Fat City (New York Review Books Classics), by Leonard Gardner
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Fat City (New York Review Books Classics), by Leonard Gardner
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Fat City is a vivid novel of allegiance and defeat, of the potent promise of the good life and the desperation and drink that waylay those whom it eludes. Stockton, California, is the setting: the Lido Gym, the Hotel Coma, Main Street lunchrooms and dingy bars, days like long twilights in houses obscured by untrimmed shrubs and black walnut trees. When two men meet in the ring—the retired boxer Billy Tully and the newcomer Ernie Munger—their brief bout sets into motion their hidden fates, initiating young Munger into the company of men and luring Tully back into training. In a dispassionate and composed voice, Leonard Gardner narrates their swings of fortune, and the stubborn optimism of their manager, Ruben Luna, as he watches the most promising boys one by one succumb to some undefined weakness; still, “There was always someone who wanted to fight.”
Fat City (New York Review Books Classics), by Leonard Gardner- Amazon Sales Rank: #49397 in Books
- Published on: 2015-09-08
- Released on: 2015-09-08
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.98" h x .42" w x 5.02" l, .81 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 200 pages
From Library Journal LJ's reviewer found this "sordid saga of cheap hotels, cheap women, cheap dreams, and little or no fulfillment" to be "expertly written" (LJ 9/1/69). The plot finds palooka Billy Tully teaming up with a young would-be fighter who is destined to follow in Tully's footsteps.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review "Sometimes, somehow, someone gets it right. The reissue of Fat City, Leonard Gardner’s pitch-perfect account of boxing, blue-collar bewilderment and the battle of the sexes, is cause for celebration, and reflection.” —Paul Wilner, San Francisco Chronicle "A slim, taut book that has earned its status as a classic by dint of its immaculate, evocative prose, a compassionate but dour view of the human condition, and the absolute credibility of its depiction of the sport of the busted beaks...Though Fat City was written long before cellphones or the Internet, its human apparatus is state of the art. With this new edition, new generations of readers and writers will discover it, learn from it, and find both wincing pain and deep pleasure. Gardner’s achievement lives on precisely because Fat City is not depressing. The tale is dark, but it is charged with energy. It is seductive, engaging, and lit, despite the odds, by a vitality that is in itself a form of hope. We come away from it burnt clean.” —Katherine Dunn, Slate“A meditation on rugged beauty and abject degradation.”—Sam McManis, The Sacramento Bee"Really a superior performance...Gardner takes us into the bitter fancies of two professional prizefighters...the first is a has-been, the second is learning to lose. A third character, their manager, links the pair in defeat and frustration...Gardner strips them of everything except the most important thing: their singularity...of such a seemingly small gift is dignity born and success measured." --Newsweek“Gardner…writes like a sad poet…free of clichés and sentimentality… a beautifully written book.”—Brian Greene, The Life Sentence"Fat City affected me more than any new fiction I have read in a long while, and I do not think it affected me only because I come from Fat City, or somewhere near it...He has got it exactly right...but he has done more than just get it down, he has made it a metaphor for the joyless in heart." --Joan Didion"Gardner has laid claim to a locale that others have explored, but seldom with such accuracy and control...in a tone that is both detached and lyrical. The triumph of the book is its action. Running, fighting, loving, weeding, harvesting, these men stay in motion in order not to be doomed. So powerfully does Gardner record their actions that we recall their lives, not their defeats." --The New York Times Book Review"Gardner's book should be taken slowly. The chapters are constructed with great care, worked, polished and fitted like a precision parts in a beautiful engine. There is a comic chapter on the physical attributes of boxers which could easily be overlooked, three pages as delicate and funny as the calmer Twain. Chapter Four, a short section ending a magnificent description of a boxer doing roadwork, withstands the closest scrutiny." --Frank Conroy, Life"The stories of Ernie Munger, a young fighter with frail but nevertheless burning hopes, and Billy Tully, an older pug with bad luck in and out of the ring, parallel one another through the book. Though the two men hardly meet, the tale blends the perspective on them until they seem to chart a single life of missteps and baffled love, Ernie its youth and Tully its future. I wanted to write a book like that." --Denis Johnson, Salon"By almost any criterion imaginable, Leonard Gardner's Fat City is one of the two or three very best boxing novels ever written. That it rates among the Top Ten is pretty much beyond dispute." --George Kimball, The Sweet Science"Leonard Gardner wrote Fat City as a moody elegy to the wayward dreamers who fight in tank-town arenas, then retreat to flophouses and shotgun weddings, day labor and rotgut drinking binges." --John Schulian, L.A. Times"In his pity and art Gardner moves beyond race, beyond guilt and punishment, as Twain and Melville did, into a tragic forgiveness. I have seldom read a novel as beautiful and individual as this one.”—Ross Macdonald
Language Notes Text: French
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33 of 34 people found the following review helpful. The Tough Battle for Survival By William Hare Billy Tully and Ernie Munger are two young men living in the Northern California delta town of Stockton. Their world is the violent one of boxing, but their struggles for survival are more universal than just any conventional story about men battling professionally in the squared circle. You do not have to be a fight fan to appreciate this arresting work.Leonard Gardner has followed the rule of thumb laid down years ago of "Write what you know." Gardner grew up in Stockton and knows the lower middle class world he describes with graphic brilliance. He was an amateur boxer, giving him a knowledge of how men struggle to survive in that competitive and highly dangerous world.Gardner's story craft is straight out of Albert Camus, in many ways reminiscent of his epic novella, "The Stranger." His descriptions of dingy bars and dreary hotel rooms ring with clarity, transferring readers to a world of existential survival where some cling to hope while others have long since given up.Tully was on the verge of being a contender but lost a major fight, hit the bottle, and quit boxing. He got a job as a short order cook. After going to the local high school gym to work out he meets Ernie Munger. At 18 Ernie is eleven years Tully's senior. He becomes so impressed by Munger's moves that he recommends that he visit Lido Gym and look up his former manager. When Munger begins boxing amateur Tully's interest increases and he is motivated to launch a comeback.Tully and Munger seek extra money by working as field pickers under a broiling sun. Tully finds temporary romance with Oma, a woman he meets in a bar with such a propensity for alcohol that he moves out of her dingy hotel room and back to his own, warned by his manager that she will destroy his concentration as he prepares for a main event bout in Stockton. Meanwhile Munger impregnates a young local woman, marries her, and with additional incentive, turns professional.Gardner wrote the screenplay for the electrifying film version directed by John Huston, which starred Stacy Keach, Jeff Bridges and Susan Tyrell. It matches the tenaciously gripping, Camus-like existential reality of the book.
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful. Fat City By Robin Friedman Leonard Gardner's short novel, "Fat City", set in Stockton, California in the mid-1950's, appeared in 1969. Gardner wrote the screenplay for the movie, directed by John Huston, in 1972. The book remains in print in a series of novels based in California called "California fiction". I came upon this book by chance. It is little-known but a treasure.The book is about boxing and low life, faded dreams, lack of prospects, booze, rooming houses, failed relationships in a small California town. The two primary characters are Billy Tully and Ernie Munger. Billy at age 29 is a washed-up fighter who has lost his wife and several jobs and is sinking deeply into alcohol and oblivion. Ernie is 19 years old and a boxer who may have potential. He marries a young women named Faye, after getting her pregnant, and takes up the ring as a professional in order to support his wife and child.The paths of the two men cross in the gym at the beginning of the book and their careers take parallel courses. Billy had lost an important fight in Panama some years earlier when his manager, Ruben Luna, forced him to travel alone to Panama in order to save on expenses. He makes an attempted comeback at the age of 30 and actually wins a decision in a brutal match with an aging Mexican fighter. He returns to fighting to try to save himself from depression over the loss of his wife, his lack of prospects, and his loneliness.Ernie Munger is young and works at a gas station. Although he has some boxing potential, his skills appear limited. As had been the case with Tully years earlier, Ruben Luna sends Munger out of town, (to Las Vegas) for a fight to save on the expenses. This is Munger's first professional fight which proves more successful for him than did Tully's fight in Panama.The book ends darkly, but with a hint of the possiblity of personal growth and true independence for Munger.The descriptions in this book of bars, of women, of cheap hotels, of the training for fights, and of the fights themselves is compelling. This is a strong picture of boxing at its seamiest which yet captures the fascination that this sport holds for many -- myself included.There are also many scenes in the book of the life of seasonal, agricultural workers in northern California. One of the most memorable portions of the book occurs when Tully and Munger sign on for day work in picking nuts. Tully climbs upon a ladder on a tractor and beats the nuts from a tree with a stick where they fall on Munger's head as he gathers them into a bag. The rage and the frustration of both men is palpable.Gardner writes with a spare understated style which does not moralize. The characters and their experiences speak for themselves. It is highly effective.There is a picture here of despairing men with small visions but also a real sense of underlying humanity, of hope, and of valuable, if fallen ideals. This will be a rewarding novel for the reader who wants to go slightly off the routine path.
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful. A masterpiece of a novel By Mark Miller It really is. I have read, I'd guess, 250-300 novels by contemporary writers since I read a glowing review of FAT CITY in a San Francisco newspaper years ago, sometime in the early 1970s, and bought the novel, mainly because I was brought up in San Jose, California, and wondered what could a writer find in the humble tank town of Stockton to write about. When I finished reading it I just looked out the window, so moved was I by the characters in the novel, and by Gardner's storytelling prowess. And to this day -- going on 28 years later -- I swear that I have not read a contemporary novel that has affected me as profoundly as FAT CITY did, and still does whenever I reread it, which is every year or two. Gardner's craft is wonderful to read -- the cadences of his sentences are gorgeous; you find yourself wanting to read it out loud to yourself, just to relish the drum beat of the syllables. (The only other writer I can think of who constructed sentences that way in English is Joseph Conrad.) Gardner's understanding of his characters, and of human nature, makes you shake your head and smile, even as his characters are blindly reeling toward sad destinies. This is American literature of the finest kind -- and though Gardner has not published a novel since FAT CITY in 1969, I know that a whole lot of people hope that he will again. He has the gift and this novel is proof.
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