The author’s research is commendable, but it swamps readers with too many details.
How an 1897 boxing match helped make cinema history.
This is a long book about a very short film. Admittedly, that movie, a document of a heavyweight title bout called The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight, was once much longer—about three times longer than the 29-minute version eventually shown on June 10, 1997, at London’s National Film Theatre. But even the 90-minute version of the film, which no longer exists, would pale in comparison to Hawley’s (The Imjin War, 2014, etc.) densely written account, which weighs in at more than 350 pages. His subject is a little-known footnote to cinema history: the “fight film.” As motion pictures were being created—by everyone from Thomas Edison to Georges Méliès to the Lumières—two American brothers, Gray and Otway Latham, and their associate, Enoch Rector, realized there was money to be made by filming prizefights. Boxing was exceedingly popular at the end of the 19th century but prohibited in many states. Their idea was simple and savvy: given there were no laws (yet) against boxing films, they would find a pair of famous pugilists, put them in a ring, and rake in money by showing the footage all over the country. It was harder to pull off than they thought, though, and Hawley’s book painstakingly chronicles the enormous pre-bout preparation. The author splits his attention between the athletes and the cinematic pioneers to deliver an extremely well-researched tale of who did what, when, and how—and sometimes, even why. But this mountainous accumulation of detail is ultimately smothering. Readers don’t just learn about Eadweard Muybridge and his famous stop-motion films of Leland Stanford’s horses; they even learn the name of one of the equines (Sallie Gardner, if one wonders). In the same vein, Hawley doesn’t just describe a match between British fighter Robert Fitzsimmons (who would later appear in the titular film) and an Irish heavyweight named Peter Maher; he provides, literally, a blow-by-blow account. It’s not that his research is unwelcome; it’s simply overwhelming. By page 260, he’s only gotten to the first round of the big fight in Carson City, Nevada. So many writers give readers so little that it seems churlish to chide one who gives too much—but there’s a reason for the old adage “less is more.”
The author’s research is commendable, but it swamps readers with too many details.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 404
Publisher: Conquistador Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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