On Boxing by Joyce Carol Oates Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of On Boxing
Book Review: For making me think about it in a different way
Summary: 5 Stars
I boxed a bit as a young person although nothing really serious. I did however know something about the 'game' as it was a real part of my childhood world. Our upstairs neighbor Ike Newman was a boxing manager. A friend of my father who he used to visit in his shack down by the Hudson River was a man who once had been a very good featherweight, Joe Bedell. I too in those years saw many fights especially on the Gillette Cavalcade of sports. The greatest of another era were there, the Sugar Ray- Lamotta fights, the sad spectacle of Joe Louis being stopped by a decent Rocky Marciano , the great pleasure of seeing lightweight Jewish Algerian boxer Alphone Halimi take the title in a dancing victory over a now nameless- for-me- opponent.
For me in those days 'boxing' was about 'toughness' and 'proving oneself a man'. There was also identity- politics and ethnic struggle with I naturally rooting for the Jewish fighters in those days. I also of course rooted for the underdog 'Negro' fighters when they were not fighting someone Jewish.
All this is perhaps irrelevant to a review or Oates thoughtful, insightful and as usual beautifully written essay on Boxing. She sees it not as a 'sport' but rather sees each boxing match as a ' story, a highly condensed dramatic story' She says 'when nothing much happens' failure is the story. She speaks about boxing as a masculine world involving highly complex and refined skill 'especially in the lighter divisions'. She distinguishes boxing from fighting. " Fighting seems to belong to something predating civilization , the instinct not merely to defend oneself - for when has the masculine ego ever been assuaged by so minimal a gesture? - but to attack another and to force him into absolute submission. Hence the electifying effect upon a typical fight crowd when fighting suddenly emerges out of boxing - the excitement when a boxer's face begins to bleed."
She speaks about boxers being angry and about anger being a fundamental emotion of boxing. She speaks of it too , and its 'obsessive appeal' as a kind of art form an'emotional experience impossible to convey in words' She also does not shy away from something many see its 'brutality' She discusses the humanitarian interest in doing away with the sport but defends it .
She raises many questions which I had not really thought about it.
I will only add that I have not really had any interest in boxing for many many years. One reason is that I am one of those weak- hearted people who just cannot bring himself to take pleasure from seeing someone beaten and bloody. My own mixed feelings about the sport I guess have shifted with the years. In youth I had more enthusiasm for it . In age while still understanding the excitement it can give I am more repelled by it.
This is a book well- worth reading for anyone who truly wishes to think again about the 'sport'.
Book Review: Not what you might expect
Summary: 3 Stars
I don't know what it is about Oates that makes so many, be they critics, fellow writers, or just average Joes and Janes, instinctively start spewing superlatives. Granted, some of what she's written is very good, but there are also those rather mediocre titles that seem to be praised to the skies for no other reason than that they're supposed to be, and that indeed appears to be the case with this little piece. It's amusing and it's informative, sure, but some kind of masterwork? Please.`On boxing' is best when Oates focuses on the hard facts, like who did what where and when. That was not was I was looking for when I first got my hands on it, but it's still better - by far - than the parts where she tries to decipher the meaning of it all, which read like undergraduate assignments in pretentiousness. As is common with knowledgeable writers, Oates cannot help involving complex notions to say simple things. A boxer is not knocked out, he is knocked out of Time (yes, big `T'). The opponent is not the opponent, he is the Other (yes, big `O'). This is a practice I absolutely loathe. What we've got here is supposed to be a book about boxing, and if I wanted `Being and Nothingness' I'd have bought it. Don't get me wrong - certainly boxing could make for some profound commentary on the nature of humanity, which, I presume, is what she was aiming at (although I don't think she'd admit it). I'm just saying that with what she finally came up with you just keep wondering why she can't stick to the point, namely, that two people are trying to beat each other up.
Some people say this is the best that has ever been written on boxing. Obviously, they haven't looked very hard - even the Mailer quote on page 103 is enough to see why this is so.
Give it three stars for the moderately enjoyable journalism and, I almost forgot to say it, some beautiful photographs.
Book Review: Oates Writes Like Ali Danced
Summary: 4 Stars
Oates Writes Like Ali Danced4.25 Stars
I really enjoyed this book.
There's another reviewer (Ensio N. Mikkols) who said it best - "The Lady Knows Boxing" and she really does.
I was on the fence about reading this. I went back and forth trying to decide and finally just went for it and I'm glad I did.
Oates has a great and unique perspective on boxing as an art and science. She sounds like she's been around boxing her whole life and has a respect for it.
Her writing style is fancy, elegant and adds respectability to the sweet science.
I love her take on Mike Tyson - I hate that most writers make him sound like a monster. Oates knows he's human and shows him in a fair, understanding and empathetic light.
One sign of a great book is what it leaves you with or what it inspires you to do. I'm left with a greater respect and understanding of the sweet science of bruising and am inspired to read and learn more about Mike Tyson.
Book Review: Oates on Boxing
Summary: 3 Stars
Oates psychoanalyzes fighters and boxing. On some points she was probably right, on others she was way off.
Book Review: Of Champion Quality
Summary: 4 Stars
Despite some pretentiousness, many redundancies, and an often poorly stitched together narrative, Joyce Carol Oates brings a scalpel-like insight to the incomparable phenomenon that is boxing. She will deepen your understanding -- and take your breath away.I wonder what Miss Oates thinks of the apparent growing popularity of female boxers (surely, the oxymoron non pareil). My guess is that she sees it for precisely what it is -- political correctness carried to its ultimate and inevitable fatuity. A woman who boxes may be to drool over by lipstick lesbians, but she will always be that absurd and grotesque anomaly -- a woman who boxes. The one thing she'll never be is a "Boxer."
Perhaps another book will be forthcoming from Miss Oates, one that will explore this perversion of the "Sweet Science." My guess is not -- why waste time on the ridiculous when, in "On Boxing," she has spoken so well on what is sublime.