Fat City by Leonard Gardner

Fat City by Leonard Gardner
HB ed., Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright 1969

Fat City is a California noir story about the torpid lives of two despairing boxers, one old and one young. One day their bleak paths cross in a gym and from then on we are taken into a world of destitute souls, broken romance, and faded dreams. Set in the seedy part of 1950s Stockton, Gardner uses the backdrop of small-time local boxing to intensify the stark mood of this distressing tale.

"His life, he felt, had turned against him. He was convinced every day of it had been mislived. His attention dulled, his ears humming, a sense of emptiness and panic hovering about him, he feared he was losing his mind. Catastrophes seemed to whisper just beyond hearing."

Billy Tully is the older washed up boxer, who has been lagging out a living as a field picker or a short order cook; anything to get a couple of bucks to pay for his flophouse and a bottle. His best days have past, and he faces a long future of grim disconsolation. Thinking he still has some gas in the tank, he attempts a return to the ring and chase an unreachable illusion. He meets 18 year old Ernie Munger and encourages the boy towards local boxing. Ernie has some talent, but not enough to get him out of the entrapped life he will forever live in Stockton.

This novel is much more than a palooka boxing story. It's a haunting portrayal of people who seem content embracing an existence of little hope, and find comfort living in despair and lack of personal drive. Leonard Gardner delivers it through the depressed atmosphere of the harsh streets of Stockton, with all of its cast of characters eroding in a world they composed of their own failures. Fleabag hotels, crooked managers, stale smelling taverns, drunken lush women that live in turnstile bedrooms, and yet Gardner teases us into thinking that a glimmer of hope can spark, especially for young Ernie. But escape is too difficult and failure continues to be the word in everyone's destiny.

Leonard Gardner wrote numerous short shorts and screenplays, but "Fat City" is his only novel. When first published, it received wide acclaim and caught the interest of director John Huston. (who directed the 1972 film) But now this novel seems forgotten, and that is a shame. Few better than this capture the honest depiction of cheap uncaring lives -with its pains of past glory, hopelessness, and utter loneliness.

The Canvas Coffin by William Campbell Gault

The Canvas Coffin by William Campbell Gault
Dell 795, Copyright 1953

Thanks to William Campbell Gault's fondness for sports, readers have been rewarded with a handful of wonderful stories that use a sport as the backdrop for mystery, murder, and detective work. Boxing is on tap here and the main event has an aging middleweight boxer who is a suspect in a murder case and he's determined to prove his innocence.

"Twice, he started that overhand right; both times I beat him to the punch. It would be unfair to Western Union to say he telegraphed it; it was more in the nature of a night letter."

Luke Pilgrim wakes up the morning after taking some serious punches in his title fight the night before; and can't remember if he killed a girl he was seen with after the victory party. He's no palooka; Pilgrim is a sympathetic, caring, middleweight champion. Puzzled and confused, he becomes tormented by what he may of done. Pilgrim realizes that to clear himself as a suspect, he must piece the events together and find out what occurred that night. But, justice is breathing down his neck and closing in, so he must continue to slug out of his lost memory any vague thought that could prove beneficial to solve the mystery.

The setting is the 1950s L.A. boxing scene, with its cynical atmosphere of smoky ringsides, mobsters, fixed fights, and and an assortment of characters with names like Muggsy, Noodles and Patsy. Between bout after bout, the Champ spends his time hunting down clues and people, to fit together what really happened that night and what his involvement was. It climatically comes down during his last big title fight, where Luke Pilgrim finally gets all the dots connected and confronts the men involved.

Written a couple of years before Gault introduced his compassionate P.I. Brock Callahan, it is obvious that the Luke Pilgrim character planted the seed for Callahan. The story has the same feel as those excellent early Callahan novels-in its pervasive mood, dialog and characters. Pilgrim even has a sophisticated girlfriend named Sally, who is essentially the Jan character in the Brock Callahan series. If you enjoyed those early Gault novels, you'll want to strap the gloves on for this one. It's wonderfully done.......

"Murder is more important than that; it's a double death, killing the killer as well as the killed, ending the dream and staining the soul. The newspapers love it, especially if one breast or more can be exposed, along with the inside of the thigh. "

Boxing has been the backdrop in other William Campbell Gault stories. In the excellent "The Hundred Dollar Girl," (1961) Tough wise-ass P.I. Joe Puma tackles murder and broads when a contenders' voluptuous wife hires him to investigate her husband's manager.





Gault boxing stories that were published in pulp magazines:

A Dilemma for Danny (1943)
Slug the Man Down (1948)
The Longest Count (1949)
Wake for a Warrior (1950)
Chop-’Em-Down Kid (1950)