratus, Gymnasticus, in Stephen G. Miller, Arete: Greek
Sports from Ancient Sources (Berkeley , ca, 1991), p. 31. On
Greek nostalgia in this period, see Michael Poliakoff,
Combat Sports in the Ancient World: Competition, Violence, and
Culture (New Haven, ct, 1987), p. 4; Jason Konig, Athletics
and Literature in the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2005), ch.7.
On comparable late -Victorian nostalgia, see Donald G. Kyle,
'E. Norman Gardiner and the Decline of Greek Sport', in
Essays on Sport History and Sport Mythology, ed. Donald G.
Kyle and Gary D. Stark (College Station, tx, 1990), pp. 7-44.

2 On the ritual significance of the Thera paintings, and in
particular the boys' shaved heads, see Ellen N. Davis, 'Youth
and Age in the Thera Frescoes', American Journal of Archaeol-
ogy, 90, no. 4 (October 1986), 399-406. See also Nanno
Marinatos, Art and Religion in Thera: Reconstructing a Bronze
Age (Athens, 1984). On the implications of the skeletal dis-
order of one of the figures, see Susan Ferrence and Gordon
Bendersky, 'Deformity in the "Boxing Boys'", Perspectives in
Biology and Medicine, 48, no. 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 105-23.

3 R. A. Hartley, History and Bibliography of Boxing Books
(Alton, Hants, 1988), p. 6.

4 Poliakoff, Combat Sports in the Ancient World, p. 153. On box-
ing in Samoan funeral games, see James Frazer, 'The Killing
of the Divine King', in Aftermath: A Supplement to The Golden
Bough (London, 1990), p. 314.

5 Clifford Geertz, 'Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese
Cockfight', in The Interpretation of Cultures (London, 1993),
pp. 412-53.

6 Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory
(Baltimore, 1977), p. 8.

7 Andrew Stewart, Art, Desire and the Body in Ancient Greece
(Cambridge, 1997), p. 32; Virgil Nemoianu, 'Rene Girard
and the Dialectics of Imperfection', in To Honor Rene Girard,
ed. Alphonse Juilland (Saratoga, ca, 1986), p. 8. See also
Violent Origins: Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation, ed.
Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly (Stanford, ca, 1987).

8 Michael Silk, Homer: The Iliad (Cambridge, 1987), p. 104.

9 James M.Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad (Durham,

NC, 1994), p. 210.

10 jasper Grifffin, Homer on Life and Death (Oxford, 1980),
p. 193.

11 Homer, Iliad, trans. Martin Hammond (Harmondsworth,
1987), p. 382.

12 Homer, Odyssey, trans. Richmond Lattimore (New York,
1991), pp. 124-6.

13 Homer, Odyssey, pp. 270-73.

14 On the suitors' attitudes to games see Leslie Kurke, Coins,
Bodies, Games and Gold: The Politics of Meaning in Archaic
Greece (Princeton, 1999), p. 255.

15 Poliakoff, Combat Sports in the Ancient World, p. 70.

392

16 Tom Winnifrith, 'Funeral Games in Homer and Virgil',

in Leisure in Art and Literature, ed. Tom Winnifrith and Cyril
Barrett (London, 1992), p. 16.

17 Winnifrith, 'Funeral Games in Homer and Virgil', p. 24.
Baron Pierre de Courbertin's assertion that 'the important
thing ... is not to win but to take part' is not in the spirit of
Greek competitiveness. See Waldo E. Sweet, Sport and Recre-
ation in Ancient Greece (Oxford, 1987), p. 118; Poliakoff, Com-
bat Sports in the Ancient World, p. 115. An Edwardian view of
Greek 'fair play' can be found in K. T. Frost, 'Greek Boxing',
The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 26 (1906), pp. 213-25.

18 See Thomas F. Scanlon, 'Boxing Gloves and the Games of
Gallienus', The American Journal of Philology, 107, no. 1
(Spring 1986), pp. 110-14.

19 'Virgil's ^neis', in The Poems of John Dry den, ed. James
Kinsley (Oxford, 1958), vol. in, p. 1185.

20 Apollonius, Jason and the Golden Fleece (The Argonautica),
trans. Richard Hunter (Oxford, 1993), p. 38; Virgil, The
Georgics, trans. L. P. Wilkinson (Harmondsworth, 1982),
p. 107. See Richard Hunter, 'Bulls and Boxers in Apollo-
nius and Vergil', The Classical Quarterly, new series, 39,
no. 2 (1989), pp. 557-61. Mesopotamian cylinder seals
often featured friezes of animal contests. In the Akkadian
period, pairs of contesting figures sometimes included
human-headed bulls or bull-men.

21 Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (London, 1976), p. 116;
Norman Mailer, The Fight (London, 1976), p. 156.

22 Richard Heinze, Virgil's Epic Technique (1982), trans. Hazel
and David Harvey and Fred Robertson (Bristol, 1993),
pp. 121-41.

23 Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. David West (Harmondsworth,
1990), pp. 115-19-

24 Achilles stops the wrestling match at the funeral games.
Homer, Iliad, p. 383.

25 Joseph Farrell, 'Aeneid 5: Poetry and Parenthood', in Reading
Vergil's Aeneid, ed. Christine Perkell (Norman, ok, 1999),
p. 102; R.G.M. Nisbet, 'Aeneas Imperator: Roman General-
ship in an Epic Context', in Oxford Readings in Vergil's Aeneid,
ed. S.J.Harrison (Oxford, 1990), p. 382. See also Konig,
Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire, pp. 238-9.

26 Homer, Lliad, p. 382. See Poliakoff, Combat Sports in the
Ancient World, p. 113. Tacitus and Quintilian mention boxing
in arguments about skill specialization. See H. A. Harris,
Sport in Greece and Rome (London, 1972), p. 65.

27 Homer, Lliad, pp. 331, 334-

28 Michael C.J. Putnam, The Poetry of the Aeneid (Cambridge,
ma, 1965), p. 215, fn. 22.

29 The Athenian develops the analogy fully. If they ran out of
sparring partners, they would use dummies, and if they had
none of those, they would 'box against their own shadows -
shadow-boxing with a vengeance! ' Plato, The Laws, trans.
Trevor J. Saunders (Harmondsworth, 1975), pp. 323-4;
The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee (Harmondsworth, 1974),
p. 188.

30 Plutarch, Moralia, in Miller, Arete, p. 35; Marcus Auerelius,
Meditations, trans. A.S.L. Farquharson (London, 1946),
p. 38.

31 Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross,
revised. J. L. Ackrill and J. O. Urmson (Oxford, 1980),
pp. 70-71.

32 1 Corinthians, 9:26-7.

33 Onomastos of Smyrna is credited (by Sextus Julius
Africanus) with drawing up the basic rules, while Pythago-
ras of Samos is reputed to have introduced scientific boxing
to the 48th Olympiad in 588 bc. See Poliakoff, Combat Sports
in the Ancient World, p. 80; Sweet, Sport and Recreation in
Ancient Greece, p. 71.

34 Pausanias, Guide to Greece, trans. Peter Levi (Harmonds-
worth, 1971), vol. 11, p. 259. See also Konig, Athletics and
Literature in the Roman Empire, ch. 4; Zahra Newby, Greek
Athletics in the Roman World (Oxford, 2005), ch. 7.

35 Suetonius, 'Augustus', in The Twelve Caesars, trans. Robert
Graves (London, 1962), p. 63.

36 Tacitus also reports an anxiety that Greek practices such
as boxing will distract young men from their duties as
warriors. Annals (Harmondsworth, 1956), p. 323.

37 Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, p. 63.

38 Cicero, Laws, trans. Niall Rudd (Oxford, 1998), p. 137.

39 Horace, Epistles, in Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, trans.
H.RushtonFairclough (London, 1929), pp. 412-13; Terence,
Eunuch, in Harris, Sport in Greece and Rome, pp. 51-2.

40 St Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (Harmonds-
worth, 1961), pp. 121-2. For a very different view of
spectatorship, see Philostratus's account of an exceedingly
violent wrestling match. Lmagines, trans. Arthur Fairbanks
(London, i960), p. 151.

41 This is Horace's definition of the scope of lyric, as opposed
to epic, poetry in The Art of Poetry, in Satires, Epistles and Ars
Poetica, pp. 456-7.

42 Bacchylides, Ode 1, in Epinician Odes and Dithyrambs of
Bacchylides, trans. David R. Slavitt (Philadelphia, 1998),
p. 11.

43 Deborah Steiner, The Crown of Song: Metaphor in Pindar
(London, 1986), p. 111.

44 Bacchylides, Ode 111, Epinician Odes and Dithyrambs, p. 21.

45 Pindar, 'Olympian X', trans. C. M. Bowra, The Odes
(Harmondsworth, 1969), pp. 106-7. Pausanias's version of
the founding of the Olympics has the games beginning in a
heavenly contest between the gods. Guide to Greece, p. 216.

46 See, for example, Pindar, 'Olympian X', in Odes, p. 110;
and, on athlete-heroes, Poliakoff, Combat Sports in the
Ancient World, pp. 128-9.

47 Richmond Lattimore, 'A Note on Pindar and His Poetry',
The Odes of Pindar (Chicago, 1964), p. viii. Epinicians
for events such as the chariot race (which the wealthy
inevitably won) were more 'sumptuous' than those for
events like running or boxing, which athletes won. Robert
Fogies, Bacchylides: Complete Poems, trans. Fogies (New
Haven, ct, 1961), p. xxii.

48 Pindar, 'Olympian vn', in Odes, pp. 164-9; and 'Olympian
V, in Odes, pp. 94-5.

49 In The Art of Poetry, Horace declares that should he fail to
maintain poetic forms such as the epinician, he would not
deserve to be called a poet. Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica,

393

pp. 456-9. See, for example, Odes, Book 4, Ode 3 in The
Complete Odes andEpodes, trans. David West (Oxford, 1997),
pp. 115-16.

50 Dio Chrysostom, 28th Discourse, mDio Chrysostom, trans.
J. W. Cohoon (London, 1939), vol. 5, pp. 360-63. On gladia-
torial exhibitions, see the 31st Discourse, p. 121, and Cohoon's
comments, p. 358.

51 See Konig, Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire, ch. 3.

52 Winckelmann, 'On the Imitation of the Painting and Sculp-
ture of the Greeks' (1755), in Winckelmann: Writings on Art,
ed. David Irwin (London, 1972), p. 64.

53 Winckelmann, 'Imitation', p. 62; James Davidson, 'Tall and
Tanned and Young and Lovely', London Review of Books, 18
June 1998, p. 26.

54 The Greek physician, Galen, complained that training
inflicted as many wounds as conflict. See Poliakoff, Combat
Sports in the Ancient World, p. 93.

55 Dio Chrysostom, 28th Discourse, p. 365.

56 Heinze, Virgil's Epic Technique, p. 132.

57 Idyll 22, 'The Dioscuri', in Theocritus, Idylls, trans.
Anthony Verity (Oxford, 2002), pp. 61-6.

58 In Apollonius's version of this story (which most scholars
argue preceded Theocritus), Amcyus is killed by Polydeuces.

59 In Vera Historia, Lucian too sets a modern athlete (Areios)
against a Homeric hero (Epeios). See Konig, Athletics and
Literature in the Roman Empire, pp. 77, 237.

60 Mark Golden, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece
(Cambridge, 1998), p. 59, fig. 3.

61 The sculpture is also known as the Terme Boxer. The Baths
of Diocletian (Rome, 2002), pp. 103-5.

62 Thorn Jones, 'The Pugilist at Rest', in The Pugilist at Rest
(London, 1994), pp. 18-19. Jones's narrator speculates that
the statue depicts Theogenes.

63 Harris, Sport in Greece and Rome, p. 23. Konig notes that
'mangled ears occur so frequently that they seem to have
been taken as a standard means of identifying an athlete as
a wrestler or boxer.' Athletics and Literature in the Roman
Empire, p. 115.

64 Lucilius, in The Greek Anthology, trans. W. R. Paton (London,
1918), vol. v, p. 111.

65 Greek Anthology, vol. v, p. 111; see also vol. v, p. 109.

66 Ibid., p. 109.

67 Philostratus, Gymnasticus, in Miller, Arete, p. 18.

68 Greek Anthology, vol. iv, p. 343.

69 Plato, The Republic, p. 229.

70 Ovid, 'Letter XVI: Paris to Helen', in Heroides, trans. Harold
Isbell (Harmondsworth, 1990), p. 153.

71 Propertius, 'The advantage of Spartan athletics', in The
Poems, trans. Guy Lee (Oxford, 1994), pp. 90-91. Propertius
also frequently imagined sex as a kind of combat sport
('let bruises show that I've been with my mistress'). See
Golden, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece, pp. 128-9;
Poliakoff, Sport and Recreation in Ancient Greece; ch. 20.

72 Anacreon, fragment 369; Sophocles, Trachiniae, 441, in
Scanlon, Eros and Greek Athletics, p. 261. Eros is, however,
more commonly imagined as a wrestler than as a boxer. For
athletic Cupids, see Philostratus, Imagines, p. 25.

73 Lucilius, Greek Anthology, p. 111.

74 Scanlon, Eros and Greek Athletics, p. 227.

2 The English Golden Age

1 John Marshall Carter, Medieval Games: Sports and Recre-
ations in Feudal Society (Westport, ct, 1992), pp. 102, 140.

2 See Alison Sim, Pleasures and Pastimes in Tudor England
(Stroud, 1999).

3 Elliott J. Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-knuckle Prize-fighting in
America (Ithaca, ny, 1986), pp. 23-4.

4 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London,
1978), p. 249.

5 The Dairy of Samuel Pepys, ed. John Warrington (London,
1953), vol. 11, p. 87.

6 This is the claim made by T. B. Shepherd, who includes
the report in his anthology, The Noble Art (London, 1950),
p. 88.

7 Hester Lynch Piozzi, Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson,
LL.D. during the last twenty years of his life, ed. S. C. Roberts
(Cambridge, 1925), p. 7. Until recently Figg's card was
attributed to Hogarth; today it is thought to be a late-
eighteenth-century forgery. Boxing booths continued to
feature in British fairgrounds until the 1980s; one features
prominently in Alfred Hitchcock's 1927 film The Ring. See
Vanessa Toulmin, A Fair Fight: An Illustrated Review of
Boxing on British Fairgrounds (Oldham, 1999), and Tony Gee,
Up to Scratch (Harpenden, 1998).

8 Pierce Egan, Boxiana, or Sketches of Ancient and Modern
Pugilism: A Selection, ed. John Ford (London, 1976), pp. 21-2.

9 The London Journal, 31 August 1723, cited in Christopher
Johnson, '"British Championism": Early Pugilism and the
Works of Fielding', Review of English Studies, new series, 47
(August 1996), p. 343, n. 33-

10 Quoted in James Peller Malcolm, Anecdotes of the Manners
and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century
(London, 1808), p. 334. On 'mixed doubles', see pp. 42-3,
339. See also Dianne Dugaw, Warrior Women and Popular
Balladry, 1650-1850 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 122-6.

11 Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, London in 1710, trans.
W. H. Quarrell and Margaret Mare (London, 1934), pp. 90-
91; Martin Nogiie, Voyages et Ave ntu res (1728); William
Hickey, Memoirs (1749-1809), ed. Alfred Spenser (London,
1913-15), vol. 1, pp. 82-3.

12 Pierre Jean Grosley, A tour to London, or, New observations on
England and its inhabitants, trans. Thomas Nugent. (Dublin,
1772), vol. 1, p. 64.

13 For an account of the context in which this print was made,
see Ben Rogers, Beef and Liberty (London, 2003), pp. 123-8.

14 The Gentleman's Magazine, August 1754, quoted in Liza
Vicard, Dr Johnson's London (London, 2000), p. 208. See also
George Rude, Hanoverian London (Trupp, 2003), pp. 74-5.

15 Dennis Brailsford, Bareknuckles: A Social History of Prize -
fi$hti n 8 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 28. Casanova reported coming

upon a man dying 'from a blow he had received in boxing'
in the streets of London. On inquiring about medical

394

assistance, he was told that this was not possible since two
men had bet 20 guineas on his death or recovery. Wilmarth
Sheldon Lewis, Three Tours Through London in 1748, 1776,
1797 (New Haven, 1941), pp. 62-3.

16 H. D. Miles, Pugilistica: A history of British Boxing (Edin-
burgh, 1906), vol. 1, pp. vii, 9, 10. Captain John Godfrey's
Treatise on the Useful Science of Defence, which includes a
chapter on boxing, was published in 1747. Prior to this,
fist fighting was only one of several forms of 'prize-fight-
ing'. Other forms involved cudgels, quarterstaffs and
backswords.

17 Brailsford, Bareknuckles, p. 2. Norbert Elias argues that it
was not until these rules were introduced that boxing
'assumed the characteristics of a "sport"'. 'The Genesis of
Sport as a Sociological Problem', in Quest for Excitement:
Sport and Leisure in the Civilising Process, ed. Norbert Elias
and Eric Dunning (Oxford, 1986), p. 21.

18 The Daily Advertiser, February 1747, in Miles, Pugilistica, vol. 1,
p. 26.

19 Egan, Boxiana: A Selection, p. 54.

20 William Maginn, 'An Idyl on the Battle', in Miscellaneous
Writings, ed. Skelton Mackenzie (New York, 1855-7), vol. 1,
p. 277. The battle in question is the 1823 fight between Bill
Neate and Tom Spring.

21 James Faber's portraits of Broughton and Figg are repro-
duced and discussed in Sarah Hyde, 'The Noble Art:
Boxing and Visual Culture in Early Eighteenth-Century
Britain', in Boxer: An Anthology of Writings on Boxing and
Visual Culture, ed. David Chandler, John Gill, Tania Guha
and Gilane Tawadros (London, 1996), pp. 93-7.

22 The games stopped in 1643 as a result of the Civil War and
were revived soon after the Restoration. They finally ended
in 1853, after complaints of increasingly rowdy crowds.

23 Michael Drayton, 'To My Noble Friend Mr. Robert Dover on
his brave annual Assemblies upon Cotswold', and John
Stratford, 'To my kind Cosen, and Noble Friend Mr Robert
Dover, on his Sports Upon Cotswold', in Robert Dover and
the Cotswold Games: Annalia Duhrensia, ed. Christopher
Whitfield (Evesham, 1962), pp. 102, 179-180.

24 John Suckling, 'A Session of the Poets', in Fragmenta Aurea
(London, 1646), p. 7.

25 See Seymour Howard, 'Some Eighteenth-Century "Restored"
Boxers', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 56
(1993), pp- 238-55.

26 Moses Browne, 'A Survey of the Amphitheatre', in The New
Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse, ed. Roger Lonsdale
(Oxford, 1984), p. 292.

27 John Byrom, 'Extempore Verses Upon a Trial of Skill
Between the Two Great Masters of the Noble Science of
Defence, Messrs. Figg and Sutton', in Miscellaneous Poems
(Manchester, 1773), vol. 11, p. 47. Greek gore as well as
grace characterizes Paul Whitehead's 'The Gymnasiad,

or The Boxing-Match' (1744), a mock-heroic account of
Broughton's victory over George Stephenson in three
books. An extract from Book m is included in The New
Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse, pp. 373-4. Jonathan
Swift's 'The Battle of the Books' (1704) satirized the

ongoing debate between 'Ancients' and 'Moderns'.

28 Christopher Anstey, The Patriot (Cambridge, 1767), pp.5, 7,
19. See Martin S. Day, 'Anstey and Anapestic Satire', English
Literary History, xv/2, p. 145.

29 Christopher Anstey, Memoirs of the No ted Buckhorse, Wherein
That Celebrated Hero is Carried Into High Life (London, 1756),
vol. 1, p. 4. Simon Dickie considers the Memoirs as an exam-
ple of the 'ramble' novel in In the Mid-Eighteenth Century,
PhD dissertation, Stanford, 2001
(http://novel.stanford.edu/archive2.htm).

30 Anstey, Memoirs of the Noted Buckhorse, vol. 11, p. 265.

31 Fielding learnt to box at Eton, which he attended from 1719
to 1724. In various essays and poems from the 1730s he
mentions attending Figg's amphitheatre. Martin C. Battestin,
A Henry Fielding Companion (Westport, ct, 2000), pp. 63-4.

32 Henry Fielding, Tom Jones (Oxford, 1996), p. 615.

33 Ibid., p. 181.

34 Henry Fielding, Shamela, in Joseph Andrews and Shamela
(London, 1973), pp. 18-19. Fielding mentions two contempo-
rary women fighters in a burlesque of Juvenal's Sixth Satire:
'Have you not heard of fighting Females / Whom you rather
think to be Males? / Of Madam Sutton, Mrs. Stokes / Who
give confounded Cuts and Strokes?' Miscellanies, ed. Henry
Knight Miller (Oxford, 1972), vol. 1, p. 111.

35 Fielding, Tom Jones, p. 156.

36 Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews (New York, 1987), pp. 109-10.

37 Fielding, Tom Jones, p. 68.

38 Ibid., p. 447. In case the reader does not know the phrase
Fielding explains it in a footnote, as he later does with
'muffled' (p. 615).

39 Broughton's 'most favourite blow was the projectile, and
when directly planted in the pit of the stomach, generally
proved decisive'. [William Oxberry], Pancratia, or a History
of Pugilism (London, 1812), p. 44. The spot just above the
liver became known as 'Broughton's Mark'. Bob Mee, Bare
Fists: The History of Bare-Knuckle Prize-Fighting (Woodstock,
ny, 2001), p. 14-

40 Fielding, Tom Jones, pp. 614-15.

41 Bonnell Thornton and George Colman (as 'Mr Town'), The
Connoisseur 22 August, 1754, reprinted in Boxing in Art and
Literature, ed. William D. Cox (New York, 1935), p. 59.

42 Oxberry, Pancratia, p. 37.

43 Anstey, Memoirs of the Noted Buckhorse, vol. 1, p. 66.

44 Fielding, Tom Jones, p. 434.

45 Fielding, 'An Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters of
Men' (1743), reprinted as an appendix to Joseph Andrews,
p. 327.

46 Fielding, Joseph Andrews, p. 108.

47 See Johnson, '"British Championism"', for an account of the
full range of boxing references in Fielding.

48 John Richetti says this is the effect, and intent, of the
novel's many forms of repetition. The English Novel in
History, 1700-1780 (London, 1999), p. 124.

49 Samuel Richardson, as Johnson points out, ends Clarissa
with a duel in which Morden kills Lovelace: '"British Cham-
pionism"', p. 348.

50 Tom Jones, pp. 230-31. See also p. 220. Anstey gently mocks

395

this attitude in Memoirs of the Noted Buckhorse. At one point
his hero knocks out a dragoon, and after the fallen man has
had a chance to set 'his Hair and other matters to rights',
Buckhorse clasps and shakes his hand, saying, 'I never love
a Man till I have box'd him' (p. 131).

51 Daniel Me ndoza, The Memoirs of the Life of Daniel Mendoza,
ed. Paul Magriel (London, 1951), p. x.

52 Jenny Uglow, Hogarth (London, 1997), p. 423.

53 Henri Misson, M. Misson's memoirs and observations in his
travels, trans. John Ozell (London, 1719), vol. 1, p. 304.

54 Grosley credited boxing for the fact that London was the
'only great City in Europe where neither murders nor
assassinations happen', and supported the conventional
view of English magnanimity. He also noted the adoption of
the sport in Brittany, whose inhabitants 'still practise it with
certain modifications'. The modified sport, which combined
hand and foot fighting, became known as boxe-francaise. A
tour to London, vol. 1, pp. 62-3, 67, 94.

55 Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763, ed. Frederick A. Pottle
(New Haven, 1950), p. 278.

56 Pierce Egan, Boxiana; or Sketches of Ancient and Modern
Pugilism (London, 1818), vol. 1, p. 19; Piozzi, Anecdotes of the
late Samuel Johnson, pp. 150, 7.

57 Christopher Johnson notes that while the words 'box' or
'boxing' do not appear in translations of the epics by
Dryden (1697, 1700) or Pope (1715-20, 1725-6), Cowper's
1791 version of the Lliad refers to 'the boxer's art': '"British
Championism"', p. 332, n. 5.

58 Brailshrd, Bareknuckles, ch. 2.

59 Whitehead, 'The Gymnasiad', I.29. See, for example, the
London Evening Post of 23 October 1764, quoted in Picard,
Dr Johnson's London, p. 126.

60 Boxing in Art and Literature, ed. Cox, p. 57. See Lance Ber-
telsen, The Nonsense Club: Literature and Popular Culture,
1749-1764 (Oxford, 1986), ch. 2.

61 Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield {Uarmondsworth,
1982), pp. 98, 188.

62 See Tony Gee, 'From Stage-Fighting Fame to the Gallows at
Tyburn: James Field -Pugilist and Criminal', in The British
Board of Boxing Control Boxing Yearbook 2006, ed. Barry J.
Hugman (Harpenden, 2005), pp. 55-8.

63 Godfrey, Treatise upon the Useful Science, p. 56.

64 Nat Fleischer and Sam Andre, A Pictorial History of Boxing
(London, 1959), p. 18.

65 The World, 10 January 1788, quoted in Ruti Ungar, 'On
Shylocks, Toms and Bucks: Images of Minority Boxers in
Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Britain',
in Fighting Back? Jewish and Black Boxers in Britain, ed.
Michael Berkowitz and Ruti Ungar (London, 2007), p. 25.

66 See Adam Chill, 'The Performance and Marketing of
Minority Identity in Late Georgian Boxing', in Fighting
Back?, pp. 33-49-

67 See Mendoza, Memoirs, ch. 3, 'A Verbal Contest with
Humphreys'. David Liss's thriller, A Conspiracy of Paper
(London, 2000) draws on the Memoirs for the life of
pugilist Benjamin Weave, although the novel is set in 1719
and deals with the South Sea Bubble. Mendoza 's great-

granddaughter was the mother of actor Peter Sellers.

68 On 'earning a living from sport' at this time, see Adrian
Harvey, The Beginnings of a Commercial Sporting Culture in
Britain, 1793-1850 (London, 2004), pp. 198-202.

69 In 1834 Francis Place rather optimistically noted that Men-
doza 's school had 'put an end to the ill-usage of the Jews':
'the art of boxing as a science . . . soon spread among young
Jews and they became generally expert at it.' Todd M. Endel-
man, The Jews of Georgian England, 1714-1830 (Ann Arbor,
mi, 1999), p. 219. In 1787 the Times observed that the school
was near the Bank of England and that this was consistent
with Mendoza 's 'character as a Jew'. Ungar, 'On Shylocks',

p. 25.

70 G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History (1944) (London,
1973), p- 503- See John Ford, Prizefighting: The Age of Regency
Boximania (Newton Abbot, 1971).

71 Robert Southey, Letters from England, ed. Jack Simmons
(London, 1951), p. 451.

72 Joseph Moser, The Adventures of Timothy Twig, Esq,
(London, 1794), vol. 1, pp. 45, 47.

73 Mendoza, Preface to The Memoirs, p. xi. For examples of
such attacks see Grosley, A Tour to London, vol. 1, p. 96.

74 Richard Steele, The Tatler, 7 July 1709; in The Tatler, ed. D. F.
Bond (Oxford, 1987), vol. 1, pp. 271-2.

75 Mendoza, Preface to The Memoirs, p. xi.

76 On English fair play, see Paul Langford, Englishness
Identified: Manners and Character 1650-1850 (Oxford, 2000),
pp. 148-57. For the importance of fair play to the seven-
teenth-century Venetian niudXpugni, see Robert C. Davis,
The War of the Fists (Oxford, 1994), p. 94.

77 M. Misson's memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 305-6

78 Egan, Boxiana: A Selection, pp. 44-5.

79 Ibid., p. 74.

80 Diary entry for 27 October 1792, quoted in Robert Wynd-
ham Ketton-Cremer, The Early Life and Diaries of William
Windham (London, 1930), pp. 257-8.

81 Quoted in The Earl of Roseberry, 'Introduction', The Wind-
ham Papers (London, 1913), vol. 1, pp. 6-7.

82 Don Herzog, Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders
(Princeton, 1998), p. 333. See also Harvey, The Beginnings
of a Commercial Sporting Culture, pp. 64-71.

83 The Windham Papers, vol. 11, p. 351-2.

84 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (London,
2003), p. 303.

85 Egan, Boxiana; or Sketches of Ancient and Modern Pugilism,
vol. 1, pp. 481-2.

86 Colley, Britons, p. 303.

87 In 1733 a Venetian boxer Alberto di Carni fought Bob
Whiteaker. A song celebrating di Carni's defeat proclaimed,
'Your foreigners may be allow 'd to be bringers, / Of Eunachs
and Fiddlers and Singers, / But must not pretend to Bring
Boxers or Flingers'. Whiteacre's Glory (Dublin, 1733). See also
Godfrey, Treatise upon the Useful Science, pp. 58-60. Venetian
boxing had a long history. Throughout the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, groups of artisans regularly fought
guerre deipugni on the city's bridges. See Davis, The War of
the Fists.

396

88 Egan, Boxiana: A Selection, p. no.

89 Black Ajax by George MacDonald Fraser (London, 1997)
is a thoroughly researched fictional account of the fights,
presented through the eyes of (and in the styles of) real and
imaginary witnesses. See also Peter Radford, 'Lifting the
Spirits of the Nation: British Boxers and the Emergence of
the National Sporting Hero at the Time of the Napoleonic
Wars', Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 12, no. 2
(April-June 2005), pp. 249-70.

90 Thomas Jefferson, letter to J. Bannister, 15 October 1785, in
LivingLdeas in America, ed. Henry Steele Commager (New
York, 1951), p. 557-

91 D. K. Wiggins, 'Good Times on the Old Plantation', Journal
of Sport History, 4, no. 3 (1977), pp. 260-84.

92 Egan, Boxiana: A Selection, p. 101.

93 Ibid., pp. 100-101. Egan probably wrote the letter.

94 Quoted in Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black
People in Britain (London, 1984), p. 447. Appendix 1 consists
of short biographies of boxers from 1791 to 1902. For a de-
tailed account of Cribb's training, see Peter Radford, The
Celebrated Captain Barclay (London, 2001), pp. 167-74.

95 Quoted in Christopher Hibbert, Wellington: A Personal
History (London, 1997), p. 184.

96 Thomas Moore, 'Epistle from Tom Cribb to Big Ben
concerning some Foul Play in a Late Transaction' (1818),
in Poetical Works (London, 1891), pp. 588-9.

97 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England
(London, 1987), p. 36.

98 Claims made for duelling in France were not dissimilar from
those made for boxing in England: Masculinity and Male
Codes of Honor in Modern France (Berkeley, ca, 1998), p.
145. On the British tendency to associate France (and its
culture) with effeminacy, see Tim Fulford, Romanticism
and Masculinity (London, 1999).

99 William Cobbett, 'In Defence of Boxing', The Political
Register (August 1805), in Cobbett's England, ed. John Derry
(London, 1968), pp. 172-80.

100 The eponymous narrator of Arthur Conan Doyle's Rodney
Stone (1896) justified prizefighting's widespread public sup-
port in the 1800s in terms of the fact that there was no con-
scription into the British army and navy; the army and navy
depended on 'those who chose to fight because they had
fighting blood in them'. Rodney Stone (London, 1912), p. 12.

101 Boxing infiltrated lowland Scots society and some acade-
mies were set up - notably under George Cooper. Scott's
familiarity with boxing culture emerges in surprising places.
For example, an 1803 letter to George Ellis begins by
announcing, 'My conscience has been thumping me as hard
as if it had studied under Mendoza.' The Letters of Sir Walter
Scott, 1787-1807, ed. H.J.C. Grierson (London, 1932), vol. 1,

p. 196.

102 Walter Scott, 'The Two Drovers', in Two Stories (Edinburgh,
2002), pp. 43, 51. See Christopher Johnson, 'Anti-Pugilism:
Violence and Justice in Scott's "The Two Drovers'", Scottish
Literary Journal, 22, no. 1 (May 1995), pp. 46-60.

103 Scott, 'The Two Drovers', pp. 67-8.

104 Egan, Boxiana: A Selection, p. 58.

105 Richard Holmes, in Romantics and Revolutionaries, exh. cat.,
National Portait Gallery, London (London, 2002), pp. 128-9.
In Dickens's Oliver Twist (1837-8), such dandyism is mocked
in the figure of the villain, Bill Sikes, who sports a 'black
velveteen coat' and 'a dirty belcher handkerchief round his
neck, with the long frayed ends of which, he smeared the
foam from the beer as he spoke'; like Belcher, Sikes is
famously accompanied by a bull-terrier. Oliver Twist
(Harmondsworth, 2002), p. 98. In The Old Curiosity Shop
(1841), Dick Swiveller's fantasy of life as a convict involves a
leg iron 'restrained from chafing . . . [his] ankle by a twisted
belcher handkerchief.' The Old Curiosity Shop (Harmonds-
worth, 2000), p. 259. The eponymous hero of William
Thackeray's Barry Lyndon (1844) complains that he can
no longer tell the difference between 'my lord and his
groom' since 'every man has the same coachman-like
look in his belcher and caped coat.' Barry Lyndon (Oxford,
1984), p. 248.

106 In 'Advice to a Youth', Cobbett argued that 'natural beauty of
person . . .always has, it always will and must have, some
weight even with men, and great weight with women. But
this does not want to be set off by expensive clothes.' Cob-
bett's England, p. 157. He might also be alluding to Belcher's
reputation as the 'Napoleon of the Ring', a name bestowed
partly because he was 'so successful in battle' and partly be-
cause he was said to look like the Frenchman. Egan, Boxiana;
or Sketches of Ancient and Modern Pugilism, vol. 1, p. 144. See
also The Celebrated Captain Barclay, pp. 74-5.

107 Quoted in the oed.

108 Robert Fergusson, 'Auld Reikie', in The Poems of Robert
Fergusson, ed. Matthew P. McDiarmid (Edinburgh, 1954-6),
vol. 11, p. 112. See Edwin Morgan, 'A Scottish Trawl', in Gen-
dering the Nation, ed. Christopher Whyte (Edinburgh, 1995),
pp. 208-9.

109 Anstey, The Patriot, pp. 19-20.

no See, for example, Colley, Britons, ch. 6, and A History of
Private Life, ed. Michelle Perrot (Cambridge, ma, 1990). In
1804, Richard Bisset satirized Mary Wollstonecraft, author
of The Rights of Women (1792), as longing for the day 'when
the sex would acquire high renown in boxing matches'.
Modern Literature: A Novel (London, 1804), vol. 111, p. 200;
quoted in Dugaw, Warrior Women, p. 141.

111 [B. W. Proctor], 'On Fighting', Fraser's Magazine, May 1820,
p. 519. A friend of Keats, Proctor trained with Tom Cribb
and published verse and biographies under the pseudonym
Barry Cornwall.

112 Tom Moore's Diary: A Selection, ed. J. B.Priestley (Cambridge,
1925), p. 18. Entry for 4 December 1818.

113 Miles, Pugilistica, vol. 1, p. 97.

114 [Eaton Stannard Barrett], Six Weeks at Long's (London, 1817),
vol. in, pp. 200-201. John Jackson, under the pseudonym
Milo Gymnast, plays an important role in the story.

115 William Cobbett, quoted in Steven Parissien, George iv:
The Grand Entertainment (London, 2001), p. 309. See also
Fulford, Romanticism and Masculinity, ch. 5. The Prince
separated from Caroline a year after their marriage in 1795.
Although they lived apart and both had numerous indiscreet

397

affairs, she felt entitled to take her place as his Queen in
1821.

116 Byron, 'Hints from Horace' (1811), in Complete Poetical Works,
ed. Frederick Page (Oxford, 1970), p. 138.

117 Thomas Moore, The Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
(London, 1875), pp. 116-17.

118 Byron, in Selected Letters and Journals, ed. Peter Gunn
(Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 142

119 Byron, Notes to Don Juan, in Complete Poetical Works,
p. 918.

120 Moore, The Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, p. 24.

121 Thomas Moore noted that, after his death, Byron's friends
found it hard to recall which of his feet was lame (they set-
tled on the right): 'Mr Jackson, his preceptor in pugilism,
was, in like manner, obliged to call to mind whether his
noble pupil was a right or left hand hitter before he could
arrive at the same decision.' Lz/e and Letters of Lord Byron,
p. 1062.

122 See Bohun Lynch, 'Lord Byron's Fire-Screen', The Field,
December 1922, pp. 7-9; Aubrey Noakes, '70 Years of Prize
Ring History', Boxing News, 20 August 1947, pp. 8-9; Eliza-
beth Stewart-Smith, Byron's Screen (Mansfield, 1995).

123 Cecil Y. Lang, 'Narcissus Jilted: Byron, Don Juan and the
Biographical Imperative', in Historical and Literary
Criticism, ed. Jerome McGann (Madison, 1985), pp. 154-5.

124 Don Juan, Complete Works, pp. 758, 765.

125 Letter to Elizabeth Pigot, 13 July 1807, in Moore, The Life and
Letters of Lord Byron, p. 90; Don Juan, in Complete Works,

p. 796.

126 Egan, Boxiana: A Selection, p. 168. For a list of 'sporting
houses kept by pugilists', see pp. 185-6.

127 Quoted in Jon Hurley, Tom Spring (Stroud, 2002), p. 104.

128 Byron, Selected Letters and Journals, p. 131.

129 Hurley, Tom Spring, p. 117. Life in London became a theatrical
hit, adapted in various forms throughout Britain and the
United States. Exhibition bouts were included as part of the
evening's entertainment.

130 Jonathan Bate, John Clare: A Biography (London, 2003),
p. 264.

131 Byron, Letters and Journals, vol. 1, pp. 135-6. Letter to
Elizabeth Pigot, 26 October 1807.

132 Egan, BoxianaiA Selection, pp. 168, 172.

133 Egan, Life in London. Or the Day and Night Scenes of Jerry
Hawthorn, Esq, and his elegant friend Corinthian Tom, accom-
panied by Bob Logic, The Oxonian, in their Rambles and Sprees
through the Metropolis (London, 1821), pp. 19-20.

134 Washington Irving, 'Buckthorne, or the Young Man of Great
Expectations', in Tales of a Traveller, by Geoffrey Crayon, Gent,
ed. Judith Giblin Haig (Boston, 1987), p. 121. The 'murderer
on the gibbett' is probably John Thurtell, a boxing promoter
who was executed for murder in January 1824. Pierce Egan's
Account of the Trial and his Recollections of John Thurtell were
published later that year. Buckthorne is surely a play on the
eighteenth-century prize-fighter, Buckhorse.

135 Byron, Selected Letters and Journals, p. 128. He is quoting
Virgil, Eclogues iii.59.

136 Ibid., p. 145. Entry for 10 April 1814.

137 Moore, Life and Letters of Lord Byron, p. 213.

138 Robert Giti'mgs, John Keats (Harmondsworth, 1971),

p. 390. Jack Randall defeated Ned Turner after 34 rounds.

3 Pugilism and Style

1 Cassius Clay, 'Do You Have to Ask?, in lam the Greatest!
(Rev-Ola, 1964).

2 Christopher Ricks, Keats and Embarrassment (Oxford, 1974),
p. 75-

3 Byron, Selected Letters and Journals, ed. Peter Gunn
(Harmondsworth, 1972), pp. 332, 131. Entries for 15 October
1821 and 24 November 1813.

4 Byron, Selected Letters and Journals, p. 217. Letter to Thomas
Moore, ljune 1818.

5 'Hints from Horace', in Complete Poetical Works, ed. Freder-
ick Page (Oxford, 1970), p. 138. Of Jeffrey's attack on Hours of
Idleness in 1807, he said, 'it 'knocked me down', but 'I got up
again.' Quoted in Elizabeth Longford, Byron (London, 1976),
pp. 16-17.

6 [William Maginn], 'A Letter to Pierce Egan, Esq. By Christo-
pher North', Blackwood's Magazine (March 1821), pp. 672-3.
For a full account of his career, see J. C.Reid, Bucks and
Bruisers: Pierce Egan and Regency England (London, 1971).

7 Pierce Egan, Boxiana:A Selection, ed. John Ford (London,
1976), pp. 199-200.

8 Gregory Dart, '"Flash Style": Pierce Egan and Literary Lon-
don, 1820-28', History Workshop Journal, 51 (2001), p. 198.
Mark Parker argues that the magazine was 'the preeminent
literary form of the 1820s and 1830s in Britain'. Literary
Magazines and British Romanticism (Cambridge, 2000), p. 1.

9 This is not quite the same as saying it was a 'classless
language': Dart, '"Flash Style"', p. 191.

10 Blackwood's Magazine, July 1822, pp. 105-6.

11 Thomas De Quincey, 'Sketch of Professor Wilson [Part 11]',
Edinburgh Literary Gazette, 11 July 1829, in Works, ed. Robert
Morrison (London, 2000), vol. vn, p. 16. See also Robert
Morrison, 'Blackwood's Berserker: John Wilson and the Lan-
guage of Extremity', Romanticism on the Net, 20 (November
2000).

12 Hugh MacDiarmid, Scottish Eccentrics (London, 1936),
pp. 99, 105.

13 Quoted in Christine Alexander, 'Readers and Writers: Black-
wood's and the Brontes' ', The Gaskell Society Journal, 8(1994),
p. 57-

14 Blackwood's Magazine, May 1820, p. 187. In October 1820,
Boxiana published a sonnet 'On the Battle Between Men-
doza and Tom Owen, at Banstead Downs', also supposedly
by W. W., with a lengthy note on the difference between the
Fancy and fancy. For other examples of parodies using
pugilism for bathetic effects, see Gary Dyer, British Satire
and the Politics of Style, 1789-1832 (Cambridge, 1997), p. 56.

15 The term was coined by Jon Bee in Fancy ana (1824).

16 Egan, Boxiana: A Selection, p. 13.

17 Letters of John Keats: A Selection ed. Robert Gittings (Oxford,
1970), p. 311. Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 17-14

398

September 1819. Hazlitt noted the oddity of the contrast'
between the serious and 'flashy' passages in Don Juan. 'Lord
Byron', Lectures on the English Poets and The Spirit of the Age
(London, 1910), p. 241.

18 Byron, Don Juan, in Complete Poetical Works, pp. 790-1.
By Canto xv, stanza xi, the narrator tells us that 'since in
England', his mind has 'assumed a manlier vigour' (p. 833).

19 Byron, Don Juan, in Complete Poetical Works, p. 918.

20 P. W. Graham, Lord Byron s Bulldog: The Letters of John Cam
Hobhouse to Lord Byron (Columbus, oh, 1984), p. 32; Thomas
Moore, The Letters and Journals of Lord Byron (London, 1875),
p. 446.

21 Gary Dyer, 'Thieves, Boxers, Sodomites: Being Flash to
Byron' s Don Juan, PMLA (2001), pp. 562-78 (p. 564).

22 Moore, Poetical Works (London, 1829), p. 159.

23 Benita Eissler, Byron (London, 1999), p. 103.

24 Washington Irving, 'Buckthorne, or the Young Man of Great
Expectations', in Tales of a Traveller, by Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
(1824), ed. Judith Giblin Haig (Boston, 1987), p. 121.

25 Robert Southey, Letters from England, ed. Jack Simmons
(London, 1951), p. 451.

26 [Henry Luttvell], Advice to Julia: A letter in rhyme (London,
1820), p. 32.

27 Tom Moore's Diary: A Selection, ed.J. B.Priestley (Cam-
bridge, 1925), pp. 17-18. Entry for 29 November and 4
December 1818.

28 John Hamilton Reynolds, The Fancy: A Selection from the Po-
etical Remains of the Late Peter Corcoran, ofGray'sInn, Student
of Law, with a Brief Memoir of His Life (1820), reprinted with
a prefatory memoir and notes by John Masefield and illus-
trations by Jack B. Yeats (London, 1905), pp. 64, 74.

29 Reynolds, The Fancy, p. xxi.

30 Thomas De Quincey, 'The Pretensions of Phrenology', in
Works, ed. David Groves (London, 2000), vol. v, p. 323.

31 Thomas De Quincey, 'To a Reader; Invitation to a Set-To on
Greek Literature', in Works (London, 2000), vol. vi, p. 226.

32 Andrew Crichton, Edinburgh Evening Post, 28 June 1828, in
De Quincey, Works, vol. vi, p. 194.

33 William Hazlitt, 'Introduction to Elizabethan Literature',
in The Fight and Other Writings, ed.Tom Paulin and David
Chandler (Harmondsworth, 2000), p. 64; 'William
Godwin', in The Fight and Other Writings, p. 280; 'Mr.
Wordsworth', The Fight and Other Writings, p. 306.

34 Hazlitt, 'On Shakespeare and Milton' (1818), in The Fight and
Other Writings, pp. 92, 97, 101. In a later essay, 'Poetry' (1829),
he describes Perdita's speech on flowers in The Winter's Tale
as 'knocking] down' English readers: The Fight and Other
Writings, p. 208.

35 Hazlitt, 'Gusto' (1817), in The Fight and Other Writings, pp. 78,
80.

36 Hazlitt, 'On the Prose-Style of Poets' (1826), in The Fight and
Other Writings, p. 406.

37 Linda Colley, 'I am the Watchman', London Review of Books,
20 November 2003, p. 16.

38 William Hazlitt, 'Character of Cobbett' (1821), in The Fight

and Other Writings, p. 129.

39 Hazlitt, 'Character of Cobbett', p. 133. The allusion here is

to Don Quixote. A more general essay, on 'Parliamentary
Eloquence', repeats the claim that, a 'repetition of blows . . .
is of no use, unless they are struck in the same place': The
Fight and Other Writings, p. 323.

40 The phrase is used in a newspaper clipping describing the
fight which is glued on to Byron's screen.

41 Peter Radford, The Celebrated Captain Barclay: Sport, Money
and Fame in Regency Britain (London, 2001), p. 23.

42 Hazlitt, 'Character of Cobbett', p. 138.

43 Hazlitt, 'Jack Tars', in The Fight and Other Writings, p. 157.

44 Hazlitt, 'Jack Tars', p. 158.

45 Much of Hazlitt's language is Lockean: 'The idea of solidity
we receive by our touch; and it arises from the resistance
which we find in body to the entrance of any other body
into the place it possesses . . .'; '"hard" and "soft" are names
that we give to things only in relation to the constitutions of
our own bodies'. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, ed. A. D. Woozley (Glasgow, 1984), pp. 103,
105. See also Tom Paulin, The Day-Star of Liberty: William
Hazlitt's Radical Style (London, 1998), p. 31.

46 Hazlitt, 'Madame Pasta and Mademoiselle Mars', in The
Fight and Other Writings, p. 483, 485.

47 Hazlitt, 'A Farewell to Essay-Writing', in The Fight and Other
Writings, p. 540.

48 'Letter to Pierce Egan, Esq.', quoted by Duncan Wu in his
'Introductory Note' to Table Talk, ed. Wu (London, 1998),
p. xii.

49 John Hamilton Reynolds, London Magazine, 7 (May 1823),
quoted in Wu, 'Introductory Note', Table Talk, p.xv.

50 Hazlitt, 'The Fight', in The Fight and Other Writings, p. 140,
quoting Hamlet, 11. ii 600-1.

51 John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 11, 11. 714-16.

52 David Bromwich, Hazlitt: The Mind of a Critic (New Haven,
1983), pp. 436-7, n. 10. The deleted passage, which
Bromwich quotes, comes in the third paragraph, after T
passed Hyde Park Corner', and before, 'Suddenly I heard the
clattering of the Brentford stage'. For a full discussion about
the ways in which Hazlitt negotiates between sentiment and
its 'apparent opposite', see David Higgins, 'Englishness,
Effeminacy, and the New Monthly Magazine: Hazlitt's The
Fight in Context', Romanticism, 10 (2004), pp. 170-90. See
also Gregory Dart, 'Romantic Cockneyism: Hazlitt and the
Periodical Press', Romanticism, 6 (2000), pp. 143-62.

53 William Hazlitt, Liber Amoris (London, 1957), p. 89.

54 Hazlitt, 'On Going a Journey', in Table Talk, p. 166.

55 Arguing against the introduction of class distinctions into
literary criticism in an 1821 essay, Hazlitt quoted Jem Belch-
er's response when asked how he felt when facing a larger
opponent: 'An' please ye, sir, when I am stript to my shirt,

I am afraid of no man.' 'Pope, Lord Byron, and Mr. Bowies',
London Magazine (June 1821), p. 594.

56 Hazlitt, 'The Indian Jugglers' (1821), in The Fight and Other
Writings, p. 125. On the competing claims of androgynous
and masculine prose for Coleridge, see Tim Fulford,
Romanticism and Masculinity (London, 1999), ch. 4.

57 Hazlitt, 'The Indian Jugglers', pp. 115-16.

58 Hazlitt, 'On the Qualifications Necessary to Success',

399

London Magazine l (June 1820), p. 653 fn.

59 Hazlitt, 'Prose-Style and the Elgin Marbles', in The Fight and
Other Writings, p. 240.

60 Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art, ed. Robert R. Wark
(San Marino, ca, 1959), p. 171.

61 Hazlitt, 'On the Pleasure of Painting', in The Fight and Other
Writings, pp. 22-3; 'On the Elgin Marbles', Part 11, in The
Fight and Other Writings, pp. 225, 231; 'On Hogarth's Mar-
riage- a -la-Mode', Vart u, in The Fight and Other Writings, p.
167; 'Prose-Style and the Elgin Marbles', in TheFightand
Other Writings, p. 240.

62 William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, ed. Ronald Paulson
(New Haven, ct, 1997), p. 67.

63 Reynolds complained that the Boxers 'are engaged in the
most animated action with the greatest serenity of counte-
nance. This is not recommended for imitation'. Discourses
on Art, p. 181.

64 Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique:
The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900 (New Haven, 1981),
p- 339-

65 John Flaxman, Lectures on Sculpture (London, 1829), pp. 119-
20.

66 Pierce Egan, Boxiana; or Sketches of Ancient and Modern
Pugilism (London, 1818), vol. 1, p. 20. See also Sarah Hyde,
'The Noble Art: Boxing and Visual Culture in Early Eight-
eenth-Century Britain', in Boxer: An Anthology of Writings on
Boxing and Visual Culture, ed. David Chandler, John Gill,
Tania Guha and Gilane Tawadros (London, 1996), pp. 93-7,
and Ronald Paulson, Hogarth (Cambridge, 1991), vol. 1,

pp. 23-4.

67 Jenny Uglow offers allegorical readings of Figg's presence:
m South wark Fair , he 'could suggest that old political prize-
fighters too should be wary of challengers'; in The Rake's
Progress, he represents 'the old squirarchical pleasures' that
the Rake is rejecting. Hogarth, pp. 243, 248.

68 William Hazlitt, 'On Genius and Common Sense' (1821), in
The Fight and Other Writings, p. 535. Tom Oliver defeated
Ned Painter in May 1814. On Kean's interest in the 'aesthetic
of boxing', see Jeffrey Kahan, TheCultofKean (London,
2006), pp. 13-19.

69 Haydon's interest extended beyond the life class. His diary
records trips to the Fives Court and the eager perusal of a
fight report. The Diary of Benjamin Robert Haydon, ed.
Willard Bissell Pope (Cambridge, ma, i960), vol. 11, pp. 220,
452.

70 The Diary of Joseph Farington, ed.KathrynCave (New Haven,
1982), vol. ix, pp. 3300-1.

71 Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, p. 68. Some years later
Thomas Carlyle, arguing for the importance of the
'Intuitive' over the 'Logical', asked 'does the boxer hit
better for knowing that he has a flexor longus and a flexor
brevis?' 'Characteristics', Edinburgh Review, 59 (December
1831).

72 The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol. ix, p. 3306; Sir Charles
Bell, The Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression with the Fine
Arts (London, 1890), pp. 10-11.

73 The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol. ix, pp. 3320-21. In 1744

Jack Broughton modelled for the arms of Michael
Rysbrack's sculpture Hercules, housed in the Stourhead
Pantheon. See Richard Warner, Excursion from Bath
(London, 1801), p. 111; M. I. Webb, 'Sculpture by Rysbrack at
Stourhead', The Burlington Magazine, 92 (November 1950),
p. 311.

74 On representations of Dutch Sam, see Ruti Ungar, 'On
Shylocks, Toms and Bucks: Images of Minority Boxers in
Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Britain', in
Fighting Back? Jewish and Black Boxers in Britain, ed. Michael
Berkowitz and Ruti Ungar (London, 2007), pp. 19-31.

75 Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1, 1.330. According to Michael
Levey, the painting was 'generally accounted a failure'. Sir
Thomas Lawrence, 1769-1830, exh. cat., National Portrait
Gallery, London (London, 1979), p. 34.

76 Boxiana: A Selection, p. 48.

77 For fuller accounts of these paintings, and Homer Reciting
His Poems to the Greeks, in which Jackson appears in the fore-
ground as the young victor in the foot race, see Douglas
Goldring, Regency Portrait Painter: The Life of Sir Thomas
Lawrence, P.R.A. (London, 1951), pp. 74-5, 110-11, 196, and
Radford, The Celebrated Captain Barclay, pp. 43-6, 64.

78 On the more general use of boxing prints for political and
satirical purposes, see Seymour Howard, 'Boxing Broad-
sides', in Popular Art: Essays on Urban Imagery, ed. Elizabeth
Adan (Berkeley, ca, 1992), pp. 18-19.

79 See Lorenz E. A. Eitner, Gericault: His Life and Work
(London, 1983)^.91.

80 See Maureen Ryan, 'Liberal Ironies, Colonial Narratives and
the Rhetoric of Art: Reconsidering Gericault 's Radeau dela
Meduse and the Traite des Negres', in Theodore Gericault: The
Alien Body / Tradition in Chaos, exh. cat., Morris and Helin
Belkin Gallery, University of British Columbia (Vancouver,
1997), pp. 18-51.

81 John Masefield, 'Introduction', to Reynolds, The Fancy, p. 19.

82 Quoted in Carol Bock, '"Our Plays": the Bronte juvenilia',

in The Cambridge Companion to the Brontes, ed. Heather Glen
(Cambridge, 2002), p. 48. In Charlotte Bronte's Corner
Dishes (1834), the young Duke of Zamorna employs a
pugilist as his private secretary and sparring companion.
Christine Alexander and Margaret Smith, The Oxford
Companion to the Brontes (Oxford, 2003), pp. 414-15.

83 Patrick Branwell Bronte, Works, ed. Victor Neufeldt (New
York, 1997), vol. 1, p. 177.

84 See Mary Butterfield, Brother in the Shadow: Stories and
Sketches by Patrick Branwell Bronte '(Bradford, 1988), pp.
121-5, and Christopher Heywood, '"Alas! Poor Caunt":
Branwell's Emancipationist Cartoon', Bronte Society Trans-
actions, 21, no. 5 (1995), pp. 177-85.

85 Juliet Barker, The Brontes (London, 1999), p. 229.

86 John Clare, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Eric Robinson
(Oxford, 1983), p. 144.

87 Iain McCalman and Maureen Perkins, 'Popular Culture',
in The Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age, ed. Iain
McCalman (Oxford, 1999), p. 220.

88 Jonathan Bate, John Clare: A Biography (London, 2003),
p. 438.

400

89 John Clare, Letters, ed. Mark Storey (Oxford, 1985), p. 648 n.

90 Northampton MS. Jotting, quoted in Clare: The Critical
Heritage, ed. Mark Storey (London, 1973), p. 3. See also
Edward Strickland, 'Boxer Byron: A Clare Obsession', The
Byron Journal, 17 (1989), pp. 57-76.

91 Clare, Letters, p. 647.

92 H. D. Miles, Pugilistica (Edinburgh, 1906), vol. 1, pp. 442-3.
The fight took place on 18 April; the Battle of Waterloo on 18
June. The image is reproduced in Christine Alexander and
JaneSellars, The Art of the Brontes (Cambridge, 1995), p. 95.

4 Fighting, Rightly Understood'

1 'Punch's Theatre', Punch, 25 September 1841, p. 131.

2 Matthew Arnold, 'Culture and Anarchy and Other Writings,
ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 109, 114-15. Arnold
takes his description of the Barbarians from Tennyson's
'The Princess' (1847).

3 Quoted in Carol Lansbury, 'Sporting Humor in Victorian
Literature', Mosaic, 9, 4 (Summer 1976), p. 70.

4 John Ford, Prizefighting (Newton Abbot, 1971), p. 188.

5 William Hazlitt, 'Rev. Mr. Irving' (1825), in Lectures on the
English Poets and The Spirit of the Age (London, 1910), p. 205.

6 Vincent Bowling, Bell's Life, 2 October 1825, in Ford,
Prizefighting, pp. 189-90.

7 William Cobbett, 'In Defense of Boxing' (1805), in Cohhett's
England, ed.JohnDerry (London, 1968), p. 178.

8 Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (Oxford, 1986),
p. 295.

9 George Borrow, Lavengro (Oxford, 1982), pp. 157-9.

10 Thomas Hardy links modern prizefighting to the ghosts of
'gladiatorial combat', both of which prefigure the 'mortal
commercial combat' in which Henchard and Farfrae are
engaged. The Mayor of Casterbridge (YiaYmondswo\:\h, 1978),
pp. 141. 142, 186.

11 Jon Hurley, Tom Spring (Stroud, 2002), p. 75.

12 Borrow, Lavengro, p. 167. Lavengro and its sequel, The
Romany Rye (1857), are full of fights and stories of old-school
pugilists.

13 Elliot J. Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in
America (Ithaca, ny, 1986), p. 40.

14 Viscount Knebworth, Boxing (London, 1931), pp. 36-7.

15 Quoted in Alan Lloyd, The Great Prize Fight (London, 1977),
p. 9-

16 Ibid., pp. 13, 7. See also Arthur Conan Doyle, 'Bendy's
Sermon', in Songs of the Road (1911).

17 Quoted in Hershel Parker, Herman Melville: A Biography
(Baltimore, 1996), vol. 1, pp. 501-2.

18 Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or, The Whale (Harmonds-
worth 1972), p. 266.

19 Gorn, The Manly Art, pp. 148-9.

20 This claim was made in All the Year Round (19 May i860).
The author, John Hollingshead, felt it necessary to begin his
piece by announcing that it was with the 'encouragement' of
'my friend the Conductor of this Journal' (that is, Dickens)
that he both attended the fight and wrote about it. The essay

begins, 'There was a period, not more than some six months
ago, when most of us thought we could never publicly state
that we had seen a prize fight.' H. D. Miles, Tom Sayers,
Sometime Champion of England, His Life and Pugilistic Career
(London, 1866), Appendix, pp. xx-xxxii.

21 Heenan had worked in the foundries of the Pacific Mail
Steamship Company in Benicia. Forty years later the
teenage Jack London briefly worked, and drank, there. See
John Barleycorn (1913), ch. 12. In England, the name provided
opportunities for numerous jokes. Punch pretended it was a
girl's name; Surtees adopted it for the name of a wayward
stag. 'The Wrong Ring for Ladies', Punch, 3 March i860,

p. 87; R. S. Surtees, Mr Facey Romford's Hounds (London,
1865).

22 Lloyd, The Great Prize Fight, pp. 72-3.

23 Ibid., pp. 113-15.

24 Farnborough was easily served by both the South Eastern
and South Western lines. Railways, and special excursion
trains, made it possible for a much wider social spectrum,
as well as greater numbers, of spectators to attend sporting
events. James Walvin, Leisure and Society, 1830-1950
(London, 1978), pp. 24-7. For an account of the journey to
Farnborough, see Miles, Tom Sayers, pp. 164-6.

25 See Hugh Walpole's The Fortress (London, 1932), Part rv, for
a fictional account of the fight.

26 Lloyd, The Great Prize Fight, p. 145.

27 Quoted in Punch, 26 May i860, p. 210.

28 Charles Dickens, 'The Uncommercial Traveller: Shy Neigh-
bourhoods', in The Uncommercial Traveller and other Papers,
1859-70, ed. Michael Slater and John Drew (London, 2000),
p. 119.

29 Lloyd, The Great Prize Fight, p. 133.

30 The Times, 16 June 1904, p. 9.

31 James Joyce, Ulysses (Harmondsworth, 1992), p. 311. See J.
Lawrence Mitchell, 'Joyce and Boxing', James Joyce Quarterly,
31, 2 (1994), pp. 21-9.

32 Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil (Harmondsworth, 1980), pp. 395,
397-

33 Ibid., p. 58.

34 George Eliot, Letters, ed. Gordon S. Haight (New Haven,
1954), vol. in, pp. 289-90. The following year Lewes's son,
Thornton, sent his father an excited letter telling him of his
fight with a 'Mr. R'. He concludes the letter, 'That is all, as
Sayers said to Heenan, when he split the latter's eye open'.
Eliot, Letters, ed. Gordon S. Haight (New Haven, 1978), vol.
viii, pp. 294-5. Black eyes are also the mark of prize-fighters
in Anthony Trollope's The Small House at Allington
(Harmondsworth, 1991), p. 382.

35 William Allingham, A Diary, 1824-1889 (Harmondsworth,
1985), pp. 85-6.

36 William Makepeace Thackeray, 'On Some Late Great Victo-
ries', in Roundabout Papers, ed.John Edwin Wells (New York,
1925), pp. 41-7. Thackeray also published (anonymously)
'The Fight of Sayerius and Heenanus: A Lay of Ancient
London', a parody of 'Horatius', one of Macaulay's Lays of
Ancient Rome (1842). Punch (28 April i860), p. 177.

37 William Makepeace Thackeray, 'De Juvente', in Roundabout

401

Essays, pp. 83-4.

38 William Makepeace Thackeray, 'John Leech's Pictures of Life
and Character', Quarterly Review, 191 (December 1854).

39 William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (Oxford, 1983),
p. 70.

40 Ibid., pp. 112, 128, 113. On more recent Oxford University
boxing, see Blue Blood, dir. Stevan Riley (2006).

41 Ibid., pp. 424-5, 427-8, 430.

42 Vanity Fair's villain, Lord Steyne is modelled on the Earl of
Yarmouth, a patron of Gentleman John Jackson. Lord
Yarmouth spoke on 'the national unity of the pugilistic art'
at the inaugural dinner of the Pugilistic Club in 1814. Peter
Radford, The Celebrated Captain Barclay (London, 2001),
p. 222. Yarmouth is also the model for Lord Monmouth in
Disraeli's Coningsby (1844).

43 Thackeray, Vanity Fair, p. 685.

44 Robert Browning, 'A Likeness', in Robert Browning: A Criti-
cal Edition of the Major Works, ed. Adam Roberts (Oxford,
1997), pp- 341-2. The eponymous hero of Washington
Irving's 'Buckthorne' recalls his Oxford college room as
'decorated with whips of all kinds, spurs, fowling pieces,
fishing rods, foils and boxing gloves.' Tales of a Traveller,
by Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, ed. Judith Giblin Haig (Boston,
1987), pp. 95-127. Schoolboy studies were decorated in a
similar style. See Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays
(Oxford, 1999), p. 94.

45 George Eliot, Middlemarch (Harmondsworth, 1994),
pp. 557-8.

46 George Eliot, Adam Bede (Harmondsworth, 1980), p. 8.

47 Ibid., p. 19. By the end of the novel, Eliot suggests that
Adam's moral sensibility has developed 'like a muscle' to
match his physical prowess (p. 489). On Eliot's debt to
Thomas Hughes, see Maureen M. Martin, '"Boys who
will be Men": Desire in Tom Brown's Schooldays' , Victorian
Literature and Culture, 30, 2 (2002), pp. 483-502.

48 Eliot, Adam Bede, pp. 62-3, 163, 165.

49 Ibid., p. 302.

50 Darwin distinguishes Natural Selection, the 'struggle

for existence', from Sexual Selection, the 'struggle between
the males for possession of the females', in which 'special
weapons confined to the male sex' ensure victory. The
Origin Of Species (Oxford, 1996), p. 73. 1 am not claiming
a direct influence. Adam Bede was published in February;
Eliot read The Origin of Species shortly after it appeared
in November.

51 Eliot, Adam Bede, p. 310.

52 InR. D.Blackmore'sIo/TM D00«e(i869), schoolboy John
Ridd speculates on the roots of the expression: 'whether that
word hath origin in a Greek term meaning a conflict, as the
best-read boys asserverated, or whether it is nothing more
than a figure of similitude, from the beating arms of a mill . . .
it is not for a man devoid of scholarship to determine'.
Lorna Doone (London, 1967), pp. 28-9.

53 In 'On Some Late Great Victories', Thackeray personified
Morality as a woman, only to interrupt her, 'Have the great
kindness to stand a leetle aside, and just let us see one or
two more rounds between the men' (p. 43).

54 See, for example, Samuel Warren, 'The Thunder Struck and
the Boxer' (1832), in Tales of Terror from Blackwood's
Magazine, ed. Robert Morrison and Chris Baldick (Oxford,
1995), pp. 243-80.

55 Thomas Ingoldsby, 'The Ghost', in The Ingoldshy Legends, or
Mirth and Marvels (London, 1840), pp. 96-7.

56 George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (Harmondsworth, 1985),
pp. 90, 107, 237, 258, 447-8, 506, 537-

57 George Bernard Shaw, 'Preface' to Cashel Byron's Profession
(London, 1925), p. xvii.

58 Thackeray, Vanity Fair, pp. 49, 50. This reworks a similar
scene set in an 1843 short story, 'Mr. And Mrs. Frank Berry'.
See The Fitz-Boodle Papers and Men's Wives (London, 1857), p.
59. The school is called 'Slaughter House'; Thackeray attend-
ed Charterhouse, where he broke his nose in a fight.

59 Thackeray, Vanity Fair, p. 54. Although Dobbin is named for
the fruit his father sells, Thackeray may also be alluding to
the prize-fighter James Figg.

60 An example of this interchange was Thomas Moore's
description of Waterloo as 'that great day of milling, when
blood lay in lakes, / When Kings held the bottle, and
Europe the stakes.' 'Epistle from Tom Cribb to Big Ben'
(1818), in Poetical Works (London, 1891), pp. 588-9.

61 Asa Briggs, Victorian People (Harmondsworth, 1965), p. 152.

62 So said Blackwood's Magazine (February 1861), p. 131.

63 The phrase 'muscular Christianity' was first used in T. C.
Sandars's review of Charles Kingsley's Two Years Ago (1857).
Donald E. Hall, 'Introduction', Muscular Christianity:
Embodying the Victorian Age (Cambridge, 1994), ed. Hall,

p. 7. See also J. A. Mangan, 'Bullies, beatings, battles and
bruises: "great days and jolly days" in one mid-Victorian
public school', in Disreputable Pleasures, ed. Mike Huggins
and J. A. Mangan (Abingdon, 2004), pp. 23-5.

64 Bruce Haley, The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture
(Cambridge, ma, 1978), p. 4.

65 Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays, pp. 281-2.

66 E.S.Turner, Boys Will be Boys (London, 1948), pp. 247.

67 Ibid., p. 254.

68 Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays, pp. 282, 301. On Hughes's
debt here to Thomas Carlyle, see David Rosen, 'The
volcano and the cathedral: muscular Christianity and the
origins of primal manliness', in Muscular Christianity, ed.
Hall, p. 25.

69 On Hughes's concern with the concept of England, see Den-
nis W. Allen, 'Young England: muscular Christianity and the
politics of the body in Tom Brown's Schooldays', in Muscular
Christianity, ed. Hall, pp. 114-32.

70 1 Corinthians, 9: 26-7. Hughes makes this observation as
Tom is about to have his first taste of a 'town and gown row'.
Tom Brown at Oxford (London, 1861), vol. 1, pp. 198-200.
Hughes attended Oriel College, which he described as 'the
accepted home of the noble science of self-defence'. Edward
C. Mack and W.H.G. Armytage, Thomas Hughes (London,
1952), p. 28. At Cambridge, Thomas Welsh, better known as
Massa Sutton, taught Charles Kingsley to box. Peter Fryer,
Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London,
1984), p. 451.

402

71 See Richard Jenkyns, The Victorians and Ancient Greece
(Oxford, 1980), pp. 280-97, and Alex Potts, Flesh and the
Ideal (New Haven, 1994), pp. 239-53.

72 Walter Pater, 'The Age of Athletic Prizemen', in Greek
Studies (London, 1910), pp. 276, 279. Pater compares
ancient athletes with modern cricketers.

73 Walter Pater, 'Winckelmann' (1867), in The Renaissance
(Oxford, 1989), p. 137; 'The Age of Athletic Prizemen', in
Greeks Studies, p. 280.

74 Pater, 'The Age of Athletic Prizemen', p. 295 (my emphasis).

75 Norman Vance finds a 'possible meeting point' between
Muscular Christian ideals and Pater's aestheticism in the
'moralised Hellenism' of the Revd. E.C.Letroy. The Sinews of
the Spirit (Cambridge, 1985), p. 185. James Eli Adams argues
that Carlyle is their common root. 'Pater's muscular aes-
theticism', in Muscular Christianity, ed. Hall, pp. 215-38.

76 Briggs, Victorian People, p. 160.

77 In his personal life, the Marquess was also pugnacious. Best
known as the father of Oscar Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred
Douglas (Bosie), and Wilde's great antagonist, the police
intervened to stop him fighting on the street with his son
Percy. The Tenth Marquess of Queensberry, The Sporting
Queensherrys (London, 1942), p. 141.

78 Donald Thomas, The Victorian Underworld (New York,
1998), p. 195.

79 Marquess of Queensberry, The Sporting Queensherrys, p. 116.

80 The Native Americans opposed the election of foreigners to
office, and demanded the repeal of naturalization laws. See
Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York (London, 2002),
ch. 5; Edward Van Every, Sins of New York as l exposed'by the
Police Gazette (New York, 1930); Gorn, The Manly Art, ch. 3.
On the wider context, see Richard B. Stott, Workers in the
Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York
City (Ithaca, ny, 1990).

81 Gorn, TheManly Art, p. 164. The Rev. Gilbert Haven
compared Ulysses S. Grant to Morrissey, describing him as
'but a boxer on a bigger scale', who 'fights with others' fists'.
National Sermons (Boston, 1869), p. 617.

82 Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 'Saints and Their Bodies', in
Major Problems in American Sport History, ed. Steven A. Riess
(Boston, 1997), pp. 83-85.

83 Oliver Wendall Holmes, 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast
Table', Atlantic Monthly, 1 (May 1858), p. 881.

84 Walt Whitman, 'A Song of Joys', in Leaves of Grass (Oxford,
1990), p. 143. See also Whitman, 'Pugilism and Pugilists'
(1858), in / Sit and Look Out: Editorials from the Brooklyn
Daily Times, ed. Emory Holloway and Vernolian Schwarz
(New York, 1932), pp. 105-6.

85 Henry James, The American (Harmondsworth, 1991),
pp- 33 _ 4, 52-3, 56. Eric Haralson connects Newman's
'corporeal and capitalist energies'. 'Henry James's The Ameri-
can: A (New)man is Being Beaten', American Literature 64
(1992), p. 478. Jeffory A. Clymer links the novel to changes in
late nineteenth-century boxing, most of which, however,
occurred after the novel's publication. 'The Market in Male
Bodies: Henry James's The American and Late-Nineteenth-
Century Boxing', The Henry James Review, 25(2004),

pp. 127-45.

86 Henry James, The Bostonians (Harmondsworth, 1976),
p. 290.

87 Duffield Osborne, 'A Defence of Pugilism ', North American
Review, April 1888, pp. 434-5. Frederick Jackson Turner's
'The Significance of the Frontier in American History' (1893)
is the classic expression of this anxiety.

88 Theodore Roosevelt, 'The Strenuous Life' (1900), in Works
(New York, 1926), vol. xm, p. 319. On Roosevelt as a Harvard
student boxer, see Jacob A. Riis, Theodore Roose\>elt, The
Citizen (New York, 1903), pp. 29-31.

89 Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York, 1985),
p. 42.

90 Vance, Sinews of the Spirit, p. 52.

91 The difference is made clear by Colin, the protagonist of
Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1911 novel, The Secret Garden.
Happy to acquire muscles that 'stand out like lumps', Colin
is appalled by the thought that he might resemble a prize-
fighter. The Secret Garden (Oxford, 2002), pp. 250, 270.

92 Mack and Armytage, Thomas Hughes, p. 98.

93 Ibid., pp. 79-80. See J. Llewelyn Davies, The WorkingMen's
College 1854-1904 (London, 1904).

94 Walter Besant, East London (London, 1901), p. 172.

95 Walter Besant, All Sorts and Conditions of Men (Oxford,
1997), p. 182. Harry's father, it turns out, had in 'his
Corinthian days . . . often repaired to Seven Dials to see
noble sportsmen chez Ben Caunt'. All Sorts and Conditions of
Men, p. 225.

96 Besant, East London, pp. 329-31.

97 See J. S. Reed, 'Ritualism Rampant in East London -
Anglo-Catholicism and the Urban Poor', Victorian Studies,
31, 3 (1988), pp. 375-403; John Springhall, 'Building
character in the British boy: the attempt to extend Christian
manliness to working-class adolescents, 1880-1914', in
Manliness and Morality, ed.J. A. Mangan and James Walvin
(Manchester, 1987), pp. 52-74; and on a similar phenome-
non in 1930s Chicago, Gerard R. Gems, 'Selling Sport and
Religion in American Society: Bishop Sheil and the Catholic
Youth Organization', in The New American Sport History, ed.
S. W. Pope (Urbana, il, 1997), pp. 300-11.

98 Robert Baden-Powell suggested that boxing might help
combat 'the deterioration of our race' noted after the Boer
War. Scouting for Boys (Oxford, 2005), pp.184, 192. He recom-
mends A. J. Newton's 1904 manual, Boxing. A rabbi's son
learns to box at Manchester's Jewish Lads' Brigade in 1916
in Louis Golding, Magnolia Street (Nottingham, 2006),
pp. 329-30.

99 Vladimir Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita (Harmondsworth,
1980), p. 45-

100 John Pearson, The Profession of Violence: The Rise and Fall of
theKray Twins (London, 1984), pp. 41, 43. See also Michael
Berkowitz, 'Jewish Blood-Sport: Between Bad Behavior and
Respectability', in Fighting Back? Jewish and Black Boxers in
Britain, ed. Michael Berkowitz and Ruti Ungar (London,
2007), pp. 67-82.

101 William Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out
(London, 1890).

403

102 Arthur Morrison, A Child ofthejago (London, 1996), p. 80.

103 Ibid., p. 173.

104 George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays
(Harmondsworth, 2003), p. 91.

105 John Carey, The Violent Effigy (London, 1973), p. 28.

106 Charles Dickens, Letters, vol. vi, ed. Graham Storey,
Kathleen Tillotson and Nina Burgis (Oxford, 1988), p. 777.

107 Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, p. 528. See also James E.
Marlow, 'Popular Culture, Pugilism and Pickwick', Journal
of Popular Culture, 15, no. 4 (1982), pp. 16-30.

108 Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop (Harmondsworth,
2000), pp. 111, 25, 106, 29.

109 Joseph Addison, The Spectator (London, 1907), vol. 1, p. 123.

110 Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, p. 225. On Victorian pubs
run by ex-boxers, see Walvin, Leisure and Society, pp. 35-6.

111 Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, p. 373.

112 Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son (Harmondsworth, 2002),
pp- 313, 577, 622, 442.

113 Charles Dickens, Bleak House (Harmondsworth, 1996),
p. 304.

114 An earlier example than those given in the oed can be found
in Washington Irving's 'Buckthorne' (1824). The narrator
says, 'I felt as if I could have fought even unto the death; and
I was likely to do so; for he, was, according to the boxing
phraze, "putting my head into Chancery" . . .'; Tales of a
Traveller, p. 111.

115 'Legal Pugilism', Punch, 7 August 1841, p. 41.

116 Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (London,
1996), p. 46.

117 Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, p. 1. See Lois E. Chaney, 'The
Fives' Court', Dickensian, 81 (1985), pp. 86-7.

118 Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (Harmondsworth,
1996), p. 298.

119 Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, p. 537.

120 After calling Mr Pickwick 'a humbug' in the book's opening
chapter, Mr Blotton says 'he had used the word in its Pick-
wickian sense'. Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, p. 6.

121 Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (Harmondsworth, 1996),
pp.170, 246, 650, 652. Mr Jarndyce, in Bleak House, is also oc-
casionally 'floored': when Esther rejects his plum pudding in
Chapter Three and when she describes Mrs Jelleby as 'a little
unmindful of her home' in Chapter Six.

122 Charles Dickens, Hard Times (Harmondsworth, 1985), p. 50.

123 Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, pp. 279-80. 'Backing the little
one' is a principle of chivalry for Roboshobery Dove in
Arthur Morrison's Cunning Murrell (London, 1900), p. 206.

124 Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (Harmondsworth, 2002),
pp. 47-8. Martin Chuzzlewit decides to go to America after
attempting to strike Pecksniff. Martin Chuzzlewit (Oxford,
1982), pp. 182-3.

125 Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, p. 99. Nicholas also knocks down
the comic tragedian Mr. Lenville in ch. 29 and the villainous
Sir Mulberry Hawk in ch. 32.

126 Carey, The Violent Effigy, p. 29

127 Dickens, David Copperfield, p. 157.

128 Ibid., pp. 253-7. Thackeray's Barry Lyndon has tussles with
local lads for similar reasons: Barry Lyndon (Oxford, 1984),

pp. 17, 22.

129 Dickens, David Copperfield, pp. 261, 266, 282.

130 Ibid., pp. 356, 476, 530, 531, 354, 567, 571-2, 689, 697-8.

131 Ibid., pp. 395, 678, 735. See Juliet John, Dickens's Villains
(Oxford, 2001), pp. 175-82. Charlotte Bronte was equally
severe on latter-day Byronism. Jane Eyre's overbearing
rival, Miss Ingram, disapproves of modern young men as
'absorbed in care about their pretty faces and their white
hands'. Jane Eyre (Toronto, 1999), pp. 257-8.

132 Dickens, Great Expectations, pp. 60, 62-3. See also Robin
Gilmour, The Ldea of the Gentleman in the Victorian Novel
(London, 1981), p. 122.

133 Ibid., pp. 90-92. Mary Edminson dates the main action of
the novel as roughly 1807 to 1823; that is the era of Regency
boximania. 'The date of the action of Great Expectations ,
Nineteenth Century Fiction, 13 (1958), p. 31.

134 Dickens, Great Expectations, p. 93.

135 Ibid., pp. 47, 140-42, 225.

136 Dickens, David Copperfield, p. 283.

137 Dickens, Great Expectations, pp. 181, 185.

138 Wilkie Collins's muscular Christians are more sinister.
Geoffrey Delamayn fights with 'stuffed and padded gloves'
but they are only 'apparently harmless weapons'. Man and
Wife (Oxford, 1998), p. 174.

139 Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, pp. 45-6.

140 Charles Dickens, Speeches, ed. K.J. Fielding (London, 1988),
p. 123.

141 Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, pp. 175-6.

142 Arthur Conan Doyle, Rodney Stone (London, 1912), p. 12.

143 Francis Galton, 'On the Anthropometric Laboratory at the
Late International Health Exhibition', Journal of the Anthro-
pological Lnstitute, 14(1884), p. 211.

144 Fitzsimmons is claimed by several nations. He was born in
Cornwall in 1863, moved to New Zealand as a child, learned
to box in Australia and was an American citizen when he
won the heavyweight title.

145 Angus Wilson, The Naughty Nineties (London, 1976), pp. 6-7.

146 David Christie Murray, The Making of a Novelist (London,
1894), pp. 196-7, 198-99, 212.

147 The French Revolution and its aftermath was a popular sub-
ject for 1890s historical fiction. See Sandra Kemp, Charlotte
Mitchell and David Trotter, Edwardian Fiction (Oxford,
1997), pp- 185-6. Rodney Stone had its origins in a play which
Conan Doyle wrote as a vehicle for Sir Henry Irving in 1894.
The House ofTemperley: A Melodrama of the Ring ended with a
lengthy boxing match. Although, or perhaps because,
reviewers praised its 'life-like' quality, the play did not at-
tract large audiences. Daniel Stashower, Teller of Tales (New
York, 1999), pp. 268-9. Other historical novels of this period
featuring boxing include Arthur Morrison's Cunning Murrell
(1900) and, a favourite of the young Norman Mailer, Jeffrey
Farnol's The Amateur Gentleman (1913). Many of Georgette
Heyer's 1930s novels include Regency boxing.

148 Doyle, Rodney Stone, p. 251.

149 Stashower, Teller of Tales, p. 192.

150 Ibid., p. 35.

151 Arthur Conan Doyle, The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1903);

404

see, in particular, his encounter with the Bristol Bustler in
'How the King Held the Brigadier'. See also Conan Doyle's
'The Lord of Falconbridge', in which Tom Spring is tricked
into fighting the Lord, 'Jackson's favourite pupil'. The Last
Galley (1911).

152 A prize-fighter also features as a bodyguard to a diamond
magnate in 'A Costume Piece' by Doyle's brother-in-law, E.
W. Hornung. The presence of this 'paid bully' provides an
added challenge to Hornung's gentleman thief, Raffles. The
Amateur Cracksman (Harmondsworth, 2003), pp. 23-38.

153 Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four (Harmondsworth,
1982), p. 41.

154 Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays, p. 355.

155 Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
(Harmondsworth, 1950), p. 76.

5 like Any Other Profession'

1 Michael T. Isenberg,/o/m L. Sullivan and His Times (London,
1988), p. 13.

2 Tom Wolfe, Foreword, The Police Gazette, ed. Gene Smith
and Jayne Barry (New York, 1972), p. 10. See also Howard P.
Chudacoff, The Age of the Bachelor: Creating an American
Subculture (Princeton, 1999), pp. 193-210.

3 Smith, 'Introduction', The Police Gazette, pp. 15-16.

4 See Frank Butler, A History of Boxing in Britain (London,
1972), ch. 5.

5 Jose Marti, 'Letter from New York', in Jose Marti: Selected
Writings, ed. and trans. Esther Allen (Harmondsworth,
2002), pp. 107-15.

6 Robert Frost, 'New Hampshire', in Complete Poems (London,
1951). pp- 193-4- The poem was published in 1925 during the
heyday of William Jennings Bryan's fundamentalist crusade
against teaching the theory of evolution in public schools.

7 Theodore Dreiser, A Book about Myself (London, 1929),
pp. 150-51.

8 In 1903, depressed by the reception of Sister Carrie, Dreiser
went to a sanatorium run by William Muldoon, Sullivan's
trainer-manager, and later portrayed him in a 1919 story,
'Muldoon, the Strong Man'. Fulfilment and Other Tales of
Women and Men, ed. T. D. Nostwich (Santa Rosa, ca, 1992),
pp. 341-84. See Kathy Frederickson, 'Working Out to
Work Through: Dreiser in Muldoon's Body Shop of Shame',
in Theodore Dreiser and American Culture, ed. Yoshinobu
Hakutani (Newark, nj, 2000), pp. 115-37.

9 Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (Harmondsworth, 1981),
pp. 165, 43. In creating McTeague Frank Norris may also
have thought of Sullivan. Norris drew on a newspaper re-
port of a murder case, which said of the accused, Collins:
'Fancy a first cousin of John L. Sullivan's in Collins' dress and
situation and you have the man.' San Francisco Examiner,

14 October 1893, in McTeague (New York, 1977), p. 260.
10 Vachel Lindsay, 'John L. Sullivan, The Strong Boy of Boston',
in Collected Poems (New York, 1925), pp. 93-5. The poem is
dedicated to Louis Untermeyer and Robert Frost. In 1921
Frost wrote to another poet, Sara Teasdale, proposing to

include Lindsay's poem in a collection of poetry about Sulli-
van. The collection never materialized. Philip Cronenwett,
'Frost to Teasdale: A New Letter', Friends of the Dartmouth
Library Newsletter, no. 31 (July 2001), p. 3.

11 Edward Bellamy imagined that people of the future would
associate Bostonians with pugilistic skills. Looking Backward,
2000-1887 (New York, 2000), p. 26.

12 Lindsay used the phrase 'Higher Vaudeville imagination'
when introducing his poems in Poetry, A Magazine of Verse in
1913. The editor, Harriet Monroe, reprinted his comments
in her introduction to his collection The Congo and Other
Poems (New York, 1914).

13 Patrick Myler, Gentleman Jim Corbett (London, 1998),
pp. xiv, 46.

14 Ibid., pp. 216-21. Alan Woods argues that the marketing

of Corbett marks 'a major step in the American commercial-
ization of both sport and theatre.' 'James J. Corbett:
Theatrical Star', Journal of Sport History (Summer 1976),
p. 175-

15 Mark Twain, Selected Letters, ed. Charles Neider (New York,
1982), p. 224. Corbett ends his autobiography with his ver-
sion of this anecdote. He refers to Twain as 'dear old Mark,
another good friend of mine'. The Roar of the Crowd (New
York, 1925), p. 328. Twain had described Sullivan as the
kind of 'man of prowess' who would have done well in the
Middle Ages. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, in
Historical Romances (New York, 1994), p. 304.

16 For a full account of the Texan fight promoter Dan Stuart's
attempts to stage the fight, see Leo N. Mitetich, Dan
Stuart's Fistic Carnival (College Station, tx, 1994).

17 Myler, Gentleman Jim Corbett, p. 141; Theodore Roosevelt,
Autobiography (New York, 1985), p. 43.

18 Quoted in Steven A. Riess, 'In the Ring and Out: Profes-
sional Boxing in New York, 1896-1920', in Sport in Am erica:
New Historical Perspectives, ed. Donald Spivey (Westport, ct,
1985), p- 97-

19 From 1911 to 1918, a state commission ran these clubs, bring-
ing in around $49,000 in revenue a year. The 1920 Walker
Bill was modelled on the examples of the British National
Sports Club and Army, Navy and Civilian Board of Control.
In a 1906 short story, 'The Coming-out of Maggie', 0. Henry
describes 'the legal duress that constantly threatened' the
Give and Take Athletic Association of New York's East Side.
The Four Million (London, 1947), p. 53.

20 Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (New York, i960), pp. 96, 250.
Sinclair may have drawn on Alexander R. Piper's Report of
an Investigation of the Discipline and Administration of the
Police Department of the City of Chicago which described how
Joseph Kipley, Police Superintendent during the late 1890s,
supported an ultimately unsuccessful scheme to hold illegal
prizefights to aid a 'Police Relief Fund'. Piper, Report
(Chicago, 1904), pp. 5-11. See Perry R. Duis, The Saloon:
Public Drinking in Chicago and Boston, 1880-1920 (Urbana,

IL, I983), p. 240.

21 Jack London, John Barleycorn (Oxford, 1989), p. 3. See also
pp. 12, 27, 33-

22 G. Stanley Hall, Life and Confessions of a Psychologist (New

405

York, 1923), pp. 578-9. Although Hall officially disapproved
of prize-fights in his non-confessional writings, he vocifer-
ously championed the moral and physical benefits of
amateur boxing. See Adolescence (New York, 1904), p. 218;
Youth (New York, 1904), pp. 3, 78, 102-3.

23 Eakins's interest in professional, rather than amateur, box-
ing only began in the late 1890s, but once introduced to the
sport, Lloyd Goodrich notes, he attended the arena 'several
times a week . . . watching [the fights] with such intensity
that he would go through all the motions'. At 'polite parties
he would draw friends aside to discuss the latest bouts'.
Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins (Cambridge, ma, 1982), vol.
11, p. 144.

24 Salutat alludes to Hail Caesar! We Who Are About To Die
Salute You (1859) by Eakins's Paris teacher, Jean-Leon
Gerome. In 1866 Eakins wrote from Paris to his father about
the American reputation for boxing. Quoted in Goodrich,
Thomas Eakins, vol. 1, p. 21. Eakins described Gerome's
painting as depicting 'cold cruel barbarians' who kill each
other 'for love of fighting' while 'the fat hideous Caesar' is
raised far above them in his elaborate throne. Goodrich,
Thomas Eakins, vol. 1, pp. 45-6.

25 Goodrich, Thomas Eakins, vol. 11, p. 277.

26 Quoted in Martin A. Berger, Man Made: Thomas Eakins and
the Construction of Gilded Age Manhood (Berkeley , ca, 2000),
p. 113.

27 Michael Ha tt, 'Muscles, morals, mind: the male body in
Thomas Eakins' Salutat', in The Body Imaged, ed. Kathleen
Adler and Marcia Pointon (Cambridge, 1993), p. 68.

28 Bennard B. Perlman, Painters of the Ashcan School: The
Immortal Eight (New York, 1988), p. 56.

29 Quoted in Perlman, Painters of the Ashcan School, p. 89.

30 David E. Shi, Facing Facts: Realism in American Thought and
Culture, 1850-1920 (Oxford, 1995), p. 258.

31 Edward Lucie-Smith, American Realism (New York, 1994),
p. 69.

32 Bellows, quoted in Marianne Doezema, George Bellows and
Urban America (New Haven, 1992), p. 213, n. 58.

33 Doezema, George Bellows and Urban America, p. 100.

34 Charles Belmont Davis, 'The Renaissance of Coney', in
Tales of Gaslight New York, ed. Frank Oppel (Edison, nj,
1985), p. 29.

35 Doezema, George Bellows and Urban America, p. 100.

36 Quoted in Doezema, George Bellows and Urban America,
p. 215, n. 84.

37 See, for example, Robert Haywood, 'George Bellows 's Stag at
Sharkey's: Boxing, Violence, and Male Identity', Smithsonian
Studies in American Art, 2 (Spring 1988), pp. 3-15.

38 James Huneker, 'Seen in the World of Art', New York Sun

(5 March 1911). The 'mere manliness of Mr. Bellows 's style is
enough to distinguish him' from the general 'American
school of painting' in which 'there is so much that is effemi-
nate,' wrote Henry McBride: New York Sun (20 November
1921). Bellows is 'a real man, with "pep" enough for half a
dozen' declared the Boston Evening Transcript (13 January
1919). All are quoted in Shi, Facing Facts, p. 267.

39 George Santayana first used the phrase in his 1911 lecture

'The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy'.

40 Frank Norris, 'The True Reward of the Novelist', in The
Responsibilities of the Novelist and Other Literary Essays
(London, 1903), pp. 15-22.

41 Michael Hoiroyd, Bernard Shaw {Harmondsworth, 1990),
vol. 1, p. 114. George Bernard Shaw, 'Note on Modern
Prizefighting' (1901), appended to Cashel Byron's Profession
(London, 1925), p. 341.

42 A film of the novel, Roman Boxera, was made in Czecho-
slovakia in 1921. Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw
(Harmondsworth, 1993), vol. in, p. 374.

43 Shaw, 'Preface', Cashel Byron's Profession, pp. xii-xiii.

44 P. G.Wodehouse, 'The Pugilist in Fiction', The Independent
Shavian, 30, nos 1-2 (1992), pp. 2-14. A schoolboy boxer at
Dulwich, Wodehouse often wrote about boxers. See, for
example, 'The Debut of Battling Billson', in He Rather
Enjoyed It (1924) and Bachelors Anonymous (1973).

45 Norman Clark, '"Come to Lunch!" - G. Bernard Shaw:
Exclusive Interview' in Shaw: Interviews and Recollections,
ed. A. M. Gibbs (Iowa City, ia, 1990), pp. 94-5.

46 Clark, '"Come to Lunch!"', p. 195.

47 George Bernard Shaw, 'Joe Beckett v Georges Carpentier',
in Punches on the Page, ed. David Rayvern Allen (Edinburgh,
1998), pp. 41-7; Arnold Bennett, 'The Prize Fight', in Boxing
in Art and Literature, ed. William D. Cox (New York, 1935),
pp. 139-45-

48 Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, vol. 111, pp. 208-9. See also Jay
Tunney, 'The Playwright and the Prizefighter: Bernard Shaw
and Gene Tunney', shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw
Studies, 23 (2003), pp. 149-54; and 'Cashel Byron s Profession:
A Catalyst to Friendship - Life Imitates Art', shaw: The
Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, 25 (2005), pp. 52-8.

49 Shaw, 'Preface' to Cashel Byron 's Profession, p. xv.

50 Shaw, Cashel Byron's Profession, pp. 4, 7, 24, 141-2, 276.

51 Arthur Conan Doyle, 'The Croxley Master', The Green Flag
(London, 1905), pp. 104-70.

52 Shaw, Cashel Byron's Profession, p. 167; Shaw, 'Joe Beckett v
Georges Carpentier', p. 47.

53 Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, vol. 1, p. 114.

54 Shaw, 'Modern Prizefighting', pp. 345-6.

55 George Bernard Shaw, Preface, Plays Pleasant and Unpleas-
ant (London, 1898), vol. 1, pp. xxv-xxvi.

56 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York,
1953), pp. 172, 178-9, 182.

57 Theodor W. Adorno, 'Veblen's Attack on Culture', Prisms
(1967), trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber (Cambridge, ma,
1981), p. 81. For an example of an extended development
of this idea, see, Jean-Marie Brohm, Sport- A Prison of
Measured Time, trans. Ian Fraser (London, 1978).

58 Horace Fletcher, The a.b.-z of Our Own Nutrition (1903). See
Donald J. Mrozek, Sport and the American Mentality,
1880-1910 (Knoxville, tn, 1983), pp. 91-7, 196-9.

59 Jack London, The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other
Stories (Oxford, 1990), p. 22.

60 The raw is always preferable to the cooked. In Tarzan of
the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs contrasts the fastidious
Lord Greystoke who 'sent back his chops to the club's chef

406

because they were underdone, and when he had finished
his repast he dipped his finger-ends into a silver bowl of
scented water and dried them upon a piece of snowy
damask' with his nephew Tarzan, who gobbled down a
great quantity of the raw flesh' before wiping 'his greasy
fingers upon his naked thighs'. Burroughs, Tarzan of the
Apes (London, 1917), p. 77.

61 Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (Harmondsworth, 2002),
p. 53-

62 Jon Hurley, Tom Spring (Stroud, 2002), p. 18; Moses Browne,
'A Survey of the Amphitheatre', in The New Oxford Book of
Eighteenth Century Verse, ed. Roger Lonsdale (Oxford, 1984),
p. 292. See Ben Rogers, Beef and Liberty: Roast Beef John Bull
and the English Nation (London, 2003).

63 Quoted in The Great Prize Fight (London, 1977), pp. 80-81.

64 Norman Mailer, The Fight (London, 1975), pp. 27-8.

65 Quoted in Tom Spring, p. 26. See also Peter Radford, The
Celebrated Captain Barclay (London, 2001), pp. 169-70.

66 Benjamin Disraeli, 5yM(Harmondsworth, 1980), p. 119.

67 Daniel Mendoza, 'Observations on the Art of Pugilism',
Appendix to The Memoirs of the Life of Daniel Mendoza, ed.
Peter Magriel (London, 1951), p. 113.

68 Arthur Morrison, 'Three Rounds', in Tales of Mean Streets
(London, 1927), pp. 85-96. Stan Shipley has written on the
difficulty of conceiving boxers as a labour force in this
period. 'Tom Causer of Bermondsey - A Boxer Hero of the
1890s', History Workshop, 15 (1983), pp. 28-59.

69 In an early comic story, 'Shorty Stack, Pugilist' (1897), Frank
Norris too depicts the effects of stodge (here, potato salad)
on a boxer's stomach. The Apprenticeship Writings, ed. Joseph
R. McElrath, Jr and Douglas K. Burgess (Philadelphia, 1996),
vol. 1, pp. 187-95.

70 Jack London, 'A Piece of Steak', in The Portable Jack London,
ed. Earle Labor (Harmondsworth, 1994), pp. 232-48.

71 See, for example, his remarks on the 1905 'Britt-Nelson
Fight' in Jack London Reports, ed. King Hendricks and
Irving Shepard (New York, 1971), p. 258.

72 Jack London, 'The Somnambulists', in Re\>olution and Other
Essays (London, 1910), pp. 46-7, 50. The Federal Meat-In-
spection Act, designed to prevent adulterated livestock from
being sold as food, and to ensure that meat was slaughtered
and processed under sanitary conditions, was passed in
1906. For London, Darwin's ideas could be pretty much be
reduced to 'the law of meat', the title of Chapter Five of
White Fang (1906). See also Jack London, Smoke Bellew (1911),
chs. land 2.

73 London wrote an almost identical sentence mjohn
Barleycorn, only substituting drinking for boxing (p. 66).
'Certainly prize-fighting is not half as brutalizing or
demoralizing as many forms of big business,' concurred
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography, p. 43.

74 George Orwell, 'Introduction to Love of Life and Other
Stories by Jack London', in The Collected Essays, Journalism
and Letters, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (Harmonds-
worth, 1970), vol. iv, p. 45.

75 Orwell, 'Introduction to Love of Life', p. 47. Orwell concludes
that 'if [London] had been a politically reliable person he

would probably have left behind nothing of interest' (p. 48).

76 London described Battling Nelson as both 'the abysmal
brute' and 'the lean and hungry proletarian' in his report of
the 1905 Nelson-Britt prize-fight:/^/: London Reports, pp.
254-5. Nelson became known by the first rather than the
second title, and dedicated his 1909 autobiography to Lon-
don, thanking him for 'paying me the biggest compliment
ever accorded me by any writer.' David Mike Hamilton, 'The
ToolsofMy Trade': The Annotated Books in Jack London's Li-
brary (Seattle, 1986), pp. 212-13. London revived the phrase
as the title for a 1911 novella, in which Pat Glendon, a bear-
eating, Browning-reading 'creature of the wild' retires when
the corrupt nature of capitalist boxing becomes clear to him.

77 Champion (1949) starred Kirk Douglas as Midge. The film
was based on Ring Lardner's 1915 short story of the same
title.

78 Non-capitalist fights can occur in nature. See Buck vs. Spitz
in The Call of the Wild (1903), ch. 3. Mark Seltzer describes
the protagonists of London's animal stories as 'men in furs':
Bodies and Machines (New York, 1992), p. 166.

79 Jack London, 'The Mexican', in The Portable Jack London,
pp. 291-313-

80 Philip Fisher, Hard Facts: Setting and Form in the American
Novel (Oxford, 1986), pp. 171-2.

81 Dreiser, Sister Carrie, p. 338.

82 Pierce Egan, Boxiana:A Selection, ed. John Ford (London,
1976), p. 15.

83 Roland Barthes, 'The World of Wrestling', in Mythologies,
trans. Annette Lavers (New York, 2000), pp. 15-25.

84 Jack London, A Daughter of the Snows (London, 1964),
p. 46. London's formulation is close to that of one his
favourite writers, Herbert Spencer, who maintained that
'the amount of vital energy which the body at any moment
possesses is limited; and that being limited, it is impossible
to get from it more than a fixed quantity of results. ' Educa-
tion: Intellectual, Moral and Physical (London, 1861), p. 268.
Although stories such as 'A Piece of Steak' or 'Three Rounds'
suggest that decline in muscle stock was an individual
phenomenon, reversible with the ingestion of a good meal,
many argued that it affected whole populations. See H.
Llewellyn Smith, 'Influx of Population (East London)', in
Charles Booth et al., Life and Labour oj the People in London,
1st series (London, 1902), vol. 111, p. 110. For a full account
of various applications of thermodynamic language in this
period, see Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy,
Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (Berkeley, ca, 1990).

85 Jack London, 'Jeffries Never Wasted Energy', in Jack London
Reports, pp. 287-90.

86 Jack London, 'What Life Means to Me', in No Mentor but
Myself, ed. Dale L. Walker and Jeanne Campbell Reesman
(Stanford, ca, 1999), pp. 90-91. Compare George Orwell's
remark that 'a novelist does not, any more than a boxer or a
ballet dancer, last for ever. He has an initial impulse which is
good for three or four books, perhaps even for a dozen, but
which must exhaust itself sooner or later.' 'As I Please', in
Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, vol. iv, p. 293.

87 See Christopher Wilson, The Labor of Words: Literary

407

Professionalism in the Progressive Era (Athens, ga, 1985),
pp. 92-112.

88 London, John Barleycorn, pp. 134-5; Jack London, Martin
Eden (Harmondsworth, 1967), pp. 104-5.

89 Shaw, 'Modern Prizefighting', p. 335.

90 Ibid., p. 336.

91 Myler, Gentleman Jim Corhett, p. 129.

92 Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 205.

93 Ibid., p. 205.

94 Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), in Collected
Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (London, 1975),
vol. vi, p. 127. See also E. P. Thompson, 'Time, Work-
Discipline and Industrial Capitalism', Past and Present, 38
(1967), pp. 56-97-

95 Gorn, The Manly Art, p. 205.

96 The first automatic timing device was used in California
for the 1891 Corbett vs. Jackson fight. It was not adopted
in New York until 1925 when the new Madison Square
Gardens opened. Myler, Gentleman Jim Corbett, p. 42.

97 Arthur Morrison, Cunning Murrell (London, 1900), pp. 210-
12. The chapter is entitled 'The Call of Time'.

98 John Masefield, 'The Everlasting Mercy' (1911), in Poems
(London, 1946), pp. 37-79. The pub call of time - 'hurry up
please it's time' - was to play a significant part in 'A Game
of Chess', Section 11 of T.S.Eliot's The Waste Land (1922).

99 'Between Rounds' is also the title of an 0. Henry story in
which the ongoing fight between a husband and wife is
briefly interrupted by the news of a missing child. The Four
Million (1906).

100 Carl Smith contrasts the 'peaceful' nature of these paintings
with George Bellows 's lithographs, Between Rounds (1916),
where 'the two exhausted fighters slump on their stools and
over the ropes as they gasp for life', and A Knockout (1921),
where 'the upright fighter does not stand back . . . but,
tasting blood, bulls his way past the referee to finish the
slaughter'. 'The Boxing Paintings of Thomas Eakins',
Prospects, 4 (1979), p. 408. See Emma S. Bellows, George
Bellows: His Lithographs (New York, 1927).

101 Michael Fried, Realism, Writing, Disfiguration (Chicago,
1989), p. 71. Eakins here depicts his friend, sportswriter
Clarence Cranmer (the man raising his hat in Salutat) as the
timekeeper.

102 Martin A. Berger describes Salutat is 'an apparent rework-
ing' of Eakins's 1875 Gross Clinic, another setting in which
professional activity becomes a spectacle. Berger, Man
Made, p. 112.

103 See Susan Danly and Cheryl Leibold, Eakins and the
Photograph (Philadelphia, 1994).

104 Eakins studied in Paris from 1866 to 1869. In 1867, Courbet
and Manet were rejected from the Exposition Universale
and famously showed their work in a building outside.
Eakins wrote home about the Exposition, but did not
mention Manet. Goodrich, Thomas Eakins, vol. 1, p. 30.

105 Emile Zola, 'The Experimental Novel', in Documents of
Modern Literary Realism, ed. and trans. George J. Becker
(Princeton, 1963), p. 171.

106 Frank Norris, 'Zola as a Romantic Writer', in Literary

Criticism, ed. Donald Pizer (Austin, tx, 1964), p. 72.

107 London, Martin Eden, p. 118. The mechanical model of the
body had changed considerably in 75 years. In 1818 Pierce
Egan had compared the boxer's muscles to 'springs and
levers, which execute the different motions of the body'.
Boxiana (London, 1818), vol. 1, pp. 37-8.

108 Terry Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights: History of the
Motion Picture Through 1925 (New York, 1986), p. 88. Laurent
Mannoni notes that 'from 14 April 1894 to 1 April 1895 the
takings of the New York Kinetoscope Parlor were $16,171.56.'
Laurent Mannoni, The Great Art of Light and Shadow (1995),
trans. Richard Crangle (Exeter, 2000), p. 400.

109 In an earlier novel, London described a sense of being both
actor and spectator as being characteristic of dreams. Jack
London, Before Adam (London, 1929), p. 109. See David
Trotter, Cinema and Modernism (Oxford, 2007), p. 19.

110 Films of animal fights were also popular and presumably to
London's taste. The first boxing kangaroo was exhibited by
Professor Landermann at the London Aquarium in 1892.
Paul Gallico's Matilda (1970; filmed in 1978) is the story of a
kangaroo which knocks out the middleweight champion.

111 Mannoni, TheGreat Art of Light and Shadow, p. 427. See
also Luke McKernan, 'Sport and the First Films', in Cine-
ma: the Beginnings and the Future, ed. Christopher Williams
(London, 1996), p. 109; Charles Musser, The Emergence

of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (New York, 1990),
pp. 82-3.

112 Myler, Gentleman Jim Corbett, p. 96.

113 McKernan, 'Sport and the First Films', p. 110. The Lumieres
had projected film before this, but not commercially. The
New York World advertised the event: 'You'll sit comfortably
and see fighters hammering each other, circuses, suicides,
hangings, electrocutions, shipwrecks, scenes on the
exchanges, street scenes, horse-races, football games,
almost anything, in fact, in which there is action, just as if
you were on the spot during the actual events. And you
won't see marionettes. You'll see people and things as they
are.' Quoted in Musser, The Emergence of Cinema, p. 96.

114 Although celebrated as new, this was the same punch as Jack
Broughton's 'projectile', discussed by Fielding's Tom Jones.

115 Quoted in Musser, The Emergence of Cinema, pp. 196-7.

116 Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights, p. 288. Staged re-enact-
ments, based on newspaper reports, were also popular. See
Musser, The Emergence of Cinema, pp. 196, 201; Dan Streible,
'Fake Fight Films', in Le cinema autourant du siecle, ed. Claire
Dupre La Tour, Andre Gaudreault, and Roberta Pearson
(Quebec, 1999), pp. 63-79.

117 Quoted in Leon Edel, Henry James: The Treacherous Years,
1895-1901 (Philadelphia, 1969), p. 175.

118 James Joyce, Ulysses (Harmondsworth, 1992), p. 323.

119 Miletich, Dan Stuart's Fistic Carnival, pp. 95, 229-30;
William A. Brady, The FightingMan (Indianapolis, 1916),
pp. 148-50. Corbett had earned $5,000 for his first film,
the six-round staged contest against Courtney in 1894,
but also received royalties of $150 per week (later reduced
to $50) for each set of films on exhibition in the kineto-
scopes. Musser, The Emergence of Cinema, p. 84.

408

120 Shaw, 'Modern Prizefighting', p. 340. Jack London's
'abysmal brute' earns 'from twenty to thirty thousand
dollars a fight, as well as equally large sums from the
moving picture men'. Jack London, The Abysmal Brute
(Lincoln, ne, 2000), pp. 62-3.

121 Dan Streible, 'A History of the Boxing Film', Film History, 3
(1989), pp. 235-47; McKernan, 'Sport and the First Films', p.
107. Equally bold are the claims made by Noel Burch, Life to
those Shadows, trans. Ben Brewster (London, 1990), p. 143.

122 Kevin Brownlow, The Parade's Gone By (Berkeley, ca, 1968),
p. 2.

123 Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights, p. 116.

124 I am quoting from a poster advertising a 20 June 1898 show-
ing of the Corbett-Fitzsimmons film at the Argyle Theatre of
Varieties, Birkenhead, which is on display at the Bill Douglas
Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture,
University of Exeter.

125 Vachel Lindsay, The Art of the Moving Picture (New York,
2000), pp. 136-7.

126 Quoted in Streible, 'A History of the Boxing Film', p. 238.

127 Frederick A. Talbot, Moving Pictures: How They are Made and
Worked (London, 1912), p. 122.

128 On 29 January 1912, for example, the Argyle Theatre of
Varieties, Birkenhead, advertised PhilRees's Stable Lads in
their Novel Racing Act, 'Not a Crook', introducing New
Songs, Dances, and Comic Boxing. The Bill Douglas Collec-
tion, University of Exeter. After 1900, boxing films in
America were largely shown at burlesque houses. Richard
Abel, The Red Rooster Scare: Making American Cinema,
1900-1910 (Berkeley, ca, 1999), pp. 3-12.

129 Musser, The Emergence of Cinema, p. 116

130 Dennis Gifford, The British Film Catalogue (London, 2000),
vol. 1, p. 13; John Barnes, The Beginnings of Cinema in
England, 1894-1901 (London, 1992), vol. rv, p. 239.

131 The Knockout was completed on 29 May and released on 11
June 1914; Mabel's Married Life (dir. Chaplin and Mabel
Normand) was released on 20 June.

132 Bioscope (^june 1915) described Chaplin as fighting 'with
the agility of a boxing kangaroo and with almost as much
disregard for the rules of warfare'. Glen Mitchell, The Chaplin
Encyclopedia (London, 1997), p. 97.

133 Chaplin may have picked up this gag from The Knockout
where Fatty Arbuckle instructs the camera to move away
while he is changing. See also William Paul, 'Charles Chap-
lin and the Annals of Anality', in Comedy/Cinema/Theory,
ed. Andrew Horton (Berkeley, ca, 1991), pp. 109-30.

134 Mark Winokur, American Laughter: Immigrants, Ethnicity,
and 1930s Hollywood Film Comedy (London, 1996), p. 104.

135 Chaplin attended fights in Hollywood and, with Fatty
Arbuckle, acted as a second at the la Athletic Club. He was
often photographed with boxers. Charles Chaplin, My Auto-
biography (Harmondsworth, 1996), pp. 185-8, 273; David A.
Yallop, The Day the Laughter Stopped: The True Story of Fatty
Arbuckle (London, 1976), p. 79.

136 Thomas Burke, 'The Chink and the Child', Limehouse Nights
(London, 1916).

137 The Abysm al Brute was the title of a 1911 Jack London

novella; it was filmed in 1923. See also Karl Brown,
Adventures with D. W. Griffith (London, 1973), p. 241.

138 Dudley Andrew, 'Broken Blossoms: The Vulnerable Text and
the Marketing of Masochism', Film in the Aura of Art
(Princeton, 1984), p. 21.

139 Brigitte Peucker, Incorporating Images: Film and the Rival Arts
(Princeton, 1995), p. 61.

140 Estimates varied; one source suggested that in Chicago 60
per cent of spectators were women. Musser, The Emergence of
Cinema, p. 200.

141 Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in
American Silent Film (Cambridge, ma, 1991), p. 1.

142 Dan Streible, 'Female Spectators and the Corbett-Fitz-
simmons Fight Film', in Out of Bounds: Sports, Media and the
Politics of Identity, ed. Aaron Baker and Todd Boyd (Bloom-
ington, ia, 1997), pp. 34-5, 41. Women also attended his
stage performances. William Brady, Showman (New York,
1937). P- 107- Sherwood Anderson recalled shadow-boxing
in front of a girl he was trying to impress in hope that 'she
will take me for ... a young Corbett'. A Story Teller's Story
(New York, 1924), p. 202.

143 Nellie Bly, 'A Visit with John L. Sullivan', in Punches on the
Page, ed. Allen, pp. 11-16. London includes a lengthy scene
in which a woman journalist interviews a prize-fighter in
The Abysmal Brute, p. 79.

144 Streible, 'Female Spectators and the Corbett-Fitzsimmons
Fight Film', p. 31. On Annie Laurie, see Barbara Belford,
Brilliant Byline: A Biographical Anthology of Notable News-
paper Women in America (New York, 1986), p. 140.

145 Quoted in Miletich, Dan Stuart's Fistic Carnival, p. 196.

146 Corbett, The Roar of the Crowd, p. 264.

147 Ashton Stevens, 'Tragedy is Mirrored in the Face of Britt's
Father', San Francisco Examiner, 10 September 1905, quoted
in Michael Oriard, 'Introduction' to Jack London, The Game
(Lincoln, ne, 2001), p. xv.

148 Streible, 'A History of the Boxing Film', p. 241.

149 Quoted in Riess, 'In the Ring and Out', p. 113. See also
Jeffrey T. Sammons, Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in
American Society (Urbana, il, 1990), pp. 53-9.

150 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (Oxford, 1996), p. 73.

151 Shaw, Cashel Byron's Profession, pp. 28, 41-2. For a compari-
son with a similar scene in Lady Chatterley's Lover, see Elsie B.
Adams, 'A "Lawrentian" Novel by Bernard Shaw', TheD. H.
Lawrence Review, 2 (1969), pp. 245-53.

152 Shaw, Preface to Cashel Byron's Profession, p. xi. Corbett first
played the role in 1901; he also appeared in a

Broadway production in 1906. See Benny Green, Shaw's
Champions (London, 1978), ch. 3.

153 Shaw, Cashel Byron's Profession, pp. 49, 266, 277.

154 London, Martin Eden, p. 303. See also London, A Daughter of
the Snows, p. 10.

155 The best account of the novella is Michael Oriard's introduc-
tion to the 2001 edition, pp. vii-xviii; see also Christian
Messenger, 'Jack London and Boxing in The Game', Jack
London Newsletter, 9 (1976), pp. 67-72.

156 London, The Game, pp. 9, 13.

157 Ibid., p. 41.

409

158 In 1883, actress Ann Livingston reportedly 'dressed as a boy'
to attend a fight between her boyfriend, John L. Sullivan, and
Charlie Mitchell. Nat Fleischer and Sam Andre, A Pictorial
History of Boxing (London, 1959), p. 61. In 1909, London's
wife, Charmian, attracted controversy when, undisguised,
she accompanied him to the Johnson-Burns contest in
Sydney. Clarice Stasz, American Dreamers: Charmain and Jack
London (New York, 1988), p. 192. See also 'The Birth Mark:

A Sketch written for Robert and Julia Fitzsimmons', in which
a girl dresses up in a man's tuxedo and sneaks into the West
Bay Athletic Club for a bet. There she meets Fitzsimmons
who, although he knows she's a girl, strings her along for a
while. Jack London, The Human Drift (New Tork, 1917).

159 London, The Game, p. 53.

160 Ibid., pp. 61-5. Michael Hatt compares London's descrip-
tion of Joe with Thomas Eakins's depiction of boxer Billy
Smith in Salutat, which he claims 'requires an imaginary
female viewer'. 'Muscles, morals, mind: the male body in
Thomas Eakins' Salutat', p. 68.

161 London, The Game, pp. 80, 84, 98-9.

162 A similar moment of incomprehension can be found in

The Sea-Wolf when Maud Brewster tries to intervene in some
dangerous 'man-play'. Jack London, Novels and Stories
(New York, 1982), p. 641.

163 See Jean Pfaeflzer, The Utopian Novel in America, 1886-1896:
The Politics of Form (Pittsburgh, 1984), p. 145-6.

164 William H. Bishop, The Garden of Eden, usa:A Very Possible
Story (Chicago, 1895), pp. 148, 198.

165 The Police Gazette, ed. Smith, p. 120.

166 Quoted in Vanessa Toulmin, A Fair Fight (Oldham, 1999),

p. 33. Belle Gordon regularly used a punch bag as part of her
vaudeville act, and is named as the author of Physical Culture
for Women (New York, 1913). Other women's boxing movies
include Gordon Sisters Boxing (Edison, 1901), based on Bessie
and Minnie Gordon's stage act; The Physical Culture Girl
(Edison, 1903), in which a young woman wakes up, stretch-
es, and hits a punch bag; and Boxing Ladies (Mitchell and
Kenyon, early 1900s) in which two women fairground
boxers rescue a man from a gang of thieves. See also Lauren
Rabinovitz, For the Love of Pleasure: Women, Movies, and
Culture in Turn-ofthe-Century Chicago (New Brunswick, nj,
1998), p. 33-

167 J. K. Huysmans, Against Nature, trans. Robert Baldick
(Harmondsworth, 1959), p. 110; George Gissing, The Odd
Women (London, 1980), p. 102. See Stephen Kern, The
Culture of Love: Victorians to Moderns (Cambridge, ma, 1992),
p. 71.

168 Frank Norris, 'A Girl of Twenty Who has the Frame of a
Sandow', in The Apprenticeship Writings, pp. 238-40. Many
of Norris's heroines recall Capitaine. For example, Moran,
the daughter of a Norwegian sea captain, is 'massive': 'even
beneath the coarse sleeve of her oilskin coat one could infer
that the biceps and deltoids were large and powerful'. Norris
describes her as more powerful than the hero, Ross Wilbur,
but when they fight, he wins. Moran of the Lady Letty (New
York, 1898), pp. 70-72.

169 London, A Daughter of the Snows, p. 17. As the novel goes on,

Frona becomes less interested in physical activity and comes
to represent an alternative moral position. Compare the
unnamed heroine of 'Amateur Night', whose 'vigorous dain-
tiness . . . gave an impression of virility with none of the
womanly left out.' Jack London, Moon-Face and Other Stories
(New York, 1906), p. 60. See Clarice Stasz, 'Androgyny in the
Novels of Jack London', in Jack London: Essays in Criticism,
ed. Ray Wilson Ownbey (Santa Barbara, ca, 1978), pp. 54-65.
170 London, ,4 Daughter of the Snows, pp.52, 53,55.

6 Fresh Hopes

1 Frank Norris, 'The True Reward of the Novelist', in The
Responsibilities of the Novelist and Other Literary Essays
(London, 1903), p. 19.

2 On the role of sport in the development of a national ethos in
this period, see S. W. Pope, Patriotic Games: Sporting Tradi-
tions in the American Imagination, 1876-1926 (Oxford, 1997).

3 Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers (New York, 1976), p. 128.

4 Abraham Cahan, Yekl:A Tale of the New York Ghetto, in
The Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories (New Tork, 1996),
p. 168.

5 Sabine Haenni, 'Visual and Theatrical Culture, Tenement
Fiction, and the Immigrant Subject in Abraham Cahan's
YekT, American Literature, 71, 3 (1999), p. 513.

6 Cahan, Yekl, p. 185.

7 Ibid., p. 173.

8 Jules Chametzky, From the Ghetto: The Fiction of Abraham
Cahan (Amherst, ma, 1977), p. 53.

9 Initially rejected by magazines such as Harper's as being of
no interest to 'the American reader', Yeklwas eventually
published in 1896. A translation also appeared in a Yiddish
magazine. Saul Scott, Homing Pidgins: Immigrant Tongues,
Immanent Bodies in Abraham Cahan's Yekl (Stanford, ca,
1995), p- 17- On Yekh reception, see Jules Chametzsky, Our
Decentralized Literature (Amherst, ma, 1986), pp. 61-2.

10 Chametzky, From the Ghetto, p. 55. Werner Sollors also finds
that Jake's 'bastardized language' is rendered 'quite deroga-
torily'. Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American
Culture (Oxford, 1986), p. 164. For a more subtle reading, see
Gavin Jones, Strange Talk: The Politics of Dialect Literature in
Gilded Age America (Berkeley, ca, 1999), ch. 5.

11 Cahan, Yekl, p. 194.

12 Howe, World of Our Fathers, p. 473.

13 Cahan, Yekl, pp. 170-71.

14 See Sander Gilman, The Jew's Body (New York, 1991),

pp- 53~4- On the revival of interest in Mendoza at this time,
see Michael Berkowitz, The Jewish Self -Image: American and
British Perspectives, 1881-1930 (London, 2000), p. 75. Muscu-
lar Judaism was promoted by the Maccabi movement. By
1914, there was over 100 Maccabi clubs in Europe. For an
example from Weimar Germany, see Hermann von Wed-
derkop, 'Judischer Box-Klub Machabi', Querschnitt, 6 (1926),
p. 887.

15 Israel Zangwill, The Children of the Ghetto (London, 1998),
pp. 8-9.

410

16 PaulBreines, Tough Jews (New York, 1990), pp. 19-49.

17 Quoted in Howe, World of Our Fathers, p. 128.

18 Patrick Myler, The Fighting Irish (Dingle, 1987), p. 49.

19 In this period, a 'move from racial to cultural identity
appears to replace essentialist criteria of identity (who we
are) with performative criteria (what we do).' Walter Benn
Michaels, Our America (Durham, nc, 1995), pp. 14-15.

20 O.Henry, 'The Coming-out of Maggie', The Four Million
(London, 1947), pp. 51-8. In 1905 the National Police Gazette
noted that although 'Celtic names' still dominated boxing,
many of them belonged to Italians ('the stiletto of one gen-
eration being succeeded by the hard knuckles of the next').
Major Problems in American Sport History, ed. Steven A. Riess
(Boston, 1997), pp. 280-81.

21 Steven A. Riess, Sport in Industrial America, 1850-1920
(Wheeling, il, 1995), p. 104.

22 James. T.Farrell, Young Lonigan, in Studs Lonigan (New York,
1977), pp- 82, 143. On the experience of Jewish immigrants in
Irish Harlem at this time, see Henry Roth, A Star Shines Over
Mt. Morris Park (London 1995), p. 30. The 1927 film, East
Side, West Side is the story of an Irish-American boxer made-
good (played by George O'Brien) and his Jewish girlfriend.
See Frederick V. Romano, The Boxing Filmography: American
Features, 1920-2003 (Jefferson, nc, 2004), pp. 53-4.

23 Randy Roberts, Papa Jack: Jack Johnson and the Era of White
Hopes (New York, 1983), p. 13. See also Patrick Myler,
Gentleman Jim Corhett (London, 1998), ch.5, and David Berz-
mozgis, 'Choynski', Natasha and Other Stories (London,
2004), pp. 113-26.

24 James Corbett, The Roar of the Crowd (New York, 1925), p. 65.

25 'The National Police Gazette Supports the Rise of Italian
Boxing, 1905', Problems in Sport History, ed. Riess, p. 281.

26 See John Harding with Jack Berg, The Whitechapel Windmill
(London, 1987). An opera based on the book, written by
Berg's cousin Howard Frederics and Jacob Sager Weinstein,
was performed in London in 2005.

27 Quoted in Allen Bodner, When Boxing was a Jewish Sport
(Westport, ct, 1997), p. 19. In Joseph Roth's 1929 story
'Strawberries', eight brothers disperse from their Eastern
European birthplace; 'one became a boxer in America'.
Joseph Roth, The Collected Stories, trans. Michael Hoffmann
(New York, 2002), p. 143. The wicked son in the parable of
the four sons in the Haggadah was sometimes presented

as a boxer. Douglas Century, Barney Ross (New York, 2006),
p. 27.

28 John Dos Passos, Nineteen Nineteen, in USA (London, 1950),
pp. 667-8.

29 Philip Roth, Patrimony (London, 1999), p. 203. The book he
gave his father was Ken Blady, The Jewish Boxers' Hall of Fame
(New York, 1988).

30 Philip Roth, The Facts (New York, 1997), p. 28.

31 Farrell, YoungLonigan, 145.

32 Peter Levine, Ellis Island to Ebbets Field: Sport and the
American Jewish 'Experience (Oxford, 1992), p. 152.

33 Nat Fleischer, leonara I the Magnificent (Norwalk, ct, 1947),
p. 87.

34 Simon Lovish, Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the

Marx Brothers (London, 1999), pp. 121, 301.

35 Groucho Marx and Richard J. Anobile, The Marx Bros.
Scraphook (New York, 1974), p. 40; Lovish, Monkey Business,
p. 134.

36 Budd Schulberg, 'The Great Benny Leonard', RingMagazine
(May 1980), pp. 32-7.

37 Levine, From Ellis Island to Ebbets Field, pp. 145-6.

38 Charles E. Van Loan, 'No Business', in Taking the Count: Prize
Ring Stories (New York, 1915), pp. 147-73. Hemingway was a
fan ofVan Loan's fight stories. In 1924, while working on In
Our Time, he gave a copy to a friend, and in 1925 he sent his
bullfight story, 'The Undefeated' to George Lorimer of the
Saturday Evening Post, with a letter explaining that he was
trying 'to show it the way it actually is, as Charles E. Van
Loan used to write fight stories'. Hemingway: Selected Letters,
1917-1961, ed. Carlos Baker (London, 1985), p. 148; Michael
Reynolds, Hemingway: The Paris Years (New York, 1989),

p. 249.

39 Cohn was based on Harold Loeb, whose mother was related
to the Guggenheims. Loeb and Hemingway had a famous,
drunken almost-fight in Pamplona in 1925. Harold Loeb,
The Way It Was (New York, 1959), pp. 294-7; Reynolds,
Hemingway: The Paris Years, pp. 304-5. Hemingway's satire
may also have been directed at Princeton-educated Scott
Fitzgerald. See James Plath, ' The Sun Also Rises as 'A Greater
Gatsby ", in French Connections: Hemingway and Fitzgerald
Abroad, ed. J. Gerald Kennedy and Jackson R. Bryer
(London, 1999), pp. 257-75; Carlos Baker, Ernest Heming-
way: A Life Story (London, 1969), p. 107.

40 Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (London, 1976),
pp. 7-8. Compare with Loeb, The Way It Was, p. 218.

41 On Santayana and the Ivy League 'spirit', see Ronald Berman,
Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and the Twenties (Tuscaloosa, al,
2001), ch. 6.

42 Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, pp. 11, 39, 40, 135, 148,
158-61, 167-9, 172.

43 Michaels, Our America, p. 27.

44 Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, pp. 8, 32.

45 Herman Melville, Typee (London, 1993), p. 234. This view
was widely assumed, despite contrary evidence from works
such as Captain Cook's accounts of his voyages to the South
Sea. See John Hoberman, Darwin's Athletes (Boston, 1997),
p. 105.

46 James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan (New York, 1991),
pp. 59-60.

47 James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored
Man (Penguin, 1990), pp. 76-8. See also, Johnson, Black
Manhattan, pp. 74-8.

48 Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,
An American Slave (Oxford, 1999), pp. 70, 74. See also Henry
Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An
American Slave, Written by Himself {1849), in Puttin on Ole
Massa, ed. Gilbert Osofsky (New York, 1969), p. 68; and the
Rev. W. P. Jacobs, quoted in Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews
with Virginia Ex-Slaves, ed. Charles L. Perdue, Jr, Thomas

E. Barden and Robert K. Phillips (Charlottesville, va, 1976),
p. 155.

411

49 Douglass, Narrative, pp. 68, 57. On the book's debt to the
American jeremiad, see David Blight, Introduction, Narra-
tive of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Boston, 1993), p. 8. See
also Robert O'Meally, 'Frederick Douglass's 1845 Narrative:
The Text Was Meant to be Preached', in Afro-American
Literature, ed. Dexter Fisher and Robert Stepto (New York,
1979).

50 David L. Dudley, My Father's Shadow (Philadelphia, 1991),
pp. 27-8.

51 Jenny Franchot, 'The Punishment of Esther: Frederick
Douglass and the Construction of the Feminine', in Frederick
Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays, ed. Eric J.
Sundquist (Cambridge, 1990), p. 141.

52 Richard Yarborough, 'Race, Violence and Manhood:
The Masculine Ideal in Frederick Douglass's "The Heroic
Slave"', in Frederick Douglass, ed. Sundquist, p. 174. See also
Donald B. Gibson, 'Reconciling Public and Private in
Frederick Douglass's Narrative , American Literature, 57
(Dec 1985), p. 563.

53 Douglass, Narrative, p. 67. 'He has borne himself with
gentleness and meekness, yet with true manliness of
character,' concluded William Lloyd Garrison: Preface
to Douglass, Narrative, p. 5.

54 Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (New York,
1969), pp. 242-6.

55 David Leverenz, Manhood and the American Renaissance
(Ithaca, ny, 1989), p. 112.

56 See Bernard R. Boxill, 'The Fight with Covey', in Existence in
Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy, ed. Lewis
R. Gordon (New York, 1997), pp. 273-90.

57 Legree delegates Tom's whipping to 'two gigantic negroes'.
He wants to make Tom an overseer for which he believes
'hardness' is the prerequisite. In refusing to beat others,
Tom remains physically soft but morally firm. Harriet
Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, in Three Novels (New
York, 1982), p. 415. In My Bondage, Douglass wrote, 'while
slaves prefer their lives, with flogging, to instant death,
they will always find christians enough, like unto Covey,
to accommodate that preference.' In taking on Covey,
Douglass 'had reached the point, at which I was not afraid
to die (p. 247). On 'Douglass's preference for death', see
PaulGilroy, The Black Atlantic (London, 1993), pp. 61-4.

58 See Susan F. Clark, 'Up Against the Ropes: Peter Jackson as
"Uncle Tom" in America', The Drama Review, 44, no. 1
(2000), pp. 157-82; Linda Williams, 'Versions of Uncle Tom:
Race and Gender in American Melodrama', in New Scholar-
ship from bfi Research, ed. Colin McCabe and Duncan Petrie
(London, 1996).

59 Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom , pp. 246-7.

60 Frederick Douglass, 'Fighting the Rebels with One Hand',
in The Frederick Douglass Papers, ed. John W. Blassinghame
and John R. McKivigan (New Haven, 1991), Series 1, vol. 111,
pp. 473-88.

61 Frederick Douglass, 'Men of Color, To Arms', in Life and
Times (Cleveland, oh, 2005), pp. 397-8. Douglass is alluding
to Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: 'Hereditary bonds-
men! know ye not /Who would be free themselves must

strike the blow?'. He also attached this stanza to the end of
his accounts of the Covey fight in My Bondage and Life and
Times.

62 Frederick Douglass, 'What the Black Man Wants', in The
Frederick Douglass Papers, Series 1, vol. rv, p. 69.

63 The fight is 'the primal scene in male African American
autobiography'. Dudley, My Father's Shadow, pp. 26-7

64 Kelly Miller, 'Frederick Douglass', Voice of the Negro, 1(1904),
pp. 463-4; John Henry Adams, 'Rough Sketches: The New
Negro Man', Voice of the Negro, 1 (1904), p. 450.

65 Paul Lawrence Dunbar, 'Frederick Douglass', in Helen Pitts
Douglass, In Memoriam Frederick Douglass (Freeport, ny,
1971), p. 168.

66 Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass (New York, 1969)
pp. 40-41.

67 James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way (New York, 1935),
p. 208. In an 1892 interview with R. Thomas Fortune,
Douglass described Jackson as 'one of our best missionaries
abroad. ' Quoted in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series 1,
vol. v, pp. 500-501.

68 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York, 1995),

p. 54. See D. K. Wiggens, 'From Plantation to Playing Field',
Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 57, no. 2 (1986),
pp. 101-16.

69 Dale A. Somers, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, 1850-1900
(Baton Rouge, la, 1972), pp. 181-3.

70 David K. Wiggens, 'Peter Jackson and the Elusive Heavy-
weight Championship: A Black Athlete's Struggle Against
the Late Nineteenth Century Color-Line', in A Question of
Manhood: A Reader in us Black Men 's History and
Masculinity, ed. Ernestine Jenkins and Darlene Clark Hine
(Bloomington, ia, 2001), vol. 11, p. 293.

71 Corbett, TheRoarofthe Crowd, p. 118. See also Leo N.
Miletich, Dan Stuart's Fistic Carnival (College Station, tx,
1994), p. 214.

72 Patrick Myler, Gentleman Jim Corbett (London, 1998),
pp. 37-45-

73 Clark, 'Up Against the Ropes', p. 173. Sullivan also appeared

in a production of the play, as Simon Legree. Nat Fleischer,
John L. Sullivan (London, 1952), p. 165.

74 Winston Churchill's drawing of the fight is reproduced in
The Fireside Book of Boxing, ed. W. C. Heinz (New York, 1961)
p. 205.

75 Guy Deghy, Noble and Manly: The History of the National
Sporting Club (London, 1956), pp. 104-5. The story of the
Jackson-Slavin fight is recounted by an English bartender in
the opening chapter of BuddSchulberg's novel, The Harder
They Fall (1947).

76 On Jackson's gentlemanliness, seeKasia Boddy, 'Peter Jack-
son and Jack Johnson Visit Britain', in Fighting Back? Jewish
and Black Boxers in Britain, ed. Michael Berkowitz and Ruti
Ungar (London, 2007), pp. 51-66.

77 Johnson, Black Manhattan, p. 73. See, for example, Frank
Harris, My Life and Loves (New York, 1991), p. 650.

78 Richard Wright, 'The Ethics of Living Jim Crow', Uncle
Tom's Children (New York, 1993), p. 14. Wright included
this passage in his 1945 memoir Black Boy (London, 1970),

412

p. 202. The only change is the addition of the Fifteenth
Amendment.

79 Al-Tony Gilmore, Bad Nigger! The National Impact of Jack
Johnson (Washington, ny, 1975), pp. 27-8.

80 Jack Johnson,//? the Ring and Out (New York, 1977), p. 48.
Out of print for many years, Johnson's autobiography was
reissued at the height of Black Power under the title, Jack
Johnson is a Dandy (1969).

81 Jack London, 'Burns-Johnson', in Jack London Reports, ed.
King Hendricks and Irving Shepard (New York, 1970),
pp. 258-9, 260, 261, 263. In his autobiography, Johnson
felt obliged to note that 'to me it was not a racial triumph.'
Johnson, In the Ring and Out, p. 53.

82 Roberts, Papa Jack, p. 53. On 'the black American as a
living comic supplement,' see Jessie Fauset, 'The Gift of
Laughter' in The New Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain
Locke (New York, 1997), pp. 161-7.

83 See William H . Wiggens, Jr. 'Boxing's Sambo Twins: Racial
Stereotypes in Jack Johnson and Joe Louis Newspaper
Cartoons, 1908-1938', Journal of Sport History, 15, no. 3
(Winter 1988), pp. 242-54.

84 Roberts, Papa Jack, pp. 24-6.

85 In 1901, Jim Jeffries had seen Johnson defeat his brother in
five easy rounds. Roberts, Papa Jack, p. 21.

86 Rudyard Kipling, 'The White Man's Burden', McClure's
Magazine, 12 (February 1899).

87 Quoted in Johnson, Black Manhattan, p. 66.

88 Lovish, Monkey Business, pp. 70-71.

89 Quoted in Finis Farr, Black Champion: The Life and Times of
Jack Johnson (New York, 1965), p. 105.

90 Arthur Conan Doyle, Rodney Stone (London, 1912), p. 164;
'Both in Fine Condition', New York Times, 3 July 1910, p. 2;
Jack London, Jack London Reports, pp. 266, 273. See John
Hoberman, Darwin's Athletes, pp. 11-12

91 'Johnson's Mother Happy', New York Times, 5 July 1910, p. 3.

92 Louis Armstrong, Satchmo:A Life in New Orleans (New York,
1986), p. 31; Henry Crowder, 'Hitting Back', in Negro: An
Anthology, ed. Nancy Cunard (New York, 2002), p. 119.

93 Allen Guttmann, Sports Spectators (New York, 1986), p. 119.

94 Quoted in Lerone Bennett, Jr, 'Jack Johnson and the Great
White Hope', Ebony (October 1976), p. 80. The Johnson
years coincided with the founding of the naacp (1909),
the National Urban League (1911) and the Universal Negro
Improvement Association (1918).

95 Tad, 'Keeping Pace with Jack Johnson', Preface to Johnson,
In the Ring and Out, p. 19.

96 John Lardner, 'That Was Pugilism: The White Hopes -I',
The New Yorker, 25 June 1949, p. 59. See also Graeme Kent,
The Great White Hopes: The Quest to Defeat Jack Johnson
(Sutton, 2005).

97 William A. Phelon, 'Fitzsimmons and the White Hopes',
Baseball Magazine, 4 (February 1914), p. 51.

98 Georges Carpentier, Carpentier by Himself trans. Edward
Fitzgerald (London, 1958), p. 89.

99 Jack London, The Abysmal Brute (Lincoln, ne, 2000), pp. 5, 16.
100 Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Mucker (New York, 1974),

pp. 183-4.

101 W.R.H. Trowbridge, The White Hope (London, 1913), pp. 61,
293, 303.

102 Gilmore, Bad Nigger!, pp. 75-90.

103 James Weldon Johnson, 'The Passing of Jack Johnson', in
The Selected Writings, ed. Sandra Kathryn Wilson (Oxford,
1995), vol. 1, p. 126. See W. Stephen Bush, 'Arguments of
Fight Films', The Moving Picture World, 15 May 1915, pp.
1049-50; Edward de Grazia and Roger K. Newman, Banned
Films: Movies, Censors and the First Amendment (New York,
1982), pp. 185-6; Dan Streible, 'Race and the Reception of
Jack Johnson Fight Films', in The Birth of Whiteness, ed.
Daniel Bernardi (New Brunswick, nj, 1996), pp. 170-200;
Lee Grieveson, Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in
Early Twentieth-Century America (Berkeley, ca, 2004), ch. 4;
Richard Maltby, 'The Social Evil, The Moral Order and the
Melodramatic Imagination, 1890-1915', in Melodrama, ed.
Jacky Bratton, Jim Cooke and Christine Gledhill (London,
1996), p. 226.

104 Theodore Roosevelt, 'Recent Prize-Fight', Outlook, 16 July
1910, p. 551.

105 W.E.B. Du Bois, 'The Prize Fighter', in Writings (New York,
1986), p. 1162.

106 W.E.B. Du Bois, 'The Problem of Amusement', in W.E.B Du
Bois on Sociology and the Black Community, ed. Dan S. Green
and Edwin D. Driver (Chicago, 1978), pp. 226-37.

107 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Crisis, April 1926, p. 270; 'As to
Pugilism', Pittsburgh Courier, 7 April 1923, p. 6.

108 Ida B. Wells, Crusade for Justice (Chicago, 1970), p. 359.
Johnson later ran the Harlem Club de Luxe, which became
the Cotton Club. See Johnson, In the Ring and Out, pp. 58-60;
Ted Vincent, Keep Cool: The Black Activists Who Built the Jazz
Age (London, 1995), p. 70; Kevin J. Mumford, Interzones:
Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early
Twentieth Century (New York, 1997), pp. 3-18.

109 Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (New York, 1996),
p. 57. On black dandies, see Eric Lott, Love and Theft:
Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class
(Oxford, 1993), pp. 133-4-

110 The Booker T Washington Papers, ed. Louis R. Harlan and
Raymond W. Smock (Urbana, il, 1981), vol. x, pp. 75-6.

111 Nick Carraway laughs at the sight of 'a limousine, driven
by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes'.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatshy (Harmondsworth,
1990), p. 75-

112 Johnson married Etta Duryea in late 1910 or early 1911. She
committed suicide in September 1911, and in 1912 he married
Lucille Cameron. They divorced in 1924 and the following
year he married Irene Pineau. On interracial marriage in
this period, see W.E.B. Du Bois , 'Intermarriage', Crisis, 5
(February 1913), pp. 180-81; Mary Frances Berry and John
W. Blassingame, LongMemory: The Black Experience in
America (Oxford, 1982), pp. 130-41.

113 Roberts, Papa Jack, p. 145; Geoffrey C. Ward, Unforgiveable
Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (New York, 2004),
ch. 10. On white slavery in the movies, see Grieveson,
Policing Cinema, ch. 5.

114 Booker T.Washington, 'A Statement on Jack Johnson for the

413

United Press Association', 23 October 1912, in The Booker
T. Washington Papers, vol. xn, ed. Louis R. Harlan and
Raymond W. Smock (Urbana, il, 1982), pp. 43-4. For
Johnson's response, see Gilmore, Bad Nigger, p. 102.

115 Johnson, In the Ring and Out, p. 70.

116 'Actions Against Jack Johnson: Assault on a Music-Hail
Artist', The Times, 2 March 1916, p. 4. See also Boddy, 'Peter
Jackson and Jack Johnson Visit Britain'.

117 Immediately after the fight Johnson said nothing, but within
a year, he sold his 'confessions' to Nat Fleischer, editor

of The Ring, for $250. Footage of the fight, recovered by Jim
Jacobs and included in his film Jack Johnson (1970), suggests
that Johnson really was knocked out.

118 Claude McKay, Home to Harlem (Boston, 1987), pp. 66-7,
71-2, 273. He later recalled being told that he 'did not look
like the boxer-type [portraits] . . . that were reproduced with
the reviews of Home to Harlem. 1 Claude McKay, from A Long
Way Home, in The Portable Harlem Renaissance, ed. David
Levering Lewis (Harmondsworth, 1994), p. 165.

119 George Hutchinson, The Harlem Renaissance in Black and
White (Cambridge, ma, 1995), p. 364. For the full story,
see Jon-Christian Suggs, '"Blackjack": Walter White and
modernism in an unknown boxing novel', Michigan
Quarterly Review, 38, no. 4 (Fall 1999), pp. 514-40.

120 Jim Tully had been a professional featherweight boxer
(1907-1915) and in 1937 published a prize-fight novel, The
Bruiser. He is best known, however, as author of Beggars of
Life: A Hobo Autobiography (1924), which was filmed in 1928.

121 Quoted in Martin Duberman, Paul Robeson: A Biography
(New York, 1988), pp. 103-4. Langston Hughes attended
one of the 37 performances. Langston Hughes, The Big Sea:
An Autobiography (New York, 1993), p. 251. See Gerald
Bordman, American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and
Drama, 1914-1930 (Oxford, 1995), pp. 297-8; and Theophilus
Lewis's review, in The Messenger Reader, ed. Sondra Kathryn
Wilson (New York, 2000), p. 247.

122 See Barbara Foley, Spectres 0/1919: Class and Nation in the
Making of the New Negro (Urbana, il, 2003).

123 Henry Louis Gates, 'Canon-Formation, Literary History and
the Afro-American Tradition: From the Seen to the Told',

in Afro-American Literary Study in the 1990s, ed. Houston A.
Baker and Patricia Redmond (Chicago, 1989), p. 33.

124 James Weldon Johnson, 'Inside Measurement', in The Selected
Writings, ed. Wilson, vol. 1, pp. 260-61.

125 James Weldon Johnson, The Book of American Negro Poetry
(New York, 1931), p. 9.

126 W.E.B. Du Bois , 'The Talented Tenth', in The Negro Problem
(New York, 1903), pp. 33-75-

127 Johnson, 'The Passing of Jack Johnson', p. 125.

128 Johnson, Along This Way, p. 208.

129 James Weldon Johnson, 'The Negro in American Art', in
Selected Writings, vol. 1., p. 262. Robert Coady was the
editor of The Soil (1916-17) which argued that America's
distinctive culture was found outside its museums. He
interspersed photographs of figures such as Johnson and the
comedian Bert Williams among reproductions of primitive
and European art. See Wanda Corn, The Great American

Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915-1935 (Berkeley,

CA, 1999), pp. 8I-89.

130 In a 1924 article in the Messenger, A. Philip Randolph imag-

ined Du Bois and Marcus Garvey as boxers and gave a
round by round account of their contest. A. Philip
Randolph, 'Heavyweight Championship Bout for Afro-
American-West-Indian Belt, Between Battling Du Bois
and Kid Garvey . . . Referee - Everybody and Nobody', in
Voices of a Black Nation: Political Journalism in the Harlem
Renaissance, ed. Theodore G. Vincent (San Francisco, 1973),
p. 122.

131 George S. Schuyler, 'The Negro-Art Hokum', in The Portable
Harlem Renaissance, ed. Lewis, p. 97.

132 Claude McKay, A Long Way from Home (New York, 1937),
p. 61.

133 Denzil Batchehr, Jack Johnson and His Times (London, 1956),
p. 178.

134 The song was recorded and reproduced by folklorist J.
Mason Brewer in WorserDays and Better Times: The Folklore
of the North Carolina Negro (Chicago, 1965), p. 178.

135 J. 'Berni' Barborn, 'The Black Gladiator', quoted in Streible,
'Race and the Reception of Jack Johnson Fight Films', p. 195
n. 17.

136 Roberts, Papa Jack, p. 134. The song adapts an urban toast
featuring a character called Shine. See Larry Neal. 'And
Shine Swam On', in Black Fire, ed.LeRoi Jones and Larry
Neal (New York, 1968), p. 638. For two versions, see The
Norton Anthology of African American Literature, ed. Henry
Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay (New York, 1997),
pp. 51-2. Legend had it that Johnson was refused a ticket
for the Titanic, but in April 1912 he was in Chicago arranging
a fight with Jim Flynn. After Johnson defeated Flynn, the
Chicago Defender described him as 'the pugilistic Titanic of
the Caucasian race'. Roberts, Papa Jack, p. 134.

137 William J. Maxwell, NewNegro, Old Left: African-American
Writing and Communism Between the Wars (New York, 1999),
p. 64. McKay later dismissed what he called 'the highly
propagandized Negro renaissance period'. Claude McKay,
A Long Way from Home, p. 154.

138 Claude McKay, 'If We Must Die', in Harlem Shadows: The
Poems (New York, 1922), p. 53.

139 See Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 'The Trope of the New Negro and
the Reconstruction of the Image of the Black', in The New
American Studies, ed. Philip Fisher (Berkeley, ca, 1991),

p. 325.

140 Rollin Lynde Hartt, 'The New Negro. When He's Hit,

He Hits Back', Independent, 15 January 1921, pp. 59-60, 76.
The term 'New Negro' had been in circulation since the
1890s but was used increasingly in the period following the
postwar race riots. See Foley, Spectres of 1919.

141 W. A. Domingo, Editorial, The Messenger, September 1919,
and J. A. Rogers, 'Who Is the New Negro, And Why?',
March 1927, reprinted in The Messenger Reader, ed. Wilson,
pp. 308-12, 335-7-

142 Zora Neale Hurston, Mules andMen (1935), in I Love Myself
When I Am Laughing: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader, ed. Alice
Walker (New York, 1979), p. 83; Hurston, 'High John de

414

Conquer' (1943), in Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel:
Readings in the Interpretation of African-American Folklore, ed.
Alan Dundes (Jackson, mi, 1981), pp. 541-8. See also Harry
Ostler, 'Negro Humor: John and Old Master', in Mother Wit,
ed. Dundes, pp. 549-60.

143 See H. C. Brearley, 'Ba-ad Nigger', in Mother Wit, ed.
Dundes, pp. 578-85; John W.Roberts, From Trickster to
Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom (Phila-
delphia, 1989), ch. 5; William H. Wiggens, 'Jack Johnson as
Bad Nigger: The Folklore of His Life', Black Scholar (January
1971), pp. 4-19.

144 Crowder, 'Hitting Back', pp. 117-19.

145 Alain Locke, 'Sterling Brown: The New Negro Folk-Poet', in
Negro, ed. Cunard, pp. 88-92.

146 Sterling Brown, 'Strange Legacies', in The Collected Poems,
ed. Michael S. Harper (New York, 1980), pp. 86-7. Johnson
meanwhile compared himself to Job. Johnson, In and Out
the Ring, p. 167.

147 Johnson, In and Out of the Ring, pp. 168-9.

148 Roberts, Papa Jack, p. 212.

149 Claude McKay, The Negroes in America, trans. Robert J.
Winter, ed. Alan L. McLeod (Port Washington, ny, 1979),
p. 3. The original text was lost; this version was translated
from Russian back into English.

150 For a reading of McKay as 'a precursor - and Marxian
pre-critic - of black cultural studies', see Maxwell, New
Negro, Old Left, pp. 86-87.

151 McKay, The Negroes in America, pp. 53-5. See also Wayne F.
Cooper, Claude McKay (Baton Rouge, la, 1996), pp. 185-9.

152 Langston Hughes, 'Prize Fighter', Fine Clothes to the Jew (New
York, 1927), p. 33-

153 Jean Toomer, 'Box Seat', in Cane (New York, 1988), p. 67.

154 See Darwin T. Turner, 'Contrasts and Limitations in Cane',
reprinted in Toomer, Cane, p. 210; and Thomas Fahy,
'Exotic Fantasies, Shameful Realities: Race in the Modern
American Freak Show', in A Modern Mosaic: Art and
Modernism in the United States, ed. Townsend Ludington
(Chapel Hill, nc, 2000), pp. 75-82.

155 On the popularity of the 'fistic quarrel' in minstrel shows,
see Lott, Love and Theft, pp. 126-8.

156 Arthur Conan Doyle, 'The Adventure of the Three Gables',
in The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes (Harmondsworth,
1981), pp. 1023-4. See also 'Nig' Coston, a Tyson-like biter,
in P. G. Wodehouse, Psmith Journalist (Harmondsworth,
1970), p. 105.

157 William Carlos Williams, The Autobiography (New York,
1967), p. 141.

158 Joyce Carol Oates, 'George Bellows: The Boxing Paintings',
in (Woman) Writer: Occasions and Opportunities (New York,
1988), p. 295. See also Marianne Doezema, George Bellows
and Urban America (New Haven, 1992), p. 101.

159 McKay, Home to Harlem p. 106. Whites who attended
'nigger clubs' justified their visits as nostalgia for a child-
hood spent among Tittle darkies'. Paul Lawrence Dunbar,
The Sport of the Gods (New York, 1981), p. 103.

160 See Emma S. Bellows, George Bellows: His Lithographs (New
York, 1927). Compare The WhiteHope with The Saviour of his

Race, an etching which Bellows published in Masses the
month after Willard beat Johnson. The white fighter is
depicted with arms outstretched against the corner post in
an obvious crucifixion allusion. Doezema, George Bellows
and Urban America, p. 218.

161 Ernest Hemingway, 'A Matter of Colour', in Ernest Heming-
way's Apprenticeship: Oak Park, 1916-1917, ed. Matthew J.
Bruccoli (Washington, DC, 1971), pp. 98-100. See also David
Marut, 'Out of the Wastebasket: Hemingway's High School
Stories', in Ernest Hemingway: The Oak Park Legacy, ed. James
Nagel (Tuscaloosa, al, 1996), pp. 81-95; Gregory Green, '"A
Matter of Color": Hemingway's Criticism of Race Prejudice',
Hemingway Review, 1 (Fall 1981), pp. 27-32. Hemingway be-
gan boxing lessons in 1916. See Carlos Baker, Ernest Heming-
way: A Life Story (London, 1969), pp. 43-4; Peter Griffin,
Along with Youth: Hemingway, the Early Years (Oxford, 1985),
pp. 23-4-

162 Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, p. 60. His model seems
likely to have been the 1922 Siki-Carpentier fight. James L.
Martine, 'Hemingway's "Fifty Grand": The Other Fight(s)',
in The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: Critical Essays, ed.
Jackson J. Benson (Durham, nc, 1975), p. 200; Peter Benson,
Battling Siki (Fayetteville, ar, 2006), pp. 251-2.

163 Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, p. 14.

164 Reynolds, Hemingway: The Paris Years, p. 297. The fight took
place on 9 June; Hemingway changed it to 20 June.

165 Ernest Hemingway, 'The Light of the World', in Winner Take
Nothing (London, 1977), pp. 67-73.

166 Ketchel's real name was Stanislaus Kiecal.

167 Ketchel's knockdown of Johnson was widely believed,
even at the time, to have been staged for the film cameras.
The painter John Sloan wrote appreciatively in his diary
of seeing 'the cinematograph pictures of the recent fight
between Ketchel and the negro Jack Johnson. The big black
spider gobbled up the small white fly - aggressive fly -
wonderful to have this event repeated.' Quoted mjohn
Sloan's New York Scene, ed. Bruce St John (New York, 1965).

168 Walter Benn Michaels, 'The Souls of White Folk', in Litera-
ture and the Body, ed. Elaine Scarry (Baltimore, 1988), p. 193.

169 Philip Young, Ernest Hemingway (Philadelphia, 1966), p. 50.
On the story's relationship to Holman Hunt's painting of
Jesus with a lantern, see Michael Reynolds, 'Holman Hunt
and "The Light of the World'", Studies in Short Fiction, 20
(Winter 1983), pp. 317-19.

170 Roberts, Papa Jack, pp. 81-4. In a 1922 letter, Hemingway
described Ketchel as 'too small for that damned smoke'.
Selected Letters, 1917-1961, ed. Carlos Baker (London, 1985),
p. 64. See also William J. Collins, 'Taking on the Champion:
Alice as Liar in "The Light of the World'", Studies in American
Fiction, 14, no. 2 (Autumn 1986), pp. 225-32; James J.
Martine, 'A Little Light on Hemingway's "The Light of
the World!'", in The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, ed.
Jackson, pp. 196-8.

171 See Howard L. Hannum, 'Nick Adams and the Search for
Light', in New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of
Ernest Hemingway, ed. Jackson L.Benson (Durham, nc,
1990), pp. 321-30.

415

172 Hemingway described the story as being about a 'busted
down pug and a coon'. Selected Letters, ed. Baker, p. 157.
Baker argues that Ad was an amalgam of Ad Wolgast and
Bat Nelson, and that Bugs was based on the trainer who had
looked after Wolgast, a one-time opponent of Steve Ketchel.
The story was originally called 'A Great Little Fighting
Machine'. Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A LifeStory, pp. 178-9.

173 The opening story of In Our Time, 'Indian Camp', introduces
the recurrent motif of a safe-seeming camp which turns out
to be a violent and dangerous place.

174 Ernest Hemingway, 'The Battler', in/« Our Time (New York,
1986), pp. 53-62. He sent the manuscript to his publisher
with a letter claiming it had 'a good 3/1 chance' at success.
'And I never bet on Jeffries at Reno nor Carpentier not other
sentimental causes.' Hemingway was only 11 in 1910, but he
did bet, and lose, on Carpentier in 1921. Selected Letters,

pp. 155, 52.

175 Thomas Strychacz, 'Dramatizations of Manhood in
Hemingway's In Our Time and The Sun Also Rises', American
Literature, 61, no. 2 (May 1989), p. 252.

176 See, for example, George Monteiro, '"This is My Pal Bugs":
Ernest Hemingway's "The Battler'", in New Critical Ap-
proaches, ed. Jackson, pp. 224-8. Consider also Hemingway's
reported comments to Gertrude Stein: 'when you were a boy
and moved in the company of men, you had to be prepared
to kill a man, know how to do it and really know that you
would do it in order not to be interfered with. '/I Moveable
Feast (London, 1982), pp. 21-2.

177 The novel makes much of the 'mingled virtues' of Johnny's
mixed blood, or 'sanguinary cocktail'. Alin Laubreaux,
Mulatto Johnny, trans. Coley Taylor (London, 1931), p. 204.
See also John Frederick Matheus, 'Some Aspects of the
Negro interpreted in Contemporary American and
European Literature', in Negro, ed. Cunard, pp. 86-7.

178 Joseph Moncure March, The Set-Up (Garden City, nj, 1931),
pp. 123, 200.

179 Mae West, The Constant Sinner (London, 1995), p. 6. The
original American edition had the title Babe Gordon; the
working title was Black and White. Marybeth Hamilton,
The Queen of Camp: Mae West, sex and popular culture
(London, 1996), p. 138.

180 Bearcat McMahon was a White Hope of the teens. Stories
about the feats of Mae's father, 'Battling Jack West, Cham-
pion of Brooklyn New York', and various boyfriends, can be
found in West's autobiography, Goodness Had Nothing to Do
with ^(London, 1996) pp. 2-3, 17, 23-5, 136. Boxers reputed
to have had affairs with West include Jim Corbett, Johnny
Indrisano, William 'Gorilla'Jones, Kid Berg and Joe Louis.
See Maurice Leonard, Mae West: Empress of Sex (New York,
1991), pp. 292-4 and passim.

181 The Constant Sinner, pp. 47, 17, 90, 103, 109-10, 212. When
the novel was adapted for Broadway in 1931, Money Johnson
was played by a white actor in blackface. Hamilton, The
Queen of Camp, p. 148. See also West, Goodness Had Nothing
To Do With It, p. 148.

182 Wallace Thurman, Infants of the Spring (New York, 1999),
pp. 22, 40, 43, 74. On the fashion among white women to

have black lovers and 'Negro' annoyance at Jack Johnson's
white wives, see Heba Jannath, 'America's Changing Color
Line', in Negro, ed. Cunard, pp. 64-5. Although the oed
dates the use of 'Johnson' as a slang equivalent of 'penis' to
1863, Clarence Major argues that its use in African-American
slang 'probably stems from the image of Jack Johnson
pounding his opponent'. Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-
American S/a«ij(Harmondsworth, 1994), p. 261.

183 Thurman, Infants of the Spring, pp. 79, 87, 156, 169.

184 William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (Harmondsworth,
1971), pp. 13, 19-25, 36, 38, 115.

185 Stanislaus Joyce, My Brother's Keeper (London, 1958), p. 62.

186 The advertisement ran in The Freeman's Journal on 19 and 28
April 1904 (p. 4 each day) and described an upcoming 'civil
and military' boxing tournament to be held at Earlsfort Ter-
race Rink, including a ten-round fight between M. L. Keogh
of Dublin and Garry of the Sixth Dragoons. On the 30th, we
learn that Keogh has won. Joyce changed the names slightly
to avenge himself on Percy Bennett, the consul-general in
Zurich whom he sued in 1918. Bennett had supported Henry
Carr, another member of the consulate, in a row concerning
Joyce's theatre company, the English Players. Carr is avenged
in 'Circe'. Richard E\\ma.rm, James Joyce (Oxford, 1982),

pp. 436-42, 472. See also Robert Martin Adams, Surface and
Symbol: The Consistency of Ulysses (New York, 1967), p. 70.

187 See Tracy Mishkin, The Harlem and Irish Renaissances:
Language, Identity and Representation (Gainsville, fl, 1998).

188 James Joyce, [//yss^s (Harmondsworth, 1992), pp. 219-20.
Ted Keogh, who managed a prizefighter, may have been a
model for Blazes Boylan. ^\\mdir\n, James Joyce, p. 389.

189 Joyce, Ulysses, pp. 412-4.

190 Ibid., p. 432. Valente argues that Bloom here is merely
providing 'a colonial impersonation of manhood'. Joseph
Valente, '"Neither fish not flesh"; or how "Cyclops" stages
the double-bind of Irish manhood', in Semicolonial Joyce, ed.
Derek Attridge and Marjorie Howes (Cambridge, 2000),

p. 120. See also Richard Brown, 'Cyclopean Anglophobia and
Transnational Community: Re-Reading the Boxing Matches
in Joyce's Ulysses', in Twenty-First Joyce, ed. Ellen Carol Jones
and Morris Beja (Gainsville, fl, 2004), pp. 82-96; Tracey
Teets Schwarze, '"Do You Call That a Man?": The Culture of
Anxious Masculinity in Joyce's Ulysses', in Masculinities in
Joyce, ed. Christine Van Boheemen-Saaf and Colleen Lamos
(Amsterdam, 2001), pp. 113-35.

191 See Valente, '"Neither fish not flesh'"; Vincent Cheng,
'Catching the Conscience of a Race', in Joyce, Race and Empire
(Cambridge, 1995), pp. 15-56.

192 Joyce, Ulysses, pp. 496, 745-6, 764.

193 Stuart Gilbert argues that this chapter, 'Eumaeus', was
meant to represent both physical and linguistic exhaustion,
and that Bloom was perhaps deliberately trying to send
Stephen to sleep. Quoted in Elhnan, James Joyce, p. 372, n.

194 Joyce, Ulysses, pp. 444-5, 805. Later still, Bloom rejects
'retribution' against his wife's lover, Blazes Boylan - 'Duel
by combat? No', pp. 863, 866. On Mendoza's 1791 visit to
Ireland, see Myler, The Fighting Lrish, pp. 19-22.

195 While Bloom is walking home, Molly lies in bed reminiscing

416

about the attentions paid to her by various men. She
remembers a fish supper that a King's Counsel gave her 'on
account of winning over the boxing match'. His silk hat
recalls those worn by the spectators in the nineteenth-
century print seen by Stephen. Joyce, Ulysses, pp. 925-6.

196 Joyce misquotes the title (deliberately?) as Physical Strength
and How to Obtain It. See Hugh Kenner, 'Bloom's Chest',
James Joyce Quarterly, 16.4 (1979), pp. 505-8; Cheryl Herr,
Joyce's Anatomy of Culture (Urbana, il, 1986), pp. 193-5;
Brandon Kershner, 'The World's Strongest Man: Joyce

or Sandow', James Joyce Quarterly, 30.4/31.1 (1993-94),
pp. 667-96.

197 Bloom first thinks of Sandow on his way back from buying
his breakfast kidney, when, after reading a Zionist pam-
phlet, he becomes depressed at the thought of the 'dead sea
in a dead land' and his own ageing body. 'Must begin again
those Sandow exercises. On the hands down.' (Sandow
wrote of the benefits of his system for 'the inner organs' as
well as visible muscles.) He remembers them again in
'Calypso' and in 'Circe' when he develops a stitch. In 'Ithaca',
the narrator notes that the exercises would also have given
him 'a most pleasant repristination of juvenile agility.'
Bloom is 11st 4lb and wears a size 17 collar. His 'before and
after' measurements are also given. Joyce, Ulysses, pp. 73,
567, 797, 779, 835, 850. Chapter Seven of Strength and How to
Obtain It is entitled 'Physical Culture for the Middle-Aged'.

198 Eugen Sandow, Strength and How to Obtain It (London,
1900), pp. 89-95; Eugen Sandow, Sandow on Physical Train-
ing: A Study in the Perfect Type of the Human Form (London,
1894), pp. 19, 113.

199 Joyce, Ulysses, pp. 564, 572, 578.

200 Shortly after Ulysses was published, Joyce told Arthur
Power that, 'in realism you are down to the facts on which
the world is based: that sudden reality which smashes
romanticism into a pulp.' Conversations with James Joyce, ed.
Clive Hart (New York, 1974), p. 98.

201 Joyce, My Brother's Keeper, p. 62.

202 Joyce, Stephen Hero, pp. 34, 82.

203 George Bernard Shaw, 'Preface' (1901) to Cashel Byron's
Profession (London, 1925), p. xiv. Boxing could easily have
been included in the litany of 'British Beatitudes': 'beer,
beef, business, bibles, bulldogs, battleships, buggery and
bishops'. Joyce, Ulysses, p. 556.

204 The Keogh-Bennett fight, and Joyce's battle with the Zurich
consulate is again evoked as Carr drunkenly announces
that Bennett's his 'pal' -'I love old Bennett'. Joyce, Ulysses,
pp- 579. 686, 687, 69. See Eilmann, James Joyce, p. 442.

205 Joyce, Ulysses, pp. 689, 696, 697. The scene also reworks one
in Stephen Hero in which a drunken 'bandy-legged little' clerk
argues with a medical student about 'the art of self-defence'.
There is again great relish in the quoted lingo of 'props',
'mits' and 'smashing'. Joyce, Stephen Hero, pp. 211-12. That
scene may in turn rework an incident from Joyce's early life.
See Flimann, James Joyce, p. 156.

206 James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (Harmondsworth, 1992), p. 18.

207 If the Irish were often described as blacks, then perhaps
occasionally blacks were Irish. See Noel Ingatiev, How the

Irish Became White (New York, 1995).

208 Joyce, My Brother's Keeper, p. 62;Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 371.

209 Joyce, Finnegans Wake, pp. 16-18, 338-55, 609-10.

210 Gilbert Seldes, The Seven lively Arts (New York, 1924),

p. 216; Bud Fisher, A. Mutt, 1907-1908 (Westport, ct, 1977),
p. 51. The pair did not make it into the English or Irish press
until 1918 when they appeared as soldiers - Mutt as an
American, Jeff as British. Joyce may also have encountered
Mutt and Jeff in one of over 500 animated silent cartoons
produced between 1917 and 1928. See Donald Crafton,
Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1908-1928 (Cambridge,

MA, I984), pp. 196-200.

211 Dan Schiff, 'Joyce and Cartoons', in Joyce in Context, ed.
Vincent J. Cheng and Timothy Martin (Cambridge, 1992),
pp. 210, 212. See also Elhnann, James Joyce, p. 61.

212 William York Tindall compares the knockout to Private
Carr's biffing of Stephen in 'Circe'. Tindall, A Reader's Guide
to Finnegans Wake (New York, 1969), p. 181. See also Schiff,
'Joyce and Cartoons', p. 209.

213 Joyce, Finnegans Wake, pp. 301, 302, 304.

214 Joyce described this part of the book as 'the most difficult
of all': 'the technique here is a reproduction of a schoolboy's
(and schoolgirl's) old classbook complete with marginalia
by the twins, who change sides at half time, footnotes by
the girl (who doesn't), a Euclid diagram, funny drawings
etc' James Joyce, letters, ed. Stuart Gilbert (London, 1957),
p. 406.

215 Jimmy Wilde, known as the Mighty Atom, held British,
European and World flyweight titles between 1916 and 1923.
Heavyweight Jack Sharkey (born Joseph Chusauskasof
Lithuanian parents) adopted the Irish name of his hero Tom
Sharkey, and fought against Dempsey, Schmeling and Louis
in the 1930s. He was briefly champion in 1932. In 1918,
Katherine Mansfield told Middleton Murry that, despite her
new iron supplements, 'Jimmy Wilde is more my size than
Jack Johnson.' The Collected letters of Katherine Mansfield, ed.
V. O. Sullivan and M. Scott (Oxford, 1987), vol. 11, p. 222.

216 Joyce, Finnegans Wake, p. 269.

7 Sport of the Future

1 In Cameron Crowe's 1989 film Say Anything, Lloyd Dobler
(JohnCusack) memorably declares kickboxing the 'sport of
the future'.

2 Bruce J. Evensen, 'Jazz Age Journalism 's Battle Over Profes-
sionalism, Circulation, and the Sports Page', Journal of
Sports History, 20, no. 3 (Winter 1993), p. 231; PaulGallico,
A Farewell to Sport (1937) (London, 1988), p. 15.

3 'Jack Dempsey, New Heavyweight Champion, Announces
He Will Draw the Color Line', New York Times, 6 July 1919,
p. 20. W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that 'Dempsey develops a weak
heart because of Texas Rickard's strenuous efforts to protect
him from the Willis wallop'. The Crisis, April 1926, p. 270.

4 Thomas Healey, A Hurting Business (London, 1996), p. 17.

5 Quoted in Tom Clark, The World of Damon Runyon (New
York, 1978), p. 123.

417

6 Peter Heller, In This Corner! (London, 1973), p. 55; Joyce
Carol Oates, On Boxing (London, 1988), p. 88.

7 Gallico, Farewell to Sport, p. 16.

8 A species of cichlid, Cichlasoma biocellatum, was nick-
named 'Jack Dempsey' and 'renowned for the fairness of
his fighting'. This was not, however, the boxer's reputation.
Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, trans. Marjorie Latzke
(London, 1967), p. 94.

9 Damon Runyon, New York American, 5 July 1919, p. 1.

10 Jack Dempsey, with Jack Cuddy, Championship Fighting
(London, 1950), pp. 8-9. Dempsey and Willard were
reunited in the 1933 film, The Prizefighter and the Lady.
Dempsey says, 'A little bit of a problem we had in Toledo
that day' and Willard replies, 'I don't remember much about
that day, Jack'.

11 Melvin B. Tolson, 'Omega', Harlem Gallery, Booki: The
Curator (New York, 1969), p. 149.

12 Damon Runyon, New York American, 5 July 1919, p. 1.

13 Clark, The World of Damon Runyon, pp. 11-14, 124.

14 'The Psychology of Boxing' is the subject of a chapter in
Georges Carpentier, My Methods, or Boxing as a Fine Art,
trans. F. Hurdman-Lucus (London, n.d.).

15 Gallico, Farewell to Sport, p. 17. During the Second World
War, Dempsey wrote a book about 'down and dirty' tech-
niques. One illustration caption reads '"Remember . . . he's
the enemy. Break off his arm and hit him over the head with
it."' Jack Dempsey, How to Fight Tough (Boulder, co, 2002),
p. 125.

16 Roderick Nash, The Nervous Generation: American Thought,
1917-1930 (Chicago, 1970), p. 127.

17 The original Madison Square Garden, a converted railroad
station, opened at Madison Square in 1874; in 1891, a new
sports arena dedicated chiefly to boxing, opened on the site.
In 1968 the Garden moved to its current location on top of
Penn Station at 33rd Street and Seventh Avenue.

18 Max Schmeling, An Autobiography, trans. George B. von der
Lippe (Chicago, 1998), p. 53-

19 Ernest Hemingway, 'Fifty Grand', Men Without Women (New
York, 1986), p. 86.

20 See Elliott J. Gorn, George Plimpton and Marianne
Doezema's short essays on the painting in Frames of Refer-
ence: Looking at American Art, 1900-1950, ed. Beth Venn and
Adam D. Weinberg (New York, 1999), pp. 146-57.

21 The Lynds, Middletown (New York, 1929), p. 226. See Jesse
Frederick Steiner, 'Spectatorism versus Participation', in
Americans at Play: Recent Trends in Recreation and Leisure
Time Activities (New York, 1933), pp. 100-102.

22 Stuart Chase, Men and Machines (London, 1929), pp. 259-60.

23 Peter Standish, Understanding Julio Cortazar (Columbia, sc,
2001), pp. 47-8; Julio Cortazar, 'Circe', Breve Antologia de
Cuentos (Buenos Aires, 1991), p. 12; Garrison quoted in Ray
Barfield, Listening to Radio, 1920-1950 (Westport, ct, 1996),
p. 80. Firpo's story forms the basis for Julio Cortazar, Tori-
to', Final del juego (1956). See also Cortazar, 'The Noble Art',
in Around the Day in Eighty Worlds (New York, 1986).

24 Richard Bak, Joe Louis: The Great Black Hope (New York,
1998), p. 25.

25 Stanley Woodward, Sports Page (New York, 1949), p. 38. In
the first two decades of the twentieth century, there had
been a 50 per cent rise in sports coverage in 63 of America's
largest papers. Between 1920 and 1925, newspaper circula-
tion increased by 5 million. Evensen, 'Jazz Age's Journalism',
pp. 234 236.

26 Gallico, Farewell to Sport, pp. 103-5. Within months of buy-
ing the New York Journal fin 1895, William Randolph Hearst
quadrupled its sports coverage and introduced the first
dedicated sports section. His circulation wars with Joseph
Pulitzer were partly fought over their respective coverage
of Corbett's title defence against Charlie Mitchell, the fight
that Abraham Cahan's Yekl reads about. Evensen, 'Jazz Age
Journalism', p. 238. The New York Daily News, Hearst's 'first
conspicuously successful tabloid', was launched in 1919.
Frederick Allen Lewis, Only Yesterday (New York, 1964), p. 3.
'A journal for the home' called Cosy Moments is transformed
into 'red-hot stuff' by the introduction of crime and box-
ing in P. G. Wodehouse's 1915 novel, Psmith Journalist
(Harmondsworth, 1970), pp. 9, 32.

27 See Leo Lowenthal, 'The Triumph of Mass Idols', Literature,
Popular Culture, and Society (Palo Alto, ca, 1968),

pp. 109-41-

28 Heywood Broun, 'Sport for Art's Sake', in The Best American
Sports Writing of the Century, ed. David Halberstam (Boston,
1999), p. 133.

29 Lowenthal, 'The Triumph of Mass Idols', p. 133.

30 Ibid., pp. 131-4.

31 Damon Runyon, 'The Big Umbrella', in On Broadway
(Harmondsworth, 1990), p. 441.

32 William K. Everson, American Silent Film (New York, 1998),
p. 269.

33 Kevin Brownlow, The Parade's Gone By (Berkeley, ca, 1968),
pp. 448-56.

34 Paul Gallico, The Golden People (New York, 1965), pp. 13-28.

35 Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria,
1919-1920 (Minneapolis, 1955), p. 241.

36 F.Scott Fitzgerald, 'Echoes of the Jazz Age', in The Crack-Up
(Harmondsworth, 1965), p. 10; Lewis, Only Yesterday, p. 155.

37 John Dos Passos, 'Newsreel xl', Nineteen Nineteen (1932), in
usa (London, 1950), pp. 665-6.

38 Carpentier 's Hollywood films include The Wonder Man
(1920), A Gypsy Cavalier (1922) and The Show of Shows
(1929).

39 Quoted in Claude Meunier, Ring Noir (Paris, 1992), pp. 74-5.
A full translation appears in Carpentier's autobiography,
Carpentier by Himself, trans. Edward Fitzgerald (London,
1958), pp. 135-8.

40 Broun, 'Sport for Art's Sake', pp. 131, 134. Eugene O'Neill
supposedly once told Harry Kemp, a Byronic Provincetown
poet who often talked about boxers, that he would have
liked to have been a prizefighter, too - but I got a blow once
that loosened all my teeth.' Edmund Wilson, The Twenties
(New York, 1976), p. 338.

41 Ring Lardner, 'The Battle of the Century', in Some Cham-
pions, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and Richard Layman (New
York, 1992), pp. 134-49. When Lardner died in 1933, Scott

418

Fitzgerland described him as a 'disillusioned idealist': 'It was
never that he was completely sold on athletic virtuosity as
the be-all and end-all of problems; the trouble was that he
could find nothing finer.' F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'Ring', in The
Crack-Up, pp. 37-8.

42 GeneTunney, 'My Fights with Jack Dempsey', in The Aspirin
Age, 1919-1941, ed. Isabel Leighton (London, 1950), p. 159.

43 Tunney studied Dempsey 's fights in detail. 'My Fights with
Jack Dempsey', pp. 155-7.

44 F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (Harmondsworth,
1990), p. 125. See Elliot J. Gorn, 'The Manassa Mauler and
the Fighting Marine: An Interpretation of the Dempsey-
Tunney Fights' ', Journal of American Studies, 19, no. 1(1985),
pp. 27-45.

45 Jeffrey T. Sammons, Beyond the j?/ng (Urbana, il, 1990),
p. 72.

46 Quoted in Sammons, Beyond the Ring, p. 71; 'The Manassa
Mauler and the Fighting Marine', p. 29.

47 In 'The Bear' (1942), William Faulkner described the never-
ending conversation about the fight between the bear, Old
Ben, and the dog, Lion, as anticipating the way 'people
later would talk about Sullivan and Kilrain and, later still,
about Dempsey and Tunney.' Faulkner's story is set in the
early 1880s. If the Kilrain-Sullivan fight of 1889 signalled the
beginning of the development of modern commercial box-
ing, theTunney-Dempsey contests of 1926 and 1927 repre-
sented its apotheosis. This is just one manifestation in the
story of capitalism's encroachment on the 'doomed wilder-
ness'. Faulkner, Go Down, Moses (Harmondsworth, i960),
pp. 175, 147.

48 See Randy Roberts, Jack Dempsey, The Manassa Mauler
(Baton Rouge, la, 1979), pp. 258-63.

49 Sherwood Anderson, 'Prize Fighters and Authors', in No
Swank (Philadelphia, 1934), p. 20.

50 Lewis, Only Yesterday, p. 174; Clark, The World of Damon
Runyon, p. 189. 'G.B.Shaw's Letters to GeneTunney', are
in Collier's Magazine, 23 June 1951. See also Jay Tunney,
'The Playwright and the Prizefighter: Bernard Shaw and
Gene Tunney', shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies,
23 (2003), pp. 149-54; Benny Green, Shaw's Champions
(London, 1978).

51 Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw (Harmondsworth, 1993),
vol. in, p. 208. See Gene Tunney, 'What People Want To
Know About Me', The American Legion Monthly Magazine,
March 1927, and 'The Ring and the Book: A Champion
Surveys the Literary Champions who have written of the
Glories of the Fight', The Golden Book Magazine, April 1934.
See also David Margolick, 'The Reader in the Ring', New
York Review of Books, 31 May 2007, pp. 46-8.

52 Harrison S.Martland, 'Punch Dr\mk',Journaloftke Ameri-
can Medical Association, 91, 13 October 1928, pp. 1103-7.
The oed cites the first use of 'punch drunk' in 1918.

53 Anderson, 'Prize Fighters and Authors', pp. 17-20.

54 James T. Farrell, 'A Remembrance of Ernest Hemingway',
in Literary Essays, 1934-1974, ed. Jack Alan Robbins (Port
Washington, ny, 1976), pp. 88-9. Robert Frost asked
Tunney how Hemingway bloodied his nose. Nelson Algren,

Notes from a Sea Diary: Hemingway All the Way (New York,
1966), p. 128.

55 Ernest Hemingway, 'Banal Story' Men without Women,
pp. 126-8. Hemingway is referring to Laird S. Goldsborough,
'Big Men - Or Cultured', Forum, 73 (February 1925), 209-14.
The story was first written for the Little Review's 'Banal Issue'.
Hemingway wrote to the editor Jane Heap, 'Now don't go
and switch numbers on me and put it in A Great White
Hopes number.' Reynolds, Hemingway: The Paris Years,
pp. 265-6. See also Wayne Kvam, 'Hemingway's "Banal
Story'", in New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of
Ernest Hemingway, ed. Jackson J.Benson (Durham, nc,
1990), pp. 215-23.

56 Mina Loy, 'Perlun', The Last Lunar Baedeker, ed. Roger
L. Conover (Manchester, 1997), pp. 75, 96; Roger Kahn,
A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring '20s
(New York, 1999), p. 249.

57 Gosta Adrian-Nils son's 1926 collage Bloody Boxing Debut
(1926), figure 7.18, in Christopher Wilk, 'The Healthy Body
Culture', in Modernism: Designing a New World, 1914-1939,
ed. Wilk, exh. cat., Victoria and Albert Museum, London
(London, 2006), pp. 263, 28sn.

58 Djuna Barnes, 'My Sisters and I at a New York Prizefight'
(1914), in New York, ed. Alyce Barry (Los Angeles, 1989),
pp. 168-73.

59 Djuna Barnes, 'Jess Willard Says Girls Will Be Boxing for a
Living Soon', in / Could Never Be Lonely Without a Husband
(London, 1987), p. 137.

60 Djuna Barnes, 'Dempsey Welcomes Female Fans', ml Could
Never Be Lonely, p. 285.

61 Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Ringside Seats (New York,
1937). pp. 208-26.

62 Quoted in Brian Gallagher, Anything Goes (New York, 1987),
p. 98.

63 Mae West, The Constant Sinner (London, 1995), p. 59.

64 Colette, Cheri, trans. Roger Senhouse (London, 2001), p. 14,
18.

65 Ibid., p. 25. When Lea meets Cheri again after the war, he
appears 'scraggy' to her; no longer like a pugilist, but like a
fighting cock'. Colette, The Last of Cheri (1926), trans. Roger
Senhouse (London, 2001), pp. 51-2.

66 Anne Chisholm, Nancy Canard (Harmondsworth, 1979),
p. 219.

67 Rosamund Lehmann, The Weatherin the Streets (London,
1981), pp. 146-7. In the second volume of Ford Madox Ford 's
war tetralogy, Parade's End (1924-28), Captain Christopher
Tietjens refuses a soldier home-leave on the grounds that
he will be killed by his wife's lover, a prize-fighter. Ironically,
a bomb gets him instead. Parade's End (Harmondsworth,
1982), pp. 309-10.

68 Jane Bowles, 'Going to Massachusetts', in My Sister's Hand in
Mine: The Collected Works (New York, 1978), p. 460.

69 Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz, in The Collected Writings,
ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli (London, 1993), pp. 98, 100. A lack
of ability to fight is linked to lack of virility elsewhere in the
novel. See also Matthew J. Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur:
The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Columbia, sc, 1981), p. 199.

419

70 William Carlos Williams, The Autobiography (New York,

1967), pp. 224, 226.

71 Schmeling, An Autobiography, pp. 49-50; Erik Jensen,
'Crowd Control: Boxing Spectatorship and Social Order in
Weimar Germany', in Histories of Leisure, ed. Rudy Koshar
(Oxford, 2002), pp. 93-4.

72 See Frederick V. Romano, The Boxing Filmography, 1920-2003

(Jefferson, nc, 2004), pp. 152-4; Frank Ardolino, 'Shadow
Boxing: Max Baer on Canvas and On Screen', Aethlon, 9,
no. 1 (Fall 1991), pp. 67-71. The film was banned in Germany
because 'the relationship of the Jewish man - who ... is a
quite Negroid type . . .-with the non-Jewish women in the
film is ... a violation of the National Socialist sentiment as
interpreted by the new film law of February 16'. David Hull,
Film in the Third Reich (Berkeley, ca, 1969), p. 47.

73 Jensen, 'Crowd Control', p. 93.

74 Tom D^dis, Keaton: The Man Who Wouldn't Lie Down (New
York, 1979), pp. 133, 190.

75 Quoted in Marion Meade, Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase
(New York, 1995), p. 160.

76 Dardis, Keaton, p. 133.

77 Walter Kerr, The Silent Clowns (New York, 1980), p. 243.

78 H. L. Mencken, 'Appendix to Moronia, part 3: Valentino',
in Prejudices: Sixth Series (London, 1927), p. 311.

79 Quoted in Gaylen Studlar, This Mad Masquerade. Stardom
and Masculinity in the Jazz Age (New York, 1996), p. 185.

If Valentino was not sufficiently a boxer, Garbo was too
much of one. Kenneth Tynan complained that she walked
'like a middleweight boxer approaching an opponent'.
'Garbo', Sight and Sound, 23, no. 4 (April-June 1954), p. 189.
See also Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in
American Silent Film (Cambridge, ma, 1991).

80 Emily W. Leider, Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph
Valentino (London, 2003), p. 374.

81 John Dos Passos, 'Adagio Dancer', The Big Money, in usa,
pp. 861, 863-4.

82 Dorothy Parker, 'The Sheik' (1922), in The Uncollected
Dorothy Parker, ed. Stuart Y. Silverstein (London, 2001),
p. 115.

83 Quoted in Chase, Men and Machines, p. 258.

84 Quoted in Envisioning America: Prints, Drawings and Photo-
graphs by George Grosz and his Contemporaries, 1915-1933,
exh. cat., Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University
(Cambridge, ma, 1990), p. 10.

85 George Grosz, An Autobiography, trans. Nora Hodges
(Berkeley, ca, 1997), p. 228.

86 Wanda Corn, The Great American Thing: Modern Art and
National Identity, 1915-1935 (Berkeley, ca, 1999), p. 57.

87 Guillaume Apollinaire, 'Montparnasse', Le Guetteur melan-
colique suivi de Poemes Retrouves (Paris, 1970), pp. 180-81.

88 William Carlos Williams, Spring and All, in Lmaginations
(New York, 1970), pp. 97, 103.

89 See Mary Nolan, Visions oj Modernity: American Business and
the Modernization of Germany (Oxford, 1994).

90 Although by the 1920s, boxing was thought of as an Ameri-
can sport, it was initially popularized by young Germans
who had learned to box in British prisoner-of-war camps

during the war. Jensen, 'Crowd Control', p. 81.

91 Hannes Meyer, 'Die Neue Welt' (1926), in The Weimar
Republic Sourcebook, ed. Anton Kaes, Martin Jay and
Edward Dimendberg (Berkeley, ca, 1994), p. 447. See also
'The Healthy Body Culture', pp. 249-96.

92 Herbert Jhering, 'Boxing', in The Weimar Republic
Sourcebook, p. 686.

93 JohnM.Hoberman, Sport and Political ideology (London,
1984), p. 19.

94 Quoted in David Bathrick, 'Max Schmeling on the Canvas:
Boxing as an Icon of Weimar Culture', New German
Critique, 51 (Autumn 1990), p. 119. See Der Querschnitt:
Facsimile Querschnitt durch den Querschnitt 1921-1936, ed.
Wilmont Haacke (Frankfurt, 1977), p. 146.

95 Quoted in Jensen, 'Crowd Control', pp. 89-90.

96 Willi Wolfradt's discussion of impersonality in Baumeister's
1929 series, Sport und Maschine, is quoted in John Willett,
The New Sobriety, 1917-1933: Art and Politics in the Weimar
Period (London, 1978), pp. 105-6.

97 Belling's sculpture is reproduced in Barbel Schrader and
Jurgen Schebera, The 'Golden' Twenties: Art and Literature in
the Weimar Republic (New Haven, ct, 1980), pp. 144, 174.

98 Schmeling, An Autobiography, pp. 28-30; Grosz, An Auto-
biography, p. 195. The painting is reproduced in Willett,
The New Sobriety, p. 103.

99 Schmeling won the title because Sharkey was disqualified.
The following year he defended it against Stribling, and in
1932 lost, by a dubious decision, to Sharkey. 'We wuz
robbed,' Joe Jacobs famously yelled. An Autobiography,
pp. 4, 65-6, 75-6, 81-3, 91, 102-5.

100 Schmeling, An Autobiography, pp. 32-3; Peter Kuhnst, Sport:
A Cultural History in the Mirror of Art, trans. Allen Guttmann
(Dresden, 1996), p. 331. Hemingway later said of Dietrich,
'The Kraut's the best that ever came into the ring'. Lillian
Ross, Reporting (London, 1966), p. 204.

101 Bertolt Brecht, Diaries 1920-1922 , trans, and ed. John
Willett (London, 1979), p. 74; Bertolt Brecht, Poems,
1913-1956, ed. John Willettt and Ralph Manheim (New York,
1987), pp. 57-8.

102 Grosz, An Autobiography, p. 188.

103 Bertolt Brecht, 1954 note on In the Jungle of Cities, trans.
Gerhard Nellhaus, ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim
(London, 1970), pp. 71-2.

104 Quoted in Battrick, 'Max Schmeling on the Canvas', p. 122.
Brecht wanted to write a novel or play about Dempsey vs.
Carpentier. Das Renomee: Fin Boxerroman, Werke (Frank-
furt/Main, 1989), vol. xvii, pp. 421-39.

105 Brecht, Poems 1913 101956, ed. Willett and Manheim,
pp. 1534.

106 Bertolt Brecht, Man Equals Man in Collected Plays: Two, ed.
John Willett and Ralph Manheim (London, 1994), pp. 75,
90; Franco Ruffini, 'A Little More Healthy Sport! Bertolt
Brecht and Objective Boxing', Mime Journal (1996), p. 5.

107 Brecht, Note on In the Jungle of Cities, p. 65. See also p. 53.

108 Bertolt Brecht, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
(1927), trans. W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, in Collected
Plays: Two, p. 211.

420

109 The protagonist of Hook to the Chin' is roughly based on
Samson-Korner. Bertolt Brecht, Collected Short Stories, ed.
John Willett and Ralph Manheim (London, 1992), pp. 68-71.
For an unfinished fragment of Life Story of the Boxer
Samson-Korner', see Brecht, Collected Stories, pp. 207-24.

110 Schmeling, An Autobiography, pp. 19, 22.

111 Quoted in Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic,
ed. John Willett (London, 1974), p. 551. Samson-Korner's
1925 essay 'Jugend und Sport' is discussed in Theodore F.
Rippey, 'Athletics, Aesthetics, and Politics in the Weimar
Press', German Studies Review, 28, no. 1 (2005), pp. 91-2.

112 Maximillian Sladek, 'Our Show' (1924), in The Weimar
Republic Sourcebook, p. 556. See also Peter Jelavich, Berlin
Cabaret (Cambridge, ma, 1993), pp. 165-75.

113 Quoted in Envisioning America, p. 14.

114 'Girls' Prizefights Entertain Dempsey', New York Times,
2 May 1922, p. 27.

115 Quoted in Kahn, A Flame of Pure Fire, p. 295. In 1924,

a quintet of 'athletic frauleins from the land of the pretzel
and schnapps' embarked on a tour of American vaudeville
houses. The Boxing Blade (12 April 1924). In England, there
was outrage when a boxer called Annie Newton challenged
Dempsey. The niece of A. J. Newton, author of a 1904
boxing manual, Annie later featured in a documentary on
Women London Boxers (Gaumont, 1931).

116 'Berlin Wickedness Shocks Dempsey', New York Times,
4 May 1922, p. 27.

117 Antonio Gramsci, 'Americanism and Fordism', in Selections
from the Prison Diaries, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and
Geoffrey Nowell Smith (London, 1971), p. 318.

118 Wyndham Lewis, 7fl/r(Harmondsworth, 1982), p. 85.

119 George Du Maurier, Trilby (Oxford, 1995), pp. 3-4, 89, 91-2,
144, 229-30. Although set in the 1850s, the novel includes
much 1890s detail.

120 Claude Meunier, RingNoir (Paris, 1992), pp. 111-13. See also
Daniel Karlin, Proust's English (Oxford, 2005), p. 14.

121 Marcel Proust, A Vombre des jeunes files enfleurs, in A la
recherche du temps perdu, Pleiade edition (Paris, 1987), vol. 11,
p. 200, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin,
revised by D. J. Enright (London, 2002), vol. 11, p. 490;
Sodome et Gomorrhe, Pleiade, vol. m, p. 23, English trans-
lation, vol. rv, p. 25; La Prisonniere, Pleiade, vol. in, p. 710,
English translation, vol. v, p. 229. In Le Temps retrouve, the
Baron imagines the war as a gigantic boxing match: Pleiade,
vol. iv, p. 373, English translation, vol. vi, p. 129. 1 am
grateful to Danny Karlin for drawing my attention to these
passages.

122 Arthur Cravan, 'To Be or Not To Be . . . American', in
Oeuvres, ed. Jean-Pierre Begot (Paris, 1992), pp. 121-4.
Terry Hale's translation is in FourDada Suicides, ed. Roger
Conover, Terry Hale and Paul Lenti (London, 1995), p. 34.
See also Andre Dunoyer de Segonzac on the arrival of
American boxing, in Meunier, RingNoir, pp. 35-6. Dunoyer
de Segonzac later illustrated Tristan Bernard's Tableau de la
hoxe (1922) and Jean Giraudoux's Le Sport (1924).

123 Carpentier, My Methods, or Boxing as a Fine Art, p. 22;
Carpentier by Himself, p. 60.

124 Carpentier, My Methods, p. 23.

125 Orio Vergani, Poor Nigger, trans. W. W. Hobson (London,
1930), p. 193.

126 Colette, Contes des Mille et Un Matins (Paris, 1970), some are
quoted in Meunier, RingNoir, pp. 46-49. Cocteau, quoted in
Alexis Philonenko, Histoires de la Boxe (Paris, 1991), p. 400
(my translation). On Hemingway's coaching of Masson and
Miro, see Carolyn Lanchner, Andre Masson (New York,
1976), p. 86. Man Ray attended a 1929 fight with Heming-
way; his photographs are reproduced in Jean-Michel
Bouhours, 'Les Mysteres du Chateau du de', in Man Ray:
directeurdu mauvais movies, ed. Jean-Michel Bouhours and
Patrick de Haas (Paris, 1997), p. 97. On Hemingway's
encounter with Jean Prevost, see Noel Riley Fitch, Sylvia
Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the
Twenties and Thirties (Harmondsworth, 1983), pp. 189-90.
OnBonnard's 1931 self-portrait The Boxer, see Graham Nick-
erson, in Pierre Bonnard, Stealing the Image: Works on Paper,
exh.cat., New York Studio (New York, 1997). See also Yvette
Sanchez, 'Un round de litterature francaise et la boxe',
Versant, 40 (2001), pp. 159-71.

127 Vladimir Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita (Harmondsworth,
1995), p- 26.

128 Quoted in Tyler Stovall, Paris Noir: African Americans in the
City of Light (Boston, 1996), p. 68. See also Petrine Archer-
Straw, Negrophilia (London, 2000).

129 Ivan Coll, 'The Negroes are Conquering Europe', in The
Weimar Republic Sourcebook, p. 559; Paul Colin, quoted in
Karen C. C. Dalton and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 'Josephine
Baker and Paul Colin: African American Dance Seen
Through Parisian Eyes', Critical Lnquiry , 24 (Summer 1998),
p. 921; 'Ring du Coliseum' is included in Josephine Baker,
footage from the Cinematheque de la Danse archives (Paris,
1998); many thanks to Sarah Wood for showing me this.

130 Quoted in Katia Samaltanos, Apollinaire: Catalyst for Primi-
tivism, Picabia and Duchamp (Ann Arbor, mi, 1984), p. 53.

131 Stovall, Paris Noir, pp. 67-8. See Michel Fabre, 'The Ring
and the Stage: African Americans in Parisian Public and
Imaginary Space before World War 1', in Space in America:
Theory History Culture, ed. Klaus Benesch and Kerstin
Schmidt (Amsterdam, 2005), pp. 521-8. For a fictional life of
Sam McVea, see Guillaume Apollinaire, 'Distiques pour
plaire a Dupuy', in Poesies libres (Paris, 1978), p. 51.

132 Bennetta Jules -Rosette, Black Paris: The African Writers'
Landscape (Urbana, il, 1998), p. 11.

133 Quoted in Jules-Rosette, Black Paris, p. 29. See also Eduardo
Arroyo, Panama Al Brown (Paris, 1998), pp. 106-8.

134 Stovall, Paris Noir, pp. 3-4, 75. See also Craig Lloyd, Eugene
Bullard: Black Expatriate in Jazz-Age Paris (Athens, ga, 2000).

135 Gwendolyn Bennett, 'Wedding Day', in The Sleeper Wakes:
Harlem Renaissance Stories by Women, ed. Marcy Knopf (New
Brunswick, nj, 1993), p. 54. See also Alice Morning's 'Some-
thing Alive in Paris', TheNewAge(n March 1920), pp. 302-3.
Morning describes 'modern life' at the 'Nothing-Happens
Bar'. The cast of characters includes 'a negro boxer', 'a short
woman, sports variety' and 'an American sausage-king',
and the story, a scene in which 'the negro boxer mistakes

421

his place in the sun and pays court to the sportswomen,
for which Uncle Sam taps him on the head from behind
and knocks him out.' Morning describes this as a 'scene
of gilded savagery'.

136 Claude McKay, The Negroes in America (Port Washington,
ny, 1979), p. 50. Individuals too did not always fare so well.
In 1913, Jack Johnson was refused rooms at the city's best
hotels. Roberts, Papa Jack, p. 186.

137 JohnLardner, White Hopes and other Tigers (New York, 1951),
pp. 118-36.

138 The first African-American to contest a title after Johnson
was Tiger Flowers who won the world middleweight title in
1926. See Andrew M. Kaye, The Pussycat of Prizefighting: Tiger
Flowers and The Politics of Black Celebrity (Athens, ga, 2004).

139 Hemingway wired this description of Siki to the Toronto Star
two days before the fight. Michael Reynolds, Hemingway:
The Paris Years (New York, 1989), p. 73.

140 Lincoln Steffens, 'The Carpentier-Siki Fight', in The World of
Lincoln Steffens, ed. Ella Winter and Herbert Shapiro (New
York, 1962), p. 249.

141 Bob Scanlon, 'The Record of a Negro Boxer', in Negro, ed.
Nancy Cunard (New York, 2002), p. 210.

142 Orio Vergani's Siki-like hero, George Boykin, fights a French
opponent and finds 'the primeval savagery of his race' has
been 'unloosed'. Vergani, Poor Nigger, p. 160. Despite this
language, the novel portrays Boykin as a victim of prejudice.
In 2004, it was adapted by Extramondo-Theatri 90 for the
Milan stage as Knock Out (dir. Michela Blasi). P. C.Wren,
author of Beau Geste, also wrote a novel about Siki, Soldiers
of Misfortune. M'Bongu is 'so much lower in the scale of
creation' than his white opponent that he is impossible to
beat. (New York, 1929), p. 20.

143 'Battling Siki as a Dark Cloud on the Horizon', Literary
Digest, October 1922, pp. 62-5; 'Battling Siki Shot Dead in
the Street', New York Times, 16 December 1925, p. 3; Gerald
Early, 'Battling Siki', The Culture of Bruising (Hopewell, nj,
1994), p- 68. See also Gerald Early, 'Three Notes Toward a
Cultural Definition of The Harlem Renaissance', Callaloo, 14,
no. 1 (1991), p. 142.

144 Steffens, 'The Carpentier-Siki Fight', p. 250.

145 Blaise Diagne, Le Populaire, 1 December 1922. A slightly dif-
ferent translation is quoted in Benson, Battling Siki, p. 258.
When Diagne became Under Secretary of State for the
Colonies in 1931, an American magazine reminded its read-
ers that he was the deputy who had risen 'magnificently in
the Chamber in 1922 in defense of his compatriot Battling
Siki, kinky-haired light heavyweight'. 'Butcher's Son's
Cabinet', Time, 9 February 1931.

146 David Trotter, The Making of the Reader (London, 1984),
p. 73-

147 Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (London, 1969),
pp. 132, 162. See also Selected Letters, 1917-1961, ed. Carlos
Baker (London, 1985), p. 139. When Hemingway wrote his
memoir of that period, A Moveable Feast, in the late 1950s,
his reputation as a boxer-writer was firmly established. It
therefore seems deliberately provocative to preface the book
with the announcement that it will contain 'no mention of

the Stade Anastasie where the boxers served as waiters at
the tables set out under the trees and the ring was in the
garden. Nor of training with Larry Gains, nor the great
twenty-round fights at the Cirque d'Hiver.' Ernest Heming-
way, A Moveable Feast (London, 1984).

148 Morley Callahan, That Summer in Paris (New York, 1963),
p. 122. See David L. Inglis, 'Morley Callaghan and the
Hemingway Boxing Legend', Notes on Contemporary Litera-
ture, 4, no. 4(1974), pp. 4-7; Scott Donaldson, Hemingway
vs. Fitzgerald (London, 1999), pp. 138-44.

149 Hemingway, Selected Letters, p. 673.

150 On Hemingway's encounter with Wallace Stevens, see
Kenneth Lynn, Hemingway (London, 1987), p. 437. Heming-
way's contest with William Carlos Williams took place on
the tennis court. Williams, The Autobiography (New York,
1967), p. 218.

151 Hemingway, Selected Letters, p. 116.

152 Ibid., pp. 205, 210.

153 Sherwood Anderson, Selected Letters, ed. Charles Modlin
(Knoxville, tn, 1984), p. 80.

154 Judy Jo Small and Michael Reynolds, 'Hemingway v.
Anderson: The Final Rounds', The Hemingway Review, 14, no.
2 (Spring 1995), p. 4. In an earlier draft the fighter had been
called Nerone; Hemingway changed the name to Anderson
and then, finally, to Andreson. Anderson responded with a
story about two 'substantial-looking' men whose fight settles
nothing. Sherwood Anderson, 'The Fight', in Death in the
Woods and Other Stories (New York, 1961), pp. 95-108.

155 Hemingway, Selected Letters, p. 649.

156 Wyndham Lewis, Blasting and Bombardiering (London,
1967), p. 277. On teaching Pound to box, see Hemingway,
Selected Letters, pp. 62, 65. See also Fitch, Sylvia Beach and
the Lost Generation, p. 123.

157 Wyndham Lewis, 'The "Dumb Ox" in Love and War', in
Twentieth-Century Lnterpretations of A Farewell to Arms',
ed. Jay Gellens (Englewood Cliffs, nj, 1970), pp. 72-90.

158 Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, pp. 75-6.

159 On this passage, see David Trotter, Paranoid Modernism
(Oxford, 2001), p. 287.

160 Ezra Pound, 'Patria Mia', in Selected Prose 1909-1965, ed.
William Cookson (New York, 1973), pp. 109-10. A few pages
earlier Pound relates a story about 'Bill Donohue, a pugilist'
who is forced to lift pianos to amuse the 'civilised peoples of
the world' (p. 105). Again American virility has been made
to perform with the tools of effete European culture, to little
appreciation.

161 Wyndham Lewis, 'A Soldier of Humour', in The Wild Body
(London, 1927), pp. 27-8. See Trotter, The Making of the
Reader, pp. 76-7.

162 See Trotter, Paranoid Modernism, pp. 305-11.

163 For an argument that being an American is a profession in
itself, see Cravan, Oeuvres, pp. 121-4.

164 Ezra Pound, 'A Retrospect', in Literary Essays of Ezra Pound,
ed. T. S. Eliot (London, 1954), p. 10.

165 Ezra Pound, Selected Letters, 1907-1941, ed. D. D. Paige
(London, 1950), p. 13.

166 Ezra Pound, 'On Technique', in Selected Prose, pp. 32-3.

422

167 Ezra Pound, ThePisan Cantos, ed. Richard Sieburth (New
York, 2003), p. 47. Siki is mentioned in Canto 74(1.704) in
the context of a passage about undergraduates and the First
World War. The students with their bayonets are 'inferior
gorillas'; Siki, it seems, is the real thing. ThePisan Cantos,
p. 23. On Dempsey and Tunney, see Ezra Pound, abc of
Reading (London, 1951), pp. 86-7.

168 Pound, Selected Letters, p. 348.

169 Conrad Aiken, 'King Bolo and Others', in T. S. Eliot:

A Symposium, ed.M.J. T. Tambimuttu and Richard March
(London, 1948), pp. 20-23. See also Conrad Aiken, Ushant
(London, 1963), pp. 133-7. Attending Harvard in 1910,
Quentin Compson is 'boxed ... all over the place' by a
fellow student who has learnt to fight by 'going to Mike's
every day, over in town'. William Faulkner, The Sound and
the Fury (Harmondsworth, 1964), pp. 149-50.

170 O'Donnell advertised in the mit newspaper The Tech: 'Box-
ing and Physical Culture taught by steve o'donnell Boxing
Instructor at Harvard University First class gymnasium all
the latest Spaulding machines, hot and cold shower baths.
Guaranteed no black eyes or marks. 8 E. Concord St., cor
Wash.' Available at http://www-tech.mit.edu/ archives/

VOL_026/TECH_V026_S0129_P004.pdf.

171 T. S.Eliot, 'Portrait of a Lady', in The Complete Poems and
Plays (London, 1969), p. 20.

172 The facsimile of The Waste Land includes a satirical reference
to Fresca as 'Minerva in a crowd of boxing peers'. Valerie
Eliot glosses this by naming the peers as the 8th Marquis of
Queensberry and the 5th Earl of Lonsdale. The Waste Land:
A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original, ed. Valerie Eliot
(London, 1971), pp. 29, 127. Eliot retained an interest in box-
ing throughout his life. In 1963, he attacked television, but
admitted that he nevertheless liked to watch boxing. David
E. Chinitz, T. S. Eliotandthe Cultural Divide (Chicago, 2003),
p. 228. In 1963 Groucho Marx began a correspondence
with Eliot and joked that he shared a first name with Tom
Gibbons, 'a prizefighter who once lived in St. Paul'. The
Groucho Letters (London, 1969), pp. 127-9.

173 Nevill Coghill, 'Sweeney Agonistes (An anecdote or two)',
in T. S. Eliot: A Symposium, p. 86.

174 DosPassos, usa, pp. 402, 404.

175 Fitzgerald, The Great Gatshy, p. 12. See Christian Messenger,
'Tom Buchanan and the Demise of the Ivy League Athletic
Hero' ', Journal of Popular Culture, 8, no. 2 (Fall 1974),

pp. 402-10. By 1931, Fitzgerald was complaining that 'except
for a short period in school, we were not turning out to be
an athletic people like the British, after all.' 'Echoes of the
Jazz Age', in The Crack-Up, pp. 15-16.

176 Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (London 1976), pp. 10,
9, 13, 33-4, H6, 140, 144, 178, 181, 14.

177 In Save Me the Waltz, David tells his wife, Alabama, who is
trying to establish a career as a ballet dancer, T hope you
realize that the biggest difference in the world is between the
amateur and the professional in the arts.' Zelda Fitzgerald,
The Collected Writings, p. 138. See also F. Scott Fitzgerald,
'Early Success', in The Crack-Up, pp. 58, 61.

178 F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night (Harmondsworth,

1986), p. 196. This is perhaps a dig at Hemingway, for
Fitzgerald adds that 'Dick was ashamed at baiting the man,
realizing that the absurdity of the story rested in the imma-
turity of the attitude combined with the sophisticated
method of its narration.'

179 Fitzgerald, Tender Ls the Night, pp. 102, 198, 245, 261. For an
account of Hemingway's mid-Atlantic boxing, see Baker,
Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, pp. 112-13.

180 Discussions of 'diving' in the period include James T. Far-
rell's story, 'Twenty-Five Bucks', in which a manager warns
his fighter, 'that ring ain't no swimming pool'. The Short
Stories (New York, 1962), p. 185. Damon Runyon coined
numerous phrases to describe the phenomenon, including
'a header into the wash bowl' and 'watermen'. Quoted in
Daniel L. Schwarz, Broadway Boogie Woogie: Damon Runyon
and the Making of New York City Culture (London, 2003),

p. 22. See also Runyon's column, 'The Lost Art of Diving',
quoted in Clark, The World of Damon Runyon, p. 237.

181 Quoted in Joshua Taylor, Futurism (New York, 1961),
pp. 124-7-

182 See Filippo Marinetti, 'Some Episodes from the film Futurist
Life', in Selected Writings, trans. R. W. Flint and Arthur A.
Coppotelli (London, 1972), pp. 135-6; Mario Verdone and
Giinter Berghaus, 'Vita Futurista and Early Futurist Cinema',
in International Futurism in Art and Literature, ed. Giinter
Berghaus (Berlin, 2000), pp. 398-421.

183 The Hylaea group (later renamed Cubo-Futurists), 'Slap in
the Face of Public Taste', in Russian Futurism through its
Manifestoes, 1912-1928, ed. Anna Lawton (Ithaca, ny, 1988),
pp. 51-2; D.H.Lawrence, The Letters, ed.Aldous Huxley
(London, 1932), p. 196; Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini: A
Biography (New York, 1982), p. 114.

184 T. E. Hulme, 'Modern Art, 1: The Grafton Group' (1914), in
The Collected Writings, ed. Karen Csengeri (Oxford, 1994),
pp. 263-7; 'Mr. Epstein and the Critics', in Collected Writings,
p. 260. See also Patrick Bridgwater, Nietzsche in Anglosaxony
(Leicester, 1972), pp. 135-8.

185 Wyndham Lewis, The Letters, ed. W. K. Rose (London, 1963),
pp. 54-6. See also Michael Levenson, A Genealogy of Mod-
ernism (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 121-3; Trotter, Paranoid
Modernism, pp. 231-3.

186 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (1888), trans. Walter
Kaufman and R.J. Hollingdale (New York, 1968), pp. 428-9.

187 Russian Futurism through its Manifestoes, p. 149.

188 Antonello Negri, Aligi Sassu, trans. Susan Scott (Lugano,
1998), pp. 12-13.

189 Quoted in Marianne Doezema, George Bellows and Urban
America (New Haven, 1992) p. 215.

190 Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities, trans. Sophie
Wilkins (London, 1995), vol. 1, pp. 7-8, 21-2, 24-5.

191 Musil's first novel, The Confusions of Young Torless (1906),

is a school story in which the pupils are required to 'be con-
stantly ready to engage in quarrels and fist-fights'. Unlike
Tom Brown and the rest, Torless does not fight for the
weaker boy's honour but lets him become a scapegoat. The
old rules do not apply. Robert Musil, The Confusions of Young
Torless, trans. Shaun Whiteside (Harmondsworth, 2001),

423

pp. 11, 42, 119, 143-

192 Wyndham Lewis, 'The New Egos', Blast, no. 1 (Santa Bar-
bara, ca, 1981), p. 141. Although the magazine 'blasts' sport,
it 'blesses' six prize-fighters (Young Ahearn, Colin Bell, Dick
Burge, Petty Officer Curran, Bandsman Rice and Bombadier
Wells). Blast, pp. 17, 28. See Richard Cork, Vorticism and
Abstract Art in the First Machine Age (London, 1976), p. 250;
William C. Wees, Vorticism and the English Avant-Garde
(Manchester, 1972), pp. 22-7, 171.

193 Wyndham Lewis, 'Inferior Religions', in The Wild Body,
pp. 235-6. A couple of comic types battle it out in Lewis's
1929 painting Boxing atJuan-les-Pins. See Paul Edwards,
Wyndham Lewis: Painter and Writer (New Haven, 2000),
pi. 216.

194 Although Bergson was one of the thinkers whom Lewis
'blasts' in his magazine, his rejection of the 'isolated figure'
in favour of insect-like intersection derives from Bergson's
philosophy of 'creative evolution' which was very much in
vogue before the war. In the same, first, issue of Blast, Lewis
presented his unperformable 'Vorticist drama', 'The Enemy
of the Stars', in which two antagonists Hanp and Arghol
(workers in a wheelwright's yard, and uneasy doubles) argue
and then fight. See Wees, Vorticism and the English Avant-
Garde, pp. 182-5; David Graver, 'Vorticist Performance and
Aesthetic Turbulence in Enemy of the Stars', pmla, 107, no. 3
(1992), pp. 482-96.

195 For a comparison of 'Combat No. 2' (in which three
couples battle) with 'The New Egos' and Lewis's story
'Bestre', which describes 'phases of combat or courtship
in the Insect-world', see David Ayers, Wyndham Lewis and
Western Man (London, 1992), pp. 27-9.

196 Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man (London, 1927),
p. 332.

197 Ibid., pp. 36-7.

198 Wyndham Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled (New York, 1926),
pp. 115-16. In the first of his 1935 series of lectures, Introduc-
tion to Metaphysics, Heidegger cited two symptoms of the
'spiritual decline of the earth': 'when a boxer counts as a
great man of a people; when the tallies of millions at mass
meetings are a triumph'. In a later lecture, Heidegger hailed
the 'inner truth and greatness' of the National Socialist
movement as a possible solution. Introduction to Metaphysics,
trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven, 2000),
pp. 40, 213. By 1935, Lewis too was a sympathetic supporter
of Hitler. See Edwards, Wyndham Lewis: Painter and Writer,
ch. 11.

199 Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, pp. 191-2. See also
Constant Lambert's ballet score Prize Fight (1924-7).

200 This was also true for Le Corbusier, who illustrated the
proposition that 'lesson of the machine lies in the pure
relation of cause and effect' with pictures of ships' guns, air-
plane propellers and a boxing match between a black and
white fighter. Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today
(1925), trans. James I. Dunnett (London, 1987), pp. xxiv, 170.
Consider also the comparison of Raymond Hood's Radiator
Building (clad in black brick with gilded details and a golden
crown) and 'Jack Johnson's golden smile'. Robert A. M.

Stern, Gregory Gilmartin and Thomas Mellins, New York
1930 (New York, 1994), p. 576.

201 George Antheil, Bad Boy of Music (Hollywood, 1990), p. 139.
See also Carol J. Oja, 'George Antheil's Ballet Mecanique
and Transatlantic Modernism', in A Modern Mosaic, ed.
Townsend Ludington (Chapel Hill, nc, 2000), pp. 175-202.

202 391, no. 19 (October 1924). See Roger Conover's note in Loy,
The Lost Lunar Baedeker, p. 196. Duchamp bet, and lost, on
Carpentier when he fought Dempsey. Affectionately, Marcel:
The Selected Correspondence of Marcel Duchamp, ed. Francis
M. Nuamann and Hector Obalk Ludion, trans. Jill Taylor
(Ghent, 2000), pp. 99-100.

203 See The Green Box in The Writings of Marcel Duchamp. See
also Craig E. Adcock, Marcel Duchamp 's Notes from the Large
Glass (Epping, 1983). The photomontage was first published
as a leaflet in tnt, March 1919. The magazine is reprinted in
New YorkDada, ed. Rudolf E. Kuenzli (New York, 1986).
'Combat de Boxe' appears on p. 150. 'The Boxing Match'
(1913) and the 1919 photomontage can also be found in
Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp
(London, 1997), vol. 11, pp. 583, 641.

204 Quoted in Jerrold Seigel, The Private Worlds of Marcel
Duchamp (Berkeley, ca, 1995), p. 106.

205 Dawn Ades, Neil Cox and David Hopkins, Duchamp
(London, 1999), p. 99.

206 Calvin Tompkins, Duchamp: A Biography (New York, 1996),
p. 10.

207 Jean Suquet, 'Possible', in The Definitely Unfinished Marcel
Duchamp, ed. Thierry De Duve (Cambridge, ma, 1992),
p. 101.

208 Quoted in Calvin Tompkins, The Bride and the Bachelors:
The Heretical Courtship in Modern Art (New York, 1965),
p. 24, and in James Johnson Sweeney, 'Marcel Duchamp',

in Wisdom: Conversations with the Elder Wise Men of Our Day,
ed. James Nelson, (New York, 1958), p. 99.

209 Andre Breton, 'Lighthouse of the Bride' (1935), View (March
1945), pp. 6-9, 13.

210 Tyrus Miller compares the mechanical operation of desire
in the Large Glass and Djuna Barnes's Nightwood. Late
Modernism (Berkeley, ca, 1999), pp. 164-8.

211 Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (London, 2001), pp. 69, 71, 84, 133,
146. See also Tim Armstrong, Modernism, Technology and the
Body (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 123-9.

212 Tristan Tzara, Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries, trans.
Barbara Wright (London, 1992), pp. 12-13.

213 Tzara, Seven Dada Manifestos, p. 28; Tzara, 'Memoirs of
Dadaism', in Edmund Wilson, Axel's Castle, London, 1984),
p. 243.

214 Tzara, Seven Dada Manifestos, p. 5; Tzara, 'Zurich
Chronicles (1915-1919)', in The Dada Painters and Poets,
ed. Robert Motherwell (Cambridge, ma, 1989), p. 236.

215 See Jill Lloyd, German Expressionism: Primitivism and
Modernity (New Haven, 1991), ch. 6.

216 John D. Erickson, 'The Cultural Politics of Dada', in Dada:
The Coordinates of Cultural Politics, ed. Stephen C. Foster
(New York, 1996), p. 25.

217 Malcolm Cowley, Exile's Return (Harmondsworth, 1994),

424

pp. 169-70. The previous year Cowley published a poem,
'Valuta', in which he declared the 'four angels' of modern
America to be Theodore Roosevelt, Charlie Chaplin, Jack
Johnson and an anonymous fiddle player. Quoted in
Michael North, Readingi922 (Oxford, 1999), p. 166.

218 David Gascoyne, A Short Survey of Surrealism (London,
2000), p. 44. Jacques Rigaut, quoted in Patrick Waldberg,
Surrealism (London, 1965), p. 63.

219 Anna Balakian, Surrealism: The Road to the Absolute
(Chicago, 1986), pp. 135, 137. Breton's Poem-Objet, 1941 is
reproduced and discussed in Diane Waldman, Collage,
Assemblage, and the Found Object (London, 1992), pp. 157-8.

220 Arthur Cra van, 'Oscar Wilde Lives!', in Oeuvres, pp. 49-63;
translation in FourDada Suicides, pp. 49-61. See also Maria
LluTsa Borras, Arthur Cravan: Une strategic du scandale (Paris,
1996); Arthur Cravan: Poke et Boxeur, exh. cat., Galerie
1900/2000, Paris (Paris, 1992).

221 Cravan, 'Poet and Boxer', in Oeuvres, pp. 87-92; translation
in FourDada Suicides, pp. 40-44.

222 Cravan, 'Exhibition of the Independents', in Oeuvres,
pp. 67-79; translation in The Dada Painters and Poets, ed.
Motherwell, pp. 3-13. See also Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia,
'Arthur Cravan and American Dada', in The Dada Poets
and Painters, pp. 13-17; Steven Watson, Strange Bedfellows:
The First American Avant-Garde (New York, 1991), p. 376.

223 Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Arts in France,
1885-1918 (New York, 1955), p. 272.

224 Quoted in Virginia M. Kouidis, Mina Loy: American
Modernist Poet (Baton Rouge, la, 1980), p. 10.

225 Nina Hamnett, Laughing Torso: Reminiscences of Nina Ham-
nett (London, 1932), pp. 51-2. Van Dongen painted a full-size
portrait of Johnson, naked and holding a jewel-studded cane
and a top hat, against a backdrop of palms and exotic
flowers. See Fabre, 'The Ring and the Stage', p. 527.

226 Cravan, 'Andre Gide', in Oeuvres, pp. 33-7; translation in
FourDada Suicides, p. 40; 'Notes', in vw, issues land 2/3
(June 1942 and March 1943), in Oeuvres, pp. 105-17, trans-
lated by Terry Hale in FourDada Suicides, p. 79; Geoffrey C.
Ward, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
(New York, 2004), p. 388. On Johnson in Paris, see Ring Noir,
chapter one. Cravan said of Johnson, 'After Poe, Whitman,
Emerson, he is the most glorious American.' 'Arthur Cravan
vs. Jack Johnson', The Soil, 1, no. 4 (April 1917), quoted in
Francis M. Maumann, New York Dada, 1915-23 (New York,
1994), pp. 165-6.

227 Quoted in George Plimpton, Shadow Box (London, 1989),
pp. 57-9-

228 Leon Trotsky, My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography (New
York, 1930), p. 268.

229 See Roger Conover, 'Mina Loy's Colossus: Arthur Cravan
Undressed', in New YorkDada, ed. Kuentzli, pp. 102-19.
Fictional accounts of the story include Antonia Logue,
Shadow Box (London, 1999); Mike Richardson and Rick
Geary, Cravan: Mystery Man of the Twentieth Century
(Milwaukie, or, 2005).

230 James Riordan, Sport in Soviet Society (Cambridge, 1980),
pp. 9, 19, 79-

231 Riordan, Sportin Soviet Society, p. 98. See also Sport and
Political Ideology, ch. 7. American popular culture remained
popular in Soviet Russia. See, for example, Lev Kelshov,
'Americanism' (1922), in The Film Factory: Russian and
Soviet Cinema in Documents, 1896-1939, ed. Richard Taylor
and Ian Christie (London, 1988), pp. 72-3.

232 Vladimir Mayakovsky, 'Comrades, discuss Red Sport!'
(1928), unpublished translation by Tanya Frisby. Some 40
years later, the Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko echoed
Mayakovsky s words. The sports star should display more
than mere 'athletic narcissism'; he should be an 'educator'.
'A Poet Against the Destroyers', Sports Illustrated, 12
December 1966, p. 106.

233 Quoted in Riordan, Sportin Soviet Society, p. 104. On
Lunacharsky, see Huntly Carter, The New Spirit in the
Russian Theatre, 1917-1928 (London, 1929), pp. 37-46.

234 Vil Bykov, 'Jack London in the Soviet Union', Book Club of
California Quarterly Newsletter, 24, no. 2 (1959), pp. 52-8.

235 Mike O'Mahony, Sport in the ussr: Physical Culture-Visual
Culture (London, 2006), p. 84.

236 Irina Makoveeva, 'Soviet Sports as a Cultural Phenomenon:
Body and/or Intellect', Studies in Slavic Culture, 3 (2002),

p. 11.

237 MartinAmis, Visiting Mrs Nabokov and Other Excursions
(Harmondsworth, 1994), p. 118.

238 Vladimir Nabokov, 'Breitenstrater-Paolino', in Sobranie
sochinenii russkogo perioda vpiati tomakh, ed. A. Dolinin et al.
(St Petersburg, 1999), vol. 1, pp. 749-54. 1 am quoting from
an unpublished translation by Thomas Karshan. 'The Fight'
was written a few months earlier. The narrator of the story is
'enthralled' by 'the play of shadow and light' on the bodies
of two fighting men. Vladimir Nabokov, The Stories (New
York, 1997), pp. 141-54. Glory (1932), Nabokov's Cambridge
novel, includes a virtuoso fight over a girl between the
protagonist and a boxing Blue called Darwin. Glory, trans.
Dmitri Nabokov (Harmondsworth, 1974), pp. 115-19.
Nabokov's poem 'The Boxer's Girl' (1924) is written from
the point of view of the girl happy to see her violent lover
knocked out. Sobranie sochinenii russkogo perioda vpiati
tomakh, vol. 1, pp. 622-3. See also Brian Boyd, Vladimir
Nabokov: The Russian Years (Princeton, 1990), pp. 242-3,
257.

239 Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific
Management (London, 1993), p. 13.

240 Taylor, The Principles, pp. 39, 63, 68, 85.

241 Marie Seton, Sergei M. Eisenstein (London, 1952), p. 47. See
also Janne Risum, 'The Sporting Acrobat: Meyerhold's
Biomechanics', Mime Journal (1996), pp. 67-111.

242 Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form (New York, 1949), pp. 7-8. See
also Seton, Sergei M. Eisenstein, pp. 42-3, and Robert Leach,
'Eisenstein's Theatre Work', in Eisenstein Rediscovered, ed.
Ian Christie and Richard Taylor (London, 1993), pp. 110-20.

243 Dziga Vertov, 'The Cine-Eyes. A Revolution' (1923), in The
Film Factory, ed. Taylor and Christie, p. 92.

244 S. M. Eisenstein, 'Our "October". Beyond the Played and the
Non-Played', in Selected Works, ed. Richard Taylor (London,

, vol. 1, p. 103.

42S

245 S. M. Eisenstein, 'The Montage of Attractions', in Selected
Works, vol. i, p. 33.

246 Discussions of theatrical productions which draw on boxing
conventions include Gerhard P. Knapp, 'From Lilla helvetet
to the Boxing Ring: Strindberg and Durrenmatt', in Struc-
tures of Influence: A Comparative Approach to August Strind-
berg, ed. Marilyn Johns Blackwell (Chapel Hill, nc, 1981),
pp. 226-44; Howard Quackenbush, 'Pugilism as Mirror and
Metafiction in Life and in Contemporary Spanish American
Drama', Latin American Theatre Review (Fall 1992), pp. 23-41;
Franco Ruffini, Teatro e Boxe (Bologna, 1994).

247 Etienne Decroux, 'Words on Mime', trans. Mark Piper,
Mime Journal '(1985), p. 14. See also Thomas Leabhart,
'The Theatre/Sport Connection', Mime Journal (1996),
pp. 32-65.

248 Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double (1938), trans.
Victor Corti (London, 1993), pp. 88-9.

249 Bertolt Brecht, 'More Good Sports', in The Weimar Republic
Sourcebook, p. 537. See also 'Is the Drama Dying?', in The
Weimar Republic Sourcebook, pp. 538-9; Jensen, 'Crowd
Control', p. 82.

250 Brecht, In the Jungle of Cities, p. 2. Nellhaus translates
'ringkampf ' as wrestling. Compare Brecht's programme
notes for the 1928 Heidelberg production, section 3,
pp. 69-71.

251 Bertolt Brecht, 'Difficulties of the Epic Theatre', in The
Weimar Republic Sourcebook, p. 540. See Hans Ulrich
Gumbrecht, In Praise of Athletic Beauty (Cambridge, ma,
2006), pp. 211-12.

252 Brecht on Theatre, pp. 44, 231, 33.

253 Schmeling, Autobiography, p. 38.

254 Jean Arp, 'Flyweight Glory', in Collected French Writings,
trans. Joachim Neugroschel and ed. Marcel Jean (London,
2001), p. 259.

8 Save Me, Jack Dempsey; Save Me,
Joe Louis

1 Irwin Shaw, 'I Stand By Dempsey', Sailor off the Bremen (New
York, 1939), pp. 21-31. The following year, Gene Tunney
imagined Dempsey knocking Louis out. 'Dempsey Knocks
Out Louis in Mythical Ring Battle', Look, 13 February 1940.

2 A.J. Liebling, The Sweet Science (Harmondsworth, 1982),
p. 2.

3 Quoted in David Margolick, Beyond Glory: Max Schmelingvs.
Joe Louis, and a World on the Brink (London, 2005), p. 86. See
also Roger Kahn, A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the
Roaring 20s (New York, 1999), pp. 430-31.

4 Jo Sinclair, Wasteland (New York, 1946), p. 263.

5 Horace Gregory, 'Dempsey, Dempsey', in Proletarian Litera-
ture in the United States: An Anthology, ed. Granville Hicks,
Michael Gold, et al. (London, 1935), pp. 161-2.

6 Budd Schulberg, On the Waterfront (London, 1988), p. 231.

7 Jesse Frederick Steiner, Americans at Play: Recent Trends in
Recreation and Leisure Time Activities (New York, 1933), p. 96.
In 1923 the Chicago Tribune decided to supplement the

Amateur Athletic Union tournaments with something
locally based; in 1927, the New York Daily News copied the
idea and Paul Gallico, then sports editor, dubbed the
competition 'Golden Gloves'.

8 Otis L. Graham, Jr., 'Years of Crisis: America in Depression
and War', in The Unfinished Century, ed. William Leuchten-
burg (Boston, 1973), p. 381.

9 Frederick Lewis Allen, Since Yesterday: The 1930s in America
(New York, 1986), p. 147.

10 Barney Ross and Martin Abramson, A r oMa/7 Stands Alone
(London, 1959), pp. 65, 70.

11 Steven Riess, City Games: The Evolution of American Urban
Society and the Rise of Sports (Urbana, il, 1989), p. 112.

12 Ross, No Man Stands Alone, pp., 22, 65, 75. For a more
reliable version, see Douglas Century, Barney Ross (New
York, 2006).

13 Paul Gallico, Farewell to Sport (London, 1988), pp. 21, 27. Jim
Tully dedicated a novel to Dempsey, 'my fellow road-kid'.
Tully, The Bruiser (London, 1937).

14 Leger Grindon, 'Body and Soul: The Structure of Meaning
in the Boxing Film Genre', Cinema Journal, 35, no. 4
(Summer 1996), pp. 54-69. Grindon argues that after 1934,
when the Production Code constrained the gangster film,
boxing films 'served to both mute and deliver key elements
made popular by the urban crime film'.

15 John Burrowes, Benny: The Life and Times of a Fighting Legend
(Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 199, 151. See also Kasia Boddy,
'Scottish Fighting Men: Big and Wee', in Scotland in Theory,
ed. Eleanor Bell and Gavin Miller (Amsterdam, 2004),
pp. 183-96.

16 Robert Sklar, City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield (Princeton,
1992), p. 12.

17 In The Roaring Twenties (1939), Cagney plays Eddie Bartlett,
a World War 1 veteran who becomes a gangster after failing
to get a j ob in 1919 (a year characterized in the film by
reference to the Dempsey-Willard fight). 'I can't go around
shadow-boxing any more,' he says.

18 Frederick V.Romano, The Boxing Filmography: American
Features, 1920-2003 (Jefferson, nc, 2004), pp. 207-9.
Cagney, a dancer, was not surprised to find his footwork
praised. Cagney by Cagney (New York, 1976), p. 53.

19 In Night After Night (1932) George Raft plays an ex-boxer
who takes etiquette lessons to impress an heiress. His
cover is blown when his brash ex-girlfriend, Mae West in
her film debut, shows up.

20 Cagney also appeared as a boxer in The Irish in Us (1935)
and City for Conquest (1940). See Romano, The Boxing Film-
ography, pp. 32-4, 95-7. After 1934, the studios began to
recast gangsters and boxers as crime -fighting government
employees. In 1936's Great Guy, Cagney plays an ex-boxer
who works for the Bureau of Weights and Measures. Great
Guy was advertised with the slogan - 'Ex-Boxer Johnny Cave
has a New Opponent: corruption!'

21 Cass Warner Sperling and Cork Millner, with Jack Warner
Jr., Hollywood Be Thy Name: The Warner Brothers Story
(Lexington, ky, 1998), p. 161. The release of 42nd Street was
announced as 'The Inauguration of a New Deal in Enter-

426

tainment'. Richard Barrios, A Song in the Dark: The Birth
ofthe Musical Film (Oxford, 1995), p. 377.

22 Aaron Baker, 'A Left/Right Combination: Populism and
Depression-Era Boxing Films', in Out of Bounds: Sports,
Media, and The Politics of Identity, ed. Aaron Baker and Todd
Boyd (Bloomington, in, 1997), p. 165.

23 Quoted in Brian Neve, Film and Politics in America (London,
1992), p- 115.

24 In 1946, The Milky Way was remade as The Kid from Brooklyn,
a musical starring Danny Kane. The most recent version is
The Calcium Kid (2003), in which a South London milkman
(Orlando Bloom) defeats a slick American.

25 Romano, The Boxing Filmography, pp. 133-5.

26 Kid Galahad was remade as an Elvis Presley musical in 1962.

27 'Palooka' became slang for an incompetent boxer in the
twenties. Palooka (1936) spawned a series that ran from 1947
to 1951 and which was 'a veritable film school of budding
left-wing directors and writers'. Paul Buhle and Dave
Wagner, Blacklisted (London, 2003), pp. 113-14.

28 The Life of Jimmy Dolan was remade by Warners in 1939 as
They Made Me a Criminal, starring John Garfield, Gloria
Dickson and the Dead End Kids.

29 Andrew Bergman, We're in the Money: Depression America
and Its Films (New York, 1992), p. 73.

30 On communitarian ventures' at this time, see Warren I.
Sussman, 'The Thirties', in The Development of an American
Culture, ed. Stanley Coben and Lorman Ratner (Englewood
Cliffs, nj, 1970), p. 183.

31 Rural and ethnic values are combined in Mama Donati's
farm in Kid Galahad (1937). When her son Nick (Edward
G. Robinson) visits, he drops his wise-guy persona and
starts speaking Italian.

32 In 1964 Charles Strouse and Lee Adams turned the play into
a successful Broadway musical about a black boxer. Sammy
Davis, Jr. starred. See Stanley Green, Broadway Musicals
Show by Show (New York, 1996), p. 210.

33 Harold Clurman, The Fervent Yeats: The Story ofthe Group
Theatre and the Thirties (New York, 1957), p. 197. See also
Gabriel Miller, Clifford Odets (New York, 1989), pp. 62-79.

34 The play ended with a rather different homecoming. On
learning that Joe and Lorna have been killed in a car crash,
Papa Bonaparte closes the play saying, 'Come, we bring-a
him home . . . where he belong'. Clifford Odets, Golden Boy
and Other Plays (Uavmondsworth, 1963), p. 111.

35 Nelson Algren, Nonconformity (New York, 1996), pp. 33-4.
Hemingway is the source for Carpentier's line 'viciousness
in the ring is essential'. Nelson Algren, Notes from a Sea
Diary: Hemingway All the Way (New York, 1966), p. 29.

36 Nelson Algren, Chicago: City on the Make (New York, 1951),
p. 69. On getting even, see, for example, Nelson Algren, 'The
Face on the Barroom Floor', The Neon Wilderness (New York,
1986), p. 129.

37 Warner Bros, was famously 'the studio ofthe working class'.
David A. Cook, A History of Narrative Film (New York, 1996),
p. 290. See Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Holly-
wood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (New York, 1988), chs. 9
and 12.

38 Nelson Algren, Never Come Morning (New York, 1987), p. 16.
The story originated in a short story, 'A Bottle of Milk for
Mother', in The Neon Wilderness, pp. 73-90.

39 Never Come Morning, pp. 3, 111, 122, 261. See also Ian
Peddie, 'Poles Apart? Ethnicity, Race, Class and Nelson
Algren', Modern Fiction Studies, 47, no. 1 (Summer 2001),
pp. 118-44.

40 Hazel Rowley, Richard Wright: The Life and Times (New York,
2001), pp. 187-9, 354, 202; Bettina Drew, Nelson Algren: A
Walk on the Wild Side (London, 1990), p. 125.

41 Algren, Never Come Morning, pp. 59, 60, 87, 118.

42 The gang first appeared in Sidney Kingsley's 1937 hit play,
Dead End, and then in the film version, written by Lillian
Hellman and directed by William Wyler. Approximately 85
films featuring either the Dead End Kids or Bowery Boys
followed. See We're in the Money, Chapter Eleven.

43 Vladimir Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita (Harmondsworth,
1980), p. 45. Other films featuring boxing priests include:
The Leather Saint (1955), in which a priest fights to get
medical supplies for the parish hospital, and The Big Punch
(1948) in which a boxer retires to enter the church. On the
Waterfront (1954) presents the parallel crises of conscience
of ex-pug, Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), and priest ('and
something of an amateur boxer in his college days'), Father
Barry (Karl Maiden). Budd Schulberg, On the Waterfront,
p. 43-

44 Algren, Never Come Morning, pp. 57-8, 89, 90-91. See also
Kasia Boddy, 'Detachment, Compassion and Irritability:
The Naturalism of Never Come Morning,' 'in Nelson Algren: A
Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Robert Ward (Madison, nj,
2007), pp. 72-94

45 Damon Runyon, 'Tobias the Terrible', in On Broadway
(Harmondsworth, 1990), p. 88.

46 James T. Farrell, Epilogue, Studs Lonigan (Urbana, il, 1993),
p. 865. The death fantasy sequence was not published in
1935; much was lost and this edition is the first to include
fragments. AlCapone was a great fan ofDempsey'sand the
boxer had to dissuade him from trying to fix the Tunney
rematch. Kahn, A Flame of Pure Fire, p. 412.

47 John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (Harmondsworth, 1949),
pp. 25-6, 31, 47, 54, 74-

48 See Jeffrey T. Sammons, Beyond the Ring (Urbana, il, 1990),
pp. 86-91.

49 Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, pp. 22-3, 26, 54, 55, 76. Stein-
beck recalled that he had once been 'fairly good at boxing,
mainly because I hated it and wanted to get it over with and
to get out. This is not boxing but fighting.' 'Then My Arm
Glassed Up' (1965), in Of Men and Their Making: The Selected
Non-Fiction of John Steinbeck, ed. Susan Shillinglaw and
Jackson J. Benson (London, 2002), p. 127.

50 Steiner, Americans at Play, p. 96.

51 It was not, of course, impossible to fix team sports. In 1919,
the Chicago White Sox conspired with a betting syndicate
to throw the World Series.

52 On some of these ways, see Riess, City Games, p. 179.

53 Riess, City Games, p. 177

54 Ike Williams, Testimony to the US Congress Senate Judiciary

427

Committee, Professional Boxing: Hearings Before Subcommittee
on Antitrust and Monopoly, i960, in Major Problems in
American Sport History, ed. Steven A. Riess (Boston, 1997),
pp. 401-8.

55 The other boxing-and-crime story in Men without Women,
'Fifty Grand', is much lighter in tone. See Robert P. Weeks,
'Wise-Guy Narrator and Trickster Out-Tricked in Heming-
way's "Fifty Grand'", in New Critical Approaches to the Short
Stories of Ernest Hemingway, ed. Jackson L. Benson (Durham,
nc, 1990), pp. 275-81.

56 Ernest Hemingway, 'The Killers', in Men Without Women
(New York, 1955), pp. 45-55. On the three stories in which
Nick Adams encounters the 'perplexing behaviour of
boxers', see Gerry Brenner, 'From "Sepi Jingan" to "The
Mother of a Queen": Hemingway's Three Epistemologic
Formulas for Short Fiction', in New Critical Approaches,
pp. 156-71.

57 Damon Runyon, 'Leopard's Spots', in More Guys and Dolls
(Garden City, ny, 1951), p. 68. Heavyweight parasols are
'big umbrellas'. 'The Big Umbrella' is one of several stories
about Spider McCoy, a manager on the look-out for 'some
sausage' who might be 'the next heavy-weight champion of
the world'; see particularly 'Bred for Battle'. Both are in On
Broadway.

58 James T. Farrell, 'Twenty-Five Bucks', in The Short Stories
(New York, 1962), pp. 183-96.

59 DashieliUammett, Red Harvest (London, 1974), p. 63.

60 Ibid., p. 72.

61 Gerald Early, 'I Only Like It Better When the Pain Comes:
More Notes toward a Cultural History of Prizefighting',
Tuxedo Junction (Hopewell, nj, 1989), p. 138. Early is
discussing Mailer's The Fight. On race in Body and Soul, see
Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in
the Hollywood Melting Pot (Berkeley, ca, 1996), ch. 7.

62 Odets also makes the distinction between fighting for mon-
ey and fighting for things you 'believe in'. Golden Boy, p. 108.

63 Quoted in Neve, Film and Politics in America, p. 133.

64 Only at this point, argue Borde and Chaumeton, does the
film become noir. Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton,
Panorama dufilm noir americain, 1941-1953 (Paris, 1955), p. 3.

65 In 1949 T. V. Smith argued that 'the game' was a 'fitting sym-
bol' of all aspects of American life during this period; 'deal'
evoked poker as well as business. T. V. Smith, 'The New
Deal as Cultural Phenomenon', in Ideological Differences and
World Order, ed. F.S.C. Northrop (New Haven, 1949), p. 209.
On precoccupation of New Deal stories with insurance, see
Michael Szalay, New Deal Modernism (Durham, nc, 2000).

66 Neff 's wound is usually read as a mark of castration. See, for
example, Claire Johnston, 'Double Indemnity', in Women in
Film Noir, ed. E. Ann Kaplan (London, 1998), p. 92. Neff
loses the 'game' because he fails to anticipate all the correct
'moves' - if Dietrichson had taken out accident insurance,
he would have made a claim after breaking his leg.

67 Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, in The Chandler Collection
(London, 1983), vol. 1, pp. 9-11. As the novel goes on, Mar-
lowe and others compare his job to a variety of occupations:
the detective is also a pornographer (trying to 'take a photo-

graph with an empty camera'), a Proustian 'connoisseur in
degenerates', a 'stooge ... in search of a comedian', a 'killer',
and a 'soldier'. The Big Sleep, pp. 41, 51, 60, 128, 180.

68 Chandler, The Big Sleep, pp. 133, 178.

69 Raymond Chandler, letter to D. J. Ibberson, 19 April 1951,
in Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, ed. Frank MacShane
(London, 1981), p. 270. Humphrey Bogart, who played Mar-
lowe in John Huston's 1946 film adaptation, was only 5' 8",
and the film jokes about him being too short to be a private
eye. In the film, a picture of a boxer in a crouch can be seen
on his office wall.

70 Chandler, The Big Sleep, pp. 10-11, 53, 66, 85-90.

71 Canino had killed Harry Jones, 'a very small man' in love
with a woman 'too big' for him. To get to Canino, Marlowe
must first endure a knockdown blow from Art Huck, who
fights above his weight by fighting dirty. Chandler, The Big
Sleep, pp. 137, 139, 142, 156-60.

72 Ibid., pp. 161, 163, 169-70.

73 James M. Cain, Double Indemnity (London, 2002), p. 112.

74 See David Reid and Jayne L. Walker, 'Cornell Woolrich and
the Abandoned City', m Shades of Noir, ed.JoanCopjec
(London, 1993), pp. 64-5; Joan Mellen, Big Bad Wolves:
Masculinity in the American Film (New York, 1977), p. 164;
Frank Krutmk, In a Lonely Street (London, 1991), ch. 5.

75 Margaret Mead, Male and Female (London, 1950), p. 278.

76 Odets, Golden Boy, p. 96.

77 Joyce Carol Oates says that this is what boxing is always
'about'. On Boxing (London, 1988), p. 25.

78 Lincoln Kirstein, 'James Cagney and the American Hero',
Hound And Horn (April/June 1932), pp. 466-7; John
Houseman, quoted in Krutnik, In a Lonely Street, p. 89.

79 Kirstein, 'James Cagney and the American Hero', p. 467.

80 Andrew Dickos, Street with No Name: A History of the
Classic American Film Noir (Lexington, ky, 2002), p. 197.

81 These films are very different from historical boxing
dramas such as Gentleman Jim (1942) and The Great John
£.(i945) that were popular during the war. Errol Flynn
played Corbett in Gentleman Jim; he also fought frequently
with Bette Davis on the set of The Private Lives of Elizabeth
and Essex (1939). She hit him 'in the most beautiful technical
way' and harder than he'd ever been hit 'even in the boxing
ring'. Errol Flynn, My Wicked, Wicked Ways (London, i960),
pp. 221-8.

82 James Naremore, More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts
(Berkeley, ca, 1998), p. 103.

83 Manny Farber, 'Fight Films', in Negative Space (New York,
1971), p. 65.

84 This scene was shown in studies on the effects of screen
violence on viewers. Richard B. Felson, 'Mass Media
Effects on Violent Behavior', in Screening Violence, ed.
Stephen Prince (Piscataway, nj, 2000), pp. 237-66.

85 Roland Bergan, Sport in the Movies (New York, 1982), p. 16.

86 Kenneth Patchen, The Collected Poems (New York, 1968),
p. 71.

87 RingLardner, 'Champion', in The Best Short Stories of Ring
Lardner (New York, 1957), p. 119; Tully, The Bruiser, pp. 107-8;
Algren, Never Come Morning, p. 24. Sometimes women are

428

not bad but just young and stupid. See also Irwin Shaw,
'Return to Kansas City', in Sailor off the Bremen, pp. 47-58;
a film adaptation is in Women and Men 2: In Love There Are
No Rules (1991).

88 Robert Siodmak claimed that The Killers was 'the only film
of a Hemingway story that Hemingway actually likes!':
'Hoodlums: The Myth', Films and Filming, 5, no. 9(1959),
p. 10

89 Krutnik, In a Lonely Street, p. 116. For a full discussion of the
film, see pp. 114-24.

90 See James M. Welsh, 'Knockout in Paradise: An Appraisal
of The Set-up', American Classic Screen, 2, no. 6 (1978),
pp. 14-16.

91 Another boxer's girlfriend confesses to doping his tea to get
him 'out of the game'; he tells her he's been a 'blind fool' and
thanks her. Robert E. Howard, 'Iron Men' (1930), in Boxing
Stories, ed. Chris Gruber (Lincoln, ne, 2005), pp. 239-41.

92 John Steinbeck, 'Always Something to Do in Salinas' (1955),
in Of Men and Their Making, pp. 6-7.

93 Stanley Renner, 'The Real Woman Inside the Fence in
"The Chrysanthemums'", Modern Fiction Studies, 31, no. 2
(Summer 1985), pp. 305-17-

94 John Steinbeck: A Life in Letters, ed. Elaine Steinbeck and
Robert Wallsten (London, 1975), p. 509.

95 John Steinbeck, 'The Chrysanthemums', in TheLong Valley
(London, 1958), pp. 7-19

96 Malcolm X, with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
(London, 1965), pp. 97-8.

97 Haley, Autobiography of Malcolm X, p. 98.

98 Nelson Mandela also described boxing as preparation for
political leadership. Long Walk to Freedom (London, 1995),
pp. 192-3.

99 A major destination during the Great Migration, Detroit
saw its black population grow from 5,000 in 1910 to about
120,000 in 1930. Richard Bak, Joe Louis: The Great Black Hope
(New York, 1998), p. 13.

100 Bak, Joe Louis, p. 26. The seeming dichotomy between box-
ing and violin-playing proved popular. It was picked up in
Kid Galahad, in which fight manager Donati (Edward G.
Robinson) declares that 'a fighter's a machine, not a violin
player', and developed at length by Odets in Golden Boy.

101 Damon Runyon coined the phrase after seeing a group of
fight managers taking the sun on colourful chairs outside
Jacobs's ticket store. Barney Nagler, James Norris and the
Decline of Boxing (New York, 1964), p. 47.

102 Margolick, Beyond Glory, p. 73.

103 Chris Mead, Champion: Joe Louis Black Hero in White America
(New York, 1985), p. 40; Milly Heyd, Mutual Reflections:
Jews and Blacks in American Art (New Brunswick, nj, 1999),
pp. 192-3 and fig. 100.

104 Quoted mJoeLouis: The Great Black Hope, p. 87.

105 Bak, Joe Louis, pp. 74-5. Although never photographed
with them, Louis had affairs with several white women
including Sonja Henie and Lana Turner. In 1939 Look maga-
zine published an article about his womanizing. Louis's
lawyer later admitted that the article was largely true, but it
conflicted with Louis's carefully cultivated image. 'So we

sued. And Look settled.' Truman K. Gibson, KnockingDown
Barriers (Chicago, 2005), pp. 75-6.

106 Langston Hughes, 'Joe Louis', in Montage of a Dream
Deferred (1951), in Selected Poems (London, 1999), p. 265.

107 Quoted in Al-Tony Gilmore, 'The Myth, Legend and Folk-
lore of Joe Louis: The Impression of Sport on Society', South
Atlantic Quarterly, 82 (1983), p. 259. Andrew M. Kaye quotes
this line in his comparison of the personae cultivated by
Louis and Tiger Flowers. See The Pussycat of Prizefighting:
Tiger Flowers and the Politics of Black Celebrity (Athens, ga,
2004), pp. 134-9-

108 Bak, Joe Louis, p. 293.

109 Quoted in Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Black Messiahs and
Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious
Myth (Philadelphia, 1993), p. 157.

110 See William Barlow, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio
(Philadelphia, 1999), ch. 3; Allen Guttmann, Sports
Spectators (New York, 1986), pp. 132-4.

111 Miles Davis, with Quincy Troupe, The Autobiography
(London, 1990), pp. 8-9.

112 Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird 'Sings (London,
1984), pp. 129-32-

113 A couple of months later, The Crisis felt it necessary to add a
note of caution, advising 'our race' not to 'hitch its wagon to
a boxer'. Quoted in John Hoberman, Darwin's Athletes
(Boston, 1997), p. 27.

114 Richard Wright, 'Joe Louis Uncovers Dynamite', New Masses,
17 (8 October 1935), pp. 18-19. Wright's essay followed
Saul Green's piece on the lynching of Richard Lee, entitled
'Lessons'. See also Michel Fabre, The Unfinished Quest of
Richard Wright, trans. Isabel Barzun (Urbana, il, 1993),

p. 125.

115 Ralph Ellison, 'Bearden', in The Collected Essays of Ralph
Ellison, ed.JohnF. Callahan (New York, 1995), pp. 833-4.
Forty years earlier Ellison had described Harlem as a place
where 'surreal fantasies' were regularly acted out. For
example, 'a man beating his wife in the park uses boxing
"science" and observes Marquess of Queensberry rules (no
rabbit punching, no blows beneath the belt).' Shadow and
Act (New York, 1972), p. 297.

116 Quoted in James dejongh, Vicious Modernism: Black Harlem
and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge, 1990), p. 120.

117 Quoted in Peter Levine, Ellis Island to Ebhets Field (Oxford,
1992), p. 180.

118 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampfi trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston,
1971), pp. 407-12. Goebbels was particularly fond of using
boxing metaphors to illustrate military progress or setbacks.
After the Battle of Stalingrad, for example, he reassured
Germany, 'We wipe the blood from our eyes in order to see
clearly, and, when it is time to enter the ring for the next
round, our legs stand firm once again.' On Goebbels's
boxing metaphors, see Victor Klemperer, 'Boxing', in The
Language of the Third Reich, trans. Martin Brady (New York,
2002), pp. 231-5. The absurdity of boxing, with all its rules
and claims to fair play, in the midst of the death camps is
made very clear in Primo Levi, The Truce (1963), trans. Stuart
Woolf (London, 1987), pp. 374-5, and Paul Steinberg, Speak

429

You Also, trans. Linda Coverdale with Bill Ford (Harmonds-
worth, 2001), pp. 17-27. A camp survivor feed, his son
boxing 'tales from an invented past' to make him tough in
Jurek Becker, The Boxer (New York, 2002), p. 202. See
Sander Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the
Hidden Language (Baltimore, 1985), pp. 341-44.

119 Margolick, Beyond Glory, p. 30

120 Quoted in Levine, Ellis Island to Ehhets Field, p. 182.

121 Geoffrey C. Ward, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall
of Jack Johnson (New York, 2004), p. 441.

122 Margolick, Beyond Glory, p. 124.

123 Ibid., p. 185.

124 Quoted in Clarence Lusone, Hitler's Black Victims (London,
2002), pp. 220-21.

125 The Chicago Defender surveyed the racial prejudice of the
Southern papers and concluded that 'it took the defeat of
Joe Louis to uncover this condition'. Lewis A. Erenberg, The
Greatest Fight of Our Generation: Louis vs. Schmeling (Oxford,
2006), p. 101. On the Saturday Evening Post's coverage of
Schmeling, see Kathryne V. Lindberg, 'Mass Circulation
versus The Masses: Covering the Modern Magazine Scene',
boundary 2, 20, no. 2 (Summer 1993), pp. 51-83.

126 Juneteenth celebrations commemorated 19 June 1865, when
the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger,
landed at Galveston, Texas, with news that the war had
ended and that the enslaved were free. This was two and a
half years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Procla-
mation, which had become official on 1 January 1863.

127 Quoted in Vicious Modernism, p. 121.

128 Quoted in Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms, p. 159.

129 Margolick, Beyond Glory, p. 193; John Dos Passos, The
Fourteenth Chronicle: Letters and Diaries, ed. Townsend
Ludington (London, 1974), p. 485.

130 Damon Runyon dubbed Braddock Cinderella Man in 1935
after he had surprisingly outboxed Max Baer to win the
title. Peter Heller, In This Corner (London, 1989), p. 173.
See also Jeremy Schaap, Cinderella Man (Boston, 2005),
the main source for the movie of the same title.

131 Alistair Cooke, 'Joe Louis', Letters from America, 1946-1951
(Harmondsworth, 1951), pp. 56-61 (p. 57).

132 Quoted in Margolick, Beyond Glory, p. 231.

133 In 1937 Goebbels had wanted Braddock to come to Ger-
many to fight Schmeling. Braddock's manager, Joe Gould,
had three conditions. Goebbels agreed to the first two
(concerning the fee and referee), but the deal fell through
when Gould asked 'that you get Hitler to stop kicking the
Jews around'. Quoted in James Norris and the Decline of
Boxing, p. 14. See also Budd Schulberg, Loser and Still Cham-
pion: Muhammad Ali (London, 1972), pp. 31-2.

134 Quoted in Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms, p. 159.
Margolick thinks the story apocryphal. Beyond Glory, p. 98
fii.

135 Ray Barfield, Listening to the Radio, 1920-1950 (Westport,
cn, 1996), pp. 80, 196. 64 per cent of all American radio
owners are estimated to have listened in (97 per cent in
New York). Only two of Roosevelt's fireside chats drew
more listeners. Bak, Joe Louis, p. 163. See also Wideman,

Sentfor You Yesterday, p. 202.

136 Bob Considine, 'Louis Knocks Out Schmeling', in The Best
American Sports Writing of the Century, ed. David Haleber-
stam (Boston, 1999), pp. 138-9.

137 Richard Wright, 'How He Did It - And Oh! - Where Were
Hitler's Pagan Gods?', Daily Worker, 24 June 1938, pp. 1, 8.

138 Quoted in Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms, p. 159.

139 Jimmy Carter, Why Not the Best? (New York, 1976), pp. 36-7

140 Donald McRae, White and Black: The Untold Story of Joe Louis
and Jesse Owens (New York, 2002).

141 Quoted in Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms, p. 159.

142 Richard Wright, 'High Tide in Harlem', in Speech and Power,
ed. Gerald Early (Boston, 1992), vol. 1, p. 157. Ralph Ellison
had tickets to the fight, but missed it. Lawrence Jackson,
Ralph Ellison: Emergence of a Genius (New York, 2002), p. 203.

143 William H. Wiggens, Jr. 'Boxing's Sambo Twins: Racial
Stereotypes in Jack Johnson and Joe Louis Newspaper
Cartoons, 1908-1938' Journal of Sport History, 15, no. 3
(Winter 1988), pp. 251-4.

144 Eugene S. McCartney, 'Alliteration on the Sports Page',
American Speech, 13, no. 1 (February 1938), p. 31. On Louis's
endorsements, see St Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton,
Black Metropolis (New York, 1962), vol. 11, p. 462.

145 One of the heroes of Pearl Harbor was another black boxer,
Dorie Miller, heavyweight champion of the uss West
Virginia. The first black sailor to be awarded the Navy Cross,
for rescuing numerous other sailors and remaining on
board to operate an anti-aircraft machine gun, he was killed
while on active service in 1943.

146 Quoted in Lauren Sklaroff, 'Constructing g.i. Joe Louis:
Cultural Solutions to the "Negro Problem" during World
War n', Journal of American History, 89, no. 3 (December
2002), p. 972, 959-

147 A. Philip Randolph, 'The March-on-Washington Movement',
in Sources of the African-American Past: Primary Sources in
American History, ed. Roy E. Finkenbine (London, 1997),
p. 151. During the war, many southern blacks and whites
migrated to ports and industrial cities in search of work.
This led to frequent racial disturbances and in 1943 full-scale
riots broke out in Detroit and many other cities. Member-
ship of the naacp soared during the war, growing from
50,000 in 1940 to 450,000 in 1947.

148 Louis's remark also inspired a popular poem by Carl Byoir,
'Joe Louis Named the War', Collier's, 16 May 1942.

149 Claudia Jones, Lift Every Voice for Victory! (New York, 1942),
p. 9-

150 Irving Berlin, 'That's What the Well-Dressed Man in Harlem
Will Wear', in Perfect in their Art, ed. Robert Hedin and
Michael Waters (Carbondale, il, 2003), p. 30.

151 Thanks to Mark Whalan for lending me a video copy.
Intended to promote a segregated army, the film led to
some integration in postwar Hollywood. Thomas Cripps
and David Culbert, 'The Negro Soldier (1944): Film Propagan-
da in Black and White', in Hollywood as Historian, ed. Peter
C. Rollins (Lexington, ky, 1983), pp. 109-33. Louis also
appeared in the loosely autobiographical 'race film' Spirit of
Youth (1937). Coley Wallace played him in The Joe Louis Story

430

(i953)- See Romano, The Boxing Film ography, pp. 101-2,
187-9.

152 Lillian Hellman wrote the original script for The Negro
Soldier. In her version, John, a young black soldier meets an-
other young black man called Chris on the 80th anniversary
of the Emancipation Proclamation. 'In the course of the
evening, which included Joe Louis's fight over the radio, the
recounting of a lynching, and a concert of Paul Robeson at
the Lincoln Memorial, John succeed, in convincing Chris
that the America of Lincoln is worth fighting for even though
the lynchers are present both inside and outside the United
States.' Saverio Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism: Film and
Politics in the Age of the New Deal (Philadelphia, 2001), p. 259.

153 Mead, Joe Louis, Champion, p. 236.

154 Joe Louis, with Edna Rust and Art Rust, My Life (Boston,
1997), p- 137.

155 Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, vol. 11, p. 391. See also
Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness
(New York, 1977), pp. 420-40.

156 Frank Byrd, 'Private Life of Big Bess', in A Renaissance in
Harlem: Lost Essays of the wpa, ed. Lionel C. Bascom (New
York, 2001), pp. 163-4.

157 Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, vol. 11, p. 403.

158 E. Franklin Frazier, Negro Youth at the Crossways (New York,
1967), p. 179.

159 Quoted in Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms, p. 156.

160 Martin Luther King, Why We Can't Wait (New York, 1963),
pp. 110-11. The story is retold in Madison Smartt Bell, Save
Me, Joe Louis (Yiarmondsworih, 1993), pp. 305-6, and Ernest
J. Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying (New York, 1994), p. 91. See
also Ernest J. Gaines, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
(New York, 1971), p. 203.

161 On the need for both Louis and King to adopt 'the mutually
antagonistic roles of racial crusader and "Uncle Tom'", see
Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms, ch. 10.

162 Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms, p. 157; Frazier,
Negro Youth at the Crossroads, p. 179.

163 Wright, 'Joe Louis Uncovers Dynamite', p. 18.

164 Melvin B. Tolson reversed the usual metaphor and claimed
that 'the First Lady has a punch like Joe Louis.' 'The Four
Freedoms of Mrs Roosevelt', in Caviar and Cabbage: Selected
Columns by Melvin B. Tolson from the Washington Tribune,
1937-1944, ed. Robert Farnsworth (Columbia, mo, 1982),

p. 157.

165 'Recognition: "New Masses" Honors Outstanding Artists',
New Masses, 58, no. 7 (12 February 1946), pp. 16-17; Earl
Ofari Hutchinson, Blacks and Red.: Race and Class in Conflict,
1919-1990 (East Lansing, mi, 1995), pp. 197-8.

166 Michael Denning, The Cultural Front (London, 1997), p. 155.

167 Simon Louvish, Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the
Marx Brothers (London, 2000), p. 419.

168 V. S. Naipaul, The Mimic Men (London, 2002), pp. 160, 262.
An inhabitant of Anguilla describes Louis as the 'one man'
in his generation to have made a difference: V. S. Naipaul,
'The Shipwrecked Six Thousand', in The Writer and the
World (London, 2002), p. 88.

169 Lloyd L. Brown, Lron City (New York, 1951), pp. 239-43. See

also Alan M. Wald, Writing from the Left (London, 1994),
ch. 18; Barfield, Listening to the Radio, 1920-1950, p. 41.

170 Langston Hughes, 'To Be Somebody', Phylon, 11, no. 4
(1950), p. 311.

171 Chester Himes, Lf He Hollers Let Him Go (London, 1986),
pp.37, 153, 202.

172 See, for example, Louise Meriwether, Daddy was a Number
Runner (London, 1986), pp. 91-3, 170, 175-6; John Edgar
Wideman, Sentfor You Yesterday (London, 1986), pp. 200,
202; Jewelle Gomez, 'Joe Louis was a Heck of a Fighter', in To
Be Continued: Take Two, ed. Michele Karlsberg and Karen X.
Tolchinsky (Ann Arbor, mi, 1999), pp. 53-71.

173 All on Joe Louis: An American Hero, compiled by Rena
Kosersky, with an essay by William H. Wiggens, Jr (Sony,
2001). 'Joe Louis Strut' is on Memphis Minnie: Queen of the
Blues (Columbia/Legacy, 1997). See Paul Oliver, Blues Fell
This Morning (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 274-6; Oliver, Screen-
ing the Blues: Aspects of the Blues Tradition (London, 1968),
pp. 148-9.

174 The complete lyrics are quoted in a letter to Carl Van
Vechten, Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston
Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964, ed. Emily Bernard
(New York, 2001), p. 175. See also Denning, The Cultural
Front, p. 312.

175 Fabre, The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright, p. 237.

176 On Joe Louis: An American Hero.

177 Robert Hayden's poems frequently considered the role of
boxers as inspirational 'dark dream figures' for American
blacks. 'Summertime and the Living . . .' (1955) presents a
child's recollection of a Depression summertime in which
hope exists in the vision of 'big splendiferous /Jack Johnson
in his diamond limousine'. Johnson 'set the ghetto burgeon-
ing/ with fantasies/of Ethiopia spreading her gorgeous
wings.' Poems (New York, 1975), pp. 6-7. See Michael F.
Cooke, Afro-American Literature in the Twentieth Century
(New Haven, 1984), pp. 137-9; Edward M. Pavlic., Crossroads
Modernism (Minneapolis, 2002), pp. 163-70.

178 Written in the thirties, Lawd Today was not published until
1963, after Wright's death. He also attempted 'a psychologi-
cal study of bronze-sepia, firm-fleshed Jack Johnson', which
he intended to form part of his uncompleted second novel,
Tarbaby's Dawn. Rowley, Richard Wright: The Life and Times,
pp. 103, 113, 304, 538. See also William Burrison, 'Lawd
Today: Wright's Tricky Apprenticeship', in Richard Wright:
Critical Perspectives Past and Present, ed. Henry Louis Gates,
Jr and K. A. Appiah (New York, 1993), pp. 98-109.

179 Richard Wright, Lawd Today (London, 1969), pp. 106, 171.

180 Ralph Ellison, 'The World and the Jug', in Shadow and Act,
p. 115. Ellison was responding to Howe's essay, 'Black Boys
and Native Sons', in ,4 World More Attractive (New York,
1963), pp. 98-122. On their debate, see Emily Buddick in
Jews and Blacks in Literary Conversation (Cambridge, 1998).

181 Ellison, 'The World and The Jug', p. 140. See Robert G.
O'Meally, 'The Rules of Magic: Hemingway as Ellison's
"Ancestor"', in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man: A Casebook, ed.
John F. Callahan (Oxford, 2004), pp. 149-87.

182 Ellison, 'The World and The Jug', p. 141. See Joseph T.

431

Skerrett, Jr., 'The Wright Interpretation: Ralph Ellison and
the Anxiety of Influence', in The Critical Response to Ralph
Ellison, ed. Robert J. Butler (Westport, ct, 2000), pp. 149-59.

183 Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters: 1917-1961, ed. Carlos
Baker (London, 1981), p. 673.

184 Ralph Ellison, 'A Very Stern Discipline', in Going to the
Territory (New York, 1987), p. 283. On Ellison's 'ambitions
toward literary upward mobility', see T. V. Reed, Fifteen
Jugglers, Five Believers (Berkeley, ca, 1992), p. 71. On Ellison's
'belief in his ability to compete', see Stanley Crouch, 'Intro-
duction' to The All -American Skin Game (Vintage Books,
1997), pp- x-xi. On Crouch's own pugilistic persona, see
Robert S. Boynton, 'The Professor of Connection', The New
Yorker, 6 November 1995, p. 95.

185 Ralph Ellison, Introduction, Invisible Man (New York, 1995),
p. xxi.

186 Ralph Ellison, 'The Invisible Man', Horizon, 16 (October
1947), pp. 104-18.

187 Kaye, The Pussy 'cat of Prizefighting, p. 62.

188 Ellison, Invisible Man, pp. 17-24.

189 The ten boys, and later, the ten drops of black paint added
to 'optic white', are surely an allusion to W.E.B. Du Bois'
notion of the Talented Tenth, to which the narrator feels he
naturally belongs. Gerald Early, 'The Black Intellectual and
the Sport of Prizefighting', in The Culture of Bruising
(Hopewell, nj, 1994), p. 25.

190 Ellison, InvisibleMan, p. 24.

191 Budd Schulberg, The Harder They Fall (New York, 1947),
p. 85.

192 The speech itself seems to allude to James Weldon
Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.
(Harmondsworth, 1990), p. 31. The narrator's friend Shiny
delivers a graduation speech to a largely white audience

in 'tones of appealing defiance'. The narrator compares him
to 'a gladiator tossed into the arena'.

193 See Ellison, Shadow and Act, pp. 174-5; Going to the
Territory, pp. 49, 177.

194 Richard Wright, Black Boy (London, 1970), pp. 200-13. For
an account of a battle royal as 'comedy', see James Brown,
with Bruce Tucker, James Brown: The Godfather of Soul
(Fontana, 1988), p. 27. See also Gordon Parks, The Learning
Tree (New York, 1963), pp. 119-25.

195 Others that should be considered include the narrator's
speech for the Brotherhood in an auditorium where a prize-
fighter had lost his sight, and the narrator's intervention in
a fight between Ras and Clifton. On the latter, see Jonathan
Baumbach, The Landscape of Nightmare (New York, 1965),
p. 71. The blind prize-fighter may have been based on Sam
Langford (1886-1956). In 1944 he was destitute and living
in Harlem when AlLaney tracked him down and wrote two
pieces for the New York Herald Tribune in order to establish
a trust fund. See The Fireside Book of Boxing, ed. W. C. Heinz
(New York, 1961), pp. 226-8. Other allusions are more inci-
dental: see InvisibleMan, pp. 471, 520, 523. Some may be
drawn from Len Zinberg's Walk Hard- Talk Loud (1940)
which Ellison reviewed. Zinberg describes a blind black
prize-fighter and a battle royal, during which the narrator

thinks, 'what am I cutting up this poor slob for? To make
those damn whites yell?' Len Zinberg, Walk Hard- Talk Loud
(New York, 1950), pp. 123, 161. See Ralph Ellison, 'Negro Prize
Fighter', New Masses, 17 December 1940, pp. 26-7.

196 The golden age of American literature is located in the
period 1830 to i860 in Lewis Mumford, The Golden Day
(1924). Ellison commented, 'It wasn't that I didn't admire
Mumford. I have owned a copy of The Golden Day since 1937
... I was simply upset by his implying that the war which
freed my grandparents from slavery was of no real conse-
quence to the broader issues of American society and its
culture.' Quoted in Alan Nadel, Invisible Criticism: Ralph
Ellison and the American Canon (Iowa City, ia, 1988), p. 158.

197 Ellison, InvisibleMan, p. 65.

198 He later remembers the Golden Day as a place which 'had
once been painted white; now its paint was flaking away
with the years, the scratch of a finger being enough to send
it down.' InvisibleMan, p. 201.

199 James Joyce, Ulysses (Harmondsworth, 1992), pp. 412-14.
Ellison frequently acknowledged Joyce as a model for the
intertwining of high and low cultural references. See
Shadow and Act, pp. 15, 58, 168, 174. See also Craig Hansen
Werner, Paradoxical Resolutions: American Fiction Since James
Joyce (Urbana, il, 1982), pp. 133-43; Robert N. List, Dedalus
in Harlem: The Joyce-Ellison Connection (Washington, DC,
1982). On Ellison's debt to Homer's Odyssey, see William W.
Cook 'Ellison's Modern Odysseus', Humanities (May-June
1992), 13, no. 3, pp. 26-8.

200 Ellison, InvisibleMan, pp. 71, 72, 74. Compare this with
Bledsoe's ability to 'touch a white man with impunity'.
Bledsoe describes the narrator as 'a nervy little fighter' and
says that 'the race need, good, smart, disillusioned fighters'.
He misquotes James Weldon Johnson's poem 'Prodigal Son',
'Young man, young man, /Yd arms too short/ To box with
God', substituting 'me' for 'God'. James Weldon Johnson,
God's Trombone (New York, 1927), p. 21. Ellison also quotes
these lines in 'Flying Home', in Flying Home and Other
Stories, ed. John F. Callahan (Harmondsworth, 1998), p. 166.

201 After the battle royal and speech, Invisible Man is given his
'prize' -a briefcase with a piece of paper inside, his scholar-
ship to the college. That night he dreams that the paper read
'To whom it May Concern, Keep This Nigger-Boy Running.'
InvisibleMan, p. 33.

202 The correct version of the song (with Johnson instead of
Louis) appeared in Ellison's short story, 'Afternoon', in
Flying Home and Other Stories, pp. 33-44.

203 Ellison, InvisibleMan, p. 544. For an alternative reading of
this passage, see Michael Oriard, Sporting with the Gods: The
Rhetoric of Play and Game in American Culture (Cambridge,
1991), pp. 318-20.

204 Ellison, InvisibleMan, pp. 565, 568. Early describes this scene
as 'the story of the tortoise and the hare . . . Brer Fox and
Brer Rabbit'. In Early's analysis, the prize fighter is black
and the yokel white. 'The Black Intellectual', p. 5. See also
Floyd R. Horowitz, 'Ralph Ellison's Modern Version of Brer
Bear and Brer Rabbit in InvisibleMan', in The Critical
Response to Ralph Ellison, ed. Butler, pp. 45-9. In 'Hidden

432

Name and Complex Fate', Ellison figures the world as Tar
Baby, 'that enigmatic figure from Negro folklore', and also a
boxer, Sonny Liston. Shadow and Act, p. 147.

205 Ellison, InvisihleMan, pp. 576, 577, 581. Winner Take Nothing
was the title of a 1933 collection of Hemingway's short sto-
ries. There is a lot more that could be said about the ways in
which Invisible Man relates to Hemingway's work, The Sun
Also Rises in particular. In both novels, for example, the pro-
tagonist encounters a man selling boxing dolls on the street.

206 Ralph Ellison, 'Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke', in Shadow
and Act, p. 57.

207 Ralph Ellison, 'Hidden Name and Complex Fate', in Shadow
and Act, p. 147.

208 Robert B. Stepto and Michael S. Harper, 'Study and Experi-
ence: An Interview with Ralph Ellison', in Conversations with
Ralph Ellison, ed. Maryemma Graham and Amritjit Singh
(Jackson, mi, 1998), p. 329.

209 Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action (Berkeley, ca,
1966).

210 Burke dedicated his first book of poems, Book of Moments
(1915), to 'my sparring partners, and long may we spar with-
out parting.' See Kenneth Burke, 'Ralph Ellison's Trueblood-
ed Bildungsroman , in Ralph Ellison 's Invisible Man: A Case-
book, ed. Callahan, pp. 65-79. See also Robert G. O'Meally,
'On Burke and the Vernacular: Ralph Ellison's Boomerang of
History', in History and Memory in African-American Culture,
ed. Genevieve Fabre and Robert G. O'Meally (Oxford, 1994),
pp. 244-60; James M.Albrecht, 'Saying Yes and Saying No:
Individualist Ethics in Ellison, Burke, and Emerson', pmla,
114.1 (1999), pp. 46-63; Timothy Parish, 'Ralph Ellison, Ken-
neth Burke, and the Form of Democracy', Arizona Quarterly,
51, no. 3 (Autumn 1995), pp. 117-48; Donald E. Pease, 'Ralph
Ellison and Kenneth Burke: The Nonsymbolizable (Transac-
tion', boundary 2, 30, no. 2 (Summer 2003), pp. 65-96.

211 Literature is 'designed for the express purpose of arousing
emotion'. Kenneth Burke, Counter-Statement (Berkeley, ca,
1968) p. 123.

212 On Burke's inability to discriminate high from low, see R. P.
Blackmur, Language as Gesture (New York, 1952), p. 393; Rene
Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism (London, 1986), vol.
vi, p. 255; Angus Fletcher, 'Volume and Body in Burke's
Criticism', in Representing Kenneth Burke, ed. Hayden White
and Margaret Brose (Baltimore, 1982), p. 172.

213 Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change (Berkeley, ca, 1984),
pp. 102, 275. Since Burke felt that 'all life' can be linked to
'the writing of poetry', it was not a big step to suggest 'a
"dyslogistic" adjective is the equivalent of a blow - and
enough of them can lead to one' '. Permanence and Change,
pp. 101, 320. Burke described literary criticism (in terms that
recall Pound and Brecht) as 'a game [that] is best to watch,

I guess, when one confines himself to the single unit and
reports on its movements like a radio commentator broad-
casting the blow-by-blow description of a prizefight'.
Kenneth Burke, 'Symbolic Action in a Poem by Keats', in
A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley, ca, 1969), p. 451.

214 Ralph Ellison, 'Remembering Richard Wright', in Going to
the Territory, pp. 215-16.

215 See, for example, Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro
Intellectual (New York, 1967), pp. 505-11; Lloyd L. Brown,
'The Deep Pit', in The Critical Response to Ralph Ellison, ed.
Butler, pp. 31-3; Larry Neal, 'Ellison's Zoot Suit', in Ralph
Ellison's Invisible Man: A Casebook, ed. Callahan, pp. 81-108;
John S. Wright, 'To the Battle Royal: Ralph Ellison and the
Quest for Black Leadership in Postwar America', in Recasting
America, ed. Larry May (Chicago, 1987), pp. 246-66.

216 In the posthumously published fragment of Ellison's last
novel, the Rev. Hickman preaches the need to 'Roll with
the punches like ole Jack Johnson. 'Ralph Ellison, Juneteenth,
ed. John F. Callahan (Harmondsworth, 2000), p. 129.

217 Ralph Ellison, Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph
Ellison and Albert Murray , ed. Murray and John F.Callahan
(New York, 2000), p. 132. On this letter and Ellison as a
Jack Johnson intellectual', see Tim Parrish, 'The Fight to
be a Negro Leader', in The Cambridge Companion to Ralph
Ellison, ed. Ross Posnock (Cambridge, 2005), p. 147.

9 King of the Hill, and Further Raging Bulls

1 Jeff Neal-Lunsford, 'Sport in the Land of Television: The Use
of Sport in Network Prime-Time Schedules 1946-50',
Journal of Sport History , 19, no. 1 (Spring 1992), pp. 56-76.

2 Randy Roberts, 'The Wide World of Muhammad Ali: The
Politics and Economics of Televised Boxing', in Muhammad
Ali, The People's Champ, ed. Elliott J. Gorn (Urbana, il, 1995),
p. 28.

3 Quoted in Benjamin Rader, In Its Own Image: How Television
Transformed Sports (New York, 1984), p. 18.

4 Quoted in Thomas Doherty, Cold War, Cool Medium (New
York, 2003), p. 6.

5 See, for example, Mary Pat Kelly, Martin Scorsese: A Journey
(London, 1992), p. 122; Joyce Carol Oates, On Boxing
(London, 1988), p. 82; Herb Boyd, with Ray Robinson 11,
Pound for Pound: A Biography of Sugar Ray Robinson (New
York, 2005), pp. 3-4; Paul Zimmer, After the Fire (Min-
neapolis, 2002), p. 100. Robinson and Louis both also
appeared on Ed Murrow's cbs Person to Person series. J. Fred
MacDonald, Blacks and White tv: Afro-Americans in Tele\>ision
since 1948 (Chicago, 1983), p. 37.

6 Gerald Early, 'The Passing of Jazz's Old Guard', in Tuxedo
Junction (Hopewell, nj, 1989), p. 307.

7 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Colored People (New York, 1995),
p. 20. See also Cold War, CoolMedium, p. 73, n. 5.

8 The association was very profitable - Gillette saw its share
of the razor market rise from 16 per cent in the 1930s to more
than 60 per cent in the late 1950s.

9 John Lardner, 'That Was Pugilism: Toledo, 1919', The New
Yorker, 6 December 1949, p. 71.

10 A.J.Liebling, The Sweet Science (Harmondsworth, 1982),
pp. 100, 156, 201, 181. In further essays, determined not to
use the same name twice, he referred to Egan as the Thucy-
dides, Colly Knickerbocker, and Sainte-Beuve of the London
Prize Ring. A Neutral Corner, ed.Fred Warner and James
Barbour (New York, 1990), pp. 3, 46, 129, 136, 158, 162, 192.

433

li David Remnick, King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the
Rise of an American Hero (London, 1999), p. 46.

12 David Remnick, 'Reporting It All', The New Yorker, 29 March
2004, p. 52. See also Gerald Early, '"I Only Like It Better
When The Pain Comes": More Notes Toward a Cultural
Definition of Prizefighting', Tuxedo Junction, pp. 144-6.

13 Fred Warner, 'Afterword', A Neutral Corner, p. 239.

14 Liebling, A Neutral Corner, p. 87.

15 Robert Warshaw, The Immediate Experience (Cambridge, ma,

200l), p. 75-

16 Liebling, The Sweet Science, pp. 15-29. Joyce Carol Oates,
not a fan of Liebling, nevertheless agreed with him about
television. On Boxing, pp. 50, 53, 82. Wole Soyinka also
complained about the 'cosy insulation' of 'teleglow'.
'Muhammad Ali at Ringside, 1985', in Mandela's Earth
(New York, 1990), p. 47. Norman Mailer was more confident
of his ability to communicate with boxers 'through the tube'.
Pieces and Pontifications (London, 1985), p. 76. See also
Carlo Rotella, Cut Time (Boston, 2003), pp. 6-10.

17 A. J. Liebling, 'The Reporter at Large: The Neutral Corner
Art Group', The New Yorker, 18 December 1954, p. 75.

18 Liebling, A Neutral Corner, pp. 16-44. Descriptions of Still-
man's can be found in Budd Schulberg, The Harder They Fall
(New York, 1947), pp. 89-92; Bert Randolph Sugar, 'Boxing
Gyms: A Brief History', in Shadow Boxers, ed.JohnGattuso
(Milford, nj, 2005), pp. 21-4; Ronald K. Fried, Corner Men
(New York, 1991), pp. 31-53; Rocky Graziano, with Roland
Barber, Somebody Up There Likes Me (New York, 1956),

pp. 159-60. On Graziano's book, see Gerald Early, 'The
Romance of Toughness', The Culture of Bruising (Hopewell,

NJ, 1994), pp. IOI-69.

19 Another film in which a boxing manager is put right by a
feisty feminist is Pat and Mike (1952).

20 Liebling, The Sweet Science, p. 223, n.

21 Truman K. Gibson, Jr., Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for
Black America (Chicago, 2005), p. 249.

22 Quoted in Nick Tosches, Night Train: The Sonny Liston
Story (Harmondsworth, 2001), p. 75.

23 Gibson, Knocking Down Barriers, p. 260.

24 Tosches, Night Train, pp. 81, 128-9. See also Jeffrey T.
Sammons, Beyond the Ring (Urbana, il, 1980), ch. 6;
Barney Nagler, James Norris and the Decline of Boxing
(New York, 1964).

25 Gibson, Knocking Down Barriers, pp. 251, 273.

26 Jimmy Cannon, 'This Prize-Fight Racket', in The Esquire
Treasury, ed. Arnold Gingrich (London, 1954), pp. 410-17.

27 Schulberg subsequently reworked the screenplay as a
novel in order to 'put Terry Malloy in proper focus'. On the
Waterfront {London, 1992), p. x.

28 Organization men were 'the ones of our middle class who
have left home, spiritually as well as physically, to take the
vows of organization life'. William H. Whyte, The Organiza-
tion Man (Philadelphia, 2002), p. 3. Paul Buhle and Dave
Wager describe the film as a 'narrative alibi' for the film-
makers' testimonies before the huac. Blacklisted (London,
2003), p. 166. See also 'Schulberg Tells of Red Dictation: Move
To Control His Writing Caused Him to Leave Party, Novelist

Says in Inquiry', The New York Times, 24 May 1951, p. 16.

29 David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd (New York, 1950),
pp. 17-53, 133-88.

30 James Jones, From Here to Eternity (New York, 1953), pp. 48,
701.

31 In the pre-TV setting of the novel, publicity relies on placing
the right photographs in the papers. Schulberg, The Harder
They Fall, pp. 177, 88, 257. Heinz contrasts an empathetic
sportswriter with a 'sadistic' chat-show hostess. W. C. Heinz,
The Professional (Boston, 2001), pp. 202, 235. See also
Dennis Barone, '"This Great Spectator Nation": Budd
Schulberg 's The Harder They Fall and the Parallel Growth
of the Entertainment Industries', Aethlon, 16, no. 2 (Spring
1999), pp. 67-75.

32 In 1950s boxing films good women still tried to avoid watch-
ing fights, although this was made more difficult by the fact
of television. In Stanley Kubrick's Killer's Kiss (1955), a wasp
private dancer struggles as her Latino boss tries to kiss her,
while, even worse, making her watch an interracial boxing
match on TV. The film cuts between the seduction scene
and the fight. On Kubrick's roots as a boxing photographer,
see Rainer Crone, Stanley Kubrick: Dreams and Shadows,
Photographs 1945-1950 (London, 2005). Kubrick's first film,
The Day of the Fight (1950), developed out of a photo story.

33 The novel has a classic naturalistic downward trajectory
and avoids the redemptive finale. Schulberg, The Harder
They Fall, pp. 281, 342. Schulberg did not want boxing to be
banned, only reformed. Schulberg, Loser and Still Champion:
Muhammad Ali (London, 1972), p. 13.

34 Jack Gould, 'Rod Serling's Drama Scores a Knockout', New
York Times s 12 October 1956.

35 Arthur R. Ashe, Jr., A Hard Road to Glory (New York, 1993),
vol. in, p. 83. In 1952, the first sustained sociological analysis
of 'boxing culture' concluded that it 'tends to work to the
eventual detriment of the individual boxer'. S. Kirson
Weinberg and Henry Arond, 'The Occupational Culture of
the Boxer', American Journal of Sociology, 57, 5 (March 1952),
p. 468.

36 See, however, Daniel A. Nathan, 'Sugar Ray Robinson, the
Sweet Science, and the Politics ofMean'mg , Journal of Sport
History, 26, no. 1 (Spring 1999), pp. 163-74.

37 Maya Angelou, TheHeartofa Woman (London, 1986), p. 3.

38 Boyd, Pound for Pound, pp. 50, 58-9, 131-2; Sammons,
Beyond the Ring, p. 191.

39 Arna Bontemps, Famous Negro Athletes (New York, 1964),
p. 54-

40 Jake La Motta, with Joseph Carter and Peter Savage, Raging
Bull: My Story (New York, 1997), p. 148; Boyd, Pound for
Pound, p. 118.

41 William Nack, 'The Rock', in The Best American Sportswriting
1994, ed. Tom Boswell (Boston, 1994), p. 227.

42 Russell Sullivan, Rocky Marciano: The Rock of His Times
(Urbana, il, 2005), p. 75, 84.

43 Sulllivan, Rocky Marciano, p. 74. A version of Cole Porter's
'You're The Top', in Anything Goes (1956), includes the line
'You're a Met soprano, You're Marciano'.

44 Remnick, King of the World, p. 25.

434

45 Marciano holds the record for the longest undefeated run by
a heavyweight and for being the only World Heavyweight
Champion to go undefeated throughout his career. He
defended his title only six times.

46 Ingemar and Floyd' is a popular children's game in Lasse
Hallstrom's film My Life as a Dog (1985), which is set in a
small Swedish village in the months leading up to the fight.

47 Noble Savage, edited by Jack Ludwig, Keith Botsford and
Saul Bellow, was launched in 1959. According to Bellow, it
was not to be 'too literary' but should allow writers 'to write
in the good old ranging way that was natural to novelists in
the '20s'. James Atlas, Bellow (London, 2000), pp. 278-9.
Five issues were published between March i960 and
October 1962.

48 Harvey Swandos, 'Exercise and Abstinence', Noble Savage,
1 (i960), pp. 159-75.

49 John Lardner, 'That Was Pugilism: The White Hopes -I',
The New Yorker, 25 June 1949, p. 56. See also Mary F. Corey,
The World Through a Monocle: The New Yorker at Midcentury
(Cambridge, ma, 1999), pp. 87-91.

50 Liebling, A Neutral Corner, p. 127. In 1953, however, the
Hollywood bio-pic The Joe Louis Story was unable to get dis-
tribution in the South. Ronald Bergan, Sports in the Movies
(New York, 1982), p. 43.

51 Addison Gayle Jr, The Black Situation, in New Black Voices, ed.
Abraham Chapman (New York, 1972), p. 531.

52 That is also why, he continued, less plausibly, 'the whites
applauded Joe for crushing Schmeling'. Eldridge Cleaver,
'The Allegory of the Black Eunuchs', Soul on Ice (London,
1968), p. 112.

53 'The Greatest Fights of the Century', Esquire (December
1963), discussed in LeRoi Jones, 'The Dempsey-Liston Fight',
Home: Social Essays (New York, 1966), pp. 155-60.

54 'Dark Laughter', featuring Bootsie, began in the Harlem
Amsterdam News in 1935; the cartoon was later syndicated in
a number of black newspapers.

55 James Baldwin, 'The Fight: Patterson vs. Liston', in Early,
Tuxedo Junction, p. 333.

56 Jones, Home, p. 156.

57 Richard Bak,Joe Louis: The Great Black Hope (Cambridge,
ma, 1998), p. 276; Jones, Home, p. 155; Norman Mailer,
The Presidential Papers (London, 1964), pp. 240, 242.

58 Remnick, King of the World, p. 14. Kennedy and Patterson
pose together on the cover of Patterson's autobiography,
Victory Over Myself (1962). Gerald Early, 'The Unquiet
Kingdom of Providence: The Patterson-Liston Fight', in
The Culture of Bruising, p. 50.

59 William Nack, '0 Unlucky Man', in The Fights: Photographs
by Charles Hoff, ed. Richard Ford (San Francisco, 1996),
p. 66.

60 Martin Luther King, Why We Can't Wait (New York, 1963),
p. 111.

61 Liebling, A Neutral Corner, pp. 160-1.

62 Nack, 'O Unlucky Man', p. 73.

63 Liebling, A Neutral Corner, p. 166.

64 Malcolm X, with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
(London, 1965), p. 382.

65 Thomas Hauser, Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times
(London, 1997), p. 19.

66 Jack Olsen, Cassias Clay: A Biography (London, 1967), p. 71.

67 Liebling, A Neutral Corner, p. 164.

68 Ibid., pp. 215, 217. See also p. 234.

69 Marianne Moore, The Complete Prose, ed. Patricia C. Willis
(Harmondsworth, 1986), pp. 659-60.

70 See George Plimpton, Shadow Box (London, 1989), p. 125.

71 Schulberg, Loser and 'Still Champion, p. 41; Robert Lipsyte,
quoted in David W. Zong, 'The Greatest: Ali's Confounding
Character', in Sport and the Color Line, ed. Patrick B.Miller
and David K. Wiggins (London, 2004), p. 290.

72 Olsen, Cassius Clay, p. 44.

73 Schulberg, Loser and 'Still Champion, p. 39.

74 Ali gave several different accounts of his introduction to the
Nation. Muhammad Ali, with Richard Durham, The
Greatest: My Own Story (London, 1976), pp. 199-201; Henry
Hampton and Steve Fayer, Voices of Freedom: An Oral History
of the Civil Rights Movement (New York, 1991), pp. 324-5;
Olson, Cassius Clay, pp. 150-54; Hauser, Muhammad Ali,
pp. 89-100.

75 Hauser, Muhammad Ali, p. 97.

76 See Richard Brent-Turner, Islam in the African-American
Experience (Bloomington, in, 2003).

77 See, for example, the Messenger's Address, 28 March 1964,
in The Negro Since Emancipation, ed. Harvey Wish (Engle-
wood Cliffs, nj, 1964), p. 178; Olsen, Cassius Clay, p. 146.

78 Mike Marquesee, Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the
Spirit of the Sixties (London, 1999), pp. 56-7.

79 Manning Marable, Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second
Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1990 (London, 1991),
pp. 87-91.

80 The Autobiography of Malcolm X, pp. 385.

81 Gerald L. Early, 'Muhammad Ali as Third World Hero', in
This is Where I Came In: Black America in the 1960s (Lincoln,
ne, 2003), p. 7.

82 Sammons, Beyond the Ring, p. 182. James Ellroy's byzantine
thriller The Six Cold Thousand (2001) intertwines Liston and
the mob with the cia, fbi, kkk and the Mormon Church.
1940s boxing provides background material to The Black
Dahlia (London, 1987).

83 Tosches, Night Train, pp. 221-4.

84 William Trowbridge, 'Liston'; Jay Meek, 'Sonny Liston', in
Perfect in Their A rt: Poems on Boxing from Homer to Ali, ed.
Robert Hedin and Michael Waters (Carbondale, il, 2003),
pp. 202, 145-

85 Michael A. Gomez, Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy
of African Muslims in the Americas (Cambridge, 2005), p. 361.

86 Doctrine stated that the believer was not to know his
'original' name until the second coming of the Nation's
founder, Wallace D. Fard Muhammad. Early, 'Muhammad
Ali as Third World Hero', p. 10.

87 Sammons, Beyond the Ring, p. 195.

88 Hauser, Muhammad Ali, pp. 81-4; Marquesee, Redemption
Song, p. 8.

89 Marquesee, Redemption Song p. 9; Bak, Joe Louis, p. 278.

90 Frederic Cople Jaher, 'White America Views Jack Johnson,

435

Joe Louis, and Muhammad Ali', in Sport in America, ed.
Donald Spivey (Westport, ct, 1985), p. 171.

91 Gomez, Black Crescent, pp. 360-61.

92 Jones, Home, p. 159.

93 Jeffrey 0. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African
American Identity (Baltimore, 2004), p. 131.

94 Early, 'Muhammad Ali as Third-World Hero', p. 15.

95 See Maya Angelou, All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes
(London, 1991), pp. 143-4, 146; The Autobiography of
Malcolm X, pp. 438-9; Alex Haley, in Hampton and Fayer,
Voices of Freedom, pp. 329-30.

96 Martin Luther King, 'I Have a Dream', in yl Call to Con-
science: The Landmark Speeches of Dr Martin Luther King Jr.,
ed. Clayborne Crason and Kris Shepard (New York, 2001),
p. 83; Malcolm X, 'The Ballot or The Bullet', in The Norton
Anthology of African American Literature, ed. Henry Louis
Gates, Jr and Nellie Y. McKay (New York, 1997), p. 93.

97 Malcolm X, 'Discussion with young civil rights fighters',

1 January 1965, in Malcolm X talks to Young People, ed. Steve
Clark (New York, 1991), p. 96. See also 'On Afro-American
History', 24 January 1965, in Malcolm X on Afro-American
History (New York, 1967), p. 25.

98 Mark Kram, Ghosts of Manila (New York, 2001) p. 123;
Hampton and Frayer, Voices of Freedom, pp. 326-7; Ali,
The Greatest, p. 120; Cleaver, Soul on Ice, pp. 92-3. See also
Robert Lipsyte, 'Clay Knocks Out Patterson in the 12th',
The New York Times, 23 November 1965.

99 Floyd Patterson with GayTalese, 'In Defense of Cassius
Clay', in L'm A Little Special: A Muhammad Ali Reader, ed.
Gerald Early (London, 1999), p. 66. In praise of Patterson's
essays, see Gerald Early, 'The Black Intellectual and the
Sport of Prizefighting', in The Culture of Bruising, p. 14.

100 Olson, Cassius Clay, p. 195.

101 Henry Cooper, An Autobiography (London, 1974), p. 115.
Cooper's claim to fame was that he had knocked Ali down
in 1963.

102 Ali was not exceptional in this; most blacks had 'great
difficulty' in obtaining conscientious objector status. Mary
Frances Berry and John W. Blassingame, Long Memory:
The Black Experience in America (Oxford, 1982), p. 331.

103 Hauser, Muhammad Ali, pp. 142-201; Ali, The Greatest,
pp. 124-5, 160. As early as 1965, sncc members had de-
clared that blacks should not 'fight in Vietnam for the
white man's freedom, until all the Negro people are free in
Mississippi'. Marable, Race, Reform and Rebellion, p. 85

104 Thomas A. Johnson, 'Boycott of Sports by Negroes Asked',
New York Times, 24 July 1967, pp. 1, 16. Jerry Gafio Watts,
Amiri Baraka: The Politics and Art of a Black Intellectual
(New York, 2001), p. 305. The 1968 Black Power Conference
also issued a statement condemning 'all pretenders to
the heavyweight crown of Muhammad Ali as traitors,
hypocrites, or both'. Harry Edwards, The Revolt of the Black
Athlete (New York, 1969), p. 182.

105 Debbie Louis, And We Are Not Saved: A History of the Move-
ment as People (New 'York, 1970), pp. 296-7.

106 William L. Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power
Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975 (Chicago, 1992),

p. 84; Edwards, The Revolt, pp. 179, 190. See also Othello
Harris, 'Muhammad Ali and the Revolt of the Black Athlete',
in Muhammad Ali, ed. Gorn, pp. 54-69.

107 Edwards, The Revolt, p. 74.

108 Ishmael Reed, 'The Greatest, My Own Story', in Shrovetide
in Old New Orleans (New York, 1978), p. 122; Fred Halstead,
Out Now! (New York, 1978), p. 308; Victor Bockris, Muham-
mad Ali in Fighter s Heaven (London, 2000), pp. 38-9; Wayne
Glaster, Black Students in the Ivory Tower (Amherst, 2002),
pp. 29-32.

109 Joe Louis attacked Ali as being 'a guy with ... a dime's worth
of courage'. Quoted in George Whiting, The Ring, February
1967, p. 6. Dempsey avoided the First World War and was a
dubbed a 'slacker' in his fights with war heroes Carpentier
and Tunney (who said Ali 'disgraced' the American flag).
Like Louis, however, Dempsey participated in army
propaganda in the Second World War. Jaher, 'White
America Views Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, and Muhammad
Ali', pp. 173-4-

110 Marquesee, Redemption Song, pp. 174-5. In general black
activists had 'reservations about participating in anti-war
organizations dominated by white liberals and leftists'.
Marable, Race, Reform and Rebellion, p. 101.

111 Early, 'I Only Like It Better', p. 138.

112 Schulberg, Loser and Still Champion, p. 39

113 Early, 'Muhammad Ali as Third World Hero', p. 31. See also
Elizabeth A. Castelli, 'The Ambivalent Legacy of Violence
and Victimhood: Using Early Christian Martyrs to Think
With', Spiritus, 6 (2006), pp. 1-24.

114 George Lois, Covering the '60s: The Esquire Era (New York,
1996), p. 61. On Lois's other boxer-covers, James Hughes,
'The Graphic Arts: George Lois', Stop Smiling, no. 20 (2005),
pp. 22-3.

115 Mark Feeney, 'Judged by their Covers', Boston Globe, 18
October 2005, C3. See Leonard Shechter,'The Passion of
Muhammad Ali', Esquire (April 1968), pp. 128-60.

116 Holland Cotter, 'Benny Andrews at the Studio Museum in
Harlem', Art in America, 77 (September 1989), p. 212.

117 Andrews may also have been thinking of Robert Riggs's
lithograph, Little Brown Brother (1932).

118 Quoted in Sharon F. Patton, African-American Art (Oxford,
1998), p. 191. The fate of the ex-fighter was the subject of
Clay Goss's one-act play, 'Of Being Hit', first produced at
Howard University in 1970. Homecookin ': Five Plays
(Washington, DC, 1974), pp. 65-80. On the retiring boxers,
see Nathan Hare, 'The Study of the Black Fighter', in Speech
and Power, ed. Gerald Early (Hopewell, nj, 1992), vol. 1,
pp. 158-66.

119 An exception was a political cartoon, reprinted in the maga-
zine in 1968. There, 'Ali is seen hung on the cross, arms out-
stretched, hands covered by boxing gloves. Several pairs of
white hands rip off Ali's clothes, which are imprinted with
the caption, "World Champion". One pair of white hands
throws dice.' Below the cartoon, the editorial states: 'Christ-
ian Cross, which is responsible for so much oppression of
Black people, was depicted recently ... as the instrument by
which Muhammad Ali was "crucified" at hands of white

436

America.' Quoted in Edward E. Curtis IV, 'Islamizing the
Black Body: Ritual and Power in Elijah Muhammad's Nation
of Islam', Religion and American Culture, 12, no. 2 (Summer
2002), pp. 170-71. Ali also featured in a controversially anti-
Semitic cartoon which was published in the sncc newsletter
in the summer of 1967, as an accompaniment to an article
about the Six-Day War. Ali and Nasser are depicted with
nooses around their necks; a hand marked with a Star of
David and dollar signs is holding the rope; an arm,
inscribed 'Third World Liberation Movements', is poised to
cut it. Robert G. Weisbord and Richard Kazarian Jr., Israel in
the Black American Perspective (Westport, ct, 1985), pp. 33-5.
See also Melani McAlister, 'One Black Allah: The Middle
East in the Cultural Politics of African American Liberation,
1955-1970', American Quarterly, 51, no. 3 (1999), pp. 622-56.

120 Wallace Terry, 'Bringing the War Home', Black Scholar, 2,
no. 3 (1970), pp. 6-18; Terry, Bloods: An Oral History of the
Vietnam War (New York, 1984), p. xvi.

121 Quoted in Thomas Cripps, 'The Noble Black Savage: A Prob-
lem in the Politics of Television Art', Journal of Popular
Culture, 8, no. 4 (Spring 1975), p. 693. For a comparison of
'the courting of pet primitives such as . . . Jose Torres' by
sixties New Yorkers to the courting of prizefighters by the
Regency aristocracy, see Tom Wolfe, Radical Chic and
Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (New York, 1971), pp. 39, 65.

122 'No matter what we say to Whitey, we always end up as his
entertainment'. John Oliver Killens, The Cotillion (New York,
1971), p. 180. Esquires list of signatories included Ralph
Ellison, Kenneth Burke and Katherine Anne Porter.

123 The musical was adapted by Oscar Brown Jr. from Joseph
Dolan Tuotti's play, Big Time Buck White, which was first
performed by Budd Schulberg's Watts Writers Workshop.
See The Grove Press Reader, 1951-2001, ed. Stanley Gonferski
(New York, 2001), pp. 258-65; Ali, The Greatest, pp. 239-42.

124 Jaher, 'White America Views Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, and
Muhammad Ali', pp. 175-6. On the Quarry fight, Jose Tor-
res, Sting Like a Bee (London, 1971), ch. 1. On the importance
of closed-circuit television for boxing in this period, see
Anna McCarthy, '"Like an earthquake!" theater television,
boxing, and the black public sphere', Quarterly Review of Film
and Video, 16, nos 3-4 (1999), 307-23.

125 Schulberg, Loser and Still Champion, pp. 108, 144.

126 Ibid., ch. 6.

127 Gwendolyn Brooks, Black Steel: Joe Frazier and Muhammad
Ali (Detroit, 1971). In 1935 Brooks had written a very differ-
ent 'Song for Joe Louis': 'Unspoken words are stronger /
Ungiven smiles are sweet; / Staid ice is best cover / For
strength's resourceful heat.' Quoted in George E. Kent, A Life
of Gwendolyn Brooks (Lexington, ky, 1990), p. 36.

128 Norman Mailer, Existential Errands (New York, 1973), p. 41.

129 Oates, On Boxing, pp, 25, 79.

130 Mailer, Existential Errands, p. 42.

131 Norman Mailer, The Fight (London, 1975), p. 22; V. S.
Naipaul, The Writer and the World (London, 2002), p. 207.

132 Charles Lemert, Muhammad Ali: Trickster in the Culture of
Irony (London, 2003), pp. 145-6.

133 Christian K. Messenger, 'Norman Mailer: Boxing and the

Art of His Narrative', Modern Fiction, 33, 1 (Spring 1987),
p. 98.

134 Edwards, The Revolt, pp. 106-7.

135 Kram, Ghosts of Manila, p. 163; Lemert, Muhammad Ali,
p. 147.

136 Jose Torres, 'Ex-Fighter's Notes on the Champion', in I'm a
Little Special, ed. Early, p. 177. Kram argues that Ali learnt
this, like much else, from Archie Moore. Ghosts of Manila,
pp. 70-1.

137 Lemert, Muhammad Ali, p. 24.

138 Ali, The Greatest, pp. 258, 412.

139 Kram, Ghosts of Manila, p. 185.

140 Joyce Carol Oates, 'The Cruellest Sport', in I'm a Little
Special, p. 264.

141 Mark Tobichaux, Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of
the Modern Cable Business (New York, 2002), p. 46. Pay
Cable began in 1972 as a regional service. In 1973, hbo trans-
mitted the Foreman vs. Frazier fight from Kingston,
Jamaica. By 1996, boxing accounted for 57 per cent of all
pay-per-view programming. Howard J. Blumenthal and
Oliver R. Goodenough, The Business of Television (New York,
1998), p. 83; Walter Ciciora, James Farmer, David Large
and Michael Adams, Modern Cable Television Technology
(San Francisco, 2004), p. 11.

142 See Richard Pryor's monologue on Ali vs. Spinks, Live in
Concert (1979).

143 Quoted in Oates, 'The Cruellest Sport', p. 264.

144 Ali, The Greatest, p. ix; Remnick, King of the World, p. 90.
On Durham's 'frustrating' experience writing the book, see
Leon Forrest, 'Elijah', in Relocations of the Spirit (Wakefield,
ri, 1994), p. 69. Forrest worked with Durham on the staff
of Muhammad Speaks and took over as managing editor
in 1972. See also Maureen Smith, 'Muhammad Speaks and
Muhammad Ali', in With God on Their Side: Sport in the
Service of Religion, ed. Tara Magdalinski and TimothyJ. L.
Chandler (London, 2002), pp. 177-96.

145 Ali, The Greatest, pp. 117, 193. Gerald Early, 'Some Preposter-
ous Propositions from the Heroic Life of Muhammad Ali:
A Reading of The Greatest: My Own Story', in Muhammad
Ali, ed. Gorn, p. 71-2.

146 Early, 'Some Preposterous Propositions', p. 83.

147 Ali, The Greatest, pp. 21, 320.

148 Ibid., p. 52, 244.

149 Ibid., p. 34. See also Ogbar, Black Power, pp. 38-9.

150 Ibid., p. 35.

151 Ibid., p. 63.

152 Ibid., pp. 69, 76. On the apocryphal nature of this story,
see Remnick, King of the World, p. 89.

153 Ibid., p. 197. Ali also adopted some of his predecessor's lines
and gimmicks. 'Just like him to pick up some crazy notion
from that film', complained Angelo Dundee. Plimpton,
Shadow Box, pp. 151-4. See Ali A. Mazrui, 'Boxer Muham-
mad Ali and Soldier Idi Amin as International Political
Symbols', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 19, no. 2
(April 1977), pp. 189-215.

154 Ali, The Greatest, p. 62. Alex Haley, Roots (London, 1977),
pp. 627, 628.

437

155 James Baldwin, 'How One Black Man Came to be an Ameri-
can: Review of Roots', TheNew York Times Book Review, 26
September 1976, pp. 1-2.

156 Bergan, Sport in the Movies, pp. 39-40.

157 Bockris, Muhammad Ali in Fighters Heaven, p. 118.

158 Ibid., p. 126.

159 Marquesee, Redemption Song, p. 286.

160 Ibid., p. 2.

161 Lemert, Muhammad Ali, p. 22.

162 Marquesee, Redemption Song, p. 5.

163 Marable, Race, Reform and Rebellion, p. 131; Hauser, Muham-
mad Ali, p. 281. William Klein's film of the Liston fights,
Muhammad Ali, The Greatest, was released in 1974.

164 Jaher, 'White America Views Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, and
Muhammad Ali', p. 178.

165 Brent-Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience,
p. xxix; Weisbord and Kazarian Jr., Israel in the Black
American Perspective, p. 46; Michael Ellison, 'Muhammad
Ali joins the fight with TV message to win over Muslims',
The Guardian, 24 December 2001, p. 9.

166 Marquesee, Redemption Song, p. 5.

167 Quoted in Davis Miller, The Zen of Muhammad Ali
(London, 2002), pp. 17, 37.

168 Hana Ali, More Than A Hero (New York, 2000); Hana Ali
and Muhammad Ali, The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on
Life's Journey (New York, 2004); Laila Ali, with David Ritz,
Reach: Finding Strength, Spirit and Personal Power (New York,
2003).

169 Jim Stynes, Paul Currie and Jon Carnegie, Heroes: a guide to
realizing your dreams (London, 2003), p. 10; Michele Ingber
Drohan, Learning About Strength of Character from the Life of
Muhammad Ali (New York, 1999); Ntozake Shange, Float
Like a Butterfly, with illustrations by Edel Rodriguez (New
York, 2002). 'Because of Ali, after nearly ten years of trying,
I am finally able to eke out a living as a writer', admits
Miller, The Zen of Muhammad Ali, p. 23. See also Ian Probert,
Rope Burns (London, 1999).

170 Gerald Early, 'Ali's Rumble', Sight and Sound, 7, 5 (May 1997),
pp. 10-12.

171 Sam B. Girgus finds no problem in the fact that a film which
'glorifies all things black' depends on Mailer and Plimpton
as its sole 'informed participants and commentators'.
Girgus, America on Film (Cambridge, 2002), p. 104. See also
Lemert, Muhammad Ali, pp. 143-4 and Grant Farred,
'Feasting on Foreman: When We Were Kings as Hagiography',
Camera Obscura, 39 (September 1996), pp. 52-77.

172 Julio Rodriguez, 'Documenting Myth: Racial Representation
in Leon Gast's When We Were Kings', in Sports Matters:
Recreation, Race and Culture, ed. John Bloom and Michael
Nevin Willard (New York, 2002), pp. 209-22.

173 GrantFarred, What's My Name?: Black Vernacular Intel-
lectuals (Minneapolis, 2003), pp. 8, 29, 47-9.

174 Farred, What's My Name?, p. 87.

175 Hauser, Muhammad Ali, p. 78.

176 'The Greatest, My Own Story', p. 124. Cassius was nearly
called Rudolph Valentino Clay. His younger brother was
given the name instead. Ali, The Greatest, pp. 78, 144; Kram,

Ghosts of Manila, pp. 27-8, 55, 129, 169; Hauser, Muhammad
Ali, p. 313; Ogbar, Black Power, p. 27.

177 Michael Oriard, 'Muhammad Ali: The Hero in the Age of
Mass Media', in Muhammad Ali, ed.Gorn, p. 10; Jeffrey T.
Sammons, 'Rebel with a Cause: Muhammad Alias Sixties
Protest Symbol', in Muhammad Ali, ed. Gorn, p. 161. 'The
World's Greatest Athlete is in danger of being our most
beautiful man, and the vocabulary of Camp is doomed to
appear', opens Mailer, The Fight, p. 9. See also bell hooks,
We Real Cool Men: Black Men and Masculinity (London,
2004), p. 22.

178 Lemert, Muhammad Ali, pp. 7-8; Douglas Rogers, 'The
Greatest Show on Earth, Round Two', The Guardian, 15 April
2006, p. 3.

179 Greg Levine, 'The "Greatest" Deal: Muhammad Ali Sells
Name, Image', Forbes, 12 April 2006.

180 Michael Marriott, 'With Food Line, Ali Makes Obesity an
Opponent', New York Times, 28 June 2006.

181 Bockris, Muhammad Ali in Fighter's Heaven, pp. 40-41.

182 AmiriBaraka, The Autobiography, in The LeRoi Jones/ Amiri
Baraka Reader, ed. William J. Harris (New York, 1991),

p. 389.

183 Ogbar, Black Power, p. 2; Early, 'Muhammad Ali as Third
World Hero', p. 4.

184 James H. Cone, Martin and Malcolm and America (Mary-
knoll, ny, 1991), p. 229; Marquesee, Redemption Song, p. 193.
James Brown, 'Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud (Part
I)' was released in Spring 1968. See also James Brown, The
Godfather of Soul (London, 1988), pp. 26-7, 37-8. By the mid-
seventies, Baraka, now a Maoist, rejected what he termed
'so called nationalism': an Ali-inspired '1 am the greatest-
ism', he declared, was just another form of sectarianism.
Quoted in Werner Sollors, Amiri Baraka/ LeRoi Jones: The
Questfora 'Populist Modernism' (New York, 1978), p. 230.

185 Vincent Harding, 'A Long Time Coming: Reflections on the
Black Freedom Movement 1955-1972', in Transition and
Conflict: Images of a Turbulent Decade, 1963-1973, exh. cat.,
Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, 1985), p. 41.

186 'The restoration of our cultural roots and history,' Malcolm
X declared, 'will restore dignity to the black people in this
country.' Malcolm X: Speeches at Harvard, ed. Archie Epps
(New York, 1968), p. 142. See Van Deburg, New Day in
Babylon, pp. 272-80.

187 Sonia Sanchez, 'Blk/rhetoric', in We a BaddDDD People
(Detroit, 1970), p. 15. 'The work of the poets', wrote Carolyn
Gerald in 1969, is 'to give us back our heroes and to provide
us with new ones'. Quoted in Abby Arthur Johnson and
Ronald Maberry Johnson, Propaganda and Aesthetics: The
Literary Politics of Afro-American Magazines in the Twentieth
Century (Amherst, ma, 1979), p. 171. On the limited politics
of hero worship, see William Keorapetse Kgositsile, 'Paths
to the Future', in The Black Aesthetic, ed. Addison Gayle, Jr
(New York, 1970), p. 255.

188 Jayne Cortez, 'How Long Has Trane Been Gone' (1969),
in The Norton Anthology of African American Literature,
pp. 1957-9.

189 Soul Brother # 44 (Ernest White) provided a Civil Rights

438

family tree, Dr and Mrs M. L. King are 'Pa' and 'Ma', Rosa
Parks is 'Sister' and Ali 'Brother'. Why We March (New York,
1969), p. 87. See also Larry Neal, 'Some Reflections on the
Black Aesthetic', in The Black Aesthetic, ed. Gayle, pp. 13-16;
Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary (New York, 1970),
pp. 124-5. Numerous poems and songs imagined a future
nation of chocolate cities' in which Ali occupied the White
House, or at the very least was warmly celebrated in the
names of streets. Parliament, 'Chocolate City', Chocolate City
(Casablanca, 1975); VanDeburg, New Day in Babylon, p. 286.
Today Louisville has a Muhammad Ali Boulevard and Plaza.

190 At the dedication ceremony, Gwendolyn Brooks and Don L.
Lee read poems to the 'mighty black wall'. Don L. Lee, 'The
Wall', in Understanding the New Black Poetry, ed. Stephen
Henderson (New York, 1973), pp. 334-5; Gwendolyn Brooks,
'Two Dedications, Part 2, The Wall', in The Norton Anthology
of African American Literature, p. 1594. See also Michael D.
Harris, 'Urban Totems: The Communal Spirit of Black Mu-
rals', in James Pigolf and Robin H. Dunitz, Walls of Heritage,
Walls of Pride: African American Murals (San Francisco, 2000),
p. 24. On the influence of Mexican mural art, Mary Schmidt
Campbell. Transition and Conflict, p. 49; see also pp. 56-7.

191 The Wall of Respect led to 'more than 1,500 murals in virtually
every urban black community in the nation'; by 1975, there
were 200 in Chicago alone. The Wall of Dignity was painted
in Detroit in 1968, the Wall of Truth in Chicago in 1969 and
the Wall of Consciousness in Philadelphia in 1972. Atlanta
and St Louis also had Walls of Respect. See Jeff R. Donald-
son and Geneva Smitherman Donaldson, 'Upside the Wall',
in The People's Art: Black Murals, 1967-1978 (Philadelphia,
1986).

192 Pinkney, quoted in Pigolf and Dunitz, Walls of Heritage, Walls
of Pride, p. 188.

193 See, for example, Ishmael Reed, 'white hope', in Conjure:
Selected Poems, 1963-1970 (Amherst, ma, 1972), p. 68.

194 Randy Roberts, Papa Jack: Jack Johnson andtheEra of White
Hopes (London, 1986), p. 228. See also Al Buck, 'Clay-
Johnson Parallels Warn Cassius Beware', TheRingQune
1966), p. 12.

195 Remnick, King of the World, p. 224; Hauser, Muhammad Ali,
p. 206.

196 Samella Lewis, African American Art and Artists (Berkeley,

CA, 2003), p. I63.

197 Quoted in ElsaHonig Fine, The Afro-American Artist {New
York, 1982), pp. 262-3. Le Noir est une Couleurwas the title
of an exhibition of European avant-garde painting shown at
the Galerie Maeght in Paris in 1946.

198 Lewis, African American Art and Artists, pp. 147-9; Milly
Heyd, Mutual Reflections: Jews and Blacks in American Art
(New Brunswick, nj, 1999), p. 192. See also Richard J. Powell,
Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century (London, 1997),
pp. 125-6.

199 Jones also claimed to have drawn on William H. Grier and
Price M. Cobbs's Black Rage (1968) as a 'socio-psychological
aid'. James Earl Jones, 'Jack Johnson is Alive and Well . . .On
Broadway', Ebony (June 1969), p. 60.

200 Remnick, King of the World, p. 224.

201 Ali, The Greatest, p. 317. In 1979 Ali appeared as a Recon-
struction senator in the nbc adaptation of Howard Fast's
novel, Freedom Road. Although stories of slavery and Recon-
struction remained popular during the seventies, black ath-
letes were no longer cast as Uncle Tom. Instead, Ken Norton
played a sexy fighting buck in Mandingo (1975) and Drum
(1976), and the football star O.J. Simpson played a boxer in
Goldie and the Boxer (1979). MacDonald, Blacks and White
TV, p. 232; Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies
and Bucks (New York, 1986), p. 243.

202 See Nicholas Naylor, 'Muhammad Ali, Jack Johnson, and
the "Problem" of Interracial Relationships: A Re-view of
Martin Ritt's The Great White Hope (1970)'; Scope: An Online
Journal of Film Studies: http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk.

203 Vincent Canby, '"Great White Hope" Brought to Screen',
New York Times, 12 October 1970, p. 46. During the Quarry
fight, Drew Bundini Brown famously yelled that there was a
'ghost in the house' -Johnson's ghost was watching. Ali,
The Greatest, p. 320.

204 Bergan, Sports in the Movies, p. 36. See also Pauline Kael,
'The Current Cinema: Clobber-Movie', The New Yorker, 17
October 1970, pp. 155-7.

205 Cayton and Jacobs had long been keen collectors of histori-
cal fight films and their rights. Some of these were shown in
a popular TV show, 'Greatest Fights of the Century', that
followed Gillette's Friday Night Fights from 1948 to 1954.
The two men eventually amassed a library of 16,000 boxing
films, Big Fights Inc., which they used as the basis for
numerous documentaries, including Legendary Champions
(1968) and a.k.a. Cassius Clay (1970). Hauser, Muhammad
AH, pp. 195-6.

206 Davis's approach was very different from that of Wynton
Marsalis, who, for the soundtrack to Ken Burns's pbs
documentary Unforgivable Blackness (Blue Note, 2004),
drew faithfully on the ragtime and blues of Johnson's era.

207 Miles Davis, with Quincy Troupe, The Autobiography
(London, 1990), p. 305.

208 Davis, The Autobiography, p. 164.

209 Gerald Early, 'The Art of the Muscle: Miles Davis as
American Knight and American Knave', in Miles Davis and
American Culture, ed. Early (St Louis, 2001), pp. 3-23. See
also Peter Relic, 'Knockout! The Potent Presence of boxing
in the life and music of Miles Davis', Stop Smiling, no. 20
(2005), pp. 32-7. Billie Holiday boxed as a teenager but
stopped after another girl hit her on the nose. 'I took my
gloves off and beat the pants off her. The gym teacher got so
sore, I never went near the school gym again.' Her brother
Henry 'grew up to be a prize fighter and then a minister'.
Billie Holiday, with William Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues
(New York, 1976), pp. 10, 7.

210 'When I look at a drummer,' said Davis, 'it's just like when!
look at a fighter'. Arthur Taylor, Notes and Tones:
Musician- to -Musician Interviews (London, 1983), p. 12.

211 Boyd, Pound for Pound, p. 18; Taylor, Notes and Tones, p. 119.

212 Davis, The Autobiography, p. 305.

213 Miles Davis, A Tribute to Jack Johnson (Columbia Records,
1971).

439

214 The film did not do well commercially and so Davis's album
was largely ignored. Today it is much admired and in 2003
Columbia released The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions, in-
cluding tributes to Roberto Duran, Archie Moore, Johnny
Bratton, Sugar Ray Robinson and Ali. Davis also recorded
'Ezz-thetic', George Russell's tribute to Charles Ezzard, on
Conception (Prestige, 1951).

215 Ishmael Reed, 'The Fourth Ali' (1978), in God Made Alaska
for the Indians (New York, 1982), p. 62. Reed's 1972 novel
Mumbo Jumbo explored parallels between 'the black cultural
and political spectrum' of the twenties and that of the six-
ties. See Reed, Shrovetide in Old New Orleans, pp. 130-31.
When the book was published, Reed's friend Richard Brauti-
gan presented him with the 'original front-page description
of Jack Johnson's defeat of Jim Jeffries'. Reed said this
amounted to 'overpraise', and suggested his style was closer
to that of Larry Holmes. Ishmael Reed, Writin Is Fightin'
(New York, 1988), pp. 3-8.

216 See Philip Brian Harper, Are We Not Men? Masculine Anxiety
and the Problem of African-American Identity (Oxford, 1996),
p. 50.

217 James Baldwin, in James Baldwin & Nikki Giovanni, A
Dialogue (London, 1975), p. 39; Larry Neal, 'And Shine Swam
On', in Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing, ed.
LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal (New York, 1968), p. 646; Albert
Murray, The OmniAmericans (New York, 1970), p. 30.

218 Jones and Neal, Introduction to Black Fire, p. xxiii. See also
Geneva Smitherman 'The Power of the Rap: The Black
Idiom and The New Black Poetry', Twentieth Century Litera-
ture, 19, no. 4 (October 1973), pp. 259-74; Michele Wallace,
Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (London,
1979), p- 47; Robyn Wiegman, American Anatomies
(Durham, nc, 1995), pp. 108-10; Marable, Race, Reform and
Rebellion, pp. 95, 164-6.

219 Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance
Farrington (New York, 1963), p. 240. See Marable, Race,
Reform and Rebellion, pp. 107-8; Alvin Pouissant, 'An
Overview of Fanon's Significance to the American Civil
Rights Movement', in International Tribute to Frantz Fanon,
Record of the Special Meeting of the UN Special Committee
Against Apartheid, 3 November 1978, pp. 59-66. Stokely
Carmichael's and Charles V. Hamilton's preface to Black
Power: The Politics of liberation in America ends with a quote
from Fanon. Black Power (New York, 1967), p. xii.

220 Franz Fanon, Black Skin, WhiteMasks, trans. Charles Lam
Markmann (London, 1986), pp. 158, 166.

221 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 225.

222 Cleaver, 'Allegory', p. 111. See also Jones, Home, p. 229; John
Hoberman, Darwin's Athletes (Boston, 1997), ch. 5.

223 Reed, 'The Fourth Ali', p. 39.

224 Sonny Liston remained 'the mindless Body' and for
Cleaver, that was the source of his appeal to whites. Cleaver,
'Allegory', p. 112. After Liston was defeated by 'the lippy
punk from Louisville', William Trowbridge wrote, 'We felt /
Betrayed, diminished, tongue tied by that /Prattling dancer
with the couplets and pretty face. / We wanted blood, teeth.
Nothing fancy.' Perfect in Their Art, p. 202.

225 Jones, Home, pp. 109-10.

226 Jones, 'The Changing Same (r&b and New Black Music)',
in Black Fire, ed. Jones and Neal, pp. 121-2. See also Home,
p. 170.

227 Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon, pp. 285-6.

228 Ishmael Reed, 19 Necromancers From Now (1970), in New
Black Voices, ed. Chapman, pp. 519-20. See also 'Ishmael
Reed - Self Interview', p. 129.

229 Ishmael Reed, 'Railroad Bill, A Conjure Man', in Chattanoga
(New York, 1973), pp. 9-15.

230 LeRoi Jones, 'Black DadaNihilismus', in The Dead lecturer
(New York 1964), pp. 61-4. Jones recorded the poem with
the New York Art Quartet on their eponymous 1965 album.
See Sollors, Am iri Baraka/IeRoi Jones, pp. 90-94; Kimberly
W. Benston, Performing Blackness (London, 2000), pp. 217,
219; Aldon Lynn Nielsen, Black Chant: Languages of African-
American Postmodernism (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 190-94.

231 LeRoi Jones, 'Answers in Progress', Tales, in The Fiction of
LeRoi Jones/ Amiri Baraka (Chicago, 2000), p. 219.

232 The protagonist of Jones's 1964 play Dutchman is a 'would-
be poet' called Clay Williams; 'too pretentious to be a
Jackson or a Johnson'. The leRoi Jones/ Amiri Baraka Reader,
p. 84. Ali was named after a noted Kentucky emancipation-
ist; he said Clay was not only a slave name but meant dirt.
Hauser, Muhammad Ali, p. 84. The phrase 'up against the
wall, motherfucker!' first appeared in Jones's 1967 poem,
'Black People', in The Jones/ Baraka Reader, p. 224. 'One year
later, it served as a motto for both the Black Panthers and
dissent students at Columbia University.' Johnson and
Johnson, Propaganda and Aesthetics, p. 172.

233 Jones, 'New-Sense', in The Fiction of leRoi Jones/ Amiri Baraka,
pp. 195-9.

234 When, following the Newark rebellion, Baraka was tried for
illegal possession of firearms, his poem 'Black People!' was
produced as evidence of his 'diabolical' intentions. Sollors,
Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones, pp. 199-203.

235 Larry Neal, 'The Black Arts Movement', in Visions of a
Liberated Future: Black Arts Movement Writings, ed. Michael
Schwartz (New York, 1989), p. 78.

236 Neal, 'And Shine Swam On', pp. 654-5; Neal, 'Ellison's Zoot
Suit', in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man: A Caesebook, ed. James
Callahan (Oxford, 2004), p. 98. See also Houston A. Baker,
'Critical Change and Blues Continuity: An Essay on the Criti-
cism of Larry Neal', Callaloo, 23 (Winter 1985), pp. 70-85.

237 Always fond of a boxing analogy, Stanley Crouch said of
Neal's early death: 'He was just shaking off the conventions
of black nationalist thought that had driven his intellect to
the canvas, was in the process of taking a few rounds, and
had a grand strategy for what he was going to do all the way
through the fifteenth when he left the ring feet first.' Stanley
Crouch, 'The Incomplete Turn of Larry Neal', in Visions of a
Liberated Future, pp. 3-6.

238 'Bootsie' had its origins in the conversations that Harrington
observed at the Elite Barber Shop on 7th Avenue: 'Each
Saturday morning some of America's top second class
citizens filled the Elite air with spirited public debate . . .
When Joe Louis was in the chair, traffic was tied up on both

440

sides of Seventh Avenue.' Oliver Harrington, Why I Left
America (Jackson, mi, 1993), p. 29. Hughes wrote an
introduction for Bootsie and Others in 1958. Between 1943
and 1965 Hughes wrote a weekly sketch for the Chicago
Defender which was widely syndicated. After i960 it
appeared in Muhammad Speaks.

239 See Donna A. S. Harper, Not So Simple: The 'Simple' Stories by
Langston Hughes (St Louis, 1995).

240 Larry Neal, 'Uncle Rufus Raps on the Squared Circle',
Partisan Review (Spring 1972), in Speech and Power, vol. 1, ed.
Early, pp. 186-92.

241 Compare Langston Hughes's Simple story, 'Bop', in Black
Voices, ed. Abraham Chapman (New York, 1968), pp. 103-5.
See also Early, 'Black Intellectual', p. 18.

242 Terry Baker, 'Humor Collected from a World of Pain',
Phylon, 28, no. 2 (1967), p. 213; Ishmael Reed, 'The Fourth
Ali', p. 44. Elsewhere Reed claimed that Ali's poetry was 'as
competent as any of that produced by the New York School
although literary critic Joe Frazier commented "Shhhiiit!"'
'The Greatest, My Own Story', in Shrovetide in Old New
Orleans (New York, 1978), p. 123.

243 Smitherman, 'The Power of the Rap', p. 263. Seminal essays
include John Dollard, 'The Dozens: Dialectic of Insult'
(1939) and Roger D. Abrahams, 'Playing the Dozens' (1962),
in Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel, ed. AlanDundes
(Jackson, mi, 1981), pp. 277-94, 295-309. These form the
basis of a 'theory of African-American literary criticism' in
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey ("Oxford, 1988).

244 Gates, The Signifying Monkey, pp. 52, 76.

245 Smitherman, 'The Power of the Rap', p. 268. See H. Rap
Brown, Die Nigger Die, in Mother Wit, p. 355; also published
as 'Rap's Poem', in Understanding the New Black Poetry, ed.
Henderson, pp. 187-8.

246 On the importance of 'bragging and scoffing matches' in the
'most diverse cultures', see Johann Huizinga, Homo
Ludens, A Study of the Play Element in Culture (London, 1970),
p. 86. See, for example, Achilles and Agamemnon

in the Iliad, Book 1.

247 'There is nothing so exhilarating as watching well-matched
opponents go into action. The entire world likes action, for
that matter. Hence prize-fighters become millionaires.' Zora
Neale Hurston, 'Characteristics of Negro Expression' in
Negro: An Anthology, ed. Nancy Cunard (New York, 2002),
pp. 28-9.

248 Ali, The Greatest, p. 97.

249 Cassius Clay, 'I am the Double Greatest', on I am the
Greatest!; Nikki Giovanni, 'Ego -Trip ping', in Re: Creation
(Detroit, 1970), pp. 37-8.

250 Ali, in When We Were Kings; Ishmael Reed, 'I am a Cowboy
in the Boat of Ra', in New and Collected Poems (New York,
2006), pp. 21-3.

251 See Shamoon Zamir, 'The Artist as Prophet, Priest and
Gunslinger: Ishmael Reed's "Cowboy in the Boat of Ra"',
Callaloo (Fall 1994), pp. 1205-35.

252 Reed, 'The Fourth Ali', pp. 44. Ishmael Reed, interviewed by
John O'Brien, in Joe David Bellamy, The New Fiction
(Urbana, il, 1974), p. 131.

253 Clay on the eighth round of his up-coming fight with
Liston. Part of the 'Will the Real Sonny Liston Fall Down' is
on I Am the Greatest! A version, 'Clay Comes Out to Meet
Liston', is in Perfect in Their Art, pp. 16-17.

254 Olson, Cassius Clay, pp. 198-9.

255 Raymond Washington, 'Moon bound', in New Black Voices,
ed. Chapman, pp. 389-90. See also Faith Ringgold's 1969
painting, Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger; Paul Gilroy, Against
Race (Cambridge, ma, 2000), ch. 9.

256 Killens, The Cotillion, pp. 1-3, 75, 176. Don L. Lee's poem,
'Gwendolyn Brooks', also satirizes 'nonsensical attempts of
Blacks to "outBlack" one another'. Quoted in Smitherman,
'The Power of the Rap', p. 266.

257 Imani Perry, Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip
Hop (Durham, nc, 2004), p. 58.

258 Ali, The Greatest, pp. 46-7, 89; Olson, Cassius Clay, p. 61;
Hauser, Muhammad Ali, p. 18.

259 Roberts, 'The Wide World', p. 39; Kram, Ghosts of Manila,
p. 64.

260 Hauser, Muhammad Ali, p. 39; Ali, The Greatest, pp. 104, 127.

261 Jack London, 'Burns-Johnson', in Jack London Reports, ed.
King Hendricks and Irving Shepard (New York, 1970), p. 263;
Jessie Fauset, 'The Gift of Laughter' in The New Negro, ed.
Alain Locke (New York, 1997), pp. 161-7.

262 Quoted in Ogbar, Black Power, p. 138; Early, I'm A Little Bit
Special, p. xiv.

263 On tv as 'the chosen instrument of the black revolution',
see Cripps, 'The Noble Black Savage', p. 690. Before meeting
Malcolm X, Ali knew his face and voice from 'numerous tv
debates'. Ali, The Greatest, p. 99.

264 Hampton and Fayer, Voices of Freedom, p. 325. Ralph Wiley
remembers his delight when Ali refused a tv interviewer's
demand to 'shut up', while Maxi Jazz of Faithless raps,
'My release from low self esteem / Came when I saw you
rapping on my tv screen'. Wiley, Serenity (Lincoln, ne,
2000), p. 63; 'Muhammad Ali', on Outrospective (Arista,
2001). Occasionally television caused problems for Ali. See
Kram, Ghosts of Manila, pp. 96-7; Marquesee, Redemption
Song, pp. 248-9.

265 Mailer, however, complained of Dylan that 'there's some-
thing a little boring about a man who comes from a fine
Jewish family in Minneapolis sounding like an Oklahoma
Okie'. Pieces and Pontif cations, p. 69.

266 Bob Dylan, 'Who Killed Davey Moore?', on The Bootleg
Series, 1961-1991 (Sony, 1991). Daniel Karlin notes Dylan's
habit of opposing a named figure to an anonymous group.
'Bob Dylan's Names', in Do You, Mr. Jones?, ed. Neil
Cocoran (London, 2003), p. 33. Phil Ochs also wrote a song
about Davey Moore, the chorus of which declares, rather
predictably, that 'the fighters must destroy as the poets must
sing, / as the hungry crowd must gather for the blood upon
the ring.' On The Early Years (Vanguard, 2000).

267 Rubin Carter, The Sixteenth Round: From Number One Con-
tender to #45472 (New York, 1974). See also Sam Chaiton and
Terry Swinton, Lazarus and The Hurricane (New York, 1991).

268 Robert Shelton, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob
Dylan (London, 1986), pp. 460-61.

441

269 Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy, 'Hurricane', on Desire
(Columbia, 1975). Carter's story forms the basis of The
Hurricane (1999), directed by Norman Jewison and
starring Denzel Washington. Christopher Bruce of Ballet
Rambert created a short ballet to accompany Dylan's
song. Luke Jennings, 'The Boxer Takes All', Evening Standard,
3 May 2001, p. 52.

270 Dylan quoted in Clinton Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the
Shades Revisited (London, 2003), p. 97; Larry Sloman, On the
Road with Bob Dylan: Rolling with the Thunder (New York,
1978), p. 26. See also Shelton, No Direction Home, p. 461;
Clinton Heylin, Dylan: Behind Closed Doors: The Recording
Sessions (1960-1994) (Harmondsworth, 1996), p. 113.

271 Marquesee, Redemption Song, p. 152.

272 Bob Dylan, 'I Shall Be Free No. 10', on Another Side of Bob
Dylan (Columbia, 1964).

273 Simon and Garfunkel, 'The Boxer', on Bridge Over Troubled
Water (Columbia, 1970). Heylin suggests that Simon bor-
rowed the 'singer/boxer motif from Elvis's performance in
Kid Creole and reports that Dylan was 'quite taken with the
song'. Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind The Shades Revisited, p. 310.
Many thanks to Jim Clemens for drawing this to my
attention. Simon had openly parodied Dylan in 'A Simple
Desultory Phillipic', on The Paul Simon Songbook (1965), and
then, with revised lyrics, on the 1966 Simon and Garfunkel
album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. The original
version includes the line, 'Walter Brennan punched out
Cassius Clay'. Both versions of the song make fun of Dylan's
tendency to name-drop.

274 Bob Dylan, Chronicles (New York, 2004), vol. 1, p. 120.

275 Mario Puzo, The Godfather (London, 1970), p. 150. Mordecai
Richler also presents Dempsey's Bar as a site for fantasies of
success in 'real America'. Richler's protagonist Jake Hersh
imagines breaking the jaw of Rocky Graziano (who calls him
Hymie), thus wrecking his chances against Tony Zale. St
Urbain's Horseman (London, 1972), pp. 91-2.

276 Dylan, Chronicles, p. 3. The chapter is entitled 'Markin' Up
the Score'.

277 Ibid., p. 115

278 Ibid., p. 229.

279 Ibid., p. 119.

280 Ibid., p. 128.

281 Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night (Harmondsworth,
1968), pp. 88, 145.

282 Mailer, Pieces and Pontifications, p. 153.

283 Mailer, The Armies of the Night, p. 61, 123, 48, 60. See Mary
V. Dearborn, Mailer (Boston, 1999), p. 109.

284 Mailer, Pieces and Pontifications, p. 17. See Joe Moran, Star
Authors (London, 2000), pp. 70-74.

285 Mailer, The Armies of the Night, p. 58.

286 Mailer's second father-in-law had been a professional
boxer and 'was always putting on the gloves with me'.
Advertisements for Myself (London 1985), p. 265. His first
encounter with the sport, however, seems to have been
through an English novel, Jeffrey Farnol's The Amateur
Gentleman (1913). Dearborn, Mailer, p. 18.

287 The 'unendurable demand' of mid-century was 'to restore

metaphor'. Norman Mailer, Cannibals and Christians (Lon-
don 1969), p. 352. Mailer frequently described modernity as
'schizoid'. See, for example, Advertisements for Myself , p. 165.

288 Mailer, Cannibals and Christians, p. 413. D. H. Lawrence was
a 'great writer because he contained a cauldron of boiling
opposites'. Norman Mailer, The Prisoner of Sex (New York,
1971), p. 137. Richard Poirier sees war as Mailer's key
metaphor, while J. Michael Lennon, who argues for Mailer's
debt to American Transcendentalism, argues that he is
'interested in relation, an idea larger than war and which
subsumes it under its rubric' Poirier, Mailer (London 1972),
pp. 9-24; J. Michael Lennon, 'Mailer's Cosmology', in
Critical Essays on Norman Mailer, ed. Lennon (Boston,
1986), p. 150.

289 Mailer, The Presidential Papers, pp. 125-48; Existential
Errands, pp. 195-9.

290 The Armies of the Night is subtitled 'History as a Novel, The
Novel as History'; Marilyn (1973) is a 'novel biography'.
Tom Wolfe argues that Mailer uses these phrases because
of his 'dread' of being termed a 'journalist'. 'The new
journalism', in The New Journalism: An Anthology, ed.
Tom Wolfe and E. W. Johnson (London, 1975), p. 42.

291 Mailer, Advertisements for Myself , p. 275.

292 Mailer, Existential Errands, pp. 36. Training is like making
love to one's wife with 'carnal indifference'; making 'comfort-
able love' with a sparring partner is dangerous. When Ali
starts fighting like a southpaw, Mailer thinks Foreman must
feel like he's 'making love to a brunette when she is wearing

a blonde wig'. When Ali lies back on the ropes, he's like a
'working man getting back into bed after a long day to be
treated to a little of God's joy by his hardworking wife'.
Mailer, The Fight, pp. 11, 64, 167, 175.

293 Mailer, Advertisements for Myself, pp. 392-416. When
Stephen Rojack kisses Cherry Melanie he feels as though
he'd 'been sparring with a bigger man and got hit with a
full right hand, not a bare fist but a hand in a boxing glove'.
Cherry, however, simply compliments him on being
'such a sweet kisser.' An American Dream (London, 1965),
pp. 113-14-

294 Mailer, The Presidential Papers, p. 243.

295 Emile Griffith, in In This Corner. . .!, ed. Peter Heller
(London, 1989), pp. 383-7. The story forms the basis of
Oliver Mayer's play, Blade to the Heat (New York, 1996).
See David Richards, 'The Boxing Ring as a Parable on
Manhood', TheNew York Times, 4November 1994.

296 For a reading of the fight which concludes that boxing is
'virtually antihomosexual theater', see Gerald Early, 'James
Baldwin's Neglected Essay: Prizefighting, the White
Intellectual, and the Racial Symbols of American Culture',
Tuxedo Junction, p. 189.

297 Mailer, Advertisements, pp. 269-89.

298 Quoted in W.J. Weatherby, Squaring-Ofj: Mailer v. Baldwin
(London, 1977)^.78.

299 Mailer, Advertisements, p. 187.

300 Mailer, The Deer Park (New York, 1957), pp.43, 170, 276,
300.

301 Mailer later totted up the reviews much in the manner of a

442

boxer's scorecard - 'seven good and eleven bad'. Advertise-
ments, p. 211.

302 Ibid., pp. 205-6.

303 Mailer, Pieces and Pontifications, p. 145.

304 Mailer, Advertisements, p. 21.

305 Ibid., pp. 390-91; Pieces and Pontifications, pp. 145-7, 189;
The Presidential Papers, p. 38.

306 Bobby Kennedy was 'the kind of man never to put on the
gloves with if you wanted to do some social boxing,
because after two minutes it would be a war, and ego-
bastards last long in a war', jfk, meanwhile, 'carried
himself. . .with a cool grace which seemed similar to the
poise of a fine boxer, quick with his hands, neat in his
timing, and two feet away from his corner when the bell
ended the round'. Faced with 'a competition between
totalitarianisms', Mailer argued, 'the first maxim of the
prizefighter would doubtless apply: "Hungry fighters
win fights."' America, it seemed, needed a boxer or two.
The Presidential Papers, pp. 36, 45, 43-4.

307 David Halberstam, Introduction to The Best American Sports
Writing of the Century (Boston, 1999), p. xxxi.

308 According to Wolfe, the first piece of journalism that
worked like a short story' was Gay Talese's 'Joe Louis: the
King as a Middle-aged Man' (1962). 'The New Journalism',
pp. 23-4.

309 Mailer, The Presidential Papers, pp. 213-67; Pieces and
Pontifications, p. 134.

310 Mailer, Existential Errands, pp. 15-42.

311 Messenger, 'Norman Mailer and the Art of His Narrative',
pp. 97-8.

312 Mailer, The Fight, p. 110. Hazlitt's 'The Fight' was often
discussed as an antecedent to the New Journalism. Wolfe
disagreed. See 'The New Journalism', pp. 58-9.

313 Mailer guards his territory carefully and finds the very idea
of Alias a purveyor of poetic images disturbing. The Fight,
pp. 17, 18, 29.

314 Ibid., pp. 13, 19, 43, 47, 54, 57, 83.

315 Ibid., pp. 156, 163, 164.

316 Ibid., pp. 168-70.

317 Michael Cowan, 'The Quest for Empowering Roots: Mailer
and the American Literary Tradition', in Critical Essays on
Norman Mailer, ed. Lennon, pp. 170-71.

318 Mailer, The Fight, pp. 179-80.

319 Ibid., pp. 24, 40, 42, 77, 84.

320 Ibid., pp. 93-4.

321 Ibid., pp. 34, 207.

322 Ibid., pp. 109, 142.

323 For Mailer, Hemingway's masculinity lay in a constant
struggle with 'cowardice' and an ability to carry 'within him
a weight of anxiety' which would have 'suffocated any man
smaller than himself.' He wrote these lines in a 1963 book
review, and in 1998 reprinted them as a 'prelude', and
therefore presumably a self-defining statement, to his
greatest-hits-volume, The Time Of Our Time (New York,
1998), pp. 3-4. See also Cannibals and Christians, p. 192.

324 Mailer, Advertisements, pp. 378-88. See also Cannibals and
Christians, pp. 131-61.

325 Mailer, Pieces and Pontifications, p. 69-70. Later he com-
pared himself to Leon Spinks in that, with the publication of
his first novel, The Naked and the Dead, he became 'champ
before he . . . [knew] whether he . . . [could] really fight or
not'. Both Ali and Hemingway, Mailer suggests, 'come out
of that same American urgency to be the only planet in
existence. To be the sun.' In the end, however, Ali is more
admirable than Hemingway because 'after Ali got old he
still won a couple of great fights', while Hemingway 'didn't
make the big knockout ... in his later books'. Pieces and
Pontifications, pp. 159-62.

326 Mailer, Existential Errands, p. 20.

327 Mailer evokes the example of Harry Greb, 'completely a
fighter, the way one might wish to be completely a writer'.
Christians and Cannibals, pp. 254-5; Pieces and Pontifica-
tions, p. 23.

328 Byron, Selected Letters and Journals, ed. Peter Gunn
(Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 142.

329 Mailer, Pieces and Pontifications, p. 148.

330 Protesting at the Pentagon in 1967, for example, he tussles
with Robert Lowell, a master of feinting with faint praise.
The Armies of the Night, pp. 29-32.

331 See Mailer, 'Of a Small and Modest Malignancy', pp. 27, 29.

332 Mailer, Pieces and Pontifications, pp. 51-2.

333 Ibid., p. 39.

334 Mailer, Cannibals and Christians, pp. 210-13. Algren had just
published a satirical account of one Norman Manlifellow,
the author of Look Ma, My Fly is Open. Who Lost an
American? {LQ^-don, 1963), p. 19. Mailer does not mention
this attack, but recalls his own swipe at Algren in Advertise-
ments, p. 382. As they leave the studio, the talk shifts to
middleweights and they shake hands.

335 Mailer, Pieces and Pontifications, pp. 65, 67, 73.

336 Morris Dickstein, Gates of Eden: American Culture in the
Sixties (Cambridge, ma, 1997), p. 162.

337 Mailer, Advertisements, pp. 386-7. Later he modified this
view, dismissing Baldwin's novels but praising his essays.
Christians and Cannibals, p. 143.

338 Weatherby, Squaring- Off, p. 34.

339 Ibid., p. 112.

340 James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name (New York, 1961),
pp. 216-41.

341 Mailer, The Presidential Papers, pp. 250, 256, 266;
Weatherby, Squaring-Off, pp. 78-82.

342 James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (Harmondsworth 1964),
p. 29.

343 Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name, pp. 79-81.

344 Ibid., p. 96.

345 Early, 'James Baldwin's Neglected Essay', p. 192. See also,
Early, 'The Unquiet Kingdom of Providence', pp. 57-61.

346 James Baldwin, No Name in the Street, in The Price of the
Ticket: Collected Non-fiction, 1948-1985 (London, 1985),
p. 498.

347 Philip Fisher, Hard Facts: Setting and Form in the American
Novel (Oxford, 1986), pp. 171-2.

348 Oates, On Boxing, p. 61.

349 La Motta, Raging Bull: My Story, p. 189.

443

350 See David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An
Introduction (Boston, 2001), p. 393.

351 Allen Guttmann, The Erotic in Sports (New York, 1996), p.m.

Sam B. Girgus, however, sees it as a scene of symbolic
castration' which makes La Motta equal to the 'feminized'
Robinson. America on Film, p. 85.

352 According to Louis Menand, the real subject of the film is
DeNiro's performance: boxing serves as a metaphor for
acting. 'Methods and Madnesses', in Perspectives on Raging
Bull, ed. Steven G. Kellman (Boston, 1994), pp. 60-68.

353 Steven G. Kellman, 'Introduction', Perspectives on Raging
Bull, p. 9.

354 Scorsese complained that the book Raging Bull was 'very
bad' because 'they tried to give a reason for everything Jake
did in his life, for his guilt and for his violence.' Quoted in
Scorsese on Scorsese, ed. Ian Christie and David Thompson
(London, 2003), p. 76. His film, however, teases us with
possible reasons: La Motta is pathologicallyjealous of his
wife, perhaps struggles with an 'unacknowledged homo-
sexual urge', has been a contender too long, and is angry
when he has to throw a fight. He says that he has done 'a lot
of bad things', but we don't know what they are.

355 Quoted in Fred Ferretti, 'The Delicate Art of Creating a
Brutal Film Hero', New York Times, 23 November 1980, di,
p. 28.

356 Screenwriter Paul Schrader, quoted in Schrader on Schrader,
ed. Kevin Jackson (London, 1990), p. 133. Schrader
complained that Scorsese was 'imposing salvation on his
subject by fiat'.

357 Scorsese described this as the 'redemption scene' and said
that the film was 'about a man who loses everything and
then regains it spiritually'. Elsewhere he described the film
as a kind of expressionist autobiography; dramatizing La
Motta 's problems allowed him to 'express' his own. Scorsese
on Scorsese, pp. 76-7; Les Keyser, Martin Scorsese (Boston,
1992), p. 120. Most critics elaborate on this reading. See, for
example, Girgus, America on Film, pp. 75, 86; Lawrence S.
Friedman, The Cinema of Martin Scorsese (New York, 1998),
pp. 125-6.

358 In the opera, the intermezzo 'suggests a momentary religious
sanctuary before a violent confrontation prompted by
jealousy'. Barry Leeds, 'Scorsese vs. Mailer: Boxing as
Redemption in Raging Bull and An American Dream , in
Perspectives on Raging Bull, pp. 134-5.

359 Scorsese said that Buster Keaton, director of Battling Butler,
was 'the only person who had the right attitude about
boxing in movies'. Scorsese on Scorsese, pp. 78, 80. Pauline
Kael described the film as 'a biography of the genre of prize-
fight films'. TakingltAllIn (New York, 1984), pp. 106-12.

360 Dennis Schaefer and Larry Salvato, Masters of Light:
Conversations with Contemporary Cinematographers
(Berkeley, ca, 1984), pp. 122-4.

361 Scorsese on Scorsese, p. 83. In real life, a punch does not neces-
sarily make much of a noise; in cinema, 'the sound of the
impact is well-nigh obligatory'. Visually punches are so fast
that they would 'get lost' on screen; sound 'rubber stamps'
the image. Michel Chion, Audio-Vision, trans. Claudia

Gorbman (New York, 1994), pp. 60-2. Fat City \s one of ihe
very few boxing films which did not amplify the sound of its
punches.

362 Scorsese on Scorsese, p. 78. Seen as a version of repetitive reli-
gious ritual, genre leads to a transcendence of itself. See Leo
Braudy, 'The Sacraments of Genre: Coppola, De Palma,
Scorsese', Film Quarterly, 39, no. 3 (Spring 1986), pp. 17-28.

363 Ferretti, 'The Delicate Art of Creating a Brutal Film Hero',
p. 28.

364 Quoted in Martin Scorsese: A Journey, p. 125.

365 Marquesee, Redemption Song, p. 285.

366 Hauser, Muhammad Ali, pp. 296-302.

367 Mike Figgis, 'Sylvester Stallone', in 'Hollywood Film-
Makers on Film-Making', Projections, 10 (1999), p. 113.

368 Horatio Alger, Jr., RaggedDick, Or, Street Life in Neiv York with
the Boot Blacks (New York, 1990), p. 24.

369 Scorsese on Scorsese, p. 78. 'Raging Bull seemed an anil-Rocky,
a tale of the fall down the museum steps and not the run up.'
Keyser, Martin Scorsese, p. 110.

370 The relationship between Rocky and Creed reflected that
between Stallone and Weathers as well as between Wepner
and Ali. This is Stallone's version of how they met: 'Carl
Weathers walked in . . . and he had all this arrogance. . . He
goes, "You wanna see my body?" He takes his shirt off and
he's really built. He says, "I can box a little bit." So I get up
with him and he's sort of banging me in the forehead. And
then he . . . goes, "You know, I could do a lot better if I was
with a real actor." He thought I was the office boy. John says,
"Well, he is Rocky. That's the guy." Carl goes, "Huh! Well, I
see I won't be having any problem with this movie." I said,
"Hire him, immediately. This is exactly what I want." Figgis,
'Sylvester Stallone', p. 113.

371 To become a local hero, Rocky had first, however, to
appear on national television. See also Claude Brown,
Manchildin the Promised Land (New York, 1965), p. 368.

372 Some of Apollo Creed's dialogue is Ali's. Jan Phillip
Reemtsma,M(?/Y Than A Champion: The Style of Muhammad
Ali, trans. John E. Woods (New York, 1999), p. 83.

373 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in
Post-Civil Rights America (Cambridge, ma, 2006), p. 101.
Both Rocky's habit of training in a meat freezer and running
up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum were copied
from Joe Frazier, who had worked in a slaughterhouse.
Kram, Ghosts of Manila, p. 58.

374 Early, 'The Romance of Toughness', p. 86.

375 Nack, 'The Rock', p. 227. Woroner staged his initial elimina-
tion contests (which included a Jim Jeffries victory over Ali)
as radio plays, before approaching Ali and Marciano to
make a film. The Superfight (1970) had a single showing in
1,500 closed-circuit theatres across the United States and
Europe. Since it 'made people in Europe mad' to see Ali lose
to Marciano, the bbc produced a different version in which
Ali stopped Marciano 'on cuts'. Hauser, Muhammad Ali,
pp. 196-7. The film was released on dvd in 2005. In 1971
Norman Mailer presented his own imaginary 'superfight',
between Marciano and Frazier. 'Nothing could be more
strangely sentimental and filled with longing,' says Early,

444

'The Romance of Toughness', p. 86. See also Romano, The
Boxing Film ography, pp. 195-7.

376 In Rocky 11, Creed loses his title, and by /// and iv the two
men are friends, 'a fantasy', as Tim O'Brien notes, 'that
implies that interracial harmony only blossoms as soon as
the white man wins'. The Screening of America (New York,
1990), p. 87.

377 Jacobson, Roots Too, p. 98.

378 The 'White Negro', Mailer wrote in 1957, is a kind of 'fron-
tiersman'. Advertisements, p. 272. Sam B. Girgus compares
Michael Mann's 1992 adaptation The Last of the Mohicans
and 2001 bio-pic AH as stories about 'individual and cultural
rebirth'. America on Film, p. 111.

379 Superman vs. Muhammad AH, DC Comics, no. c-56 (1978),
pp. 2-4. The story was by Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams,
with the cover and pencil work by Adams and inks by Dick
Giordano and Terry Austin.

380 Ibid., pp. 19, 28, 33-34. On how the sequels enact Rocky 's
transformation into Ali, see Reemtsma, More Than a
Champion, pp. 86-114. On Creed's transformation into an
'old-style, self-sacrificing torn', see Donald Bogle, Toms,
Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks, p. 275. On Rocky
Balboa (2007), see Kasia Boddy, 'Rocky 's American Dreams',
opendemocracy.com, 19 January 2007.

381 After meeting Ali in 1978, Ishmael Reed noted that he had
shaken hands 'with the black man they let beat up Super-
man'. 'The Fourth Ali', p. 42.

382 Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, pp. 50, 55, 64, 72-3.

383 Goebbels reputedly thought he was. See Werner Sollors,
Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture
(Oxford, 1986), pp. 100-101; Scott Rabb, 'Is Superman
Jewish?' in Superman at Fifty, ed. Denis Dooley and Gary
Engle (New York, 1987); Simcha Weinstein, Up, Up and
Oy Veyl (New York, 2006), ch. 1.

384 See, for example, Thomas Andrae, 'From Menace to
Messiah: The History and Historicity of Superman',

in American Media and Mass Culture, ed. Donald Lazere
(Berkeley, ca, 1987), pp. 124-38.

385 Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, p. 42

386 Ibid., p. 33.

387 Natty 's use of sophisticated technology relies on his ability
to calculate distances and 'a reasoning aim'. James Fenimore
Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans (Oxford, 1990), pp. 52,
208, 234.

388 Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, p. 65. Inspired by Ali's habit
of describing himself as a black Superman (and occasionally
posing in a cape), Johnny Wakelin, a white singer from
Sussex, wrote 'Black Superman'. The song became a hit in
1975 and appeared along with his other Ali-inspired hit,
'In Zaire', on Reggae, Soul and Rock 'n' Roll. Two faster reggae
versions, one by Derrick Morgan and the other by The
Aggrovators, can be found on Sucker Punch: Jamaican
Boxing Tributes (Trojan Records, 2004). 1977 saw the release
of Abar, the First Black Superman (dir. Frank Packard),
followed, in 1978, by Superman - The Movie, the 'ultimate
immigrant saga'. Beyond Ethnicity, p. 12.

Conclusion

1 Ralph Wiley describes 1978 to 1982 as 'a Golden Age'. Serenity
(Lincoln, ne, 2000), p. 51. See also Hugh Mcllvanney,
Mcllvanney on Boxing (London, 1990). On the symbolism of
fights between black and Hispanic boxers, see Gerald Early,
'Hot Spinks Versus Cool Spades: Three Notes Toward a
Cultural Definition of Prizefighting', in Tuxedo Junction
(Hopewell, nj, 1989), pp. 115-29; James Ellroy, Destination:
Morgue! (London, 2005), pp. 3-28. See also L. Howard
Quackenbush, 'Pugilism as Mirror and Metafiction in Life
and in Contemporary Spanish American Drama', Latin
American Theatre Review (Fall 1992), pp. 23-41; Gregory
Rodriguez, 'Boxing and Masculinity: The History and
(Her)story of Oscar de la Hoya', in Latino/a Popular Culture,
ed. Michelle Habell-Pallan and Mary Romero (New York,
2002), pp. 252-68. For the story of a Mexican girl in la who
decides to 'snag' the local 'Big Brown Hope', with tragic
consequences, see Yxta Maya Murray, What It Takes to Get
to Vegas (New York, 1999), pp. 41, 141. Diego Luna's docu-
mentary Chavez was released in 2007.

2 Thomas Hauser, Chaos, Corruption, Courage and Glory: A
Year in Boxing (Toronto, 2005), pp. 89-95. On recent fbi in-
vestigations into criminal practices in boxing, see pp. 221-8.

3 Robert Lipsyte, 'Tyson's Story Could Have More Chapters',
in Iron Mike: A Mike Tyson Reader, ed. Daniel O'Connor
(New York, 2002), p. 238. In some versions of the story,
D'Amato seems like Frankenstein at work in the 'laboratory'
of the Gramercy Gym. William Plummer, 'Cus D'Amato',
in Iron Mike^ p. 5. 'More than me or Patterson,' said Torres,
'Tyson is a clone of Cus's dream. Cus changed both of us,
but he made Mike from scratch.' Tom Callahan, 'Boxing's
Allure', Time (27 June 1988), p. 68. D'Amato's fighters were
recognizable by their 'peek-a-boo defense and power hooks'.
Katherine Dunn, 'School of Hard Knocks', in Shadow Boxers,
ed. John Gattuso (Milford, nj, 2005), p. 35.

4 Joyce Carol Oates, (Woman) Writer: Occasions and
Opportunities (New York, 1988), p. 238.

5 The television era is marked by a proliferation of weight
divisions, governing organizations, and hence championship
fights. On the complex, and shifting, politics of these organ-
izations and their associations with promoters such as
Don King, Bob Arum and Frank Warren, see Harry Mullan,
Boxing: Inside the Game (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 33-42; Jim
Brady, Boxing Confidential (Lytham, 2002); Thomas Hauser,
The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing
(New York, 1991). The respected website Cyber Boxing Zone
ignores 'Alphabet titles' and lists only lineal champions,
'The Man Who Beat the Man'.

6 Mullan, Boxing: Inside the Game, p. 147. The Spinks fight was
the highest-grossing one-day event in sports history to date
- ringside seats cost $1,500, while cable and closed-circuit
tv rights amounted to $58 million.

7 Tyson's trial was compared to that of O.J. Simpson and O.J. 's
lawyer Johnnie Cochran was described as 'modern-day Joe
Louis'. Michael Eric Dyson, Between God and Gangsta Rap
(Oxford, 1996), p. 27. Others described Tyson's trial as itself

44 r )

a kind of rape, or adopting Clarence Thomas's term, a 'high-
tech lynching'. All three men were said to be victims of the
myth of rapacious black sexuality'. Earl Ofari Hutchinson,
The Assassination of the Black Male Image (New York, 1996),
pp. 67, 70; Jack Lule, 'The rape of Mike Tyson: Race, the
press and symbolic types', Critical Studies in Mass Communi-
cation, 12 (June 1995), pp. 176-95; Robert Wright, 'Tyson vs
Simpson', in Iron Mike, pp. 187-90. Tyson's trial and
incarceration form the basis of Walter Hill's 2002 film
Undisputed.

8 Robert Lipsyte, 'From Spark to Flame to a Roaring Blaze',
New York Times, 12 February 1992, section 2, p. 13.

9 Montieth Illingworth, Mike Tyson (London, 1992), p. 428;
Mcllvanney, Mcllvanney on Boxing, p. 222. King gave Tyson
Jawanza Kunjufu's 1990 Countering the Conspiracy to
Destroy Black Boys, 'a very short and easy-to-read piece of
racial paranoia'. Gerald Early, 'Mike's Brilliant Career',
Transition, 71(1996), p. 48.

10 June Jordan, Technical Difficulties: African-American Notes on
the State of the Union (New York, 1992), pp. 221-6. On Tyson
as 'a kind of three-penny Raskolnikov and Bigger Thomas',
see David Remnick, 'Tyson's Corner', The New Yorker, 27
June 2005, p. 34. See also Ishmael Reed, 'Bigger and OJ', in
Birth of a Nation 'hood: Gaze, Script, and Spectacle in the O.J.
Simpson Case, ed. Toni Morrison and Claudia Brodsky
Lacour (New York, 1997).

11 Ralph Wiley, 'Open Mike for the Ratings', ESPN.com: Page 2,
29 May 2003.

12 Ellis Cashmore, Tyson: Nurture of the Beast (London, 2005),
p. 45. John Duncan's In the Red Corner: A Journey into Cuban
Boxing (London, 2000) is an account ofthejournalist's 1996
attempt to lure Cuban Olympic champion Felix Savon to
fight Tyson. Before the Revolution, Cuba produced several
great professional boxers, notably Kid Chocolate and Kid
Gavilan. Nicolas Guillen's 1929 poems 'Sports' and 'Small
Ode to a Black Cuban Boxer' warn Kid Chocolate of the
racism of the 'hard and cruel' North. Nicolas Guillen,
Man-Making Words: Selected Poems, trans, and ed. Robert
Marquez and David Arthur McMurray (Havana, 1975),
pp. 47-55. On Kid Gavilan, see Philip Levine, 'Shadow
Boxing' in Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing from Homer
to AH, ed. Robert Hedin and Michael Waters (Carbondale,
il, 2003), p. 127. Since professional sports were outlawed in
1962, Cuba has dominated international amateur boxing.
Invited to turn professional, three-time Olympic heavy-
weight champion, Teofilo Stevenson famously responded,
'What is one million dollars compared to the love of eight
million Cubans?' Savon said much the same thing. Paula J.
Pettavino and Geralyn Pye, Sport in Cuba (Pittsburgh, 1994),
p. 161.

13 Howard J. Blumenthal and Oliver R. Goodenough, This
Business of Television (New York, 1998), pp. 89-90. 'Up to
1999, Tyson had appeared in six of the eight most-viewed
ppv fights ever. His fights accounted for one-third of all
ppv boxing revenues'. Cashmore, Tyson, p. 51.

14 As a corrective to this, see Joyce Carol Oates, 'Fury and Fine
Lines', New York Times, 3 July 1997; Katherine Dunn,

'Defending Tyson', in Iron Mike, pp. 247-55; Tony Sewell,
quoted in Cashmore, Tyson, pp. 79-80.

15 Cashmore, Tyson, p. 81

16 Mcllvanney, Mcllvanney on Boxing, pp. 238-41; Oates,
quoted by George Plimpton, Iron Mike, p. xiv; David
Remnick, 'Kid Dynamite Blows Up', The New Yorker, 14 July
1997, p- 58. Oates groups Tyson with Jeffrey Dahmer and
Timothy James McVeigh under the heading 'Three
American Gothics' in Where I've Been, And Where I'm Going:
Essays, Reviews, and Prose (New York, 1999), pp. 232-42.

17 Rudy Gonzalez, 'No Happy Ending', in Iron Mike, p. 301;
Wiley, Serenity, p. 185. Tyson's threat to eat Lennox Lewis's
children may also be a film quotation. Cashmore, Tyson,
p. 53-

18 Oates, (Woman) Writer, p. 239.

19 During the seventies, membership of the kkk tripled.
Manning Marable, Race, Reform and Rebellion (London,
1991), pp. 174, 178.

20 Callahan, 'Boxing's Allure', p. 71.

21 King is also caricatured, as George Washington Duke in
Rocky v (1990) and as Lucius Sweet in 'The Homer They Fall',
The Simpsons, (1996). In 1997, he was the subject of a docu-
drama, Don King: Only in America and appeared as himself
in The Devil's Advocate (1997), which, like Snake Eyes (1998)
and Celebrity (1998), uses Atlantic City boxing as a setting.

22 See, for example, Douglas G. Glasgow, The Black Underclass
(San Francisco, 1980); Ken Auletta, The Underclass (New
York, 1982). On the validity of the concept, see Garry L Roli-
son, 'An Exploration of the term underclass as it relates to
African-Americans Journal of Black Studies, 21, 3 (March
1991), pp. 287-301; LoTc Wacquant, 'L' "underclass" urbaine
dans l'imaginaire social et scientifique americain', in
L'Exclusion. L'etat des servoirs (Paris, 1996), pp. 248-62.

23 Cornel West, 'Nihilism in Black America', in Black Popular
Culture, ed. Gina Dent (Seattle, 1992), pp. 37-47. Since the
eighties, black nationalism has been 'primarily a cultural
affair'. Michael Eric Dyson, Reflecting Black: African-American
Cultural Criticism (Minneapolis, 1993), p. 131. See also Trey
Ellis's influential essay, 'The New Black Aesthetic', Callaloo,
38 (1989), pp. 233-43; and Eric Lott's 'Response', pp. 244-6.

24 David Steele, 'Embarrassment to Just About Everyone', in
Iron Mike, p. 295; Kristen Hunter Lattany, 'Off-Timing:
Stepping to the Different Drummer', in Lure and Loathing,
Essays on Race, Identity, and the Ambivalence of Assimilation,
ed. Gerald Early (New York, 1993), p. 170.

25 Most noted (since televised) was the death of Duk Koo Kim
following a lightweight fight with Ray Mancini in November
1982. George Lundberg, 'Boxing Should be Banned in
Civilized Countries',/.4M4, 249(1983), p. 250. Since then, a
broad international medical consensus calling for the aboli-
tion of boxing has emerged. For the British position, see the
bma's The Boxing Debate (1993). After two bills to outlaw
professional boxing were defeated in 1995, doctors were
encouraged to withdraw their participation from the sport.
Hugh Brayle, Lincoln Sargeant, and Carol Brayne, 'Could
boxing be banned? A legal and epidemiological perspective',
bmj, 316 (1998), pp. 1813-15. For a comprehensive account of

446

the medical issues, see Friedrich Unterharnscheidt and
Judith Taylor-Unterharnscheidt, Boxing: Medical Aspects
(San Diego, 2003). New evidence of neurological damage
emerges all the time. See, for example, H. Zetterberg et al.
'Neurochemical Aftermath of Amateur Boxing', Archives of
Neurology, 63, no. 9 (September 2006), pp. 1277-80.

26 Women's amateur fights were first sanctioned in 1994 and
the us Women's National Championships were held in 1997;
the first Women's World Championships took place in
2001. In 2005, the ioc decided not to include women's box-
ing in the 2008 Olympics but have not ruled it out for 2012.
See Edward R. Beauchamp, 'Boxing', in International Ency-
clopedia of Women and Sports, ed. Karen Christensen, Allen
Guttmann and Gertrud Pfister (New York, 2001), vol. 1,
pp. 167-76; Jennifer Hargreaves, 'Bruising Peg to Boxero-
bics: Gendered Boxing -Images and Meaning', in Boxer: An
Anthology of Writings on Boxing and Visual Culture, ed. David
Chandler, John Gill, Tania Guha and Gilane Tawadros
(London, 1996), pp. 120-31; Jennifer Hargreaves, 'Women's
Boxing and Related Activities', Body and Society, 3 (1997),

PP- 33-49-

27 Richard Hoffer, 'Gritty Woman', Sports Illustrated, 15 April
1996, pp. 56-62.

28 Emma Lindsey, 'She Stings Like a Butterfly', The Independent
on Sunday Review, 2 July 2000, pp. 4-8.

29 David Usborne, 'Daughters Degrade the Ali-Frazier
Legend', Independent on Sunday, 16 June 2001, p. 16; Ian
Wooldridge, 'In the name of the father, these girls will
drag boxing down even lower than Tyson', Daily Mail,
23 February 2000, p. 88.

30 Kate Sekules, The Boxer's Heart: How I fell in love with the ring
(London, 2000), p. 76.

31 Harry Mullan, 'You can box, girl, but I can't watch', Indepen-
dent on Sunday, 15 February, 1998, p. 6. Bert Sugar described
the first officially sanctioned boxing match between a man
and a woman in 1999 as 'an old carnival act updated'. Sam
Howe Verhovek, 'Man-woman bout hammering bell of
boxing world', Arizona Republic, 3 October 1999, Section a,
p. 10.

32 Meg Ryan stars as 'sassy, brassy boxing manager Jackie
Kallen'in'true story' Against the Ropes (2004). Among the
many documentaries about women in boxing, see also
On the Ropes (1999), Red Rain (1999), Shadow Boxers (2000)
and The Lady and the Champ (2002).

33 Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion (1997).

34 The male narrator of 'Tough People' cries when he sees
his girlfriend get beaten. Then she leaves him for another
man. Chris Otfutt, Out of the Woods (New York, 2000),
pp. 157-76.

35 Kate Sekules, 'Glove Story', Guardian, 20 March 2001, G2,
p. 8. 'Do women subvert the ritual bullfight or do they create
a different ritual?' asked Sarah Pink of women matadors.
Sarah Pink, 'From Ritual Sacrifice to Media Commodity:
Anthropological and Media Constructions of the Spanish
Bullfight and the Rise of Women Performers', in Ritual,
Performance, Media, ed. Felicia Hughes-Freeland (London,

, p. 125. On the 'variability of females' and males, see

Katherine Dunn, 'Just as Fierce', Mother Jones (November/
December 1994), p. 39.

36 Sekules, The Boxer's Heart, p. 70; Leah Hager Cohen, Without
Apology: Girls, Women and the Desire to Fight (New York,
2005), p. 225. Picket took up boxing to express anger at her
cheating ex-husband. Lynn Snowden Picket, Lookingfor a
Fight (New York, 2000), p. 7. The therapeutic benefit of
boxing is also the theme of Laila Ali, with David Ritz, Reach!
Finding Strength, Spirit, and Personal Power (New York, 2003).

37 See, for example, Peter Pasquale, The Boxer's Workout: Fitness
for the Civilized Man (New York, 1988). The traditions of re-
forming Muscular Christianity are also maintained. In 2006
the Haringey Police Community Club in Tottenham, North
London targeted 'kids in trouble' and in 2007 reformatory
boxing became the subject of a reality TV show, Amir Khan's
Angry YoungMen. Daniel Herbert, 'Secrets of Haringey 's
success', Boxing News, 15 September 2006, pp. 38-9.

38 See Kasia Boddy, 'Franchising Fight Club', Berliner Dehatte
Initial, 12, 1 (2001), pp. 110-20.

39 On the bareknuckle revival of the nineties, see Bob Mee,
Bare Fists (Woodstock, ny, 2001), ch. 15. Several bareknuckle
fighters published authobiographies: Roy Shaw, Pretty Boy
(London, 1999), Lenny McLean, The Guv'nor (London,
1998), and Jimmy Stockin, with Martin King and Martin
Knight, On the Cobbles: The Life of a Bare Knuckle Gypsy
Warrior (Edinburgh, 2001). McLean appeared in the film
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998).

40 Niraj Warikoo, 'Teen fight club stirs controversy', Detroit
Free Press, 24 November 1999. See also 'Police Catch Local
Teens Imitating "Fight Club'", Chicago Sun-Times, liNovem-
ber 1999; Andrew Gumbel, 'Blood runs at Mormon campus
Fight Club', Independent on Sunday, 21 May 2000, p. 25.

41 George Pendle, 'Punching in pinstripes', Times, 30 August
2000, Supplement, p. 5.

42 Alex Wade, Wrecking Machine: A Tale of Real Fights and
White Collars (London, 2005), p. 13. Wade likes boxing
because the place it occupies 'outside' society is 'akin' to
the 'psychological space' he occupies due to unresolved
'issues from my childhood'. Wrecking Machine, p. 321.

43 Alessandro Baricco, City, trans. Ann Goldstein (Harmonds-
worth, 2001), p. 152. The story of a boxer who agrees to
throw a fight and then doesn't is just one of the pulp fictions
that make up Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). We
don't see the fight itself (Ta ran ti no suggests that we can take
it as read), but join the boxer after he defies the set-up.

44 Baricco, City, p. 148. Boxing is often described as a reliable
resource for writers who are 'desperate for material'. See, for
example, Jonathan Ames. 'The Vanilla Thrilla', in My Less
Than Secret Life (New York, 2002), p. 96.

45 For toddlers, see Allan Ahlberg and Janet Ahlberg, Mr Biff
the Boxer (1980); for teenagers, Robert Lipsyte's The
Contender (1967), and its sequels, The Brave (1991) and The
Chief {1993). Pamela Longfellow's romance, Chasing Women
(1993) has a boxing setting; Bruce Jay Friedman's 'The Night
Boxing Ended' (1966) was included in Arena: Sports sf, ed.
Edward L. Ferman and Barry N. Malzberg (New York, 1976),
pp. 181-6. See also Murder on the Ropes: Original Boxing

447

Mysteries, ed. Otto Penzler (New York, 2001).

46 The poster encouraged critics to adopt its metaphor.
'Warhol tko in 16 rounds', concluded the New York Times,
quoted in Leonhard Emmerling, Jean-Michel 'Basquiat
(Cologne, 2003), p. 71. The image drew on history of collab-
oration between the two artists and on Basquiat's self-
portrait with Warhol, Dos Cabezas (1982). In 1985-6 they
produced a series of paintings on punch bags, each includ-
ing a head of Christ (by Warhol) and the word 'Judge' (by
Basquiat). On the response of other black artists to this
image, and to Warhol more generally, see Russell Ferguson,
'Tomato Cans', Visual Arts and Culture, 1(1998), pp. 2-13. See
also Jose Esteban Munoz, 'Famous and Dandy like B. 'n'
Andy: Race, Pop, and Basquiat', in Pop Out: Queer Warhol,
ed. Jennifer Doyle, Jonathan Flately and Jose Esteban
Munoz (Durham, nc, 1996), pp. 144-79. In summer 2007
Pollock Fine Art staged an exhibition 'Warhol vs. Bansky'.

47 Charles Bukowski, 'Class', in South of No North (Los Angeles,
1973), pp- 65-9. See also Bukowski, 'The Loser', in The
Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966
(Los Angeles, 1988).

48 Max Apple, 'Inside Norman Mailer', in The Oranging of
America (London, 1976), pp. 49-60.

49 Quoted in Larry McCaffery and Sinda Gregory, Alive and
Writing: Interviews with American Authors of the 1980s
(Urbana, il, 1987), p. 30.

50 A. J. Liebling traced his 'rapport' with boxing's past 'through
the laying-on ofhands'. The Sweet Science (Harmondsworth,
1982), p. 1. Mailer is 'the man to beat for the men who punch
out words', said Thomas Healey, A Hurting Business (London,
1996), p. 33. Another anxiety of influence is dramatized

by Jonathan Ames in 'My Jewish Cousin, George Ames
Plimpton', My Less Than Secret Life, pp. 104-11.

51 See Greg Johnson, Lnvisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce
Carol Oates (New York, 1999).

52 Gerald Early, 'The Grace of Slaughter', Lowa Review, 18, 3
(Fall 1988), p. 181; Oates, (Woman) Writer, p. 303.

53 Reviewers often present Oates as a 'massive literary heavy-
weight' who is not allowed to compete. Helen Falconer,
'Wild Oates', Guardian, 27 October 2001, p. 10.

54 'A woman can rarely know the things that go on inside a
man.' Norman Mailer, The Deer Park (New York, 1957), p. 88.
'She was a girl, after all, and could have no sense of who he
was.' Leonard Gardner, Fat City (London, 1989), p. 89. Since
Jack London's The Game, the woman investigator of boxing
has become a recurrent fictional figure. In Harry Crews's The
Knockout Artist (1988) a young hopeful is unhappy to discov-
er that his girlfriend's pIid is based on him. The woman
researcher in Punch Drunk, a 1992 bbc sit-com, is less sinister.
She soon abandons her anti-boxing doctor boyfriend for the
young contender.

55 Joyce Carol Oates, 'Selections from a Journal: January
1985-January 1988', in Our Private Lives: Journals, Notebooks,
and Diaries, ed. Daniel Halpern (Hopewell, nj, 1988), p. 335.
See also Oates, On Boxing (London, 1988), p. 54. For a sym-
pathetic reading of Mailer's fiction, see Oates, New Heaven,
New Earth: The Visionary Experience in Literature (New York,

1974), pp. 177-203.

56 Oates usually presents gender in binary terms. In an essay
on the Tyson rape case she argued that it was 'symbolically
appropriate' that boxing and women's rights be contrasted
since 'of all sports, boxing is the most aggressively mascu-
line'. Rape, meanwhile, is the 'violent repudiation of the
female', comparable to 'knocking out an opponent and
standing over his fallen body'. Women boxers, therefore,
can only be 'parody . . . cartoon . . . monstrous'. Oates, 'Rape
and the Boxing Ring', Newsweek, 24 February 1992, p. 61; On
Boxing, p. 73. This remark is often quoted in annoyance by
women boxers. See Cohen, Without Apology, p. 17; Sekules,
The Boxer's Heart, pp. 54-5.

57 Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz (Oxford, 1998), pp. 98, 278.

58 Seminole 'had a left hand like everybody else has a right
hand'. Count Basie, as told to Albert Murray, Good Morning
Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie (New York, 1985), p. 9.
On musical battles at Minton's Playhouse in Harlem, see
Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act (New York, 1964), pp. 204,
210. On 'bucolic cutting contests' between pastoral singers
in Virgil's Eclogues, see John Henderson, Writing Down Rome
(Oxford, 1994), p. 164.

59 Quoted in Jurgen E. Grandt, Kinds of Blue: The Jazz Aesthetic
in African American Narrative (Columbus, oh, 2004), p. 91.
Jack Kerouac mentions this 'wild bop record' in On the Road
(Harmondsworth, 1999), p. 104, and Visions of Cody
(Harmondsworth, 1993), p. 346.

60 Quoted in Burton W. Peritti, The Creation of Jazz (Urbana, il,
1994), p. 114.

61 Duke Ellington, Music is My Mistress (Garden City, ny, 1973),
pp. 464, 466.

62 Ralph Ellison, InvisibleMan (New York, 1995), p. 8.

63 Ellison, Shadow and Act, p. 234. See also Mezzrow and
Wolfe, quoted in Henry Louis Gates, The Signifying Monkey
(Oxford, 1988), p. 70. Gates uses the Ellison quotation as an
epigraph to his book.

64 Babs Gonzalez, 'Sugar Ray' (May 1952), on Cool Whalin:
Bepop Vocals (Spotlight, 1979). See David Toop, Rap Attack^:
African Jive to Global Hip Hop (London, 2000), pp. 37-8.

65 Antipop vs. Matthew Shipp (Thirsty Ear, 2003). Matthew
Shipp's poem 'Boxing and Jazz' provided the starting point
for Patrick A. Gaucher's Combinations, a film which cuts
between footage of boxers at Gleason's gym in New York
and a performance of Shipp's trio. Matthew Shipp, 'Boxing
and Jazz', http://www.matthewshipp.com/press/
27boxingandjazz/boxing_and_jazz.html; Chris Chang,
'Sound and Vision: Black and Blue', Film Comment, 41, no. 1
(January-February 2005), p. 16.

66 'Famous rivalries have included Prince Buster vs. Derrick
Morgan, Jazzbo vs. I Roy, and Beenie Man vs. Bounti Killer,
to choose three periods.' Andrew Ross, Real Love (London,
1998), pp. 41, 218 n. 4. See Derrick Morgan, 'The Great
Musical Battle', Sucker Punch: Jamaican Boxing Tributes
(Trojan, 2004).

67 Beenie Man, Back to Basics (2004); Undisputed (2006).

68 Imani Perry, Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in
Hip Hop (Durham, nc, 2004), p. 14; Michael Eric Dyson,

448

Reflecting Black, p. 9. See also Mimi Clark Melnick, '"I Can
Peep Through Muddy Water and Spy Dry Land": Boasts in
the Blues', in Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel, ed. Alan
Dundes (Jackson, mi, 1981), pp. 267-76.

69 Big Daddy Kane, 'Raw', Long Live the Kane (Warners, 1988).
On the competitiveness of hip-hop culture, see Tricia Rose,
Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary
America (Hanover, nh, 1994), pp. 35-6.

70 Big Daddy Kane, 'Raw'; Coolio, 'Knockout Kings', El Cool
Magnifico (Hot, 2002); Onyx, 'Slam', Bacdafucup (Univer-
sal/Def Jam, 1993); The Fugees, featuring Q-Tip and Busta
Rhymes, 'Rumble in the Jungle', When We Were Kings
(Polygram, 1996).

71 George Nelson, Hip Hop America (Harmondsworth, 1999),
p. vii. Perry thinks the analogy inappropriate since, unlike
hip hop, the boxing battles 'only engage the body, not the
intellect or vocabulary'. Prophets of the Hood, p. 125. See also
'Hip Hop Rivalries', Wikipedia Encyclopedia.

72 Haruki Murakami, 'The Silence', trans. Alfred Birnbaum,
in The Elephant Vanishes (London, 2003), p. 296.

73 Senam Okudzeto, Interview with Trevor Schoonmaker,
Freestyle, exh. cat., Studio Museum in Harlem (New York,
2001), pp. 66-7.

74 John Updike, Rabbit Redux (1971) in The Rabbit Omnibus
(London, 1990), p. 398. In Rabbit, Run (i960), Rabbit
compliments Ruth, soon to be his lover, by telling her she's
'just a welterweight'. The Rabbit Omnibus, p. 41. Compare
the description of Riggie Hinesin Saul Bellow, The Dean's
December (Harmondsworth, 1998), p. 44.

75 Her non-fiction is similarly concerned with 'shadow selves'.
For a description of 'two young welterweight boxers so
evenly matched they might be twins', see On Boxing, pp. 1,
12. For an image of identical twins battling it out in the
womb, see Oates, (Woman) Writer, p. 265.

76 'The contours of [her] soul so resemble my own', she
remarked of Enid. Oates, (Woman) Writer, pp. 379-80. You
Must Remember Thiswas the second in a series of novels set
in Eden County, a fictional version of Erie County, New York
(where Oates grew up) and a kind of Northern version of
Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha. Greg Johnson, Joyce Carol Oates:
A Study of the Short Fiction (Boston, 1994), p. 16.

77 Joyce Carol Oates, You Must Remember This (New York,
1988), pp. 36, 132.

78 Ibid., p. 233, 168, 181.

79 Ibid., p. 118. In 'The Boyfriend', a woman allows herself to be
picked up in a bar by a man who then takes her to a boxing
match. When she refuses to sleep with him, he kicks her in
the stomach. She wonders if the kick has somehow enacted
her former boyfriend's threat of revenge and remembers the
defeated boxer lying on the floor with 'blood leaking from
his nose and mouth'. Joyce Carol Oates, Heat and Other
Stories (New York, 1992), pp. 69-81. In another novel littered
with boxing similes, a slap on the face by a woman gives
Corky Corcoran 'permission' to hit her. He's a 'skinny light-
weight with a good jab', but soon 'all his fury is in his cock'
and they have sex. Joyce Carol Oates, What I Lived For (New
York, 1995), pp. 90-91.

80 Oates, You Must Remember This, p. 386. The equation of the
self with the body is as disturbing for women as it is for
boxers, for it means being 'identified with a certain weight'.
Oates, On Boxing, p. 5. 'In Memoriam' links a photograph of
the South Korean boxer, Duk Koo Kim, taken on the night
he was 'doomed' to die in the ring with the narrator's
memory of the image of her fourteen -year-old self 'dreaming
in Woolworth's/ window': 'she didn't know was it /her
body she wanted to starve into submission, / or her soul.
Which angered her most.' Joyce Carol Oates, The Time
Traveller (New York, 1989), p. 13. On Oates's anorexia, see
Johnson, Invisible Writer, pp. 172, 175. On her philosophy
of 'tragic pain', see David B. Morris, The Culture of Pain
(Berkeley, ca, 1991), pp. 256-63.

81 A similar contest is staged in 'Golden Gloves', in which
childbirth and boxing are directly compared. While the
fighter gives up, unable to confront his fear of pain and
death, his pregnant wife 'means to be equal to it'. Joyce
Carol Oates, Raven's Wing (London, 1987), pp. 50-69. See
also Oates, On Boxing, pp. 72-3. Mailer also claimed that
'the fighter goes through experiences in the ring which are
. . . incommunicable except to fighters who have been as
good, or to women who have gone though every minute of
an anguish-filled birth'. Existential Errands (New York, 1972),
p. 17. The protagonist of another novel is told by her doctor
to have a baby because her body suffers monthly menstrua-
tion like 'a battered boxer, staggering back from its corner
into the ring'. Lorrie Moore, Anagrams (London, 1987), p. 21.

82 The narrator of Bruiser is jealous when his lover comes home
from the gym because he recognizes that 'the beatings are
sex, sex of a kind'. Richard House, Bruiser (London, 1987),
p. 30. On parallel adventures in the 'sweet science of bruis-
ing' and the 'sick science of cruising', see Ames, My Less
Than Secret Life, p. 113. See also David Wojnarowicz,
Memories That Smell Like Gasoline (San Francisco, 1992),

p. 41; and Tennessee Williams's story of a one-armed, ex-
champ hustler who looks like a 'broken statue of Apollo',
'One Arm', in Collected Stories (New York, 1985), pp. 175-88.
The 2003 film Cock and Bull Story advertised with the tag,
'Wannabe boxing champ has a secret - he gets a hard-on
in the clinch'.

83 Rita Mae Brown, Southern Discomfort (London, 1983), p. 18.
Haring compared his sculptures to children's toys. David
Galloway, 'A Quest for Immortality', in Keith Haring, ed.
Germano Celant (Munich, 1992), pp. 23, 26.

84 Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, nc, 1998),
p. 276.

85 Tony Kushner, Angels in A merica, Part 2: Perestroika (New
York, 1994), p. 37. See also Max Apple, Zip: A Novel of the
Left and Right (1978).

86 Quoted in Edmund White, Genet(London, 1993), pp. 225-6.
In 1996 the Gay Times Erotic Video Award went to a film of
boxers in the locker rooms of Bethnal Green's York Hall,
Angels with Dirty Faces. David Bret, Morrissey (London,
2004), p. 215.

87 Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library (London,
1998), pp. 3, 242.

449

88 One of the novel's many inter-texts is E. M. Forster's
Maurice. After being thrown over by his lover, Maurice
becomes a stockbroker and spends Wednesday evenings
teaching 'arithmetic and boxing' to the 'youths of the
College Settlement in South London'. Maurice
(Harmondsworth, 1972), pp. 126-7.

89 Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library, pp. 78, 135-9, !7 2 -

90 Ibid., pp. 31, 38, 284. See also pp. 144-5.

91 Douglas Oliver, Three Variations on the Theme of Harm:
Selected Poetry and Prose (London, 1990), pp. 70-74. See also
pp. 60-64.

92 Julio Cortazar, 'Some Aspects of the Short Story', trans.
Naomi Lindstrom, Review of Contemporary Fiction, 3 (1983),
p. 28.

93 See R. B. Kitaj: A Retrospective, ed. Richard Morphet, exh.
cat., Tate Gallery, London (London, 1994), pp. 168-9. See
also Alan Woods, 'Paintings with Banging Doors: Art and
Allusion in Kitaj and Hockney', The Cambridge Quarterly, 24,
no. 4 (1995), pp. 315-39-

94 John Ruskin, Works, ed. E. T. Cooke and Alexander
Wedderburn (London, 1903-12), vol. xxix, p. 158.

95 Quoted in Andrew Merrifield, Guy Debord (London, 2005),
p. 21. See also Guy Debord and Gil J. Wolman, 'Methods
of Detournement', in Situationist International Anthology,
ed. Ken Knabb (Berkeley, ca, 1981), p. 9.

96 Allyson Field, 'Hurlements en faveur de Sade: The Negation
and Surpassing of "Discrepant Cinema"', Substance, 28, no.
3 (1999). P- 96.

97 Wolfgang Becker, 'Le sport est-ilun art?', in Art et Sport, exh.
cat., Musee des Beaux-Arts de Mons (Mons, 1984), pp. 42-3.
The poster advertising the event is reproduced in Art et
Sport, p. 40. In 1997, 'during a three-day-and-night-long
blockade' of Belgrade's main square, the Serbian perform-
ance artist Tanja Ostojic tried to repeat this performance.
When no policeman accepted her offer of gloves, she under-
took a 'promotional match in front of cordon with a friend':
http://www.kultur.at/howl/tanja/setoi/textoi.htm.

98 Beuys's performance was filmed by Gerry Schum. A still of
Box Felt is reproduced in Art et Sport, p. 107.

99 Claes Oldenburg boxed with dealer Pontus Hulten as part
of his Venetian performance // Corse del Coletello in 1985. In
1999 novelist Jonathan Ames (The Herring Wonder) and
performance artist David Leslie (The Impact Addict) staged
a 'Box Opera' at the Angel Orensanz Foundation in New
York. Ames, 'The Vanilla Thrilla', p. 100. The Dutch artist
Iepe Rubingh invented 'chess boxing' in 2003 (six rounds of
chess alternating with five rounds of boxing). See Stephen
Moss, 'Wanna piece of this?', The Guardian, 9 November
2005, pp. 8-11.

100 Philip Roth, Patrimony (London, 1999), p. 203. On trips to
Laurel Garden, see also Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
(London, 2004), pp. 293-4. The narrator's cousin manages
the lightweight contender Allie Stolz. Stolz, like many of
the characters in the novel, was a real person and his biog-
raphy can be found on p. 384. Roth's bibliography includes
Allen Broder's When Boxing was a Jewish Sport (Westport, ct,
1997), which contains more information on Stolz.

101 Philip Roth, The Facts (New York, 1997), p. 28.

102 Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint (London, 1969), pp. 166,
178-9, 234-5. Portnoy and his girlfriend Mary Jane also
have a couple of 'rounds' with a prostitute in Rome. Portnoy's
Complaint, p. 139.

103 Philip Roth, The Counterlife (Harmondsworth, 1988), p. 320.

104 Philip Roth, Operation Shylock (New York, 1993), p. 334.

105 Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer (Harmondsworth, 1980),
pp. 84-5.

106 Charles McGrath, 'Zuckerman's Alter Brain: An Interview
with Philip Roth', New York Times Book Review, 7 May 2000,

P-8-

107 Philip Roth, American Pastoral (London, 1998), pp. 4, 10;
/ Married a Communist {London, 1999), p. 18.

108 Roth, I Married a Communist, p. 54.

109 Fight imagery occurs throughout. Ira complains that he's
only allowed one 'punch' a week on his radio show; Zucker-
man imagines him hiding from the fbi in 'one of those
austere training camps . . . where heavyweights used to

go . . . before the big fight'; Eve's denunciation of Ira as a
communist is the 'strongest punch she can throw'. Roth,
I Married a Communist, pp. 25, 187, 212, 267.

110 Roth, I Married a Communist, p. 15; Max Schmeling, An
Autobiography, trans. George B. von der Lippe (Chicago,
1998), p. 82.

111 Roth, I Married a Communist, pp. 27, 28, 32, 84, 263-4.

112 Ibid., p. 217. Roth is also reviving a common classical
comparison of teachers with athletic trainers. Jason Konig,
Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire (Cambridge,
2006), p. 136. Carlo Rotella updates the comparison,
although he is as much concerned with the 'lessons to be
learned at ringside' as in the gym. Cut Time: An Education at
the Fights (Boston, 2003).

113 Roth, I Married a Communist, p. 218.

114 O'Day's gear always included a 'light punching bag'. Roth,
I Married a Communist, pp. 35, 37, 228, 318.

115 Ibid., pp. 314-5. Macbeth, iv.iii. 219-21.

116 Philip Roth, The Human Stain (London, 2001), pp. 238, 280.

117 Roth, I Married a Communist, p. 106; The Human Stain,
pp. 10, 204.

118 Roth, I Married a Communist, p. 49. Passing as a Jew, Silk
pretends his name is derived from Silberzweig; that is,
silver twig. The Human Stain, p. 130. Roth may also be allud-
ing to Michael Silk, also a Professor of Greek and the author
of a study of Coleman's favourite book, the Iliad. Thanks to
Professor Silk for discussing this with me and for suggesting
another allusion, to Coleman Hawkins. See Michael Silk,
Homer: The Iliad (Cambridge, 1987), particularly pp. 103-4.

119 One of Portnoy's many names for his penis is 'the silky
monster'. Portnoy's Complaint, p. 127.

120 Mervyn Rothstein, 'From Philip Roth, "The Facts" as He
Remembers Them', New York Times, 6 September 1988.

121 Roth, The Human Stain, pp. 108, 342.

122 Ibid., pp. 90, 100; The Counterlife, p. 324.

123 Ibid., p. 343-

124 Roth, I Married a Communist, pp. 77-8; TheHuman Stain,
pp. 25, 210.

450

125 Roth, The Human Stain, pp. 5, 13, 232. Faunia is also a
'contender'; all Coleman's relationships with women are
imagined in boxing terms. See pp. 114, 121, 134. Coleman's
nemesis, Delphine Roux, has a crush on Milan Kundera
whose 'poetically prizefighterish looks' are 'an outward sign
of everything colliding within.'

126 For a convincing reading of The Human Stain as a 'medita-
tion' on Ralph Ellison's career, see Timothy L. Parrish,
'Ralph Ellison: The Invisible Man in Philip Roth's The
Human Stain, Contemporary Literature, 45, no. 3 (2004),
pp. 421-59-

127 Roth, The Human Stain, p. 337. Roth began Everyman the day
after Saul Bellow's burial. Charles McGrath, 'Roth, Haunted
by Illness, Feels Fine', New York Times, 25 April 2006.

128 Roth, The Human Stain, p. 316.

129 Ibid., p. 209.

130 Walter Benjamin, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechani-
cal Reproduction', Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn
(London, 1970), p. 225.

131 Don DeLillo, White Noise (London, 1986), p. 67.

132 Don DeLillo, Underworld (London, 1998), pp. 15-16.

133 Paul Pfeiffer, The Long Count, exh. cat., mit list Visual Arts
Center (Cambridge, ma, 2001).

134 Twan Mac, 'Microphone Knockout', Survival Tactics
(Bangin Beats Entertainment, 2004); Big Daddy Kane,
'Niggaz Never Learn', Looks Like a Job For (Cold Chillin'
Records, 1993). On the controversy surrounding the Rocky
statue, see Danielle Rice, 'The "Rocky" Dilemma', in Critical
Lssues in Public Art, ed. Harriet F. Senie and Sally Webster
(Washington, DC, 1992), pp. 228-36. On the attempt to
create a museum and 'Rocky Marciano Trail' in Brockton,
ma, see Carlo Rotella, Good with Their Hands (Berkeley,
ca, 2002), ch. 4.

135 Histories of rap usually mention Ali as one of its precursors.
Houston A. Baker, Jr., Black Studies, Rap and the Academy
(Chicago, 1993), p. 9; William Eric Perkins, 'The Rap Attack:
An Introduction', in Droppin Science: Critical Essays on Rap
Music and Hip Hop Culture (Philadelphia, 1995), p. 5; Kevin
Powell, 'The Word Movement', in Step into a Word: A Global
Anthology of the New Black Literature, ed. Powell (New York,
2000), p. 4; Toop, Rap Attacks, P- 191 Perry, Prophets of the
Hood, p. 58. In 2006 George Lois compiled a book of quota-
tions and photographs entitled Ali Rap: Muhammad Ali,
the First Heavyweight Champion of Rap.

136 See, for example, ixCoolj, featuring James T.Smith, g.o.a.t.
(Def Jam, 2001); Public Enemy, 'Timebomb', on Yo Bum
Rush the Show (Def 'Jam, 1987); epmd, 'You're a Customer',
on Strictly Business (Priority, 1991); cc Crew, 'cc Crew Rap',
on The Big Break Rapper Party: Sounds of New York, usa, voli
(Traffic, 2006).

137 Heltah Skeltah, 'The Grate Unknown', on Nocturnal
(Priority, 1996); Das efx, 'Wontu', on Straight Up Seivaside
(East/West Records, 1993). See Perry, Prophets of the Hood,
ch.3.

138 Dyson, Between God and Gangsta Rap, p. 165. Chuck d, with
Yusafjah, Fight the Power, Rap, Race and Reality (Edinburgh,
1997), pp. 1-3, 98-9-

139 Nelson, Hip Hop America, p. 53. Perry labels the 'in-your-face
. . .black masculinity and excess' of rap as'jackjohnsonism'
or 'Shine-ism'. Prophets of the Hood, pp. 29, 128. For a direct
engagement with Johnson, see Mos Def, 'Blue Blackjack'
and 'Zimzallabim', on The New Danger (Geffen, 2004). The
album features the band Black Jack Johnson.

140 llCooIj, 'I'm Bad', on Bigger and Dejfer (Def jam, 1987); dj
Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince, 'I Think I Can Beat Mike
Tyson', on And In This Corner. . . (Jive, 1989).

141 Tyson's fights were usually no longer than the average music
video. Ian Probert, Rope Burns (London, 1999), p. 30. In
1987, Nintendo released 'Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!', hbo
tried to capitalize on boxing's popularity with hip hop
fans with a short-lived show called ko Nation. See Charles P.
Pierce, 'Let's Get Ready to Rumble, Yo', Esquire, February
2001, pp. 48-51; Rotella, Cut Time, pp. 159-60.

142 David Thompson, 'Banging Big with Mike Tyson', Sight and
Sound, 9, no. 2 (February 1999), pp. 24-7. In 1995, the elderly
British philosopher A.J. Aver famously defended model
Naomi Campbell from Tyson's advances at a New York
party. To Tyson's declaration that he was the heavyweight
champion of the world, Ayer reputedly replied 'And I am the
former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-
eminent in our field; I suggest that we talk about this like
rational men.' Ben Rogers, A.J. Ayer: A I//? (London, 1999),
p. 344-

143 Nelson, Hip Hop America, p. 54. Tyson often used Tupac
tracks for his ring walks. Holyfield was later associated with
West Coast rappers mc Hammer (who became his manager)
and Snoop Doggy Dogg who boasted of 'breakin niggaz
down like Evander Holyfield'. Snoop Doggy Dogg, 'The
Shiznit', on Doggystyle (Columbia, 1987); mc Hammer with
Tha Dogg Pound, 'Sleepin on a Master Plan', on The Funky
Headhunter (Warner, 1994).

144 Canibus, featuring Mike Tyson, 'Second Round k.o.', on
Lyrical Warfare (Group Home, 1998); llCooIj, 'The
Ripper Strikes Back', on Survival of the Illest (199&), vol. 1;
Motion Man, featuring KutMasta, 'Winner Takes All
(Knockout Kings 2002)', on Clearing the Field (Threshold,
2002). In 'Mama Said Knock You Out' (Def Jam, 1990), an
attack on Kool Moe Dee, ll Cool j compared his rage to
Ali's when 'they called him Cassius'.

145 Roy Jones, Jr,'Who Wanna Get Knocked Out', on Round One:
The Album (Body Head, 2002). See also Body Head Bangerz:
Volume One (Body Head, 2004). In 1999, the American Asso-
ciation of Boxing Writers voted Jones 'Fighter of the Decade'.
See Hauser, Chaos, Corruption, Courage and Glory, pp. 3-11.

146 Spike Lee, as told to Kaleem Aftab, That's My Story and I'm
Sticking to It (London, 2005), p. 57.

147 Like Lee's earlier films, Do the Right Thing is framed by
memorializing litanies. The film is dedicated to the families
of recent victims of police brutality and ends with a roll call
of black musicians by radio dj Love Daddy.

148 Do the Right Thing prompted much critical debate. Andrew
Ross described it as a 'complex late eighties version of the
"fire next time'". 'Ballots, bullets, or Batmen: can cultural
studies do the right thing?', Screen, 31, no. 1 (Spring 1990),

451

p. 37. Complaints that the film would incite racial violence
drew comparisons to the Johnson fight films. Ed Guerrero,
Do the Right Thing (London, 2001), pp. 18-20. 'What,
finally, is at issue are matters of style far more than
substance', said Houston A. Baker, 'Spike Lee and the
Commerce of Culture', Black American Literature Forum, 25,
no. 2 (Summer 1991), pp. 237-52. Along the same lines, see
Wahneema Lubiano, '"But Compared to What?": Reading
Realism, Representation, and Essentialism in School Daze,
Do the Right Thing, and the Spike Lee Discourse', in Repre-
senting Black Men, ed.Marcellus Blount and George P.
Cunningham (New York, 1996), pp. 173-204.

149 These were intended as a homage to the tattooed knuckles
of psychotic preacher in The Night of the Hunter (1955). Spike
Lee and Lisa Jones, Do the Right Thing (New York 1989),

p. 78.

150 On Lee's Brechtianism, see Douglas Kellner, 'Aesthetics,
Ethics, and Politics in the Films of Spike Lee', in Spike Lee's
Do the Right Thing, ed. Mark A. Reid (Cambridge, 1997),
pp. 73-106.

151 W.J.T. Mitchell, 'The Violence of Public Art: Do the Right
Thing', in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, ed. Reid, pp. 107-28.

152 Lee, That's My Story, pp. 83-4.

153 In 1991, Lee made a documentary Iron Mike Tyson for hbo.
At one point, Tyson tells him that they're both just two
black guys for the ghetto'. See Phil Berger, Blood Season:
Mike Tyson andthe World of Boxing (London, 1996), p. 295.
Lee and Tyson are also compared in That's My Story, pp. 26,
49. Lee supported the boxer during his rape trial, and sent
him a copy of Arthur Ashe's Days of Grace in jail. Tyson
later tattooed an image of Ashe on his arm. Charlie Rose,
'Interview with Spike Lee', in Spike Lee: Interviews, ed.
Cynthia Fuchs (Jackson, mi, 2002), pp. 87-8; Peter Hamill,
'The Education of Mike Tyson', in Iron Mike, p. 172.

154 Lee describes itogm^iW/ as the 'best sports film ever'. That's
My Story, p. 231.

155 Cashmore, Tyson, p. 150. On Tina as 'a latter-day Josephine
Baker', see Michele Wallace, Invisibility Blues (London,
1990), p. 108. See also Chuck d, Fight the Power, pp. 217-22;
bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics
(Boston, 1990), p. 179.

156 Ross, 'Ballots, bullets, or Batmen', p. 40. Ed Guerrero notes
a sustained Godfather parody. Do the Right Thing, p. 75.

157 Henry Louis Gates, 'Final Cut: Conversation with Spike Lee',
Transition, 52 (1991), p. 199. On Lee's capitalism, see Jerome
Christensen, 'Spike Lee, Corporate Populist', Critical Inquiry,
17, no. 3 (Spring 1991), pp. 582-95, and W.J.T. Mitchell's
response, 'Seeing "Do the Right Thing"', pp. 596-608.

158 That's My Story and I'm Sticking to It, pp. 259, 271, 297.

159 The portraits of Louis and John Henry used in She Hate Me
are by Sandor Szenassy.

160 Boxers remain a popular subject for what has variously been
termed folk, self-taught or outsider art. See, for example,
Sam Doyle, Joe Louis (1980), in Pictured in My Mind: Contem-
porary American Self -Taught Art from the Collection of Dr Kurt
Gitter and Alice Rae Yelen, exh. cat., Birmingham Museum of
Art (Birmingham, al, 1995), p. 60; Sam Doyle, Abe Kane, in

Black Folk Art in America, 1930-1980, exh. cat., Corcoran
Gallery, Washington, DC (Washington, DC, 1982), p. 6; Eli-
jah Pierce, Louis vs. Braddock, in Self -Taught Artists of the
Twentieth-Century: An American Anthology, exh. cat., Museum
of American Folk Art, New York (New York, 1998). Five self-
taught artists featured in Low Brow Gods: The Art of Boxing,
Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 1997.

161 Emma Amos, introducing her work at the Flomenhaft
Gallery: http://www.flomenhaftgallery.com/exhibitions/
emma_amos_intro.htm.

162 Amos includes Ali, along with Joe Louis, in several works
that tell stories about her own life, that of her family, and
that of the black American twentieth century; works such
as A Reading at Bessie Smith's Grave (1985), My Mothers My
Sisters (1992) and Freedom March in the 1988 series, Odyssey.
See Emma Amos: Paintings and Prints, 1982-92, exh. cat.,
The College of Wooster Art Museum (Wooster, oh, 1993);
Al Murray, 'Interview with Emma Amos', October 1968,
Smithsonian Archives of American Art, http://www.aaa.
si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/amos.68.htm.

163 Donna Graves, 'Representing the Race: Detroit's Monument
to Joe Louis', in Critical Issues in Public Art, ed.Senieand
Webster, pp. 215-27. See also Ferguson, 'Tomato Cans', p. 12.
Graham may have been drawing on Richard Avedon's por-
trait, 'Joe Louis, tighter', a photograph of his clenched fist
with the thumb on top. Avedon, with James Baldwin,
Nothing Personal (New York, 1964).

164 Hal Foster discusses the 'traumatic realism' of Warhol's
series in The Return of the Real (Cambridge, ma, 1996),
pp. 130-38. Ferguson notes the connection between Buster
Douglas and Warhol's ig64Most Wanted Men series in
'Tomato Cans', p. 11.

165 Others have simply dismissed his work as a kind of
primitivist slumming. For a balanced account of critical
responses to Basquiat, see Alison Pearlman, UnpackagingArt
of the 1980s (Chicago, 2003), ch. 3.

166 Thelma Golden, 'My Brother', Black Male: Representations
of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art, exh. cat., Whit-
ney Museum of American Art, New York (New York, 1994),
pp- 39-40- Golden locates this idea in James Baldwin's asser-
tion that 'African-Americans need to reclaim their (lost)
crowns and wear them'. Another possible source might have
been Gary Byrd and Stevie Wonder's The Crown (1979)
which asserts that 'Everybody in the world has a Crown' and
includes the lines 'If you gonna fight don't do it free / Make
'em pay to see just like Ali'. SeeToop, Rap Attack 3, p. 46.

167 Greg Tate, Flyhoy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary
America (New York, 1992), p. 238. Along with the crown,
the raised arm (perhaps a Black Power salute) is one of
Basquiat's most often-repeated symbols. See also bell hooks,
Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representation (New York, 1994),

p. 20.

168 Most of these paintings are reproduced in Jean-Michel
Basquiat, exh. cat., Whitney Museum, New York (New York,
1992) and Basquiat, exh. cat., Brooklyn Museum, New York
(New York, 2005). St Joe Louis Surrounded by Snakes, a recog-
nizable portrait of the boxer accompanied by a hook-nosed

452

caricature of Mike Jacobs, is based on an Irving Penn photo-
graph from 1948. See Milly Heyd, Mutual Reflections: Jews and
Blacks in American Art (New Brunswick, nj, 1999), pp. 186-93.
Greg Tate and Leonhard Emmerling argue convincingly for
the influence of hip hop, and its battles on Basquiat's work.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, p. 88. Incidental images or references
to boxers can be found in other works too numerous to
discuss here. See also Kevin Young's collection of poems
based on Basquiat paintings (many about boxers), To Repel
Ghosts: Five Sides in B Minor (South Royalton, vt, 2001).

169 Benjamin H. D. Buchloch, '1984a', in Art Since 1900
(London, 2004), p. 590.

170 On the difficulty in distinguishing 'critics of the reiflcation
and fragmentation of the sign and connoisseurs of the same
process', see Foster, The Return of the Real, p. 96.

171 Hal Foster, '1993c', in Art since 1900, p. 644. Roderick
Buchanan, Players, exh. cat., Dundee Contemporary Arts
(Dundee, 2000). Deadweight (and many of the other works
discussed here) was included in The Squared Circle: Boxing in
Contemporary Art, exh. cat., Walker Art Center, Minnea-
polis (Minneapolis, mn, 2003). Rumble, YoungMan, Rumble
became part of a larger installation called Skin Tight. See
Glenn Ligon, 'Skin Tight', in Boxer: An Anthology, ed.
Chandler, Gill, Guha and Tawadros, pp. 58-69; Golden,
'My Brother', p. 41; Richard J. Powell, Black Art and Culture
in the 20th Century (London, 1997), p. 190.

172 Paul-Felix Montez, personal correspondence, 11 September
2006. A model of The Gloves featured in his exhibition 'The
21st Century Las Vegas Monuments', Las Vegas Museum
Library and City Hall Museum, 19 September-30 October
2006. See also Tim Dahlberg, Fight Town: Las Vegas - The
Boxing Capital of the World (Las Vegas, 2004).

173 Ralph Rugoff, 'David Hammons: Public Nuisance, Rabble
Rouser, Hometown Artist,' in David Hammons in the Hood,
exh. cat., Illinois State Museum (Springfield, il, 1993), p. 19.
See also Saint Louis (1988), a white glove puppet supporting
a cardboard torso of Louis in boxing pose; two fingers be-
come his legs. David Hammons: Raising the Rubble, exh. cat.,
The Institute for Contemporary Art, p.s.i Museum (New
York, 1991), p. 60. Tyson and Holyfield are the subjects of
Ear of Corn (1997), but neither man is depicted directly.
Instead Hammons puns on their encounter with a sculpture
consisting of a pair of boxing gloves which enclose a bitten
ear of corn. Boxing has become a 'corny' phallic spectacle.
Manthia Diawara, 'Make It Funky: The Art of David
Hammons', Artforum, 36, no. 9 (May 1998), pp. 120-27.

174 See also Ian Geraghty's golden-sequined gloves, Bright
Lights, Cameras, Bloody Action and Flashes of Brilliance (1996),
in Boxer: An Anthology, p. 11.

175 See Keith Piper, 'Four Corners, A Contest of Opposites,' in
Boxer: An Anthology, pp. 70-79; Step into the Arena: Notes on
Black Masculinity and the Contest of Territory (Rochdale,
1992). Four Corners and A Grey Area, discussed below, were
commissioned by the Institute of International Visual Arts
for the touring exhibition Boxer, curated by John Gill at the
Walsall Museum and Art Gallery. In the accompanying cata-
logue, David Chandler acknowledged the 'inspirational role'

of Oates's On Boxing. Boxer: An Anthology, p. 19. Curator
Olukemi Ilesanmi made a similar tribute in The Squared
Circle, p. 1.

176 Some of these are in the Tate along with a section of the
woodcut parquet floor. See Thomas Kilpper: TheRing, exh.
cat., South London Gallery Projects (London, 2000).

177 See Boxer: An Anthology, p. 22.

178 James Westcott, 'Sport at the Socrates Sculpture Park',
New York Arts Magazine (September-October 2005).

179 Golden, 'My Brother', p. 41. Ferguson describes Simmons's
allusion to Warhol's 162 dance diagram painting as a
'critique . . . of the whole Abstract Expressionist idea of
painting as performance'. 'Tomato Cans', p. 11. A photo-
graph of David Bowie in sparring gloves next to a dance
diagram appeared on the cover of Let's Dance (1983). Bowie
famously performed in boxing gloves during the 1974
Diamond Dogs tour.

180 A similar tension informs Jim Campbell's Fight (2000), part
of a series entitled Ambiguous Icons. Campbell translates
a colour video of a boxing match into a low resolution grid;
it is only by identifying the colours provided by the boxers'
bodies and their gloves that the viewer can see the image
as a boxing match. Glenn Kurtz, 'Jim Campbell at Hosfelt
Gallery', Artweek, 31, no. 6 (June 2000), pp. 15-16.

181 For Rosalind E. Krauss, the 'representational plane of the
sporting event' is 'displaced' by the power of the rhythm.
'Pulse', in Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind E. Krauss, Formless:
A User's Guide (New York, 1997), pp. 161-5; 'i993a', in Art
Since 1900, pp. 631-3. See also Foster, The Return of the Real,
pp. 42-3. Benjamin H.D. Buchloch argues the opposite -
that because of its interest in history Box (ahhareturnahoui)
'signals a major departure from American post-minimalist
aesthetics'. 'Memory Lessons and History Tableaux', in
James Coleman, ed. George Baker (Cambridge, ma, 2003),
p. 97-

182 Anne Rorimer, 'James Coleman, 1970-1985' in James Cole-
man, p. 9; Lynne Cooke, 'A Tempered Agnosia', in James
Coleman, p. 130.

183 Jean Fisher, 'The Place of the Spectator in the Work of James
Coleman', in James Coleman, p. 25; 'The Enigma of the Hero
in the Work of James Coleman', in James Coleman, p. 41. See
also Fisher, 'James Coleman's Box (Ahhareturnabout) ', in
Boxer: An Anthology, pp. 54-7. Fisher describes Tunney as an
Irishman, but although his parents were Irish, he was born
in New York and certainly thought of himself as American.

184 Morrissey, 'Boxers' (1995). The track was first released on an
ep with a picture of Billy Conn on the uk cover; then collect-
ed in The World of Morrissey (Reprise, 1995), the cover of which
featured Cornelius Carr. Kenny Lane's picture appeared on
the cover of Southpaw Grammar (Reprise, 1995). 'Sunny',
possibly partly about Sonny Liston ('you punched and fell/
And then you felt embarrassed') is included in Suedehead:
The Best of Morrissey (Parlophone, 1997). See Bret, Morrissey,
p. 148; Nabeel Zuberi, Sounds English: Transnational Popular
Music (Urbana, il, 2001), pp. 60-64.

185 Richard Ford's The Ultimate Good Luck (1981) begins with a
boxing match whose narrative is determined by an unseen

453

punch. This foreshadows the novel's own narrative devel-
opment. The 'essence of the modern predicament', the
protagonist thinks, lies in recognizing that 'the guy who
had it in for you was the guy you'd never seen.' Ford, The
Ultimate Good Luck (New York, 1986), pp. 7. 35.

186 Steven A. Riess, 'Professional Sports as an Avenue of Social
Mobility in America: Some Myths and Realities', in Essays
on Sport History and Sport Mythology, ed. Donald G. Kyle
and Gary D. Stark (College Station, tx, 1990), p. 90.

187 Rotella, Cut Time, p. 183.

188 Thorn Jones, The Pugilist at Rest (London, 1994), p. 21.

189 Bert Randolph Sugar, 'Boxing Gyms: A Brief History', in
Shadow Boxers, ed. Gattuso, p. 24. Katherine Dunn, 'School
of Hard Knocks', in Shadow Boxers, p. 37. See also Cohen,
Without Apology, p. 50. An abandoned baby is brought up
in a gym by a 70-year-old ex-prizefighter in Harry Crews's
The Gypsy's Curse (1974). When the protagonist of Gus Lee's
China Boy is told by his father to decide whether he's Chinese
or American, he instead 'picks ymca' and an alternative
father who teaches him to spar. Lee, China Boy (New York,
1991), pp- 212-13. Loi'c Wacquant describes the work of the
boxing trainer as 'virile mothering'. Body and Soul: Notebooks
of an Apprentice Boxer (Oxford, 2004), p. 7. Two very different
views of gym culture can be found in the films Broken Noses
(1987) and On the Ropes (1999).

190 Sekules, The Boxer's Heart, p. 51. 'Boxing was my way into the
ghetto,' she quipped. Nancy Hass, 'When Women Step into
the Ring', New York Times, 1 October 2000, pp. 1, 7. Hass
notes that Gleason's, which first admitted women in 1986,
had 116 (that is 15 per cent) women members in 2000. The
Gleason's Gym Total Body Workout for Women was published
in 2006. After going to a 'proper' gym, Leah Hager Cohen
found the pink hand wraps and wicker baskets offered by a
'spiff)'' women's health club unsatisfying. Without Apology,
p. 222.

191 The film was based on F. X. Toole's short story of the same
title. Rope Burns (London, 2000), pp. 61-101. See also
Toole's posthumously published novel, Pound for Pound
(London, 2006).

192 Thorn Jones, Sonny Liston was a Friend oj Mine (London,
1999), PP- 13, 32.

193 Snowden Picket notes that the walk to Brooklyn's Gleason's
Gym from the subway station that brought her from
Manhattan is 'down a long hill'. She has to 'will' herself
'to descend'. Lookingfor a Fight, pp. 67, 142.

194 A similar soundscape accompanies Ana Busto's photo-
graphic series, La Escuela Cubana de Boxeo and, Busto with
Sandra Seymour, Night Fight.

195 Arlene Shulman, The Prizefighters (London, 1995), pp. 36-9.
Snowden Picket begins her memoir of Gleason's with a de-
scription of its smells. Lookingfor a Fight, p. 1. On Gleason's,
see also Hauser, The Black Lights, pp. 129-30. Eric Trethewey's
'The Gym on Tchoupitoulas Street' is a eulogy to boxers who
'had fight in them like shit has stink'. Perfect in Their Art, ed.
Hedin and Waters, pp. 197-8.

196 Robert Anasi, TheGloves:A Boxing Chronicle (Edinburgh,
2004), p. 34-

197 Pete Hamill, in The Times Square Gym, photographs by John
Goodman (New York, 1996), pp. 1-2; Pete Hamill, Flesh and
Blood (New York, 1978), pp. 7-8. On boxing as manual work,
see Rotella, Goodwith Their Hands, joe Rein describes the
boxing gym as an 'endangered species' in need of preserva-
tion: 'Save the Tiger', in Shadow Boxers, ed. Gattuso, p. 157.
See also Wiley, 'Kronk', in Serenity; Bud Collins, 'Boxing
Grieves Loss of 5th Street Gym', in The Best American Sports-
writingi994, ed. Tom Boswell (Boston, 1994), pp. 84-6.
Arcadia Publishing has recently brought out a series of
books of photographs celebrating the'boxing heritage' of
American cities such as Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit,
Boston and San Francisco.

198 Craig Raine, Rich (London, 1984), pp. 92-4. See also 'A Silver
Plate', p. 46.

199 Toole, 'Frozen Water', in Rope Burns, p. 142.

200 On Howson's earlier boxing paintings, see Robert Heller,
Peter Howson (Edinburgh, 1993).

201 Rotella, Cut Time, p. 8.

202 Anasi, The Gloves, pp. 62, 331; Wade, Wrecking Machine,
p. 317-

203 Snowden Picket, Lookingfor a Fight, pp. 51-4.

204 Breece D'J Pancake, 'The Scrapper', in The Stories of Breece
D'J Pancake (Boston, 1983), pp. 101-14. Also set in West
Virginia, Pinckney Benedict's 1994 novel Dogs of God seems
to take 'The Scrapper' as a starting point. In Pete Dexter's
Flesh and Blood an imprisoned boxer rejects the sexual
advances of his Black Muslim cell-mate by biting off his
nose. See pp. 36-7.

205 Luis Alberto Urrea, In Search of Snow (New York, 1995),
p. 70.

206 Foster, The Return of the Real, p. 149.

207 Wiley, Serenity, p. 227; Anasi, The Gloves, p. 315 fn.; Rotella,
Cut Time, p. 103; Tom Boswell, 'Pain', in The Best American
Sports Writing of the Century, ed. David Halberstam (Boston,
1999), pp- 455-6o. The theatricality of professional wrestling
is often evoked as the opposite of boxing. See Roland
Barthes, 'The World of Wrestling', Mythologies, trans.
Annette Lavers (New York, 2000), pp. 15-25.

208 Rotella, Cut Time, pp. 13, 207.

209 Rotella, Cut Time, p. 14. As well as 'hitting', naturalists also
prefer to talk of 'fights' rather than use sanitizing words
such as 'bouts' or 'contests'. Richard Ford disagrees.
'Hitting in the face,' he writes, 'is finally not particularly
interesting, inasmuch as it lacks even the smallest grain
of optimism. "In the Face', in The Fights: Photographs by
Charles Hoff, ed. Ford (San Francisco, 1996), p. 10.

210 Quoted on the cover of Larry Fink, Boxing: Photographs
(Zurich, 1997). On Sherman's own sparring experience,
see Betsy Berne, 'Cindy Sherman: Studio Visit', Tate Arts
and Culture, 5 (May/June 2003), pp. 37-41.

211 Oates views metaphor as the sign, as well as the tool, of the
'writerly' and thus claims to banish it from On Boxing, a
work that strives to recapture, as well as document, the
'vanished world' of her working-class childhood. The book
nevertheless remains anxiously figurative throughout. See
On Boxing, pp. 4, 61, 93, 112; 'My Father, My Fiction', New

4 r >4

York Times Magazine, 16 March 1989, p. 45; George Vecsy,
'A Heavyweight Look at Boxing', in Conversations with Joyce
Carol Oates, ed. Lee Milazzo (Jackson, mi, 1989), p. 149.
Loi'c Wacquant spent a year as 'Busy' Louie training for the
Chicago Golden Gloves as an attempt to 'restitute [the]
carnal dimension of existence' into a sociology 'riddled
with false concepts' such as the 'underclass'. The 'social
agent', he writes, 'is before anything else a being of flesh,
nerves and senses'. Body and Soul, pp. vii, ix. The layout of
the book - including courier typeface and photographs
with visible sprocket holes - also signals authenticity. See
note 22 above.
212 Claude Levi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship,
trans. J. H.Bell, J. R. von Sturmer, R.Needham (Boston,
1969), p. xix.

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The Boxer, dir. Jim Sheridan, 1997

Die Boxerbraut, dir. Johannes Guter, 1926

Broken Noses, dir. Bruce Weber, 1987

Cain and Mabel, dir. Lloyd Bacon, 1936

The Calcium Kid, dir. Alex De Rakoff, 2004

The Champ, dir. King Vidor, 1931

Champion, dir. Mark Robson, 1949

Cinderella Man, dir. Ron Howard, 2005

City for Conquest, dir. Anatole Litvak, 1940

City Lights, dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1931

Combinations, dir. Patrick A. Gaucher, 2005

The Crowd Roars, dir. Richard Thorpe, 1938

Day of the Fight, dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1951

Do the Right Thing, dir. Spike Lee, 1989

Fallen Champ, dir. Barbara Kopple, 1993

Far and Away, dir. Ron Howard, 1992

Fat City, dir. John Huston, 1972

From Here to Eternity, dir. Fred Zinnemann, 1953

Gentleman Jim, dir. Raoul Walsh, 1942

Girlfight, dir. Karyn Kusama, 2000

Golden Boy, dir. Rouben Mamoulian, 1939

The Great John L., dir. Frank Tuttle, 1945

The Great White Hope, dir. Martin Ritt, 1970

The Great White Hype, dir. Reginald Hudlin, 1996

The Greatest, dir. Tom Gries, 1977

The Harder They Fall, dir. Mark Robson, 1956

The Hurricane, dir. Norman Jewison, 1999

TheLrish in Us, dir. Lloyd Bacon, 1935

It's Always Fair Weather, dir. Stanley Donan and Gene Kelly, 1955

The Joe Louis Story, dir. Robert Gordon, 1953

The Kid from Brooklyn, dir. Norman Z. McLeod, 1946

Kid Galahad, dir. Michael Curtiz, 1937

Kid Galahad, dir. Phil Karlson, 1962

The Killers, dir. Robert Siodmak, 1946

Killer's Kiss, dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1955

The Leather Saint, dir. Alvin Ganzer, 1955

The Life of Jimmy Dolan, dir. Archie Mayo, 1933

The Milky Way, dir. Leo McCarey, 1936

Million Dollar Baby, dir. Clint Eastwood, 2004

Monkey on My Back, dir. Andre de Toth, 1957

Muhammad Ali, The Greatest, dir. William Klein, 1974

My Life as a Dog, dir. Lasse Hallstrom, 1985

The Negro Soldier, dir. William Wyler, 1944

Night After Night, dir. Archie Mayo, 1932

On the Ropes, dir. Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen, 1999

On the Waterfront, dir. Elia Kazan, 1954

Palooka, dir. Benjamin Stoloff, 1934

Pat and Mike, dir. George Cukor, 1952

The Prizefighter and the Lady, dir. W. S. Van Dyke, 1933

The Power of One, dir. John G. Avildsen, 1992

Pulp Fiction, dir. Quentin Tarantino, 1994

Raging Bull, dir. Martin Scorsese, 1980

Red Rain, dir. Laura Plotkin, 1999

The Roaring Twenties, dir. Raoul Walsh, 1939

Rocky, dir. John G. Avildsen, 1976

Rocky V, dir. John G. Avildsen, 1990

Rocky Balboa, dir. Sylvester Stallone, 2006

Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion dir. David Mirkin, 1997

School Daze, dir. Spike Lee, 1988

The Set-Up, dir. Robert Wise, 1949

Shadow Boxers, dir. Katya Bankowsky, 2000

She Hate Me, dir. Spike Lee, 2004

SnakeEyes, dir. Brian De Palma, 1998

Somebody Up There Likes Me, dir. Robert Wise, 1956

Spirit of Youth, dir. Harry Fraser, 1938

The Super Fight, dir. Murray Woroner, 1970

They Made Me a Criminal, dir. Busby Berkeley, 1939

Undisputed, dir. Walter Hill, 2002

When We Were Kings, dir. Leon Gast, 1996

Winner Take All, dir. Roy Del Ruth, 1932

Discography

Antipop vs. Matthew Shipp (Thirsty Ear, 2003)

Battle of the Blues, vols 1-4 (King, 1959)

Beenie Man, Undisputed (Virgin, 2006)

The Big Break Rapper Party: Sounds of New York, usa, vol. 1

(Traffic, 2006)
Blues Ladies, 1934-1941 (Document, 1996)
Canibus, Lyrical Warfare (Group Home, 1998)
Cassius Clay, I Am The Greatest! (Columbia, 1963)

468

Coolio, El Cool Magnifico (Hot, 2002)
Cool Whalin: Bepop Vocals (Spotlight, 1979)
Miles Davis, Conception (Prestige, 1951)

, A Tribute to Jack Johnson (Columbia, 1971)

, The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions (Columbia, 2003)

MosDef, The New Danger (Geffen, 2004)
Snoop Doggy Dogg, Doggystyle (Columbia, 1987)
Bob Dylan, The Bootleg Series, 1961-1991 (Sony, 1991)

, Another Side of Bob Dylan (Columbia, 1964)

, Self Portrait (Columbia, 1970)

, Desire (Columbia, 1975)

Das efx, Straight Up Sewaside (East/West Records, 1993)

epmd, Strictly Business (Priority, 1991)

Faithless, Outrospective (Cheeky, 2001)

mc Hammer, The Funky Headhunter (Warner, 1994)

Hits and Misses: Muhammad AH and the Ultimate Sound of

Fistfighting {Trikont, 2003)
dj Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince, And In This Corner . . . (Jive,

1989)
Big Daddy Kane, Long Live the Kane (Warners, 1988)

, Looks Like a Job For (Cold Chillin' Records, 1993)

Constant Lambert, Orchestral Works, bbc Concert Orchestra

(asv, 1999)
Joe Louis: An American Hero (Sony, 2001)
Roy Jones Jr, Round One: The Album (Body Head, 2002)

, Body Head Bangerz: Volume One (Body Head, 2004)

llCooIj, Bigger and Deffer (Def 'Jam, 1987)

, Mother Saia 'Knock You Out (Def 'Jam, 1990)

, Survival of the Illest, vol. 1 (Def Jam, 1998)

, g.o.a.t. (Def Jam, 2001)

Wynton Marsalis, Unforgivable Blackness (Blue Note, 2004)
Twan Mac, Survival Tactics (Bangm Beats Entertainment, 2004)
Ewan MacColl, with Peggy Seeger, The Fight Game: A Radio-
Ballad About Boxers (Topic, 1999)
Memphis Minnie, Queen of the Blues (Columbia, 1997)
Motion Man, Clea ring the Field (Threshold, 2002)
Morrissey, The World of Morrissey (Reprise, 1995)

i Southpaw Grammar (Reprise, 1995)

Parliament, Chocolate City (Casablanca, 1975)
PhilOchs, The Early Years (Vanguard, 2000)
Onyx, Bacdafucup (Universal/Def Jam, 1993)
Public Enemy, Yo Bum Rush the Show (Def Jam, 1987)
Richard Pryor, An Anthology, 1968-1992 (Warner, 2001)
Simon and Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water (Columbia,

1970)
Heltah Skeltah, Nocturnal (Priority, 1996)
Sucker Punch: Jamaican Boxing Tributes (Trojan, 2004)
Johnny Wakelin, Reggae, Soul and Rock V Roll (Astor, 1976)
Warren Zevron, Sentimental Hygiene (Virgin, 1987)
When We Were Kings (Polygram, 1996)

469

Acknowledgements

The pictures in this book were made possible by generous grants
from the British Academy, the Chambers Fund, Department of
English, University College London, and the Dean's Fund of the
Faculty of Arts, ucl, whose support I warmly acknowledge. I
would also like to thank the many archivists and librarians with
whom I have worked, and especially the staff of the ucl Media
Resources Department, and everyone at Reaktion.

In the years I've been writing this book, almost everyone I know or
have met has helped in some way: suggesting things to read, watch or
listen to, lending and giving me books, tracking down obscure refer-
ences, videoing movies, scanning pictures, translating poems, invit-
ing me to give papers, writing references, reading and improving my
writing, buying lunch and keeping me well, clothed and happy. I am
particularly grateful for substantial help in all these matters to: Rose-
mary Ash ton, Matthew Beaumont, Kiki Benzon, Michael Berkowitz,
Jose Luis Bermudez, Ada and Andrew Boddy, Janet Boddy, Tracy
Bohan, Rachel Bowlby, Richard Brown, David Brauner, Christina
Buchmann, Ardis Butterfield, Melissa Calaresu, Eoin Cannon, Jean
Chothia, Jim Clemens, William W. Cooke, Valentine Cunningham,
Greg Dart, Paul Davis, Jim Endersby, Silvia Frenk, David and Tanya
Frisby, Tony Gee, Paul Giles, Heather Glen, Richard Gray, Fiona
Green, Phil Home, Luke Hughes-Davies, Erik Jensen, Wolf-Dietrich
Junghanns, Danny Karlin, Thomas Karshan, Patrick, Gabriel and
Oscar Kennedy, Simon Kovesi, Robin and Tad Krauze, Leya Landau,
Alison Light, Tim Mathews, Sam Matthews, Andrew McDonald,
Tobi Megchild, Kathy Metzenthin, Charlotte Mitchell, Brian Moore,
Edwin Morgan, Gary Moser, Michael Newton, Pete Nicholls, Lida
Oskinova, Ian Ralston, David Robb, Carlo Rotella, Joan-Pau Rubies,
Steven Rushforth, Helen Russell, Elaine Showalter, Michael Silk,
Ali Smith, Hugh Stevens, John Sutherland, Pete Swaab, Pam
Thurschwell, Jay and Kelly Tunney, Ruti Ungar, Val Williamson,
Sarah Wood, Henry Woudhuysen, and Yo Zushi. I would also like to
thank the students at Dartmouth College, Dundee University and
University College London with whom I discussed some of this
material.

I am particularly grateful to those who read, and improved, parts
of this book: Jas Eisner, Geoff Gilbert, Lee Grieveson, Ali Smith,
Pam Thurschwell and Mark Whalan, and especially, for their
generosity and stamina to the bitter end, Andrew Boddy and
David Trotter.

If I thanked David Trotter for everything I should, these
acknowledgements would be longer than the book itself.

470

Photo Acknowledgements

The author and publishers wish to express their thanks to the
below sources of illustrative material and/or permission to repro-
duce it. (Locations of artworks not in private hands are also given
below.)

Photo Acme Newspictures: 101; Addison Gallery of American Art,
Phillips Academy, Andover, ma: 38; Altonaer Museum, Hamburg:
62; photo courtesy of the artist (Emma Amos), © 1998: 130; The
Art Institute of Chicago: 24; photo author: 151; Berlinische Galerie
Landesmuseum fur Moderne Kunst, Fotografie und Architektur
(photo courtesy of vg Bild-Kunst): 96; Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University (Yale Collection of American
Literature): 99; The British Library, London (photo British Library
Reproductions): 8; British Museum, London (photos © The
Trustees of the British Museum): 2 (Vases c 334), 4 (Vases b 124), 5
(D84 and D85), li, 14; photo courtesy of Cambridge and County
Folk Museum: 51; The Cleveland Museum of Art: 40 (Hinman B.
Hurlbut Collection); Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, de: 39
(Sloan Collection); donated to Detroit Institute of Arts (photo
Paul Mastrogiacomo): 152; photo courtesy of the artist (Godfried
Donkor): 125; from Christos Doumas, The Wall Paintings ofThera
(Athens: The Thera Foundation, 1992): 43; Ecole Nationale
Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (photo ensb-ap): 23; Fondazione
Aligi Sassu e Helenita Olivares, Citta di Lugano: 61 (photo FAse-
hol); photo from the archive of the Glasgow Evening Times: 102;
Hampton University Museum, Hampton, va: 77; photo courtesy of
the artist (Peter Howson) and Flowers East Gallery, London: 110;
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin: 41 (reproduced with the permission of
Michael Yeats); courtesy of the Huntingdon Library, San Marino,
ca: 73; photo courtesy of the Huntingdon Library, San Marino, ca:
42; The Jewish Museum, London: 44, 74; photos courtesy of the
John Murray Archive, London: 18, 19; photo by permission of
Landov Galleries: 150; photos courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library,
Yale University: 10, 45; Library of Congress, Washington, DC (Prints
and Photographs Division): 13 (British Cartoon Collection; lc-
USZ62-132988), 30 (Brady Civil War Photograph Collection; lc-dig-
cwpb-02637, LC-DiG-cwpb-02638), 46 (British Cartoon Prints
Collection; LC-USZC4-6765), 50 (LC-USZ4-7692); photo Mary Evans
Picture Library: 59; photo courtesy of the Michael Hoppen Gallery,
London: 70; from H. D. Miles, Pugilistka (Edinburgh, 1906): 3;
photo courtesy of the artist (Paul-Felix Montez): 132; Museo

Nazionale Romano: 7; Museum of the City of New York: 94; photos
courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York: 37 (Byron Collec-
tion), 94; Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
(photo Philipp Scholtz Ritterman): 124; photo courtesy of the
naacp: 105; photo courtesy of the National Art Museum of Sport,
Indianapolis: 147; National Gallery of Art, Washington, dc: 31, 82
(Chester Dale Collection); National Portrait Gallery, London: 15,
16; National Portrait Gallery, Washington, dc: 88, 114 (photo ©The
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ARS, ny and
dacs, London); photo courtesy of the New York Public Library for
the Performing Arts (Astor, Lenox and Tilden Collection; Billy Rose
Theatre Collection): 81; Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire: 18, 19;
The Gallery, Petworth House, Sussex (photo courtesy of The
National Trust Photographic Library, London): 22; drawing repro-
duced from Ernst Pfuhl, Malerei und Zeichnung der Griechen
(Munich, 1923): 6; photo courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of
the Fine Arts, Philadelphia: 66; Philadelphia Museum of Art: 52;
private collections: 20, 97 (photo courtesy of the Galerie St Etienne,
New York), 111 (photo courtesy of the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery,
llc, New York); Social and Public Art Resource Center, Los Angeles
(photo courtesy of the sparcla, © sparc www.sparcmurals.org):
118; photo courtesy of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown, ma: 65; Tate, London (photo © Tate, London 2008):
17; photo United Studios: 100; Victoria and Albert Museum,
London (photo V&A Images/Victoria & Albert Museum, London):
98; photo courtesy of the Vonderbank Art Galleries, Berlin: 123;
The Walter 0. Evans Collection of African American Art, Savannah,
ga: 55 (photo courtesy of Linda J. Evans and the Walter 0. Evans
Collection of African American Art), 144; Whitney Museum of
American Art, New York: 87; The Whitworth Art Gallery, University
of Manchester: 1.

471

Index

Numerals in italics indicate illustration
numbers.

Addison, Joseph 98
Adrian-Nilsson, Gosta 218
Aiken, Conrad 238-9
a.k.a. Cassius Clay 117
Algren, Nelson 267, 272, 358, 444

The Devil's Stocking 267, 348-9

Never Come Morning 267-9, 2 78,

427-8
Ali 336

Ali, Laila 369, 448
Ali, Muhammad 7-8, 10-11, 55, 124,

282-3, 321-2, 326-49, 351-8, 360-66,

373, 382, 384, 386-7, 390, 436-41,

443-4, 446, 452, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116,

117, 121, 130, 145, 147
Allingham, William 82-3
Ames, Jonathan 451
Amos, Emma 453

Muhammad Ali 384 130
Anasi, Robert 389
Anderson, Sherwood 216-17, 236, 409,

423
Andrews, Benny

The Champion 331-2, 387, 111
Angelo, Harry 49, 55
Angelou, Maya 283, 322-3
Angels with Dirty Faces 268
Anstey, Christopher 33

Memoirs of the Noted Buckhorse 33-5,

396

The Patriot 33-4, 49
Antheil, George 246
Apollinaire, Guillaume 232, 249

'Un terrible boxeur' 225, 93
Apollonius 12, 394
Apple, Max 371
Arbuckle, Fatty 155, 409, 68
Aristotle 14-15, 25

Armstrong, Louis 183, 314
Arnold, Karl

Women Boxers, Berlin 59
Arp, Jean 256
Arroyo, Eduardo

Direct Panama 122
Artaud, Antonin 254
Attell, Abe 170
Aurelius, Marcus 14
Avedon, Richard 453
Ayer, A. J. 452

Bacchylides 18-19

Baden-Powell, Robert 403-4

Baer, Max 221, 257, 283-4, 287, 307, 316

Baker, Josephine 232-3

Baldwin, James 324-5, 335, 352, 354,

358-60, 453, 119
Baraka, Amiri 325-6, 329, 338, 342-5,

439-40
Barclay, Captain Robert 46, 124
Baricco, Alessandro 370-71
Barnes, Djuna 218, 247, 89
Barrett, Eaton Stannard 50, 397-8
Barthes, Roland 128, 151
Basquiat, Jean-Michel 371, 386, 448-9,

453-4, 150
Battle of the Blues 373, 129
Battling Butler 221
Baumeister, Willi 226-7, 95
Beach, Sylvia 246
Beatty, Pakenham 120
Becker, Jurek 430
Beckett, Joe 120, 214
Beenie Man 373, 151
Belcher, George

Time & Judgement at the National

Sporting Club 64
Belcher, James (Jem) 42, 48, 69, 124, 397,

400, 17
Belcher, Tom 52

Bell, Madison Smartt 431

Bellamy, Edward 405

Bellow, Saul 357, 435

Bellows, George 73, 119, 406, 408, 415

Both Members of This Club 194-5, 82

Business- men's Class, ymca 32

Club Night 118

Dempsey andFirpo 221, 365, 377, 87

Preliminaries to the Big Bout 69

Ringside Seats 221

Stag at Sharkey's 118, 195, 211, 40

The White Hope 195, 83
The Bells of St Mary's 268
Bendigo 78-9, 86
Bennett, Arnold 121, 214
Bennett, Gwendolyn 233
Benton, Thomas Hart 225
Berg, Jackie 'Kid' 170, 411
Berlin, Irving 288

Berlin - The Symphony of a Great City 225
Besant, Walter

All Sorts and Conditions of Men 96,

403

East London 95-6
Beuys, Joseph 377
The Big Combo 277
The Birth of a Nation 156, 185, 201
Bishop, William H. 161-2
Bisset, Richard 397
Black and White 382-3
Black, Julian 281
Blackburn, Jack 281-2
Blackmore, R. D. 402
Blackwood, John 82-3
Bly, Nellie 157-8, 218
Body and Soul 261, 273, 277-8, 109
Bonnard, Pierre 232, 422
Borrow, George 77
Boswell, James 37, 42
Bowie, David 454
Bowles, Jane 220

472

The Boxer's Bride 221, 250, 63

The Boxing Boys 9, 43

Boys' Town 265, 268-9, 104

Braddock, James J. 257, 280, 284-6, 430

Brady, Mathewjjo

Brady, William A. 113, 153

Brain, Benjamin (Big Ben) 39, 62

Brecht, Bertolt 16-7, 67, 226, 228-30,

254-5, 434
Breitenstrater, Hans 226-7, 251
Breton, Andre 247-9
Britton, Jack 218
Broken Blossoms 156-7
Bronte, Branwell57, 74-5
Bronte, Charlotte 74, 400, 404
Brooks, Gwendolyn 332, 438-9
Broughton, John 29-37, 39, 50, 68, 91,

395, 400, 409, 12
Broun, Heywood 213-4
Brown, Drew Bundini 365, 440
Brown, H. Rap 331
Brown, James 338
Brown, Lloyd L. 307-8
Brown, 'Panama' Al 232-3, 60, 122
Brown, Rita Mae 375
Brown, Sterling 191-2
Browne, Moses 33, 124
Browning, Robert 84
Buchanan, Robert 386
Buckhorse 33-5
Budgett, Graham 387
Bukowski, Charles 371
Bullard, Eugene 233
Burke, Jack 120
Burke, James 'Deaf 78-9, 86
Burke, Kenneth 315, 433~4, 437
Burnett, Frances Hodgson 403
Burns, Tommy 181
Burroughs, Edgar Rice 184-5, 407
Busto, Ana 455
Byrom, John 33
Byron, George Gordon, Lord 50, 53-9, 61,

65, 75, 118, 145, 256, 375, 398, 412, 18,

Don Juan 50, 52-3, 58, 399

Cagney, James 261-4, 268, 270, 276, 427,

103
Cahan, Abraham 167, 351

Yekl 166-9, 267, 411
Cain and Mabel 276
Cain, James M. 274
Campbell, Jim 454
Camus, Albert 7
Cannon, Jimmy 318, 320
Capitaine, Alicide 164
Carbo, Frankie 271, 320, 322

Carlyle, Thomas 400, 402

Camera, Primo 270, 282-3, 308, 312, 321

Carpentier, Georges 121, 184, 210, 213-14,

218-19, 228, 232, 234-5, 246, 254,

267, 415-16, 419, 421, 425
Carter, Jimmy 286

Carter, Rubin 'Hurricane' 348-9, 442
Casanova 395
Caunt, Ben 78
Cayton, William 341, 440
Cendrars, Blaise 250
Cerdan, Marcel 271, 360
Chambers, Arthur 91-2
The Champ 264,106
Champion 128, 264, 277, 407
The Champion 156
The Champion Annual 57
Chandler, Raymond 272, 274

The Big Sleep 274-6, 428-9
Chaplin, Charles 155-6, 215, 245, 409,

425, 6S
Charles, Ezzard 305, 346, 357
Choynski, Joe 169
Churchill, Winston 180
Cicero 16
City Lights 156
Clair, Rene 248
Clare, John 53, 74-5
Clay, Cassius see Ali, Muhammad
Cleaver, Eldridge 324, 329, 342, 345
The Close of the Battle 47
Clowes, Butler

The Female Bruisers 10
Coady, Robert 189, 414
Cobbett, William 46-50, 61-2, 65, 77, 357,

397
Cocteau, Jean 232-3
Cohen, Leah Hager 370, 455
Coleman, James

Box (ahhareturnahoui) 388, 454
Colette 232, 420

Cheri 219-20
Collett, Jon jo
Collins, Wilkie 404
Colman, George 35, 38
The Coming Champion 187, 54
Conn, Billy 305, 307-8, 454
Cooke, Alistair 285
Cooper, Henry 330, 358, 436
Cooper, James Fenimore

The Last of the Mohicans 364-6
Corbett, James ('Gentleman Jim') 107, 113,

152-3, 157-9, 166, 169-70, 179-80,

184, 206, 239, 404, 408-10, 418, 429,

67
Cortazar, Julio 211, 376-7, 418
Cortez, Jane 339

Couch, Jane 369

Counted Out see The Knockout

Courtney, Peter 152

Cowley, Malcolm 248, 425

Cranmer, Clarence 115

Cravan, Arthur 232, 249-50, 377, 99

Crews, Harry 449, 455

Cribb, Tom 44-6, 52, 55-6, 58, 61-2, 70,

73, 77-8, 84, 124, 15, 47, 4%
Cross, Leach 170
Crowder, Henry 183, 191
Cruikshank, George 52,34, 48
Cruikshank, Robert 52, 48
Cunard, Nancy 191, 219
Curtiz, Michael 265

D'Amato, Cus 367, 446

Darwin, Charles 86, 158-9, 162, 402, 407

Davis, Miles 283, 341, 373, 440

Dazey, Frank 187

Debord, Guy 377

Decroux, Etienne 254

De La Hoya, Oscar 367, 390

DeLillo, Don 381-2, 388

Dempsey, Jack 8, 121, 146, 209-19, 222-3,
228, 230, 238-9, 245-6, 256-61,
268-70, 276, 307, 309, 320, 322, 324,
331, 347, 350, 360, 373, 382, 387-8,
418-19, 421, 425, 427-8, 437, 87, 100,
101, 148

Denny, Reginald 213

De Quincey, Thomas 57, 60-61

Dermee, Paul 248

Diagne, Blaise 235, 422

Di Carni, Alberto 396

Dickens, Charles 80-81, 97, 401
Bleak House 99-100, 105, 404
David Copperfield 100-3, 105
Domhey and Son 99, 105
Great Expectations 100, 102-5, 160
Hard Times 100-1
Martin Chuzzle wit 404
The Mystery of Edwin Drood 99, 105-6
Nicholas Nicklehy 97-8, 100-1, 404
The Old Curiosity Shop 98, 397
Oliver Twist 101, 124, 397, 34
The Pickwick Papers 77, 97-8, 100, 404

Dietrich, Marlene 228, 421

Dio Chrystostom 19-21

Disraeli, Benjamin 402
Sybil 81-2, 125

Dixon, George 178

Do the Right Thing 383-4, 452-3

Donkor, Godfried

Financial Times Boxers, No. 2 385-6,
125

Donnelly, Ned 120-21

473

Dos Passos, John 285, 357

Nineteen Nineteen 170, 214, 223, 239
Double Indemnity 274, 276, 428
Douglas, Buster 367, 385
Douglas, John Sholto see Queensberry,

Marquess of
Douglass, Frederick 177-8, 189, 191-2,

339, 412, 77

The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, an

American Slave 175-7

My Bondage and My Freedom 177, 412

The Life and Times of Frederick

Douglass 177
Dover, Robert 32
Dowling, Francis 124
Dowling, Vincent 77
Doyle, Arthur Conan 8, 108, 121

'The Adventure of the Three Gables'

194

'The Croxley Master '12 1-2, 147

The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard 109

The House ofTemperley 405

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes 109

Rodney Stone 107-8, 122, 397, 35

The Sign of Four 109
Dreiser, Theodore 112, 405

Sister Carrie 112, 128
Dryden, John 12
Du Bois, W.E.B. 178, 185-6, 188, 235, 414,

432
Duchamp, Marcel 246, 425

'The Boxing Match' 246-7
Du Maurier, George 231
Dunbar, Paul Lawrence 178, 415
Dundee, Angelo 438
Duran, Roberto 257, 367
Dutch Sam 69-70, 81, 168
Dylan, Bob 320, 338, 348-51

Eakins, Thomas 115, 117, 120, 149, 406,

408

Between Rounds 115, 118, 148, 52

Salutat 115-16, 148, 157, 38

Seven Males, Nude, Two Boxing at Cen-
tre 149, 66

Taking the Count 115, 148

Two Male Students Posing as Boxers

149, 65
Early, Gerald 316, 334, 433
Edison, Thomas 151-2, 164
Edwards, Harry

The Revolt of the Black Athlete 330-31
Egan, Pierce 32, 37, 39, 44~5, 48, 52-3, 65,

70, 76-7, 83, 128, 167, 318, 326, 397-8,

408

Boxiana 43, 47, 56-8, 74, 107, 398-9

Life in London 52-3, 73-4, 83, 398, 48

Eisenstein, Sergei 253-4
Eliot, George 8, 82

Adam Bede 85-6, 101, 402

Middlemarch 85

The Mill on the Floss 86-7, 27
Eliot, T. S. 238-9, 310, 327, 423
Ellis, Jimmy 350-51
Ellison, Ralph 89, 284, 314-15, 324, 344,

430-34, 437

Invisible Man 310-14, 344-5, 373,

432-3
Ellroy, James 436
Entr'Acte 248-9
Epstein, Jacob 241

Faber, James 32
Fanon, Franz 342
Farington, Joseph 69
Farnol, Jeffrey 405, 443
Farrell, James T. 357

Studs Lonigan 169, 270, 428

'Twenty-five Bucks' 272, 424
Faulkner, William 310, 357

Absalom, Absalom! 201-2

'The Bear' 419

The Sound and the Fury 423
Fauset, Jessie 348
Felixmuller, Conrad

The Booth Boxer 96
The Female Combatants, or Who Shall 4s
Fergusson, Robert 49
Field, James 38
Fielding, Henry 34, 36, 38, 41, 162, 395

Joseph Andrews 34-6

Sham el a 34

Tom 'Jones 34-6
Figg, James 26, 28, 33, 50, 68, 394, 400, 9
Fink, Larry 391
Fight Club 370

Firpo, Luis 186, 210-11, 245, 87
Fisher, Bud 207-8, 417, 86
Fitzgerald, F. Scott 214-15, 357, 419

The Great Gatsby 239, 414

Tender is the Night 240, 423
Fitzgerald, Zelda

Save Me the Waltz 220, 423
Fitzsimmons, Robert 107, 113, 119, 146,

152-3, 158, 166, 184, 206, 404, 67
Fitzsimmons, Rose 158
Flaxman, John 68
Flechtheim, Alfred 226
Fleischer, Nat 212
Fletcher, Horace 124
Flowers, Tiger 196, 422
Flynn, Jim 185, 415
Ford, Ford Madox 236, 420
Ford, Richard 455

Foreman, Carl 264

Foreman, Freeda 369

Foreman, George 12, 333~4, 336, 356-7,

438, 443, 113
Forster, E. M. 450-51
Fox, Billy 271, 273
Fox, Richard Kyle 110-11, 113
Francis, Kid 196
Fraser, George MacDonald 397
Frazier, Jacqui 369
Frazier, Joe 332-4, 344~5, 352-5, 438
Frost, Robert 111, 405, 419

Galen 394

Gallico, Paul 209-10, 212-13, 261, 287,

408, 426
Galton, Francis 106
Gammon, Reginald

The Young Jack Johnson 339-40
Gans, Joe 178, 195-6
Gardner, Leonard

Fat City 360-61, 449
Garfunkel, Art 349-50, 442
Garvey, Marcus 235, 285-6, 339, 414
Gast, Leon 333, 336-7
Gates, Henry Louis 316, 346, 449
Gayle, Addison Jr 324
Geertz, Clifford 9
Genet, Jean 375
Gericault, Theodore 231

Les Boxeurs 72-3, 23

Two Boxers Facing Left 73, 24
Gerould, Katherine Fullerton 218-19
Gibson, Truman 320
Giovanni, Nikki 346
Girard, Rene 9
Gissing, George 164
Godfrey, Captain John 39, 395
Goebbels, Joseph 284-5, 430
Gogarty, Deirdre 369
Golden Boy 266-7, 273, 278, 107
Goldsmith, Oliver 38
Golinkin, Joseph Webster

The Long Count 88
Gonzalez, Babs 373
Gordon, Belle 164, 410
Goss, Clay 437
Graham, Robert

Monument to Joe Louis 384-5, 152
Graziano, Rocky 363

Somebody Up There Likes Me 319, 140
The Great White Hope 340, 146
The Great White Hype 369, 126
Gregory, Horace 258
Gregson, Bob 52, 69
Griffith, D. W. 156-7, 185, 201
Griffith, Emile 320, 352-4

474

Grosley, Pierre Jean 28, 37
Grossman, Rudolf 226-7
Grosz, George 225-8
Guillen, Nicolas 447

Halberstam, Judith 375

Haley, Alex 335

Hall, G. Stanley 115, 406

A Halloween Party, Boxing Match 72

Halsband, Michael

'Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel

Basquiat as Boxers' 150
Hammett, Dashiell

Red Harvest 272-3
Hammons, David 454

Champ 387, 124
Hamnett, Nina 250
Hapgood, Hutchins 169
Hardy, Thomas

The Mayor of Casterbridge 77, 401
Haring, Keith 450

Boxer 375, 123
The Harder They Fall 321-2, 362
Harrington, Oliver 324, 344, 441, 144
Harris, Harry 170
Hartnet, A. S.

'Men's Club in Connection with Holy

Trinity Church, Shoreditch'33
Hayden, Robert 432
Haydon, Benjamin 69, 400
Hayes, George A.

Bare-Knuckles 31
Hazlitt, William 61-3, 66-7, 69, 118, 217,

399-400

'The Fight' 63-6, 73-4, 107, 356-7,

399, 444

Lib or Am oris 65-6
Hearst, William Randolph 209, 212, 215,

281, 418
Heenan, John C. 75, 79-83, 86, 92-3, 95,

166, 203, 205-6, 401, 25, 26
Heidegger, Martin 424
Heinz, W.C. 435
Hellman, Lillian 431
Heman, Louis

Battling Malone, Pugiliste 199, 8s
Hemingway, Ernest 12, 220, 235-8, 243,

246, 256, 267, 285, 310, 357, 371, 411,

416, 419, 421-3, 433, 444

'Banal Story' 217-8

'The Battler' 197-9

'Fifty Grand' 211, 272

'The Killers' 236, 271, 278, 429

'The Light of the World' 196-9

'A Matter of Color' 195-6, 198

A Moveable Feast 236, 422

The Sun Also Rises 173-4, 196, 239-40

The Torrents of Spring 236
Henri, Robert 117-18
Henry, 0. 169, 195, 406, 408
Hickman, Bill 64
Himes, Chester 308
His People 170
Hitchcock, Alfred 394
Hitler, Adolf 226, 228, 284-5, 288
Hoff, Charles 362
Hogarth, William 28, 36, 38, 67-9, 118,

119, 394, 20
Holiday, Billie 440
Hollinghurst, Alan

The Swimming-Pool Library 375-6
Holmes, Larry 334, 369
Holmes, Oliver Wendell Sr. 93
Holyfield, Evander 368, 383, 390, 452
Homer 11, 14, 18, 25, 33, 87, 128, 203, 205,

207, 346

Iliad 9-12, 381, 442

Odyssey 9, 11
Horace 16, 19, 393-4
Hornung, E. W. 405
House, Richard 450
Howard, Robert E. 429
Howson, Peter

Boxer 1390, 131
Hoyt, Satch 387, 389
Hughes, Langston 192, 282, 308-9, 344-5,

441
Hughes, Thomas 90-91, 95

Tom Brown's Schooldays 89, 95, 109, 29

Tom Brown at Oxford 91, 403
Hulme, T. E. 241

Humphries, Richard 38-40, 42, 56, 44
Hurston, Zora Neale 191, 346, 442
Huysmans, Joris-Karl 164

If I Wuz the Man I Wuz S3
Ingoldby, Thomas 86
Irving, Washington 53, 59, 402, 404
It's Always Fair Weather 319

Jack Johnson 341

Jackson, John 39, 49-50, 52-3, 55, 58-9,

69-70, 72, 77, 397, 21
Jackson, Peter 175, 177-81, 189, 239, 408
Jacobs, Jim 341, 440
Jacobs, Joe 228, 284, 379, 421
Jacobs, Mike 281-2, 285
James, Henry 93, 153, 219
Jean, Wyclef 336
Jeanette, Joe 181, 233
Jefferson, Thomas 44
Jeffries, Jim 107, 119, 145, 182-5, 189-91,

195, 202, 207-9, 236, 312-3, 340, 416,

Johansson, Ingemar 322, 324
Johnson, Jack 8, 145, 169, 177-8, 181-97,

199-202, 207-9, 211, 217, 233-4, 238,

241, 250, 282-3, 285, 287, 309-10,

312-15, 322, 328, 331, 334-5, 339-41,

343-4, 348, 360, 387, 413-15, 422,

424-5, 79, So, 99
Johnson, James Weldon 178, 181, 185,

187-9, 314, 341, 433

Black Manhattan 175

The Autobiography of an Ex- Colored

Man 187, 432
Johnson, Samuel 28, 37, 42
Johnson, Tom 62
Jones, Claudia 288, 133
Jones, James 321
Jones, LeRoi see Baraka, Amiri
Jones, Roy Jr 7, 367, 383
Jones, Thorn 21, 389
Joyce, James 89, 310, 313-14, 416-18

Finnegans Wake 207-8, 418

Stephen Hero 206, 417

Ulysses 81, 153, 202-7, 417
Joyce, Stanislaus 202, 206-7
Jungle Fever 384

Kean, Edmund 69

Kearns, Jack 209-10, 231

Keaton, Buster 221-2

Keats, John 55, 58, 74, 315

Kennedy, John F. 326, 328, 353, 443

Ketchel, Stanley 196-7, 415-16

Khan, Amir 257, 448

Kid Galahad 265, 427, 429

Killens, John Oliver 347, 437

The Killers 277-8, 429

Kilpper, Thomas 387

Kilrain, Jake 111-13, 157, 419

Kim, Byron 386

Kim, DukKoo 447

King, Don 333, 362, 367-9, 447

King, Martin Luther 305-7, 326, 329, 335,

347, 134
Kingsley, Charles 95, 402
Kipling, Rudyard 182
Kitaj,R.B.377
The Knockout 155, 409, 68
Kubrick, Stanley 435
Kushner, Tony 375

Lambert, Alix 387

Lambert, Constant 424

La Motta, Jake 21, 124, 271, 273, 323, 333,

360-61, 365, 271
Langford, Sam 181, 432
Lardner, John 184, 318, 324
Lardner, Ring 195, 209, 212-13, 318, 419

47 r >

'The Battle of the Century' 214-15

'Champion' 278, 407
Laubreaux, Alin 199
Laurie, Annie 158
Lawrence, Jacob

Frederick Douglass series no. 10 77
Lawrence, Sir Thomas 70
Leadbelly 190
Le Corbusier 424
Ledoux, Charles 196
Lee, Gus 455
Lee, Spike 383-4, 453
Lehmann, Rosamund 220
Leibovitz, Annie

Women 370, 128
Leonard, Benny 171-2, 7s
Leonard, Sugar Ray 367, 390
Levi, Primo 430
Lewes, George 82, 401
Lewis, Ted 'Kid' 82, 170
Lewis, Lennox 107, 372, 447
Lewis, Wyndham 236-9, 241, 243, 245-6,

424

Combat No. 3 243, 98
Liebling, A. J. 257, 318-19, 324, 326-7, 353,

434, 449
The Life of Jimmy Dolan 265, 427
Lincoln, Abraham 181, 183, 288, 310, 79
Lindsay, Vachel 112-13, 154, 357, 405
Lingon, Glenn 386
Liston, Sonny 322, 324-5, 327-9, 331-3,

345, 347, 353-5, 359, 391, 440
LLCoolJ 382-3, 452
Locke, Alain 187, 191
Loeb, Harold 411
Lois, George 331, 349
London, Charmian 165, 410, 73
London, Jack 115, 128, 145, 160, 181-3, 217,

251, 348, 371, 42, 73

The Abysmal Brute 184, 212, 407, 409

'The Birth-Mark' 410

The Call of the Wild 124, 407

A Daughter of the Snows 164-5, 410

The Game 160-61, 449

John Barleycorn 115, 145, 401, 407

Martin Eden 145, 151-2, 160

'The Mexican'128, 253

'A Piece of Steak' 125-8, 272, 361, 408

'The Somnambulists' 126

The Sea-Wolf 410
Louis, Joe 8, 79, 166, 187, 212, 257,

280-88, 290, 305-11, 313-16, 320,

322-4, 326, 329, 331, 342, 344, 347-8,

359-6o, 373, 429-31, 437, 105, no, 133,

134, 135, 152
Love in the Ring 221
Low, William

'The Sympathetic Spectator' 213, 56
Loy, Mina 218, 250, 99
Lucilius 22-5
Ludovici, Anthony 241
Luks, George 117,39
Lunacharsky, Anatoly 251
Luttrell, Henry 59
Lynch, Benny 261, 102

McCoy, Kid 157, 37

McCoy, Memphis Minnie 309

McKay, Claude 189, 195, 414

Home to Harlem 187

'If We Must Die' 190-91

The Negroes in America 192, 234-5
McMein, Neysa 219
McVea, Sam 233
Mabel's Married Life 155-6, 409
Madden, Owney 270-71
Mailer, Norman 12, 124, 325-6, 332,

337-8, 345, 348, 351-9, 371-2, 434,

442-4, 449-50, 119

Advertisements for Myself 353, 358

An American Dream 353, 443

The Armies of the Night 351, 358

The Deer Park 352-3, 449

The Fight in, 356-7, 443

'King of the Hill' 354-5

'Ten Thousand Words a Minute' 354

'The Time of Her Time' 352
Major, Clarence 416
Malcolm X 326-30, 334~5, 339, 343, 439

The Autobiography 280-81
Mancini, Alf 74
Mandela, Nelson 429
Mandell, Sammy 170
Man Ray 232, 421-2
Mansfield, Katherine 418
March, Joseph Moncure

The Set-Up 199-200, 84
Marciano, Rocky 305, 316, 322-3, 363,

373, 386
Marinetti, Filippo 240-41
Marshall, Benjamin 69

James Belcher 17

Mr John Jackson 21
Marti, Jose ill
Martin, Christy 369, 127
Marx, Groucho 172, 182, 423, 76
Marx, Harpo 172, 307, 76
Marx, Karl 146
Masefieldjohn 148
Mason, Henry 74
Masson, Andre 232
Mauriac, Francois 214
Maurice, F. D. 95
Mayakovsky, Vladimir 250

Mead, Margaret 276
Melville, Herman

Moby-Dick 78-9, 356

Typee 174
Mencken, H.L. 218
Mendoza, Daniel 36, 38-42, 49-53, 56, 113,

125, 168, 205, 396, 398-9, 411, 44

Memoirs 38-41, 396

The Art of Boxing 40
Meyerhold, Vsevolod 252-4
The Milky Way 264-5, 427
Miller, Davis 438-9
Miller, Dorie 431
Million Dollar Baby 389
Miro, Joan 232, 235
Misson, Henri 37, 41-2
Molineaux, Tom 44-6, 56, 73, 78, 124,

166, 174, 344, 16, 19, 47
Monkey on My Back 361
Monnier, Adrienne 246
Montez, Paul-Felix 386-7

The Gloves 387, 132
Moore, Archie 318, 322, 324, 326
Moore, Davey 319, 348
Moore, Lorrie 450
Moore, Marianne 327
Moore, Thomas 46, 49-50, 58-9, 398,

402
Morning, Alice 422
Morrissey 388
Morrissey, John 93, 403
Morrison, Arthur

A Child ofthejago 97

Cunning Murrell 147, 404

'Three Rounds' 125-6, 128, 147, 408
Morrison, Toni 334
Moser, Joseph 40
Motley, Archibald J.

The Plotters 192-3, 55
Muhammad, Elijah 328-32, 336, 339
Mulfinger, Jane 387
Murray, David Christie 107
Murray, Yxta Maya 446
Musil, Robert

The Confessions of Young Tbrless 424

The Man Without Qualities 242-3
Mussolini, Benito 228, 241
Muybridge, Eadweard 149, 242

Athletes Boxing so
My Life as a Dog 435

Nabokov, Vladimir 251

'The Boxer's Girl' 426

'The Fight' 426

Glory 426

Lolita 232, 268
Naipaul, V. S. 307

476

Neal, Larry 342, 344~5
Neate, Bill 52, 64, 76, 395
The Negro Soldier 288
Nelson, Battling 158, 407
Newton, A. J. 404, 421
Newton, Annie 421
Nicholson, Sir William

An Almanac of Twelve Sports 180, 78
Nietzsche, Friedrich 241-2
Norris, Frank 119, 164, 166, 407, 410

McTeague 151, 405
Norris, Jim 320
Norton, Ken 334
Nothing Sacred 278, 108

Oates, Joyce Carol 209, 333, 367-8, 372,

449-50

'The Boyfriend' 450

'Golden Gloves' 450

'In Memoriam'450

On Boxing 372, 429, 450, 454~6

What I Lived For 450

You Must Remember This 374-5, 450
Ochs, Phil 320, 442
October 254

O'Donnell, Steve 239, 423
Odets, Clifford 266-7, 273, 276, 427-9
Okudzeto, Senam 374
Oldenburg, Claes 451
Oliver, Douglas 376
O'Neill, Eugene 214, 419
On the Waterfront 320-21, 360, 368, 428
Onomastos of Smyrna 393
Orwell, George 97, 126, 127, 408
Ostojic, Tanja 451
Ovid 24

Owens, Jesse 286, 307, 331, 342
Oxberry, William 56

Painter, Ned 69, 75, 400

Palahniuk, Chuck 370

Palermo, Blinky 271, 320

Palooka 270, 427

Pancake, Breece D'J 390

Paret, Benny 320, 352-4

Parker, Dorothy 223

Parliament 439

Patchen, Kenneth 277

Pater, Walter 91

Patterson, Floyd 318, 322, 324-5, 329-30,

345, 353-5, 359"6o, 367, 387, 436
Pausanias 15, 393

Pearce, Henry (The Game Chicken) 42
Pechstein, Max

Boxer in the Ring 248, 62
Pepys, Samuel 26, 37
Pfeiffer, Paul 382

Philostratus 8-9, 24

Picabia, Francis 246, 248

Pickens, William 183

Picket, Lynn Snowdon 390, 448, 455

Pindar 18-20, 25, 32

Pinkney, Elliott

Visions and Motions 339, 118
Piper, Keith 387
Plato 7, 14, 16, 393
Plimpton, George 337
Plutarch 14

Polonsky, Abraham 273
Poole, William (Bill the Butcher) 93

Porter, Cole 435
Pound, Ezra 67, 235-9, 243, 254-5, 423,

434
The Prizefighter and the Lady 221, 418
Proctor, B. W. 49, 397
Propertius 24, 394
Proust, Marcel 231-2, 421
Public Enemy 382-3
The Public Enemy 261
The Pugilist at Rest 22, 7
Pullum, Texan Joe 308-9
Pythagoras of Samos 393

Quarry, Jerry 332, 350-51

Queen Mary Psalter 8

Queensberry, John Sholto Douglas, 8th

Marquess of 91-2, 403
Quintilian 393

Raging Bull 21, 277, 323, 338, 360-64, 368,

384, 444-5
Raine, Craig 389-90
Ramos, Sugar 319
Randolph, A. Philip 287-8, 414
Rector, Enoch 152-4, 157
Reed, Ishmael 337, 341-3, 347, 440-41,

446
Reynolds, John Hamilton 63

The Fancy 59-60, 63, 73-4
Reynolds, Sir Joshua 66-8, 400
Richardson, Jonathan 33
Richardson, Samuel 35
Richler, Mordecai 443
Richmond, Bill 44, 69, 174
Rickard, Tex 182, 209-10, 215, 218
Rigaut, Jacques 248
Rijker, Lucia 369
Roberts, William

The Boxing Match, Novices 7, 1
Robeson, Paul 187, 309, 81
Robinson, Sugar Ray 315-16, 322, 328,

333, 341, 360-61, 380, 387, 143
Rocky 115, 124, 338, 361-5, 445, 121
Rocky v 386

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 286-7, 326

Roosevelt, Theodore 95, 113-14, 182, 185,
425

Rosenbloom, Slapsie Maxie 171

Ross, Barney 260-61, 273

Rossen, Robert 273

Rossi, John

Athleta Brittanicus 69-70, 22

Rotella, Carlo 388-91, 451

Roth, Herman 170-71

Roth, Philip 170-71, 377, 451
American Pastoral 379
The Ghost Writer 378-9
The Human Stain 380-81, 451-2
I Married a Communist 379-81, 451
The Plot Against America 451
Portnoy's Complaint 378, 451

Roth, Joseph 411

Rowlandson, Thomas 40, 14

Roxborough, John 281-2

Runyon, Damon 209-10, 212-13, 230-31,
269-70, 272, 424, 428-30

Ruttman, William 225

Rysbrack, Michael 400

Sackler, Howard 340

St Augustine 17

St Paul 15, 91

Sal Dab Giving Monsieur a Receipt in Full

28, 11
Samson-Korner, Paul 226, 421
Sanchez, Sonia 339
Sandow, Eugen 205, 231, 237
Sassu, Aligi 241

Pugilatori 242, 61
Saunders, Raymond 340
Sayers, Tom 79-83, 86, 92-3, 95, 107, 203,

205-6, 401, 25, 26
Scanlon, Bob 220, 223-4
Schiele, Egan

The Fighter 243, 97
Schmeling, Max 79, 210, 221, 226-8, 255,

257, 284-6, 288, 305, 310, 312, 379,

381, 384, 421, 430, no
School Daze 383
Schulberg, Budd 172, 311, 321, 327, 331-2,

384, 413, 435, 437
Schultz, Dutch 270-71
Schuyler, George 189
Scott, Walter 397

'The Two Drovers' 47-8
Scorsese, Martin 21, 93, 124, 221, 323,

360-63, 444-5
Sekules, Kate 370, 389, 455
Serling, Rod 322
The Set-Up 274, 277, 279, 362
Shange, Ntozake lis

477

Sharkey, Jack 208, 228, 257, 270, 379, 418,

421
Sharkey, Tom 118, 164, 169
Shaw, George Bernard 88, 120, 145-6,

153-4, 189, 214, 216-17

The Admirable Bashville 120

Cashel Byron's Profession 120-22,

159-62

Major Barbara 122

Mrs Warren's Profession 122
Shaw, Irwin 257
Shaw, John 75
She Hate Me 384
Sherman, Cindy 391
Shersheevich, Vadim 241
Shipp, Matthew 373, 449
Shulkin, Anatol

American Life 225, 94
Shulman, Arlene 389
Siki, Battling 234-5, 264, 344, 415, 422-3
Simende, Roger
Simmons, Gary 387
Simon, Paul 349-50, 442
Sinclair, Jo 258
Sinclair, Upton

The Jungle 114-15, 230
Slack, Jack 37
Slavin, Frank 180-81
Sloan, John 117, 415, 39
Smith, Billy 115-16, 148, 157
Smith, Gunboat 184
Smith, Jem 111
Southey, Robert 40, 59
Soyinka, Wole 434
Spencer, Herbert 407
Spinks, Leon 334, 444
Spinks, Michael 367, 446
Spirit of Youth 278, 431
Spring, Tom 52, 74-7, 124, 395
Stallone, Sylvester 115, 334, 362-3, 445,

121
Steele, Richard 41
Steffens, Lincoln 234-5
Stein, Gertrude 236, 415
Steinbeck, John 266, 357, 428

'The Chrysanthemums' 279-80

The Grapes of Wrath 266

Of Mice and Men 270, 279
Steinberg, Paul 430
Stenberg, Georgii 251, 63
Stenberg, Vladimir, 251, 63
Stevenson, Teofilo 447
Stillman, Lou 319, 140
Stolz, Allie 451

Stowe, Harriet Beecher 177, 180, 412
Stratford, John 32
Stuart, Dan, 152

Suckling, Sir John 32

Suetonius 15-16

Sugar, Bert 448

Sullivan, John L. 92, 110-13, 119, 157-8,

166, 169, 179, 181, 184, 201, 218, 257,

371-2, 405, 410, 419, 36
The Superfight 445
Superman vs. Muhammad AH 338, 364-6,

120

Surtees, R. S. 76, 401
Swandos, Harvey 324
Szenassy, Sandor 453

Tacitus 393

Taylor, Frederick 252

Taylor, George 36, 38, 68, 20

Tenreiro, Francisco Jose 284-5

Terence 16

Terme Boxer see The Pugilist at Rest

Thackeray, William Makepeace 83, 402

Barry Lyndon 397, 404

Vanity Fair 83-4, 88-9, 402
Theocritus 21-2, 33, 208
This is the Army 288
Thornton, Bonnell 35, 38
Thurman, Wallace 201
Thurtell, John 76, 398
Till, Emmett 334
Tipton Slasher 84, 107
Tisdale, Danny 385-6
Tolson, Melvin B. 344, 431
Toole, F.X. 390
Toomer, Jean 193
Torres, Jose 333, 367, 437
Trollope, Anthony 402
Trowbridge, W.R.H. 184-5
Tully, Jim 187, 278, 427
Tunney, Gene 121, 146, 211, 215-17, 219,

228, 245-6, 256-7, 331, 388, 419
Turner, Charles 69

The Interior of the Fives Court 49

Mr John Jackson 21
Twain, Mark 113, 310, 405
Tyson, Mike 8, 257, 367-9, 382-4, 390,

446-7, 452-3, 149
Tzara, Tristan 247-8, 377

Updike, John 357, 374- 450
Urrea, Luis Alberto 390

Valentino, Rudolph 222-3, 90
Van Dongen, Kees 250, 425
Van Loan, Charles E. 172-3, 411
Veblen, Thorstein 122-3
Veragi, Orio 422
Vertov, Dziga 253
Vidal, Gore 357-8

Vidor, King 264, 266

Virgil 11-12, 14, 18, 32, 33, 128

Aeneid 12-14, 32

Georgics 12

Wacquant, Loi'c 455-6

Wade, Alex 448

Wakelin, Johnny 446

Walcott, Jersey Joe 323, 305

Walcott, Joe 178

Ward, Bill 39, 42

Warhol, Andy 335, 371, 448-9, 150

Muhammad Ali: Hand on Chin 114
Washington, Booker T. 178, 186, 192
Washington, Raymond 347
Weems, Carrie Mae 384
Wells, Ida B. 186
West, Mae 219, 416, 427

The Constant Sinner 200-1, 416
Wepner, Chuck 362
When We Were Kings 333, 335-7, 116
White, Walter 187, 287
Whiteaker, Bob 396
Whitehead, Paul 37-8, 395
Whitman, Walt 93, 249
Wilde, Jimmy 208, 418
Williams, William Carlos 194, 220, 225-6
Willard, Jess 186-7, 196, 209, 214, 218,

268, 285, 382, 418, 427
Willis, Harry 186
Wills, Gary 7
Wilson, Angus 107
Wilson, John 57-8
Winckelmann, Johann 20
Windham, William 42-3, 46
Winner Take All 261-5
Wirtz, Arthur 320
Wodehouse, P. G. 120, 406, 419
Wolfe, Tom 110, 353, 443~4
Women Boxers 70
Woroner, Murray 364, 445
Wren, P. C.422
Wright, Richard 267, 283-4, 286-7, 307,

309-11, 315, 367, 432

Black Boy 311-12

Lawd Today 309-10, 432

Yeats, Jack

Not Pretty hut Useful 41
Yevtushenko, Yevgeny 426

Zangwill, Israel 168
Zinberg, Len 433
Zola, Emile 149-51

478

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