ROUGH HOUSE

Seeking purpose between the ropes.

Miller, a journalist, spent five years observing her young protagonist’s attempt to crack wrestling’s top tier. Her attentiveness yields an illuminating narrative that foregrounds aspiration, perseverance, and community. At the book’s core is a timeless tale of intergenerational friction. Named after a WWE champion, Hunter Noblett begins training in backyard rings. He hones his “powerslam” and “discus punch” while learning the showmanship necessary to “get over”—rouse the fans—in an unabashedly “fake” sport. Hunter’s father, Billy Ray, a former wrestler who never made it big, maintains that his son needs to finish college before even considering a dangerous, low-paying ring career. Hunter disagrees; they nearly come to blows. Miller charts Hunter’s progress on Georgia’s local wrestling circuit, where he performs for “scant crowds in second-rate venues” and experiments with personas like “the pompous jock” and Hollywood hunk. He wears sequins, modifies his approach to chest-hair grooming, and works a regular job for an industrial supplies manufacturer. He also designs his own promotional materials and hustles to out-of-state gigs when big wrestling companies need bodies. Miller’s blow-by-blow accounts of matches are gratifyingly concise. Though major-league wrestling is undoubtedly lucrative, her assertion that it’s “culturally ubiquitous” includes some weak evidence. Yet her real-life characters are frequently surprising and disarmingly tender. As Hunter sips cherry-flavored whiskey, his cousin, also a wrestler, shows him a pair of tiny wrestling tights he made for his daughter, who had recently died “in utero at 33 weeks.” “Grief, poverty, and trauma” run through these pages. Wrestlers recall painful childhoods, self-harm, and self-hatred. Miller’s conscientiousness lends gravitas to her conclusions. For those in the ring and their “working-class fans,” wrestling is “an escape from the cruel mundanity of everyday life.”

An observant study of small-time wrestling, a source of meaning for participants and fans.