Leonard Gardner (1) (1933–)

Some of the most stunning prose I have ever read. Some of it is truly stunning, like being punched in the head repeatedly, and hard. This tale of the boxer's life is really a story about masculinity and race, and about the desperate search for ways to feel special when simply being White and male are no longer enough. The threats of pain and harm and even death are insufficient to keep these men on the margins from the one thing that makes them feel powerful for a moment. There is a forward show more by Denis Johnson where he says basically that everything he has written is him trying to write something as good as this. I can see the link to Johnson's work quite clearly, though Johnson's voice is still his own. I won't read a better book this year. The perfect iteration of what this set out to be.

ETA a few quotes

After his first sexual experience: “Still he was uncertain. He wondered if everything had gone as it should. Was that all there was to it? Perhaps it had been celebrated out of proportion because there was nothing else to live for.”

About that same woman whom he ends up with: “Profoundly moved, he kissed the lax waiting mouth with exquisite unhappiness.”

From a sad alcoholic Tully hooks up with talking about her history with men of different races: “The white race is in its decline. We started downhill in 1492 when Columbus discovered syphilis."

The best quotes for me are those about Stockton and about being in the ring. I will leave everyone to find those on their own. show less

Billy Tully, 29, divorced, "afraid of a crisis beyond his capacity" which is basically his life, feels washed up as a boxer. He works as a fry cook until fired and has to resort to field labor. Billy lives in flophouse hotels, where "his neighbors all seemed to have lung trouble."

Ernie Munger is a younger boxer with potential, newly married with a child on the way. Both men are trained and managed by Ruben Luna. Early on you get the sense that none of the three are ever going to have show more success, in boxing or life. But it doesn't bring the story down. Leonard Gardner elevates it with his writing. He's one of those select writers that you read very carefully because every word counts. Tully at one point dresses in "a red sport shirt and vivid blue slacks the color of burning gas." Gardner even makes onion harvesting poetic.
"Occasionally there was a gust of wind and he was engulfed by sudden rustlings and flickering shadows as a high spiral of onion skins fluttered about him like a swarm of butterflies."

Apparently an influential work, and rightfully so. show less

Rock meets bottom in this visceral tale of boxers, young and old, making it or failing to at the edge of possibility. Billy Tully is washed up at 29. Divorced and reduced to day crop work in the California heat, he dreams of one last chance but knows in his heart that one chance was always more than he ever had. Ernie Munger is 18, still a kid without a professional bout, but Billy thinks he has potential and introduces him to his old manager. They travel different paths, both looking for show more some kind of meaning in the ring, or out of it, both filled with hope but drowning in despair. And both finding, in the end, what they think of as their due.

It is easy to see why, in an introduction by Denis Johnson, this work is held out as a model of gritty realism. Johnson claims that everything he’s ever written has been an attempt to match the effortless realism that Gardner attains here. High praise indeed. I might not see the truth that Johnson does at the sharp end of a 16-oz glove. But I recognize that Gardner stands in line with Steinbeck as a master of descriptions of work, both in the fields of California and in the ring. These men are workers in a heavy trade no worse than others and no better. And so inevitably the gritty realism melds seamlessly into elegy and romance.

Well worth reading. show less

Well written and pretty depressing, this story of two men, one a washed up boxer with woman problems and the second, a young boxer at the start of his career, is filled with little details and passages that are very well done. It's no wonder Denis Johnson admired Gardner (and wrote the introduction here, which to Johnson's immense credit, contains no spoilers). The book has the great virtue of being short. We're in another world, one we don't want to live in, but our visit is brief enough to show more save us from despair but lengthly enough to feel the pain. There is one argument scene between the older boxer and a woman that is just too painful to endure more than once. The audiobook is very well read, and I recommend it. show less