RARA-AVIS: Re: Sports Noir

From: Mark Finn ( markfinn@texas.net)
Date: 15 Feb 2007


--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Terrill Lankford"
<lankford2000@...> wrote:
>
> Don't know if anyone has mentioned this one yet, but Joe Lansdale's
short novel THE BIG BLOW mixes boxing with the great hurricane of 1900 that leveled Galveston. Jack Johnson is one of the main characters.
>
> TL
>

Boxing does seem naturally inclined to Noir writing, doesn't it? After all, it's been alleged for the past hundred years that boxing was crooked, fixed, or otherwise shady-the perfect breeding ground for gangsters and related types. And then there's the aspect of punishment-two guys beating the crap out of each other. Getting knocked to the canvas is a perfect metaphor, especially considering that up until the middle of the 20th century, the three biggest sports in America were, in no particular order, baseball, horseracing, and boxing.

To this I'll add another boxing tale: "Iron-Jaw" by Robert E. Howard. If you have either The Iron Man or Boxing Stories, it appears in those books as "Fists of the Desert." I would call it proto-noir, and certainly, it would seem that REH was headed in this direction at the end of his career. This was written and sold just a few months before he died.

Mark Finn



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