Sparring with Hemingway

Budd Schulberg's love affair with boxing began when he was twelve, when he saw his first bouts at the Hollywood Legion. Over the years, between novels, he was Sports Illustrated's first boxing editor and covered title fights for Playboy, Esquire, Newsday, and the New York Post. This new book collects the best of Mr. Schulberg's reportage on the Sweet Science, from Benny Leonard to Muhammad Ali to George Foreman. In addition to pieces on the great fights and great fighters of the last seventy-five years, Mr. Schulberg offers reflections on the social history of the fight game; the mystique of the heavyweight championship; the seamy side of the boxing business; and his own sparring match with Ernest Hemingway, when two aficionados of prizefighting had a verbal go at each other. Throughout, Mr. Schulberg is a pleasure to read and a passionate defender of an often maligned sport. "Boxing and civilization—any civilization—stand in delicate balance," he writes. "But if our civilization is indeed declining and if it finally falls, it will not be because Joe Louis clobbered Schmeling or took the measure of Billy Conn. Or because Ali made Bad Sonny Liston quit in his corner. Or because Joe Frazier landed a tremendous, humbling left hook on the controversial jaw of gallant braggadocio Muhammad Ali.”