One Ring Circus: Dispatches from the World of Boxing by Katherine Dunn

One Ring Circus: Dispatches from the World of Boxing Reviews

• 
  Orsodimondo [part time reader at the moment]

  LA VITA È COME LA BOXE PER MOLTI E SCONCERTANTI ASPETTI. LA BOXE PERÒ È SOLTANTO COME LA BOXE.
  
  
  
  Katherine Dunn ha scritto tre romanzi. Il terzo e ultimo dei quali è quello che l’ha resa più celebre: Geek Love, che in Italia è diventato prima Cuori sgozzati e poi, col cambio di casa editrice (da Leonardo a Elliot), Carnival Love. Racconta di una famiglia circense di freaks. L’ho letto e m’è piaciuto. Non mi risulta che per scriverlo Dunn avesse accumulato molta esperienza di circo: ma il risultato è stato comunque convincente.
  Per scrivere questo – che è una raccolta di suoi articoli pubblicati su testate diverse: si va da una piccola rivista settimanale dell’Oregon, che è comunque riuscita a portare a casa un premio Pulitzer, alla rivista mensile Playboy, a una online – ha invece coltivato una lunga crescente passione per la boxe.
  Passione nata per caso: suo marito, tifoso, le chiese di guardare in televisione un incontro, che lui era costretto a perdere per un impegno di lavoro, e al ritorno, non solo trovò la moglie rapita da quello che aveva visto, ma anche tre pagine fitte di suoi appunti e impressioni.
  
  
  
  Anni dopo Dunn divorziò da suo marito.
  Invece dalla boxe non si è mai separata.
  Diventando una delle esperte e critiche di questo sport più importanti. Forse, la più importante.
  Sport, individualista per eccellenza, che nelle sue pagine diventa un’arte.
  Arte fatta di violenza, ovvio, trattandosi di due persone che si prendono a cazzotti. Ma che richiede cuore, anima, passione, dedizione, tecnica, allenamento, talento, perseveranza.
  Secondo lei, soprattutto cuore.
  
  
  
  Secondo me, il cuore di Katherine palpita in queste pagine, è ben presente e vivo. E, infatti, mi ha regalato pagine struggenti di amore per uno sport/arte e tutto quello che vi ruota attorno. Mi ha regalato la scoperta di un mondo fatto incredibilmente anche di gentilezza, e garbo. Che lei trasmette con dolcezza, e anche tenerezza.
  Un mondo che cresce e si sviluppa nel silenzio: nonostante la vita intorno al ring sia rumorosa e brulicante, sul ring, tra i due contendenti, è il silenzio che regna. Rotto solo dal suono dei loro passi e dallo scontro del cuoio sulla pelle, sui muscoli e sulle ossa.
  Mi ha regalato pagine di struggente bellezza che mi hanno spinto a rivedere diversi match storici. Le ha regalate a me che ricordo ancora le veglie notturne attorno alla radio con papà e fratelli per ascoltare le radiocronache dei match di Nino Benvenuti contro Emile Griffith, che le sei ore di fuso orario collocavano in una parte della giornata che normalmente ci avrebbe visto tutti dormienti. E poi ricordo tutti i palpiti per il più grande, Cassius Clay-Muhammad Alì.
  
  
  
  Pagine che diventano l’occasione per parlare del concetto di violenza, e della sua sostanza. Per parlare di donne e parità di diritti, e di diritto della donna anche alla violenza. Per spiegare e dimostrare come altri sport siano più rischiosi e mortali: football, rugby, equitazione, automobilismo, calcio. Ma la boxe è l’unico che ogni volta suscita pubblica riprovazione e lunghe diatribe sulla necessità di proibirla.
  Personalmente ho trovato i momenti più belli di questa raccolta nelle palestre più che nei match, più intorno che dentro il ring. L’esistenza dei cutmen, gli specialisti all’angolo del ring che intervengo a curare, prevenire, arginare i tagli, le ferite: perché se un pugile sanguina da una ferita, non perde solo sangue, ma anche la vista. E se un pugile non riesce a vedere bene, prende più cazzotti.
  Oppure, la mezz’ora che occorre per avvolgere propriamente mani, dita, nocche con le fasciature.
  Gli schizzi di sangue e sudore su arbitri e giornalisti e commentatori a bordo ring…
  
  Consigliatissimo non solo a chi ama la boxe.
  
  
  
  PS
  La vita è come la boxe per molti e sconcertanti aspetti. La boxe però è soltanto come la boxe.
  Joyce Carol Oates: Sulla boxe.
  
  
  Le foto sono di Jim Lommasson e fanno parte della sua raccolta Shadow Boxers.
• 
  Mark

  Katherine Dunn discovered her deep interest in writing about boxing quite by accident around 1980. Her boxing fan husband, during an absence from home, asked her to watch a televised boxing match and tell him what happened. She amassed three pages of notes ready to give him a round-by-round account, when it turns out he only wanted to know who won the fight! After her husband took her to her first live fight, Dunn admits she was electrified. “From that night on, I needed to attend every match in reach and watch every punch thrown on television. I studied boxing books and magazines.”
  
  However, despite the lively boxing scene in her hometown of Portland, Oregon, the coverage of the sport in daily newspapers struck Dunn as “sparse and grudging.” Given her credentials as a writer at that time (two published novels and some short stories), she decided to cover local boxing events herself. The editor of Willamette Week obliged her by agreeing to print what Dunn wrote, and as her journalistic credibility grew, her work found attention in high-caliber publications such as Playboy, Sports Illustrated, and Mother Jones.
  
  The selection of 22 articles in One Ring Circus spans a period of approximately 30 years beginning in the 1980s, and covers a great deal more than just reporting particular fights. They reflect the knowledge Dunn acquired on all aspects of the “sweet science.” Initially, Dunn certainly got up close to the action (“…my notebook had been splattered with blood at ringside, and I had typed quote marks around plenty of tough talk”), but she also went to the gyms “where boxers spend a thousand hours for every minute in an actual bout.” She witnessed passion, ambition, dedication, and focus with rare human intensity.
  
  Dunn cared enough to learn boxers’ histories—why they did this, what brought them here, and what their vision of success looked like—such that she could augment fight reporting with fascinating profiles as part of boxer backstories. Her prose trends towards an exquisite blend of grit, elegance, and humor that draws readers to ringside. For example, “A crisp nose-flattening jab is a thing of exquisite beauty,” “He has a charismatic style, economical but flashy; a grace that gets the job done but keeps the audience soaring with amazement,” and “In the next round, Zevedo’s other eye gave birth to a mouse that immediately developed ambitions to full-blown rathood.”
  And her style can get away with making verbs out of nouns, as in, “Minsker defeated Taylor in the U.S. trials in Fort Worth in June, but in turn was decisioned by Taylor weeks later in the U.S. Finals Trials in Las Vegas.”
  
  It will come as no surprise to learn that even before a bout starts, it is preceded with ritualistic, boxer-unique acts, one of which is taping the boxer’s hands. “Every trainer has his own method of wrapping,” says Dunn. Boxers straddle a chair, extending one hand at a time. “Trainers use this quiet time to give last minute instructions and assurance…It’s a meditative process, a ritual change of identity, repeated every time a boxer enters a gym or steps into the ring. Whatever brand of anxious mortal sits down in that chair, a fighter stands up.”
  
  All the articles are worthy pieces, the shorter ones marginally better than the longer ones, since they pack more punch in fewer words. And Dunn is not afraid to take a position on certain fights that run counter to mainstream thinking. Case in point: the article entitled “The Bite Fight,” in which Mike Tyson bit a chunk out of Evander Holyfield’s ear. Tyson took a lot of heat for his behavior, for which he was heavily fined, suspended for a year, and for which he publicly apologized. But Dunn does her own research by watching the whole fight in slo-mo. She sees Holyfield constantly head-butting Tyson, and Tyson’s anger rising at the referee egregiously overlooking Holyfield’s antics.
  
  Dunn also gives generous coverage to the growing popularity of women’s boxing, and highlights the inevitable and exciting face-off between the daughters of Mohammed Ali and Joe Frazier. But naturally, she has this to say regarding the movie industry’s countless depiction of competitive pugilism: “Movie boxers are never as gorgeous as the real thing…Mere Hollywood magic can’t compete with the luminous intensity honed by a life of fear for breakfast, sweat for lunch, and pitched battle before supper.”
  
  For the most part, there is a healthy amount of respect among all participants in the sport of boxing; it flows upwards, downwards, and sideways. Above all, there is enduring respect for boxing itself. She uses the words of Nicaraguan professional boxer Alexis Arguello to illustrate this mark of respect: “Boxing is a great art form. I have lost in the past. But I have never, and I will never give a bad performance.”
• 
  Marc

  Dunn achieved a kind of cult-classic status with
  Geek Love published in 1989. Fans of her fiction waited and waited for another novel to follow with whispers and hints at a publication date surfacing every 3 to 5 years.
  Her death in May (2016) put to rest any further speculation. She was the type of writer who took her time (it's said Geek Love took her 10 years to write and almost another 10 to publish). But she did leave behind some lesser-known works (two previous novels:
  Truck and
  Attic; and a number of journalistic pieces on boxing, a true love of hers).
  
  This collection pulls together highlights of her nonfiction boxing essays. While I have no real interest in boxing, I was fascinated to delve into the part of Dunn's life that seemed to take up most of her writing focus. I have no idea where she stood in relation to other journalists who cover boxing, but every piece in this collection re-enforces her standing as a keen observer of people and the human condition as a whole. Her fondness for the underdog and the common person brings to light the stories of unheralded fighters. Dunn makes tangible the refuge that many boxing gyms offer, the complex and tender relationships that form between sparring partners. She manages to acknowledge the lure of the spectacle while still fighting for the dignity of the athletes. Perhaps you object to the inherent violence of the sport? Dunn just might be able to convince you otherwise given her reasoned stance on its virtues and safety (relative to many other sports). I grew up in the Don King era of boxing where a circus-like quality followed major advertising for heavyweight pay-per-view fights, so I was surprised to read Dunn's piece defending Mike Tyson's ear biting incident. And yet, even here she provides a refreshing perspective touching on everything from strategy to the media's inherent fear of "bad" black men.
  
  This collection ranges far and wide, covering the role of a good "cut man" in your corner to the growth of women in boxing. If you like boxing, you'll appreciate this book. If you like Dunn, you'll enjoy seeing her writing chops in service of something she loves. I'll leave you with a few choice selections:

  "Ego masquerading as know-how is common to every human endeavor." --Cuts
  
  "Sports are a continual testing of our strength as individuals and our resilience as a species. The more risk in the game, the closer it carries us to the limits of our own possibilities. Games are powerful art forms that offer us greatness and hurl us deeper into life by their drama and beauty." --The Vice & Virtue of Boxing
  
  "The subject of boxing is two people---who they are, and the complex chemical reaction that occurs when they collide on a given night. It is supposed to be a kind of Spartan Zen, fierce but silent except for the periodic bell and the smack of leather on flesh. The purists prefer that a boxer's identity be revealed and defined only by what happens inside the ring. But the curse of all the arts is that the most magnificent performance won't pay the rent if nobody's watching." --One Ring Circus: Ali vs. Frazier IV
  
  "The fight was a circus, as all big boxing matches are. The glitter gets the audience in the door and puts them in the seats. And then the joke is over. The white lights go on above the ring, and two people give whatever they've got. Sometimes it's a clear view of the human heart. That doesn't happen every time. Maybe it doesn't happen often enough. But when it does---as it did that night---it's the greatest show on earth." --One Ring Circus: Ali vs. Frazier IV
  
  "It's a funny world where the actors want to box because it makes them feel real, and the boxers want to act because the pay is so much better." --The Knockout: Lucia Rijker
  
  "The fight folk get impatient with writers using boxing as a metaphor. They're likely to tell you, "Everything is like boxing but boxing isn't like anything else." Still, the year-long build up to the heavyweight title fight between champion Larry Holmes and challenger Gerry Cooney danced so blatantly on the racial divide that it was downright pathetic...
  Dear fat-headed America, the dreamer. Once again, logic drops right out of the ratings and magic gets the vote. Confess: you didn't think Gerry Cooney could, should, or would win. You just wanted him to.
  If you've paid off your bets, the hollow in your pockets is echoing with laughter. You dreamed a feast and woke up with pie on your mugs. That 50-1 shot in the quinella collapses in the first turn and rolls merrily in the dust, kicking and hiccupping with unbridled levity. But ask not at whom the horse laughs. He laughs at you." --The Unhappy Warrior: Holmes vs. Cooney
  
  "The sport of boxing is evolving into a symbolic orchid rooted in gambling casinos and energized by the growlight of national television." --The Big Risk: Andy Minsker

  
  -----------------------------------------------------------
  Words I Learned While Reading This Book:
  
  folderol |
  megillah |
  quinella |
  palooka
  
  
• 
  Eric

  Such a joy to read. I already knew that Dunn had fictional chops, but her non-fiction is an ace in the hole as well. To be honest, I thought that reading a book about boxing profiles would be tedious, but Dunn obviously loves the sport and the technique and science behind it and that love is infectious. It makes me yearn for the days when I was a young lad watching (Crazy) Iron Mike Tyson beat the shite out of anyone and also watch the Iron Sheik pile drive Randy "Macho Man" Savage...whoops! Wrong sport! JK! Seriously, One Ring Circus is great. Some stories were heartwarming, some were depressing and sad, but all were interesting. Oh, something worth noting, Dunn carries a big torch for grrrl power. There are many stories that focus on women's increasing involvement in the sport and quite a few profiles of female boxers. These were the highlights of the book for me. These women have more heart than 95% of the men mentioned in the book. Oooh, now I feel inspired to put on some Ani DiFranco...Living In Clip or Puddle Dive?
• 
  Adeyinka Makinde

  The attraction of the sport of boxing to men and a good fewer women involved in the vocation of constructing words is well documented. Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer but to name a few had a great affinity to it and featured the game in their novels and in other writings. This attraction is not too hard to fathom. For in boxing lies an aggregate of the dramas of life. From the politics of matchmaking to the rituals associated with the dressing room. From the protocols within the training gymnasium to the drama of the action in the ring, it is a sport which consistently fascinates. In the ring, two beings set at each other with flailing fists to put each one’s skill and stamina to the test. Within the confines of the ropes is played out an uneasy accommodation between the use of specially designed rules and a resort back to the barbaric origins of humanity: the raison d’etre of two well-conditioned specimens is to hurt the other, and, if possible, to knock the opponent into a state of unconsciousness. It serves as a spectacle which is at once compelling and disconcerting. Two modern gladiators, exhibiting a supremely taxing form of athleticism, tread on a canvas partly as artists and partly as adrenaline-fuelled agents of destruction. In the background, a crowd, or at least, a significant portion of the crowd will bay for human blood.
  
  In each fighter is an individual’s story about the rationale for picking up the gloves. This frequently involves notions of using the sport as a pathway to redemption, of self realisation and of allowing a member of society’s underclass of nobodies a means to some form of personal actualisation. One reason for steering youth to this sport was the argument that the disciplines it imposed on the impressionable mind were character building. Yet, the boxing business is frequently charged with inflicting soul destroying experiences on its practitioners as well as leaving them physically disabled. It is a sport which is ever controversial. One which boasts of extraordinary characters such as John L. Sullivan and Muhammad Ali, who have risen to the peaks of fame –and of infamy. The monies generated by various fights have set all sorts of records but at its lowest level in the professional ranks, it has often vied for the position of most difficult and least rewarding of trades.
  
  ‘Dispatches From the World of Boxing’ is a particularly apt sub-title. For boxing is somewhat analogous to a war zone. There are the generalissimos: the rival big-time promoters and the venerated and at times cantankerous calling-the-shots superstar fighters. Then there are the ‘foot soldiers’ whose ranks include many an unsung cutman and the $200-dollar-per-round preliminary fighters. The ‘casualties’ comprise at any given moment an assortment of ageing and deluded former champions, contenders and journeymen; each one overstaying his welcome and fighting a usually losing battle against one immutable tenet of nature; the inevitability of physical degeneration. So too, the brain-damaged and indigent ex-pug struggling to pay for the medicines and the treatment that may arrest his degenerating health along with the other bills of life and even, one could argue, the adherents: today’s fan; members of a fast-shrinking constituency who more often than not feel cheated by a several decades long habit of fractious titles, non-competitive fight bills as well as the enormous dues demanded by pay-per-view shows.
  
  Culled from extensive writings for The Oregonian and Willamette Week and from prestige assignments for Playboy, Sports Illustrated and Vogue, ‘One Ring Circus’ is a collection of engaging essays and articles written by Katherine Dunn, an award-winning novelist and boxing enthusiast who has covered the sport for three decades.
  
  A 1994 article penned for Mother Jones and entitled “Just As Fierce” is a well-argued polemic urging all: feminists, traditionalists and other ideological positions in-between to acknowledge the frequently ignored feminine instinct and capacity for aggression and to get used to the idea of female combatants duking it out in the squared ring. Laced with references to personal observations, to historical, sociological and psychological surveys, she posits the compelling conclusion that the female species is as widely varied as is the male when it comes to displaying ‘fighting heart’: A ‘heresy’ postulated as an inexorable logic.
  
  She is at her prosecutorial best when indicting the denizens of the media for their widespread, one-dimensional, open and shut denunciations of Mike Tyson in the aftermath of the ear-biting incident during his second contest with Evander Holyfield. It all bore more than a whiff of double-standards and racial profiling according to Dunn.
  
  One thing Dunn has in common with the many talented writers who have devoted much time to boxing is her seemingly endless reservoir of enthusiasm about the game and the characters that are associated with it. With Alexis Arguello, the Nicaraguan legend, she celebrates a dignified paragon of pugilistic elegance and human rectitude. In Francisco Roche, a Cuban emigre with a ‘past’, we see Dunn shine a spotlight on an averagely-talented fighter trying his best to achieve his version of the ‘American Dream’. Also covered is Lucia Rijker, a Dutch warrior of resolute determination, in whose tale is a confirmation of the truism that discipline married to talent produces professional excellence. Then there is the enthrallingly dark and tangled narrative that is the story of Johnny Tapia.
  
  While boxing may be a sport many of its fans have been in love with all their lives, it is a love affair which nonetheless is often times uneasy; even bitter-sweet. It is tempered when the inevitable fatal or near fatal ring casualty hits the news. And just as in the 1960s, when the death of the Cuban welterweight Benny ‘Kid’ Paret touched off the opprobrium of the anti-boxing brigade, so in the 1980s, the death of Duk Koo Kim, a Korean lightweight, re-ignited, so far as the United States was concerned, renewed efforts to do away with a sport whose enemies feel has no place in a civilised society. Once again, Dunn, as other boxing journalists, was called upon to dip her pen into the inkwell to offer her ruminations and sober assessments of the sport she loves.
  
  As a writer situated in the epochal 1980s, she was well-placed to record the violent theatre that was Marvin Hagler versus Thomas Hearns, the racial politics and personal aspects involved in Larry Holmes’s defence of his world heavyweight title against Gerry Cooney, as well as the exhilarating success-against-the-odds comeback of Sugar Ray Leonard.
  
  Katherine Dunn's articles are wonderful lessons in deconstructing the boxing business and the boxers for the benefit of the non-fan in a way in which the aficionado can appreciate. They also serve as an historic record of the times during which the writer has covered the sport.
  
  And yes, one thing Dunn’s collection does confirm in the mind of the reader is that boxing, for all its deadly seriousness as a combat sport and its attendant poisonous issues, is one hell of a storming circus.
  
  ONE RING CIRCUS: Dispatches from the World of Boxing by Katherine Dunn is published by SCHAFFNER PRESS Inc and is available for purchase at amazon.com
  
  Adeyinka Makinde is the author of the biography Dick Tiger: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal. His next book will be Jersey Boy: The Life and Mob Slaying of Frankie DePaula
• 
  Bookeater504

  This was my last chance to tap into the beautiful mind of Katherine Dunn. I have read the novels, the collection of her answers to inquiring questions, and unless her family finds a hidey hole with some volumes of her works, that is all I get. I really enjoyed reading this series of articles from the world of boxing. It seems perfect that the last words from her that I will read were about a subject I knew so little about and had very little interest in until she put it in her voice. The tales of young men saved and protected by this so-called violent sport, young women breaking stereotypical standards with most of the old guards support, and the importance of the gyms and folks that have kept the sport alive for centuries. She even convinced me that Tyson was unfairly judged for his ear snack.
  RIP KD. It really would be heaven to be smoking and drinking coffee while having a chat with you.
• 
  Juan Valdivia

  After re-reading Dunn's "Geek Love" recently, I was eager as an eager beaver to read this book. Happy to report that it was a fun, quick read. Her love and reverence for the art of boxing is on every page. Sure, some of the essays written about fights in the 1980s and 1990s may feel dated, but her portraits of boxers like bad-ass Lucia Rijker and Johnny Tapia were fascinating. Loved her thoughtful, thorough defense of Mike Tyson's ear biting in his second fight with Holyfield, and "School of Hard Knocks" was a beautiful essay. A few of the pieces were egh but the vast majority of them--at least for me--served to capture my attention about that particular fight (such as Holmes vs. Cooney and the racial tension underlying that title fight) or fighter. And in the Age of YouTube, this book managed to further widen my interest for the sport of boxing; I know I'm going to search for these fights and fighters to see them in action. That's an accomplishment, no?
  
  To boot, I can fully endorse this book for Katherine Dunn fans. This collection further captures her spirit, too (or so I think). After reading "Geek Love," who can be surprised to read that Dunn asked Lucia Rijker's trainer, the Freddie Roach, if she could be her sparring partner for the piece so she could better understand what it feels like to be on the receiving end of one of Rijker's jabs. How can you not love a writer like her!?
• 
  Andy

  I'm a huge Geek Love fan, and it was only a matter of time before I read One Ring Circus (been on the Kindle for over a year now). I am also a very green boxing fan (admittedly, I know nothing about the sport, but have found myself intrigued over the past few years, wanting to delve into it not just as a casual viewer). Therefore, this book made sense to read for me. I was pleasantly surprised and pleased with the stories that we written here. I even did some research on some names I never heard of, just to see what I missed in the 80's. Dunn certainly knows boxing, and she has this passion for it that I could some people not understanding, as boxing is a tough sport to engage in on many levels. I respect her for her views and her insights. I can't say what my favorite story was (probably the Johnny Tapia one, heartbreaking and enthralling all in the same), but her defense of Tyson biting Holyfield had me floored. I remember that fight, and I never thought to wonder why Tyson did what he did, only assumed what the media said. Dunn's take is something else. Daring and insightful, and I find myself sympathizing with Tyson as she told he viewpoint of the fight and reason/cause. That was pretty eye opening and it's writing like that that I just love.
• 
  Josh Valley

  The recent death of Katherine Dunn made one thing depressingly clear: we may never see her follow up to Geek Love in our life time. For the last 20 years, Dunn has been working on and off on a boxing themed novel entitled Cut Man, and barring the event of it being published posthumously, it may be lost to time at this point. It makes me sad, and it sent me out looking for any of Dunn's writing to consume. I know nothing about boxing, but there's something incredible about writer whose passion for a subject you care very little about ignites a temporary interest in it. I doubt I'm going to go watch fights on my own, but through Dunn's eyes I was captivated and intrigued by this world I'd never even cast a sideways thought toward. That's enough to recommend this book to everyone.
• 
  Tom

  The sport of professional boxing has become a joke these days (I realized the other day that I had no clue who was reigning heavyweight champ, an unthinkable lapse when I was a kid mesmerized by Ali-Frazier epic fights), but fortunately, that doesn't diminish the quality of fine writing about the sport, including William Hazlitt's essay "The Fight" and AJ Liebling's classic collection "The Sweet Science." I've never heard of Dunn (my fault, I'm sure) but I look forward to reading a new contributor to that fine tradition.
• 
  Milo R.

  "At the time, boxers struck me as peculiarly civilized. They didn't screech or holler. They didn't use knives or bicycle chains or chunks of plumbing, and they only fought when the bell rang. When it rang again, they stopped. Amazing. Still, I believed that, being a girl, I had no access to the place where the rage was trained and restrained."
• 
  Katie

  I didn't finish this collection of boxing essays, which is more the result of my current addiction to Lemony Snicket than a comment on the quality. Directed at the non-enthusiast, the essays helped me to get the allure of boxing and see it in a new light. I hope to finish one of these days.
• 
  Joe DiBuduo

  Good book about boxing, but is a little dated for me
• 
  Sara

  Because I read the interview with Katherine Dunn in Guernica:
  http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews...
• 
  Derek

  My only disappointment is that it ended so quickly. I would be delighted if I had a hundred more pages to read.
• 
  Emma Richler

  Very good indeed.