Writers & FIGHTERS
Boxing has attracted some of the greatest writers in history. Most were happy to remain on the outside of the ropes but some, Ernest Hemingway perhaps the most famous, yearned to partake in the exchange of punches, as Adam Jones discovers
I HAD THIS SENSE THAT HEMINGWAY WOULD COME OUT OF THE CORNER LIKE A MADMAN. TO STOP HIM, I WOULD HAVE TO HURT HIM BADLY
IN his autobiography, Jack Dempsey reflected on his time in Paris in the 1920s: “There were a lot of Americans in Paris and I sparred with a couple, just to be obliging…. But there was one fellow I wouldn’t mix it with. That was Ernest Hemingway. He was about 25 or so and in good shape, and I was getting so I could read people, or anyway men, pretty well. I had this sense that Hemingway, who really thought he could box, would come out of the corner like a madman. To stop him, I would have to hurt him badly. I didn’t want to do that to Hemingway. That’s why I never sparred him.”
From the dawn of the London Prize Ring to the present day, boxing has attracted the fascination of the literary fraternity. Lord Byron was hooked on the sport to the extent of taking regular sparring sessions with “Gentleman” John Jackson in efforts to keep artistic ennui at bay; “Today I have been very sulky – but an hour’s exercise with Mr. Jackson of pugilistic memory has given me spirits and fatigued me into that state of languid laziness which I prefer to all other,” he wrote in a letter in 1814.
Just seven years later, William Hazlitt was to write one of the greatest pieces of fistic reportage ever committed to paper – The Fight, an account of the set-to between Bill Neat and Tom Hickman, “The Gasman”, at Hungerford. In the case of Hazlitt, though, enthusiasm for pugilistic heroics never tempted him to duck under the ropes himself, unlike his illustrious peer – defining right at the beginning the two types of literary men drawn to the flame of the most colourful and dramatic of all sports; those wise enough to keep a distance and those who got sucked in at the cost often of their own judgement and reputation – which brings us back to Hemingway.
Ernest, the epitome of the hairy-chested man of American letters (a stereotype descended from Walt Whitman) always rated himself as a boxer, an opinion it must be said, shared only with his own ego. In his youth and middle years an evening out with the novelist would often end with an alcohol-fuelled invitation to a few rounds of sparring. Unfortunately, as Hemingway’s level of technique was on a par with that of Marciano minus the fancy touches, the unwary guest would soon find out that instead of a couple of gentle rounds of jab and slap he’d be fighting for survival, as the author of A Farewell to Arms attempted to remove his head from his shoulders.
Hemingway had a low opinion of Dempsey; he was unimpressed by his destruction of Willard (“fat old Jess,” as he dismissively referred to him), and was rooting for Georges Carpentier in his doomed challenge in 1921, so it was just as well the two of them never touched gloves.
He did finally step in with a champion when he persuaded Gene Tunney to go a few rounds. Predictably, Ernest went after his superior and actually drew blood – at which point the wellmannered Tunney put in a corrective shot to the gut. Hemingway turned green and was as good as gold for the rest of the encounter.
The passing years did nothing to diminish Hemingway’s delusions, however, and although his stature as a writer grew until his very name was synonymous with literary excellence, he always thought of himself as an accomplished pugilist; “My writing is nothing, my boxing is everything,” he once declared, and he meant it. The Nobel Prize winner put a shotgun to his head in 1961.
If Hemingway was the ‘grand old man’ of American letters, then Norman Mailer was certainly the enfant terrible – and also a boxing obsessive. He may not have harboured Hemingway’s fantasies of fistic excellence, but his naturally aggressive, confrontational nature often spilled over into the physical, infamously with his various wives but also including a notable KO of Gore Vidal. A 1970 encounter with Rip Torn, the actor, in a brief venture into ‘underground’ film direction, resulted in a scalp wound for the director and a bitten ear for the male lead, uncannily anticipating Tyson-holyfield II and the era of cage fighting.
In his quieter moments, Mailer’s more measured approach to the noble art was manifested in a career-long
➤ friendship with Muhammad Ali. He covered the first Joe Frazier fight for Life magazine and got a whole book out of the Rumble in the Jungle. Mailer was content with the relationship; Ali was the champion of the boxing world, he, Stormin’ Norman, was king of the written word.
Mailer was heavily into the idea of boxing as a metaphor for life (not the other way around, as Joyce Carol Oates would have it). One of his earliest pieces covered the death of Benny Paret in his third fight with Emile Griffith, a brutal piece of social drama ignited by Paret’s ‘gay’ taunts aimed at his opponent, who actually was gay in an age of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’
Mailer’s account of the fight, which ended with Paret having the life beaten out of him while trapped on the ropes in the 12th round, is one of the most compelling pieces of writing in any sport. It is also, in the cold light of day, over-coloured and inaccurate. Mailer steps over the strict bounds of reporting to create something more vivid, more aesthetically pleasing to its creator, or as he probably would have put it, using invention to define a greater truth. Beware the writer of fiction reporting the real.
In later years Mailer was also a good friend of Jose Torres, a fighter-turned-writer, and was a regular at the former light-heavyweight champion’s Saturday morning workouts at the Gramercy Gym on 14th Street. It is not unreasonable to suppose that his adherence to a proper training regime actually straightened Norman out a bit. That or old age.
Paul Gallico made a name for himself as a young reporter when he stepped into the ring with Dempsey, who was training for the Luis Firpo fight at the time. Gallico had been a university oarsman, but didn’t have the slightest idea of how to box. Whether Gallico’s athletic appearance aroused the champion’s suspicions of a set-up is debatable, but what isn’t is that after trying a couple of hopeful jabs, the future author of The Snow Goose found himself examining the canvas. Nevertheless, he wrote an entertaining piece about his experience that did no harm to his progress in his proper profession.
George Plimpton took a leaf out of Gallico’s book – so to speak – in 1959 when he sparred light-heavweight champion Archie Moore at Stillman’s Gym in order to furnish a piece for Sports Illustrated. Apart from a bloody nose and weeping eyes, Plimpton emerged from the encounter in one piece, with the help of a foreshortened third round and a benevolently playful Moore.
George Bernard Shaw was by his own account an enthusiastic amateur in the 1880s, although the only substantial evidence of this is the program for the Queensberry Amateur Boxing Championships of 1883, bearing his name in both middleweight and heavyweight categories. That Shaw did not actually turn up on the night might tempt mean-minded folk familiar with the foibles of the amateur game to suspect this as a piece of self-agrandising flummery, but either way there is no doubting GBS knew his stuff when it came to boxing.
In 1926 he tipped the lightly regarded Tunney to beat Dempsey and went on to become firm friends with the bookish champion. There was a potentially rocky start to the relationship when Tunney dismissed Shaw’s boxing novel, Cashel Byron’s Profession, as “silly”, but showing the generosity of the Nobel Laureate that he was, Shaw happily confessed that it wasn’t a particularly good book either, and the friendship was sealed.
It has often been labelled as a peculiar relationship, but only by those whose perceptions are restricted to stereotypes.
THE AUTHOR FOUND HIMSELF EXAMINING THE CANVAS”
Tunney may have come from a humble background, but he was always a cerebral type. Cerebral types from humble backgrounds tend to get picked on and have to either hide or fight. Tunney chose the latter, retained his bookishness and became a wealthy man in the process. His love of literature led him to Shaw, the boxing buff, who was delighted by the company of this articulate man of action. It was a friendship that lasted for the remainder of Shaw’s life.
From the often dubious parade of writers who would be fighters, the undisputed crown for over-achievement has to go to poet and aesthetic provocateur Arthur Cravan, who went six rounds with the immortal Jack Johnson in a Barcelona bull ring in 1916. The Anglo-swiss mischief-maker and nephew of Oscar Wilde (his mother’s sister was Wilde’s unfortunate wife) had deserted Paris, where he’d made his mark by outraging the establishment and endearing himself to the new iconoclasts such as Marcel Duchamp, and was killing time in Spain while World War I sucked the life blood out of Europe.
Johnson, now ex-champ and on the run from his conviction in the States for contravening the Mann Act (transporting a female over state boundaries for immoral purposes – specifically brought in to bring him down in the years of John Crow) was also considering his options while running an advertising agency in Barcelona. Business was not good, Jack needed an income boost, what could be better than a high-profile fight, but with whom? Enter Cravan, an enthusiastic disciple of the noble art of self-defence, which due to his conduct in Paris, had been honed to a fine edge.
Cravan was around 6ft 1ins, reasonably fit and white. He could also call himself amateur light-heavyweight champion of Europe, as he’d been the only contestant to turn up for the finals, the others having already been called to a more fatal conflict. Arthur was already acquainted with Johnson and the two were on friendly terms, a deal was struck – film being the vital element of the promotion in the new age of cinema. Cravan had to be fit enough to go 10 rounds, Johnson would carry him, longevity being the key to a successful cinematic boxing event. A film director was hired, the stadium sorted out and the posters went up.
Come the big day, however, things did not go according to plan. Cravan, reality for once catching up with him, froze. He did nothing but grab for dear life in the first round, and his performance for the rest of the bout was strictly survival mode. It all came to an end when the director indicated to Johnson that incoming cloud cover had terminated the possibilities of a film. Johnson subsequently ended the fight and Cravan’s agony with a couple of surgically correct blows in the sixth, scooped his takings and went home.
Cravan actually got on famously with Johnson and plainly thought the world of his conqueror. “After Poe, Whitman, Emerson, he is the most glorious American. If there is a revolution here I shall fight to have him enthroned King of the United States,” he said on arriving in America. While this statement was obviously intended for headlines and further notoriety, the ongoing rehabilitation of Jack Johnson’s life and achievements place Cravan’s judgement way ahead of its time. The following year he disappeared in a Caribbean storm, sailing his yacht to Mexico.
In conclusion, there is plenty to be said for commentators on boxing knowing what it’s like to hit and be hit, but moderation is the key to that argument.
I leave the final word on the matter to the magisterial Thomas Hauser: “People play baseball, they play football, tennis, basketball, hockey, they play a lot of sports. Nobody plays boxing.”
AFTER POE, WHITMAN AND EMERSON, JACK JOHNSON IS THE MOST GLORIOUS AMERICAN