On Boxing
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The volume examines the physical drama of the prize ring, following fighters from training gyms in Catskill to championship bouts in Las Vegas and Madison Square Garden.
Oates observes iconic figures across divisions, chronicling Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, and the young Mike Tyson under Cus D’Amato. These essays scrutinise the referee as the ring’s solitary moral conscience, alongside the monastic discipline demanded by training camps.
American fight crowds draw her analytical focus during historic spectacles spanning English prize rings and the 1938 Louis-Schmeling rematch.
- Sports Essays: Oates reflects on Carmen Basilio absorbing Tony DeMarco’s punishing left hook in 1955, and Tommy Loughran drilling with basement mirrors to protect an easily broken right hand.
- Heavyweight Champions: Detailed portraits trace Jack Johnson pursuing Tommy Burns to Sydney in 1908 to claim the world title, alongside Sonny Liston’s menacing rise and Floyd Patterson’s introspective stoicism.
- Ringside Accounts: Firsthand impressions capture the ferocious eight-minute collision between Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns in 1985, as well as the tragic consequences of Ray Mancini’s 1982 bout with Duk Koo-Kim.
- Cultural Criticism: The collection interrogates why society celebrates violent spectacles, probing Gene Tunney’s blood-soaked education against Harry Greb and the ancient roots linking prizefighting to gladiatorial ritual.
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Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
