LEONARD GARDNER – Fat City. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. hardcover, 1969. Dell, paperback, 1972. Several later reprint editions have been published. Film: Columbia, 1922, directed & produced by John Huston.

   Stockton, California. Circa late 60’s. A slice of the nowhere lives of second-rate boxers in a third-rate town.

   â€œBilly Tully was a fry cook in a Main Street lunchroom. His face, a youthful pink, was lined around the mouth. There was a dent in the middle of his nose. Thin scars lay one above another at the outer edges of his brows…. It was the size of his neck that gave his clothed figure its look of strength. The result of years of exercise, of lifting ten- and twenty-pound weights with a headstrap, it had been developed for a single purpose — to absorb the shock of blows. Tully had not had a bout since his wife had left him, but last night he had hit a man…. He had thrown one punch and the man had dropped. Tully now believed he had given up his career too soon. He was still only twenty-nine.”

   What’s a retired boxer good for? At the peak, money coming in, girls like you, and like the money. The boys wanna be seen with you. To slap you on the back, to shake your hand, to buy you a drink. You’re a hero. And then suddenly it’s gone. All of it.

   So after work he heads down to the YMCA. Spies Ernie Munger, “a tall, lean, sweating youth.” He invites him to box. “Smiling tolerantly, Tully pursued him. After that he felt only desperation because everything happened so quickly: smashes on his nose, jolts against his mouth and eyes, the long body eluding him, bounding unbelievably about the ring while Tully, flinching and covering, tried to set himself to counter. In sudden rage, he lunged, swinging like a street fighter, and his leg buckled. Hissing with pain, he began hopping around the ring.”

   Asks Tully to the Ernie: “How many bouts you had?”

   â€œNone.”

   â€œYou’re shitting me. How old are you?”

   â€œEighteen.”

   â€œWell, you got it, kid. I fought Fermin Soto, I know what I’m talking about. I mean nobody used to hit me. They couldn’t hit me. They’d punch, I wouldn’t be there. You ought to start fighting.”

   â€œI don’t know. I just come down to mess around. Get a little exercise.”

   â€œDon’t waste your good years. You ought to go over to the Lido Gym and see my manager.”

   And so it begins for Ernie Munger. Billy Tully, Version 2.0.

   But for Tully “life seemed near its end. In four days he would be thirty.”

         —-

   A vivid glimpse of a grimy nowheresville, where boxing dreams gild the wilted lilies stroking the gutter. Where you come up for air a time or two. A hundred bucks in your pocket. Thinking you’re on top of the world, ma. Top of the world. Only to fall to the canvas. And rise again and again. And fall.

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   Like Ebert says of the film, if you like books about suffering and the burden of dreams, two big thumbs up!