Pain & Punishment

BOXING IN ART AND LITERATURE--William D. Cox--Reynal & Hitchcock ($5).

When Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics pointed out that boxers find "the crown and the honors" of victorious combat pleasant, but that "receiving the blows they do is painful and annoying to flesh and blood," he expressed an attitude toward pugilism that has been held by most of the writing men since his day. The 37 authors whose fragmentary observations are included in Boxing in Art and Literature seem as a rule to approach it with a strange air of mingled respect and disdain, as if striving to find some intellectual justification for the pains and punishments they describe in connection with every battle. Beginning with Homer and ending with Ernest Hemingway, Boxing in Art and Literature includes Hazlitt's famed The Fight, Arnold Bennett's report on Beckett v. Carpentier, Irvin S. Cobb on Carpentier v. Dempsey, 45 illustrations by Eakins, Bellows and 35 others, is essentially a handsome gift book that possesses more literary interest than gift books usually have.

Its title is misleading, for it is primarily an anthology of the great knockouts of literature. For straight graphic writing, Homer's account of Odysseus' one-punch victory over Irus, and of Epeios' equally effective slugging of Euryalos, make subsequent reports on fisticuffing seem cloudy and selfconscious. When Euryalos was hit, he leaped up "as when beneath the North Wind's ripple a fish leapeth" and was forthwith dragged from the ring with his legs trailing, spitting clotted blood, his head drooping awry.

Least familiar selection in the volume is Robert Davis' excellent story of the Fitzsimmons v. Corbett fight, beginning when Corbett, meeting Fitzsimmons doing roadwork, airily refused to shake hands with him. Sentimental, touchy Fitzsimmons was hurt, brooded over the slight, refused to shake hands when they met in the ring. He told Robert Davis he would win in the seventh, then changed it to the 14th. In the 14th his blow to the solar plexus left Corbett retching and helpless and Fitzsimmons champion of the world. After Corbett had been counted out Fitzsimmons offered again to shake hands with him. This time Corbett accepted.

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