The Iowa Review
Volume 18
Issue 3 Fall
Article 32
1988
The Grace of Slaughter: A Review-Essay of Joyce
Carol Oates's "On Boxing"
Gerald Early
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Early, Gerald. "The Grace of Slaughter: A Review-Essay of Joyce Carol Oates's "On Boxing"." The Iowa Review 18.3 (1988): 173-186.
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The Grace of Slaughter: A Review-Essay of
Joyce Carol Oates's On Boxing Gerald Early
arts. . . .
Boxing ain't the noblest of the
?
middleweight
champion Harry Greb,
whose
loss to Tiger Flowers in 1926 permitted the first
black ever to hold themiddleweight title
God didn't make the chin to be punched.
?
trainer who numbered
Ray Arcel, boxing
Duran
among his students the legendary Roberto
At
that time [Georges] Carpentier
was
only
14Vi years old
and I, 21 years old. So hisfirst fight was with Georges Sal
mon at the
Cafe
de Paris, Maison
Lajfitte,
and he was mak
inggood until the 11th round then he blew up. That was
because he was inexperienced on the square circle. . . .
really
but again he was knocked down several times after the 10th
to
round so I said toDeschamps
stop
[Carpentier's manager]
it.He saidNo. So I
into the ring and
it,
jumped
stopped
pick
arms and took him to his corner
ing little Georges up in my
to the
amidst the cheers of the crowd. He was
always game
toes.
?
Black American
the beginning
pion Georges
Part
One:
"The
fighter Bob Scanlon recounting
of his friendship with French cham
Carpentier
Panting
Pursuit
of Danger
..."
I
seems a sort of culmination
or at
On Boxing
OATES'S
JOYCE CAROL
of several ideas she expressed in her early novel, With
least a reexamination
ShudderingFall (1964). That book dealtwith a character named SharRule
Dolphin/Doubleday
photos
:Garden
City,
N.Y.,
1987.
118 pp.,
illustrated with
by John Ranad.
173
University of Iowa
is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to
The Iowa Review
®
www.jstor.org
name itself
car driver.
is a professional
who
speaks volumes),
racing
(the
a
a
a
car
The similarity between
boxer,
driver, and a bull
racing
jockey,
the nature of their individuality,
the brinkmanship
of
fighter regarding
their
the charged,
occupations,
exaggerated
mythic
their masculinity
and the troubling
and troubled voyeurism
attracts Oates
to
and is precisely what
they incite is surely clear enough
the ambivalent,
athletics: wrath,
of
masculine
oxymoronic
iconography
sadistic/masochistic
version
of
as male
toughness
suffering, and the pure anxiety inherent
like these:
male slaughter. When
she wrote
passages
Max
while
feel the beauty of Shar's experience
it in his very body. At a certain
could
Shar felt
came his
body:
he was
one with
in his
point
in the ritual of
imagination,
the speed be
it.
time to time, he had toyed with
the idea that spectators did not
nor did
to see drivers be killed, as most
really
people thought,
come ?as Max
to share in the
told him ?because
they wanted
they
came to share the
the occa
skill and triumph,
the
they
speed,
danger,
From
come
sional deaths ?with
than that ?to
down
force
on the track.
but
they
could not
were
One
but with
maybe,
into the men who
. . .
always
touch them,
can see it is not
One
exultation,
themselves
they gave up their identities
cheated because
the violence,
more
them
represented
to risk violence,
when
it came,
(ellipsis mine)
a very
far distance
of boxing
of the paradoxes
so very different
from
sciousness
counter-world.
something
"Free" will,
for her
is that
to travel
the viewer
that of the boxer
to this closure:
inhabits
a con
as to suggest a
?our
character
"sanity,"
"rationality"
?are
to
if not detrimental,
irrelevant,
in its most extraordinary moments.
Even as he disrobes him
boxing
in
the ring the great boxer must disrobe himself of
self ceremonially
both reason and instinct's caution as he prepares to fight.
istic modes
of consciousness
are anti-intel
are not
and auto-racing
they
simply unintelligible;
on
men
to vision quests
the part of the
who partici
ligible, activities akin
. .
severe
to
in
in
akin
those
them.
pate
(".
religions
[boxing is] obliquely
Boxing
174
which
the individual
is both
'free' and
'determined'
..."
Oates
writes.)
an
to find their
in
selves
is relent
that
activity
spiritual
by being
to
but
prove their goodness
ruthlessly physical
they wish
(i.e. their
in an activity that is so self-centered yet so self-annihilating
that it
They wish
lessly,
worth)
a Catholic
can
S. Bernard,
evil. George
only be considered
priest, argues
a boxer ?in his The
that very point ?the
of
iniquity
being
of Box
Morality
on
seems
a
a
meta
reasonable assertion because boxing poses,
ing, and it
an
ethical proposition:
beat your opponent
uncomplex
physical level, such
him and then, when he isweak and helpless, beat
until you have weakened
contest of fictive grievances
him all the more fiercely in a contrived
that
are not
a
The
itself on being without
mercy.
spectators
simply
a
are
auto
for
of
the
and
apart;
sports
apart, they
morality
boxing
on its head
are so
to take
turn
acts
by permitting
racing
morality
place that
not
and
and
another
without
malice
racing
hitting
dangerous
(high-speed
prides
world
that they are banned outside of certain sacred spaces. It is
self-defense)
as Oates
states in On Boxing,
simply the thrill of "taboo breaking,"
it is the fact that the audience recognizes
that makes boxing
attractive;
in
not
as an attack, a frontal assault upon the very nature of taboo. The
boxing
so that the harsh
is often wished
death of one of the participants
justice of
the taboo itself is made not intelligible but less a cause of distress, more
rich as a result of having been empowered
by human sacrifice. So death
near
hovers
a certain masculine
death
but will
frightening
so close to a
pointless,
As
vulgar excellence.
drama
also make
that for the audience
it alluring,
electric
may make
because it hovers
and very simple, even
nearly existential,
intelligible,
another character inWith Shuddering Fall expresses
himself:
Why
other
. . . Look at them all, Shar and the
anything be safe?
cars about
and eyes burnt,
hands all blisters
drivers ?their
should
or fall apart ?wheels,
axles, anything?but
ready to explode
they
ten min
love it all the way! A man puts in years out on the track?in
out of it.
utes he gets that much
living
(ellipsis mine)
And
in the later book:
more
is a sport it is the most
If boxing
tragic of all sports because
consumes
it dis
the very excellence
than any other human activity it
175
plays ?its
the body,
moderately
personal
is this very consumption.
the brain, the spirit ?a man must
drama
. . . the
?to
punishment
endure to become even a
to most
good boxer is inconceivable
or emotional,
risk is largely ego-related
of us whose
idea of
(ellipsis mine)
in a literal flame of glory
Shar, like a tragic young boxer, dies young,
(his
car crashes in his attempt to go too
fast), consumed by the very instrument
is it in sport generally
that appeals but that
that made him great. What
universal
tragedy of youth used up? (Even in less
a
one feels a great loss when
pitcher like
arm that once
now all
brought him fame
of the instant
morbidity
such as baseball
sports
dangerous
Tom Seaver retires,
the golden
that the arm used to achieve its
used up by the very act, the very motion
fame in the first place, "the unnatural
act," as former Oakland A's pitcher
if it is only in sex and athletics that we
Mike Norris called it. One wonders
act" as a display of skill and a presentation
of ex
so
none
as the
so
"All athletes age rapidly but
visibly
citation.)
rapidly and
akin to those il
boxer," writes Oates. Yet their rapid aging is very much
are
to
of society
members
licit and disreputable
whom
they
constantly
a certain
are viewed with
all
athletes
And
while
prostitutes.
compared:
the "unnatural
demand
and disdain which,
distinct
distrust
intense
adulation
British
boxer.
they generate,
novelist
and former
I think,
no athlete
placed
formance
perhaps
in order
because
is held
the immense
as
and
as the
quite
lowly
in The
fighter Johnny Morgan,
Square
And in
the analogy between boxers and whores.
constantly makes
times, as historian Michael
in the same class as women
Jungle,
Roman
arises from
to give
the body's
pleasure
were
points out, gladiators
for hire. To sell one's body in per
to others ultimately
saps the body,
integrity
has been denied.
Grant
Perhaps
the body
is
simply stupefied by its inability to be thrilled by the thrilling anymore.
a
after a race Shar wins by performing
point in the early novel,
maneuver which
kills another driver, two characters shout at each other:
At
one
"Shar is filled with life!" "Shar is filled with death!" and perhaps it is this
as much
as it does
surrounds
the prizefighter
ambiguity which
Is he filled with
the racing car driver that Oates finds so absorbing:
life, or
is he an angel of death, he who by his life says that life is impossible,
that
essential
only
176
the pursuit
of death
is real?
II
is no sport that, like
[boxing], promotes the spirit of
in the same measure, demands determination
aggression
There
quick
as
lightning, educates the bodyfor
steel-like
versatility.
If two young peoplefight out a differenceof opinionwith
so with a
it is no more brutal than
piece
if they do
iron. . . .But above all, the young and
of ground
healthy boy
has to learn to be beaten.
their
fists,
-Adolf
Hitler
liked boxing because it resisted rationality,
because its participants
to resist
is
that
have
rationality.
why many writers
Perhaps
Hitler
were
forced
been
attracted
to it as well
(although
for
boxing
this difference
must
be understood:
in much
its psychotic
the
potential
the purity of his mayhem;
Hitler's
love of
that Hitler
worshipped
same way amurderer
worships
a very
infantile taste but it
boxing was
simply the display of
depraved
a
to all who find
should serve as a sufficient warning
boxing
seduction).
cannot
and especially baseball, boxing
Unlike
be un
football, basketball,
a boxer's record
Its statistics mean nothing;
through numbers.
a
no
of career. As Robert Coover
tells
showed in
story of the achievements
his brilliant baseball novel, The Universal Baseball Association,
Inc.,J. Henry
derstood
Waugh,
purity
Prop., baseball's
of its mathematics.
the maze of the
story can be unfolded
through
Boxing's
change of rules in the late nineteenth
a bareknuckle
sport of indetermin
century, which
changed it from being
ate
to a
rest
rounds
and
of
timed
sport
length
gloved
periods and even
was
a finite
the only concession
that boxing
length,
tually of bouts of
to the science and
to
of
the
made
technology
day. Those
rationality,
more
to modern
it
audiences by making
changes made boxing
palatable
more systematic and schematic but
to
better
and
symbolize
only
exemplify
can
of the Spenserian
the irrationality
Boxing
only
struggle of existence.
story: the oral
through
It is
narratives of reporters.
journalistic
ence." Boxing
does not seek knowing,
be understood
tradition
amisnomer
a truth
of eyewitnesses
to call boxing
in its action.
or the
a "sci
It does not
seek to explain nature in the way baseball and football can and do. It is, in
to be nature itself. Boxing
is always seeking its
fact, an action that ismeant
text
of the magnitude
"jes grew") and the ambiguity
(like Ishmael Reed's
of its tales. Boxing
is anti-science.
It is our ancient
epic sung
to honor
a
177
past of
misty
slaves
and warrior-kings
and
the personification
of brute
force.
is an obvious
and Roland
similarity between Oates's On Boxing
World
of
"The
indeed, a series of
essay,
Wrestling,"
similarities of such a strong nature that one might
say that Barthes's essay
not
Oates's
but
the
book,
actually provided
simply inspired it,
begat
There
Barthes's
method
Oates's
famous
it possible. To say this is to pay tribute to
and language to make
to
its
and
that it can be
work,
savvy
cunning,
by acknowledging
book is the
essay. Oates's
side-by-side with Barthes's paradigmatic
placed
of various
first on the sport of boxing
(and there have been many written
or
a
I
emulated
Barthes
Barthes
which
believe,
has, consciously
quality)
on
comment
like approach:
the photos, which
and supplement
the text
or
into
of biography
history,
or social movements,
are
individual pers?nalities
that
certainly something
a book on
The
Barthes would
have done had he written
boxing.
photos
a
"...
is
of
inhabited
boxers.
world
pure
suggest
boxing
only by
boxing
without
the reader
pulling
into
the worlds
..."
for life but a unique,
self-referential world
closed,
metaphor
in one sense, this is a fiction:
writes Oates.
for the boxer's
Naturally,
aworld
is something
of
than
himself
others like him
world
else
and
quite
not
a
or
a
to talk of a boxer
of his exploits
occupying
simply the world
(and
to
Amiri
asked
Baraka
mind
the
"world" brings
many years ago
question
about the title of a jazz musician's
album; does the boxer really have a
or does he
a very traditional
world
and related room in a
simply occupy
Is he next door to the gloried discipline of the marine
masculine
complex?
so power
street corner gang
leader?) Oates
perhaps the psychosis of the
does not explicate or
this fiction,
that the work
fully evokes this world,
to do
in the end but actually summons it forth. Oates wishes
justify boxing
or
for boxing
and the boxer what
and for himself
wrestling
books written
Barthes
(which may
himself does for
says the wrestler
there
have
been fewer
explain why
than on professional
wrestling
boxing):
In
is the true de
this regard, Oates
spectacle.
intelligible
boxing
a reporter
a sport that decon
cons tructionist; Barthes is
describing
simply
can
structs itself. Of course, boxing
be deconstructed
like wrestling,
like
make
on
professional
an
any combat sport (when will someone tackle Bruce Lee and Mas Oyama's
its need and its en
is a sport that makes
This isKarate?);
indeed, boxing
to be decoded
to be deconstructed,
in some wizardly
ticement
fashion, so
178
one of its conceits. "That no other sport can elicit
as to be
nearly
"lies at the heart of boxing's
fas
such theoretical anxiety," writes Oates,
obvious
cination
for the writer"
(emphasis hers).
one of the few instances in his essay that he mentions
(in
is a story which
is constructed
that "a boxing-match
before the
boxing)
is a story ?a
"Each boxing match
eyes of the spectator." Oates writes:
and
condensed
drama
without
words."
Barthes
argues that
unique
highly
Barthes writes
is the spectacle of excess," that that is, in fact, its virtue. Oates
"wrestling
it violates
is excess because
that
the taboo against violence,
says
boxing
that as a public spectacle "it is akin to pornography"
films
(pornographic
assume
means
acts
I
I
and stage
that it is,
she means), which,
add,
might
one of the theaters in a
for Oates,
of excess.
of entertainments
complex
some
sense
But it is the naturalism
of pornography
and boxing
that in
makes
them
as excess. As Barthes writes:
to
inferior
professional wrestling
longer matters whether
it no
the passion is genuine or not.
"[In wrestling]
is the image of passion, not passion itself." It is the
What
the public wants
that makes
them imperfect because
literalness of boxing
and pornography
it is that literalness,
innocence
adult's
which
of the child's
reductionism,
is so much,
literalness
that ultimately
in one
turned
sense,
the expression
of the
to the willful
deadens
of the
immorality
senses.
the
Real blood gen
erously displayed reduces the ability to be awed by the sight of blood just
as real sex
reduces the ability to appreciate the act of
copiously
produced
sex. It is this naturalism
that tends to reduce every fight to being exactly
tries to overcome by
every other fight that boxing as a social phenomenon
is the horror
insisting that the fighter become a personality.
(Naturalism
in
of anonymity
modern
about show
is, like wrestling,
society.) Boxing
in
And
the
showman
and
boxer
the
greatest
history of the sport
manship.
was Muhammad
other than what
AH, who made fights something
they
were;
he made
the metaphors
for both
and whites who watched
them,
to
the fights
the battle of good
be, principally
they wished
It is not an accident
that boxing's
showman was
greatest
them,
against
evil.
heavily
influenced
a
George.
by
Gorgeous
professional wrestler,
the one moral
issue that fascinates Americans:
boxing deal with
or evil, which
man
good
and Barthes's discussions
in complementary
First, Barthes:
expression.
almost
the blacks
AH made
is a black
is the same as asking if he is real or not? Oates's
reach a certain critical juncture when
they discuss
essence
fashion the very
of sport and naturalistic
179
an externalized
is the only sport which
gives such
image
in the game,
here again, only the image is involved
and the spectator does not wish for the actual suffering of the contes
Wrestling
of torture.
But
tant; he only
And Oates
enjoys
the perfection
of an iconography.
responds:
is alto
boxing
(and professional
wrestling)
the
the
shed,
suffered,
damage
pain (usually
gether
or
are
Not
for
box
unfeigned.
hemophobics,
suppressed
sublimated)
a sport inwhich blood becomes
The
is
irrelevant.
ing
quickly
experi
that a boxer's bleeding
face is probably
the
enced viewer understands
Unlike
pornography
real: the blood
least of his worries.
made
the audience care about his injuries:
like the good wrestler,
he could stand pain when he was unpopular
and
first, the issue of whether
too much pain when he
he was absorbing
then, later, the issue of whether
an issue,
was
AH
made
moral
of
the
relevance
injuries
popular.
perhaps the
AH,
to do so without
to die in
having
only fighter in the history of the sport
the ring. One remembers his fight with Bob Foster because itwas the first
time he was ever cut across the brow in the ring. The first Norton
bout
stands out because
a broken
jaw, the first Frazier fight because
It is the very fact that professional wrestling
does
he was knocked down.
not demand the realism of boxing
it a protest against violence.
that makes
inner
violence as fakery, as parody, as comedy reveals wrestling's
Showing
he suffered
to say that violence
able. Of course, wrestling
wish
a
is only
impossible
this protest
as a real act,
utterly unbear
and in actual fact
theoretically
are
wrestlers
good many
dangerous which
is utterly
makes
can be
injured every year. Even faked violence
of real violence
all the more
the contemplation
. . .Defeat
is not a
argues that "in wrestling
as soon as it is understood;
it is not an out
sign, abandoned
a
a
it
is
it
but
the
takes
come,
duration,
up the an
contrary,
quite
display,
And Oates makes
cient myths
of public Suffering
and Humiliation."
frightening.
conventional
nearly
rather
Finally,
an identical
Barthes
observation
than it is about hitting,
about boxing:
"Boxing
as
it
is
about
just
feeling
is about being hit
not devas
pain, if
more than it is about winning."
tating psychological
paralysis,
and wrestling,
teresting here is that both assert that boxing
180
What
symbolic
is in
vio
are not
ventures
in the
really competitive
sense that we
think professional
sport is: they are both elaborate
normally
not
to overcome,
statements
about withstanding,
but simply
necessarily
we learn from Oates and
for the reality of enduring. Boxing
and wrestling,
lence and naturalistic
violence,
are the only activities inmodern American
and European
societies
that give us the enactment,
the drama of shame without
guilt.
a text that I think in many
carries on a
ways
Despite
being
challenging
Barthes,
its own space. It is, to
essay, On Boxing occupies
dialogue with Barthes's
a
book on the sport to be written
be sure, not the first non-fiction
by
to
to
it
is
the
first,
my knowledge,
prominent
literary person
(although
a
not intended to present
it
But
is
have been written
by woman).
clearly
as
the author
the bumbling,
well
Geoxge
Plimpton
(Shadow-Box):
nor is it in
meaning
journalist who cannot get out of the way of the stage;
the guise of Norman Mailer
the hot male
(The Fight and other works),
to
make
haunted
the act of
by Hemingway,
trying desperately
predator,
a book a blood sport. The book is neither
innocence,
writing
bumbling
drive. The book is, at last, not Liebling
sham egoism, nor hot competitive
in the low-life jungle.
It
intellectual
(The Sweet Science), the worldly-wise
as
It celebrates
slum or try to show boxing
being picturesque.
neither inadvertence nor its own prowess. On Boxing is a cool book. It is a
about the voyeur and what he or she sees at a
book about the audience,
does not
he or she is, in effect, what he or she sees.
or
the past two
three years, quite a few books on boxing have
During
been published,
of Angelo
the autobiographies
Dundee
including
(his
LaMotta
of
and
Joe Louis, Jack John
Jake
first)
(his second), biographies
a
in
son, and Sugar Ray Leonard,
history of bareknuckle
prizefighting
an
as
a
at
not
conten
is
It
look
and
inside
business.
America,
my
boxing
tion that Oates's book is the best of the lot. Which
book is the best has a
boxing
match
and how
to know about
the reader wishes
and
great deal to do with what
boxing
I do believe that On Boxing is
the format he or she finds most
stimulating.
a
one
most
of
the
books to
book, possibly
quite sophisticated
sophisticated
have been published
on the sport.
It is the most
critically
alert.
181
Part
Two:
".
. .is
the
pursuit
of
life
itself."
Ill
To be a man,
the male must be able to
face
the threat of mas
culinitywithin himself byfacing it in others like himself
?
Walter
Ong
to know how to
You no longer have to come
from the ghetto
a
are now
to
good upbringing
fight. People with
learning
as
an
as
a
at it
box.
kill-or
art, rather than
They're looking
be-killed type of thing.
?
Michael
Olajide,
middleweight
contender
man with a
toget knocked on his
good trade isn't about
Any
butt to make a dollar.
?
boxing promoter Chris Dundee
statement alone may be worth
boxing possible." This
two
the price of admission,
the price of the book. There are, in essence,
are
in
statements
the
On
like
above
and
of
those
that
brilliant
types
Boxing:
is
and those like the following:
the only human
unquestionable
"[Boxing]
can
into art,"
in
be
without
which
rage
equivocation
activity
transposed
"The
referee makes
are brilliant
analysis of the role
a
but
why
fight is
only why
an act of
a
is
that
The
sides,
warring
fight
hope,
plea
actually taking place.
a
non-com
of
active
disinterested
but
the
presence
compassionate
through
batant, can be reconciled not only to each other but to the restless, self-de
which
but debatable.
of the referee explains
not
Oates's
a
accomplished
fight is bearable
nature within
is about man's preoccupa
ourselves.
Prizefighting
an
to
tion with
that loves and
live in
adversative Eden, a world
trying
that both comforts
hates him, made by a God
and ignores. As Oates
"...
than love. Or
writes:
love commingled
with hate ismore powerful
is the irra
hate." With
the presence of the referee, modern
prizefighting
structive
tionality
world.
The
of pure
the humane
conscience
of the modern
is a bit problematic;
the rage in boxing,
after all,
second quotation
its source or
but rather fictive, and the viewer hardly knows
is not genuine
182
force confronting
its objective.
The boxer himself may not know either. It is the fact that
in
is completely
fake in the enactment of the contest itself that
rage
boxing
seems to say that the articula
makes
this statement
troublesome.
Boxing
tion of real rage in our society is
utterly impossible
is what
the contrivance
utterly pointless which
means.
The
rationalization:
it is
of course,
unless,
of
true art form of rage is the duel of which
why fight to the death for honor when
the boxing match
is the modern
boxing
one can
fight
to the
for money? And
and performance
suddenly the burden of masculine
expendability
fell upon the lower classes. The possible
art
or rebellion which
are revolution
are
forms of rage (with equivocation)
about the only worthwhile
vessels for the obsessions
of the poor. Of
?
?
television
course, boxing has always been popular
ratings tell us that
but cover articles such as the one in the British fashion magazine,
The Face
maiming
as sport
on Bellows's
piece
that it is fashionable
own
and Oates's
lead us to believe
boxing
pictures
other
words,
(in
in Art
and Antiques
in the way that
hip)
it
few
middle-class
is, although
says
persons in their right
Olajide
are
to
minds
such a sport for a living. And if it is fashion
going
perform
can
the
able,
rage (pun intended) possibly be real? On the whole, On Box
a
ing is series of tableaus that offers perhaps some of the most
stunning sur
on ma
faces imaginable
about boxing. There are penetrating
discussions
Michael
on
chismo,
ring.
But while
The
I find Oates's
on writers
section
one black writer.
enormous
as the sport that is not
boxing
And
influence
book
impressive,
a sport, on time and the
prize
it does have
its weaknesses.
and prizefighting,
for instance, does not mention
it must be remembered
that blacks have had an
on American
the sport of
popular culture through
no major black writer has written
a
To
be
sure,
prizefighting.
full-length
on
but there have been several im
treatise, fiction or non-fiction,
boxing,
portant essays produced by the likes of Amiri Baraka, Eldridge Cleaver,
Richard
and others. Also,
two of
Jervis Anderson,
Larry Neal,
scenes in all of American
the most
literature which
involve
important
were written
blacks:
Frederick
the
by
fights
Douglass's
fight with Covey,
in the 1845 edition of Douglass's
and
the
battle
slavebreaker,
Narrative,
Wright,
Itwould
have been of some in
royal scene in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
terest to hear what Oates had to say about them. Such a discussion would
like "the history of boxing ?of fighting ?in Amer
have given statements
ica is very much
more
one with
the history
of the black man
in America,"
a bit
validity.
183
in the book and
the writing
about race is the least persuasive
Generally,
as awhole.
the work
Ethnic
have been jettisoned without
might
hurting
a
too
American
is
and
and
sports
ity
boxing,
ethnicity
simply
complex
to be handled well in the short space that Oates gives herself. I think
topic
as a
hurts her discussion
her refusal to see boxing
here as well.
metaphor
At some point in American
social and political history Jack Johnson,
Joe
Louis,
and Muhammad
tieth century)
ceased
most
important blacks of the twen
(the three
to be men
in the American
mind
(both black and
AH
to be
sense and became
in the ordinary
fighters
quite legendary but also something
something
specifically inhuman. Once
the sport automatically
blacks became a force in boxing,
became ameta
white),
even ceased
they
is race in America
but the Melvillian
doubloon
ham
Indeed, what
it
in our consciousness
that bedevils us endlessly and turns anything
as well.
shines upon into a metaphor
phor.
mered
that "the bare knuckle era . . .
1) Her statement
was far less
is simply not true. Fewer punches
for fighters"
dangerous
cross
were
Prize Ring Rules
but the wrestling,
thrown under London
and poking
left
buttocks,
gouging,
spiking,
scratching,
biting, pulling,
Some minor
quarrels:
the old bruisers more
than modern
fighters usually are. Besides,
disfigured
cen
be remembered
that audiences in the eighteenth
and nineteenth
turies were a good deal more bloodthirsty
than audiences today (after all, for
a
had to compete against public
good part of their history, bareknucklers
itmust
a great
the fights were
of popular entertainment),
care
was
to
deal longer, and medical
for injured fighters
quite primitive,
is contrary to nature" does not
say the least. 2) Her assertion that "boxing
to nature.
take into account the fact that virtually all sports are contrary
executions
as a form
is not special in this regard: running a 26-mile marathon,
balanc
Boxing
on an elevated balance beam, or not
to
oneself
ing
trying
flinching while
hit a 95-mph fastball are all acts that are contrary to nature. 3) "Baseball,
are recog
American
football, basketball ?these
pastimes
quintessentially
sports because they involve play; they are games. One plays foot
nizably
one
are
writes Oates
doesn't play boxing,"
ball,
(emphasis hers). There
two responses to this: on the one hand, certain sports, like football, have a
certain
limited
Professional
football player Curtis Greer put
playing sphere.
a bad
to
it this way in explaining why he chooses to continue
play despite
or tennis, a sport that you
knee: "It's not like baseball, basketball,
golf,
as a recreation once you retire. When
can continue
you leave football, you
184
just can't go up to the rec center and get into a game." So the play element
in the same way. Moreover,
in all sports cannot be characterized
there are
as well as
types of boxing:
sparring, exhibition matches,
like.
Some
non-serious
for
the
titles and
boxing does
fighting
several different
competitive
involve an element
Sometimes
of play.
on.
are other
there
sparring is serious and sometimes
are almost never
Exhibition
matches
things going
So to say that one cannot play boxing
is not quite true; it depends
on how
the participants wish
the bout to be and precisely
competitive
serious.
is at stake.
what
I remember
as a child
a game
played
among
black boys
of the
most
inwhich both participants,
called "slap-to-the-head"
laughing
with
time, would,
open hands, cuff each other lightly on the head to see
It seemed a more physical demonstration
of
who
had the fastest hands.
in quite bad form ("You're
"the dozens,"
for it was considered
nothing
if one got angry at being shown up at this. Yet it was a
abilities.
display of one's boxing
purposeful
are some
Her criticism of the arguments
for the abolition of boxing
as other parts of the book.
not as
times telling but ultimately
compelling
but
a
chump!")
no
the humanity
Doubtless,
sport compromises
as
to overcome
boxing and it is hard, in the end,
if Imight
truth. Oates's position,
impact ofthat
asmuch
of its participants
the frightening
and bitter
as to attempt a
as a sort of
tragic
be so bold
is that of distressed ambivalence
about boxing
summary,
a
romantic rite of male expendability,
that I have
position
a great deal of
I believe it a bit too
itmyself. But, finally,
for as I once occupied
a
too
conve
self-defensive,
disingenuous,
strategically
self-consciously
nient stalking ground. There is a tendency, when one occupies
this posi
assume
to
to
D.
the
that
business
of
borrow
Richard
whole
tion,
boxing,
a
cause
"a delicious frisson rather than
Altick's words, will
shudder." She
to
the
existence
of
likens the arguments
those over the
concerning
boxing
sympathy
an
an apt
of abortion,
one, for the argu
morality
analogy but
incomplete
ments
about boxing
can, with profit, be likened to other important his
over
to debates over
torical debates as well:
slavery before the Civil War,
during
prostitution
and early twentieth
teenth
tional
the white
slavery/reformist
over Prohibition
centuries,
and the twentieth
centuries,
debates which
era of the late nineteenth
during
both
greatly
the nine
shaped
our na
character.
On Boxing
passionate
yet
is a book with
relentlessly
an incredible
scrutinizing.
amount
One
of intense
is often moved
energy,
com
by passages
185
the author
because
herself
is moved.
is, at last, not only our na
Boxing
sometimes heartbreak
is
but of how
sport of utter heartbreak
tells her
endured by the boxer and even by the audience. Oates
heroically
as Oates
part of the story of grace through
slaughter
(is boxing Puritan,
an
sense of hu
and
with
extraordinary
compulsion
astonishing
suggests?)
mane concern. To be sure, Oates's
book does not have the investigative
tional
of Barney Nagler' sJames Norris and theDe
The Black Lights,
the chatty coziness
cline of Boxing or Thomas Hauser's
and insider's view of A. J. Liebling's The Sweet Science, Trevor Wignall's
Seconds Outs; and it
the same title, or Fred Dartnell's
earlier book with
detail
and narrative
exactitude
of the volumes
guile and wit
and the
and
boxing
nineteenth-century
eighteenthscher on the history of black boxing. Nevertheless,
critical audacity that none of these books comes close
it lacks in the kind of width
up in critical height what
lacks
the historical
to
on
by Pierce Egan
books by Nat Flei
a certain
it possesses
to
It makes
having.
we have become ac
of Muhammad
Jose Torres's biography
are still
AH
pieces in Sports Illustrated and Esquire
to
this sport, but so is
understand
necessary reading for anyone who wants
as well.
Oates's work
the possibility
and the necessity
She has established
boxing books
and Floyd Patterson's
customed
having.
a
sport in way that is finally free of senti
and juvenile
for the purer
romance,
ment,
yearning
deadening
us from reading the intellectual's
entrapment
(whiter?) past. She has freed
as if itwere
of amasculine
the fulfillment
of writing
about boxing
golden
of our best writers
writing
and a
about
or as if it can
only produce
than a j'accuse writ with
orgiastic
eloquence.
is one of the more
Black Lights, Oates's work
dream
of wonder
come
across on
186
this topic
in quite
some
time.
a text
that is nothing more
The
Along with Hauser's
texts that I have
absorbing