On Boxing by Joyce Carol Oates Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of On Boxing
Book Review: Sugar Ray Oates
Summary: 4 Stars
The sport of Boxing, on the surface at least, does not automatically come to mind as obvious subject matter for the premier writing talents of Joyce Carol Oates; even though Ms. Oates certainly can get down and dirty with the best of them as in her "Man Crazy" or "Zombie."But as Oates explains in her 1987 collection of essays (revised in 1994), "On Boxing":"No one whose interest began as mine did in childhood--as an offshot of my father's interest is likely to think of boxing as something else, a metaphor...Life is like boxing, in many respects. But boxing is only like boxing."
Oates is a boxing fan and a great writer and it was inevitable that these two facets of her life would converge.
"On Boxing" is really 3 separate essays: "On Boxing," "On Mike Tyson" and "The Cruelest Sport."
The first essay is so crammed full of fascinating, revelatory statements about the nature and function and the social and psychological nature of boxing that it is hard to pick out only a few to quote here. But I will try: "To enter the ring near-naked and to risk one's life is to make of one's audience voyeurs of a kind: boxing is so intimate. It is to ease out of sanity's consciousness and into another, difficult to name. It is to risk, and sometimes to realize, the agony of which "agon" (Greek, "contest") is the root."
In Oates view, the boxer brings more than his body to bear in the ring...he also brings his soul: "There are some boxers possessed of such remarkable intuition, such uncanny prescience, one would think they were somehow recalling their fights, not fighting them as we watch."
"On Boxing" the essay is also a boxing history lesson highlighting the careers of Jack Dempsey,Joe Louis, Muhammed Ali,Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, etc.: their careers, their boxing styles, their defeats and in some cases their lives after the boxing ring: "the drama of life in the flesh. Boxing has become America's tragic theater."
The second essay, "On Mike Tyson," written in 1988 predates all of Tyson's legal troubles, court cases and incarceration. And so Oates, who had extensive access to Tyson, writes of his home,his dog and his friends in glowing terms.With Oates, Tyson is soft-spoken, courteous, sensitive, thoughtful and intospective. Things that in 2002 we do not normally associate with Mike Tyson. Never a pushover, Oates also quotes Tyson after his 1986 fight with the hapless Jesse Ferguson, whose nose was broken in the match, "I want to punch the bone into the brain...Tyson's language is as direct and brutal as his ring style, yet as more than one observer has noted, strangely disarming--there is no air of menace, or sadism, or boastfulness in what he says: only the truth."
Oates also speaks of a boxing match as a "catharsis" as Aristotle wrote: "the purging of pity and terror by the exercise of these emotions; the subliminal aftermath of classical tragedy."
The third essay, "The Cruelest Sport" details in part the physical toll of boxing. For example the 1980 Ali/Holmes fight in which Ali takes a tremendous beating from Holmes: in Sylvester Stallone's words, the fight was "like watching an autopsy on a man who's still alive." This as well as the Ali/Foreman fight in Zaire in 1974 began irreversible loss for Ali: progressive deterioration of Ali's kidneys, hands, reflexes and stamina.
"On Boxing" is Joyce Carol Oates's Ode to Boxing and by extension her father's interest in boxing, the smokiness of the arena, the smell of the hair oil and the hot dogs.And, even if you are not a boxing fan you cannot help but revel at the insights and amazing depth of feeling she brings to this subject and it's denizens.
Book Review: Take It From a Fighter
Summary: 5 Stars
I am still stunned that a person who has never been in the ring could have gained insights into boxing as powerful as the ones Oates pulled together in this book. And I'm grateful (and stunned) that a woman could be as sympathetic, not just to fighters, but to men and manhood, as Oates has managed to be in this book. I am a serious amateur fighter and a sparring partner to the professional fighters I train with. I do gym work or road work five days a week with a former-professional trainer who was also a two-time NY Golden Gloves champion and junior Olympian. I spar Glovers and pros and I love it. I understand boxing and the love for boxing. The gist of my review here is this: After I read this book I realized I didn't understand my love for boxing -- where it comes from and what it all means and what it is I'm doing exactly -- as well as Joyce Carol Oates does. This woman is amazing to me. I've never read her fiction, but I will.
The first section of this book, the one in which Oates seemingly tries to take on boxing and what it means from every imaginable angle, is best. This is one of those very, very few books that made me fold down corners so that I can easily return to specific passages. I don't know if non-fighters will really understand this book, or if many fighters will ever bother to read it. But I'm damned glad I did and damned glad Ms. Oates is out there writing.
Book Review: The Lady Knows Boxing
Summary: 4 Stars
And she's had long meaningful conversations with a pre-incarceration Mike Tyson. Before the ear biting and the crotch grabbing etc. The two chapters (actually essays) I highly recommend here are the one about Tyson and "Boxing: The Cruelest Sport." This is essentially a collection of essays Oates has written about boxing so they're a mixed bag. But it's worth getting for the two I mentioned.Book Review: The Manassa Mauler vs. Plato
Summary: 3 Stars
I agree with the Swedish reviewer. This book is too cosmic for my tastes. In a funny way I think Oates is aware of the trap she has set for herself. At the outset she says, "if you have seen five hundred boxing matches you have seen five hundred boxing matches and their common denominator, which certainly exists, is not of primary interest to you. `If the Host is only a symbol,' the Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor once remarked, `I'd say the hell with it.'" (Pp. 4-5.)
Having said that a fight is a fight, that generalizations are secondary, that symbolism is worthless, she proceeds to play philosopher for half the book. There is no relief from the earnestness. However, when she gets around to Mike Tyson, the pre-road-rage Tyson, I found a lot more to grab onto. Her rather sweet portrayal of the young champ is satisfyingly concrete, and certainly a kind of bizarre period piece in light of subsequent events in Tyson's life.
Coincidentally I read the following passage in American Heritage Magazine while I was reading this book. It's from an interview with sportswriter W.C. Heinz, now 86. Without coming within ten feet of a word like "homoerotic," it illustrates one of Oates's points and finishes with a memorable, upbeat image:
"When two fighters fight a hell of a battle, there's later a liking between them. This was true of Joe Walcott and Rocky Marciano. Marciano took him out in the thirteenth round of their great first championship fight, but Joe also knocked down Rocky in the first round. Rocky had never been down before, and the next day I was interviewing him and I asked him, "What were you thinking when you went down?" He had a wonderful fighter's remark. He said: "I was thinking, `This guy can really punch. This will be one hell of a fight.'"
I enjoy this kind of writing better. To my way of thinking, the deep thoughts come off better when left unstated, or sprinkled in carefully within more definite imagery like this.
Book Review: liberal lies or bad research
Summary: 1 Stars
i must address several untruths in ms. oates book.while she is certainly a good writer,apparently she didn't do much research for this book.she states that the majority of soldiers killed and who served in the vietnam war were black;wrong.blacks made up 12 percent of the u.s. population at the time,and 14 percent of the casualties.the average soldier who died in vietnam was a middle-classed white boy.next she states that champ jack dempsey was afraid to fight black fighters;wrong.he fought at least 3 black fighters that is easily verified,and his chief sparring partner was black.his promoter tex rickard wouldn't allow it,for fear of race riots.harry wills the top black fighter of the time was afraid to fight middleweight harry greb.he also sustained a horrific beating at the hands of white heavyweight jack sharky.jack johnson admitted that the only acknowledged fight he lost was to joe choynski.while the "saintly" joe louis was dringing,doing drugs,and cheating on his wife,max scmeling was freeing jews in germany.incidentally max scmeling and jack sharky are both still alive at nearly one hundred.do some research please!