Put Your Dukes Up! Boxing Fiction to Rattle Your Teeth

Put Your Dukes Up! Boxing Fiction to Rattle Your Teeth The first boxing book I remember was  Lando  by Louis LAmour. Lando was one of the Sacketts, but if memory serves, he was the only Sackett tossed into a horrific Mexican prison. He survived with silver-dollar-bending strength and a hellacious skill-set of the fisticuffs variety. The Sacketts were always hard hombres, but Lando was particularly bad news. I idolized him and he lead me to more reading about boxing. These days, the more I read, and the more widely I read, the more aware I am that boxing, or The Sweet Science, holds an allure for many authors. Sometimes its an attempt to understand the sport. Sometimes its an attempt to prove that its not a sport at all, but a barbaric enterprise: sanctioned brutality and blood for the mob. Boxing gets romanticized, demonized, misunderstood constantly, but so many authors  write about it, or at least make the attempt. I started accumulating boxing books as a young boy, and now Im finally ready to admit that Im never going to stop. I couldnt get enough. Still cant. And Im not alone. Hemingway wrote about boxing and boxed himself, although he may have suffered from romantic delusions. Some of cinematic storyteller Stanley Kubricks best work is found in his boxing photography. Norman Mailer was passionate about people hitting each other, but thats no surprise.  Read the Battle Royal opening of Ellisons  Invisible Manit will rattle your teeth. Joyce Carol Oates  wrote a book called  On Boxing,  and its great! There are so many, but today I want to steer you towards four of my favorites. Here are a few that I would encourage anyone to start with. The Abysmal Brute  by Jack London This is a simple, straightforward story about a hulking (but sensitive and literate!) farmboy who comes to the big city and begins to dominate the world of boxing. He winds up fighting against the sports rampant corruption when he realizes that even though hes winning his fights, (and hed win regardless, hes the best boxer) the fights are fixed to make money for other men. En route to the happy and inspiring conclusionsomething you dont get often with Londontheres a love story, some skillful writing about boxing itself, and a great underdog story. Ive never heard anyone else talk about this book. Please read it. Im very lonely. Rope Burns: Stories From The Corner  by F.X. Toole This brilliant collection of boxing stories, which houses the story  Million Dollar Baby,  is one of the best short story collections Ive ever read, period. And its definitely my favorite collection of boxing stories. Toole was a professional cut man. He knew boxing and it shows. When someone says a book is gritty, I usually think of Rope Burns  and wonder if they know about it.  If you dont find Tooles writing persuasive, I fear you are simply beyond persuasion. The story of the books publication is pretty cool, too. One Ring Circus: Dispatches from the World of Boxing  by Katherine Dunn Did you read  Geek Love,  also by Dunn? Please do. Ir you read  Geek Love,  would you have expected its author to write a book of boxing essays? Me either. But Im happy to report that  One Ring Circus  was every bit as unputdownable for me, if less perverse and insane and obscene and with fewer mutilation-based cults The Pugilist at Rest  and  Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine  by Thom Jones Besides  Rope Burns,  these two collections by Jones are as close to the visceral craziness of boxing/fighting as anything else Ive read. Jones writes well about anger, men, mania, fists, addiction, and people edging ever closer to their limits. The stories in these books arent only about boxing, but they contain some of the finest boxing fiction Ive ever read. Read  Dynamite Hands  and tell me you werent tempted to go try the isometrics exercises against the nearest brick wall. If you like these two books, Joness  Cold Snap  will also delight and/or repulse you. And thats that. If you have any additions to this list, please tell me. Ive got space on my shelves for approximately one thousand more books about boxing. . _________________________ Sign up for our newsletter to have the best of Book Riot delivered straight to your inbox every two weeks. No spam. We promise. To keep up with Book Riot on a daily basis, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, , and subscribe to the Book Riot podcast in iTunes or via RSS. So much bookish goodnessall day, every day. Sign up to Unusual Suspects to receive news and recommendations for mystery/thriller readers. Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox.