The Knockout Artist

by Harry Crews

The hard-hitting narrative of a black boxer of uncommon promise-- and his descent into the New Orleans underworld.

"A brilliant specialist in black humor, Crews delivers the goods once again... uncannily effective." —Publishers Weekly

Genres: Fiction, Southern Gothic, Southern, Classics, Book Club, Sports, Novels

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Harry Eugene Crews was born during the Great Depression to sharecroppers in Bacon County, Georgia. His father died when he was an infant and his mother quickly remarried. His mother later moved her sons to Jacksonville, Florida. Crews is twice divorced and is the father of two sons. His eldest son drowned in 1964.

Crews served in the Korean War and, following the war, enrolled at the University of Florida under the G.I. Bill. After two years of school, Crews set out on an extended road trip. He returned to the University of Florida in 1958. Later, after graduating from the master's program, Crews was denied entrance to the graduate program for Creative Writing. He moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where he taught English at Broward Community College. In 1968, Crews' first novel, The Gospel Singer, was published. Crews returned to the University of Florida as an English faculty member.

In spring of 1997, Crews retired from UF to devote himself fully to writing. Crews published continuously since his first novel, on average of one novel per year. He died in 2012, at the age of 78.

Reviews

[Diane Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was 4 stars right up til the end, then I knew I'd be thinking about this one for a while.
That ending, I have no words! Not bad for a book I wasn't sure I wanted to read. Honestly, Harry Crews scares me. The life he's led, the underbelly of society that he writes about, I'd just shrivel up and die in those environments, but he turns it into a real world where there is still a bit of beauty and decency to be found, at least in this one.

A Childhood, his memoir of his younger life still remains one of my favorite memoirs. Feast of Snakes was a novel I had to dnf at a certain point. The Gospel Singer was just weird. This one had some hard scenes to read, but I'm glad I persevered. And if I met Crews in a dark alley, or even a well lighted restaurant, I'd turn and run. But, Boy can he write!

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m basically Lebowski pumping his fist against the roof of his car to CCR right now. ‘‘Tis a feeling I only ever get from Crews. God bless you, Harry. You make me smile, you.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crews has been to hell and came back just to describe the smells — and I plan to read every word he left behind.

[Lance · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this one far more than Feast of Snakes. It makes me want to read more Harry Crews. I'd give it 5 stars but the story line of the character's signature knockout schtick didn't quite sit right with me. It just didn't make sense, or if felt kind of silly to me. Otherwise, I did love the characters and watching many of them sink to the bottom while the main character worked his way up from the depths. Anyway, a nice twisted little tale of depravity and redemption.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s no way I could have predicted after reading chapter 1 that I would cry by the time I got to the last chapter. This one is in true Crews fashion, weird and strange characters but sooooo darn good. I read hard copy and listened to the audio and both excellent.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many of the books by Harry Crews are out of print—it’s criminal. I really liked this book. Brutal and swift ending.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like all of Harry Crews’s novels, THE KNOCKOUT ARTIST has high highs and low lows. It’s laugh-out-loud funny in parts, but grimace-inducingly bad in other parts. As disciplined as Crews was with his writing schedule, he sure churned out a lot of awful pages. Consequently, it’s kind of amazing that Penguin Classics of all publishers is reviving his work — I think Crews would fit well into NYRB Classics, where cult/underground status is more important than literary merit, but Penguin doing them almost seems like a joke. Maybe that’s why they removed “The best books ever written” from their back covers when they updated their designs a few years ago. Jokes aside, TKA is entertaining and at least hints at some underlying literary theory. A couple of rewrites and a little restructuring would’ve made it one of Crews’s best, maybe on par with THE GOSPEL SINGER, but it burns out almost as quickly as it fires up.

Side note: S.A. Cosby’s foreword is more like an Instagram caption than a commissioned piece, and it does nothing to justify why Crews is receiving the Penguin Classics treatment. A third-rate writer introducing a second-rate writer doesn’t really scream “literary classic,” Penguin.

[Eden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Caveat: I'm a huge Harry Crews fan. I've been hooked on him since I read "Celebration" when it was released, then went backwards trying to find every one of his weird little feasts of testosterone and pain. The closest comparison I've ever been able to make has been a cross between John Irving's canon of masculine redemption through physical breach and Carl Hiaason's ludicrously over the top Northern Floridian swampy dark comedy.

I wish I liked this book better. It was written while Crews was at the tail end of a 20 year drinking binge, admittedly, and some of the scenes of louche New Orleans seem somehow quaint for all the posturing, but it's still signature Crews. The funny thing is how much it makes me want to read Arthur Nersessian's "The Fuck Up" again, though. Same general feeling on the surface of the skin when you're done reading them both.

[Charles White · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite Harry Crews novel thus far. Critics often refer to this book as black comedy, but frankly you have to be pretty demented to find much humor in this book. Really a journey right up to the edge of the moral abyss. Strongly written with surprisingly endearing characters. Highly recommended.

[Kyle Seibel · Rating 4 out of 5]

my fifth harry crews book after a childhood, feast of snakes, body, and my yet to be dethroned favorite, the gospel singer, and it contains everything i’ve come to expect from his novels—extreme seediness, charmingly transgressive sex stuff, and pitch perfect dialogue from characters and a world that feels entirely absent from contemporary american literature.

and yet this book stands apart for its loving depiction of boxing and boxers, something crews clearly admired deeply. that genuine passion comes through here and distinguishes what other would be as bleak a story as feast of snakes.

the charity character is another mainstay trope of crews’ fiction and the element that, imo, feels most dated. in the framing of a new orleans noir, charity is the femme fatale, sure, but i found myself wishing the author would imbue his female characters with as much complexity and affection and understanding as he does with his men.

[wally · Rating 5 out of 5]

crews was working on this one while i was attending the university of florida. he read some of this in class, that bit in the lockerroom, where eugene has just lost a fight, his manager comes in, tells him he couldn't even knock himself out.

eugene proceeds to coldcock himself, knocking himself out. a star is born. he goes on the circuit. new orleans. some fine american teachers make an appearance. they're special people. heh heh! some others. w/crews, you have folk who have a public appearance, and a very different private appearance, though among friends, that private life is public, shared.

this is a joy to read, following eugene from beginnings to a kind of end, to a new kind of a beginning, to and an end, and to a final new beginning, hallelujah, amen.

great story.

[Saxon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Often compared to Flannery O'Connor, Crews novels take place in the south and often depict down and out characters who struggle internally as much as they do with the trials they encounter daily in their convoluted and difficult lives. Themes often include drinking, sex, racism, religion, etc.

"The Knock-out Artist" spends too much time on the development of a character who has very little character! After all of this, we still do not entirely understand his motives or actions. Furthermore, the story is a bit of a stretch for Crews. (Former boxer becomes freak show and the center of a pyschological study in New Orleans after finding out that he can knock himself out at whim). Crews takes us into the dark and seedy world of New Orleans unsucessfully leaving one unsatisfied.

Nope. Dont read this...but I do suggest "Feast of Snakes" by Crews.

I left this book on a metro train in Washington D.C. after reading it. Maybe somebody else can enjoy it.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favorite Harry Crews is still good and weird Harry Crews.

[Jamie Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Riveting. I spent all day Saturday and a couple hours on Sunday tearing through this one. Glad to remember that "can't put it down" feeling!

[JC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every character is grotesque and every situation is twisted. Other than that - it is a beautiful story about folks in New Orleans eating beignets and listening to jazz.

[Larry Carr · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews is another reveal of the “dark underbelly” (thanks Jay can’t describe it any better) of the South, New Orleans, the The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews is another reveal of the “dark underbelly” (thanks Jay can’t describe it any better) of the South, New Orleans, the fight game and those outside the norm. Epigraph: “Other than the city of New Orleans, nothing in this book is real. The people do not exist; the events never happened.”

SA Crosby. Foreword— “A writer’s job is to get naked. To hide nothing, to look away from nothing, to look at it, to not blink, to not be embarrassed by it or ashamed of it. Strip it down and let’s get to where the blood is, where the bone is. — His novels are not so much read as absorbed. The pages open up like the unfurling of the wings of a bird. A buzzard or a crow, we are enveloped in the dirt lanes and juke joints, the oak pews and the hog pens, the fire pits and the five-and-dimes, the corn liquor stills and the shotgun houses.” “There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed. Done with.” Harry Crews…

This book is full of great stuff on the fight game, particularly the descriptions of boxers’ in training. The nub of the story is Eugene, a woulda, coulda young boxer, left in New Orleans by his trainer to make his way in an evil world… it’s sordid and kinky, but happy to say in the end Eugene, aka Knockout, stops knocking himself out and learns to say no. If you’re up for dark, twisted Southern Gothic, you can’t do better than Harry Crews! And if you’re into boxing, I’d say this is a must read.

Boxing scars. “the boy—whose name was Eugene Talmadge Biggs, but who was often called Knockout or K.O. or Knocker— He had decided a long time ago that the trick was to try to do the next thing in front of you and not think about it too much. Up to a point, anyway. The trouble was in knowing where the point was, the point beyond which you should not go.”

In New Orleans. “It occurred to him the first time he saw them that there were not that many suits in all of Bacon County, Georgia, he was not in Bacon County now. He was in a house that was as big as a train station on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana, standing in the dressing room of a man who owned a hundred-and-some-odd suits of clothes and who was not normal in any way that mattered and whose friends were not normal either —Even though he had not done any road work in a very long time, he was still a notch-solid middleweight, nearly six feet two inches tall in his stocking feet. He was startlingly handsome—dark, nose off-center from being broken, and just enough scar tissue in his eyebrows to make him look sinister — He had been aware for a long time of how striking his features were, of how smooth and strong his stride was when he moved along the street or through the lobby of a hotel. — “You’re Knockout?” said the one in the cap. “Eugene Talmadge Biggs,” he said. “But sometimes called Knockout or K.O. or sometimes Knocker, right?” said the one in the sleeveless shirt. Eugene sighed: “Sometimes.” “My name’s Georgie. This is Jake.” “Overlook him, kid,” Jake said. “He’s obnoxious at times but harmless. I’m your manager. Georgie’s your trainer.” It was only then that Eugene realized his manager was a woman. —an absolute breastless and hipless wonder. “How many knockouts, kid?” said Jake, sliding into a pretty good imitation of a Brooklyn accent. “I, myself, I never seen you work. But I heard. I heard plenty.” “I got seventy two” —Jake took off the soft cap and Eugene saw that she was beautiful. Since she had been standing so close to him and he was so much taller than she was, the cap pulled low over her eyes had hidden her face. — He knew exactly what was coming, knew that he hated it, but knew also he could and would go out and do it without thinking about it or worrying about it or letting it stay with him very long after it was over. “You did ask for six-ounce gloves, right, Knockout?” “Makes it easier,” Eugene said. — ballroom where perhaps three hundred and fifty people, men and women, milled about or sat on little fight stools. Everybody in the room was dressed as a fighter—Everlast — Beautiful young black men, every one of them a middleweight or lighter, moved through the crowd with silver trays full of drinks in long-stemmed glasses and freshly rolled joints and little clear, cut crystal bowls of pills and capsules of every imaginable color and coke laid out in lines. —His robe was removed and Eugene danced across the ring, giving two lightning-quick Ali shuffles, showing the great foot speed he had always had. — “When Oyster Boy gives a theme party, he insists on the authentic, the pure.” “Oyster Boy?” said Eugene. “The matchmaker,” said Jake. “The promoter. This is his place, his arena.” “He’s called Oyster Boy,” said Georgie, “because…” “Save it,” said Eugene. “I don’t want to know.” — “Ladies and gentlemen!” A mild roar came out of the audience. “Dirt track specialists!” “Fags and fagettes, clits and slits and meatpole mountaineers!” “I’m at a fucking AIDS convention,” said Eugene.— a steady chant of Knockout, Knockout, Knockout, Knockout, Knockout. “…a big hand, please, for New Orleans’s favorite fighter, Eugene ‘The Knockout Artist’ Biggs!” — He caught himself on the point of the chin with a vicious right cross. The lights dimmed, his knees buckled, and the chant Knockout, Knockout moved far away as though he were hearing it through a wall from another room. —a voice, his own and hollow as an echo, spoke out of the darkness: “Well, it’s over one more time.” “You knocked yourself cold as an Eskimo’s balls, you.” There had been no pain. There never was. There was only a feeling of tremendous pressure at the base of his skull as his jaw unhinged from the punch. “Can I get you anything?” “Well, yeah. My money.” —“I’m Oyster Boy,” said the emaciated man in the steel-studded collar at the end of the leash. His voice was as dry and scaly as his skin. —“Pay him, Purvis,” said Oyster Boy. The fat boy reached into the pocket of his warm-up suit and pulled out a roll of bills. He snapped off ten one-hundred-dollar bills —have something to eat with us?” Purvis put one hand on his enormous belly —Panéed veal with czarina sauce, roasted quail stuffed with crawfish dressing, corn maque choux, stuffed mirliton with shrimp and crab sauce.” —“Rabbit tenderloin with mustard sauce, tasso and oysters in cream on pasta that will break your heart, fried oysters bayou teche…” “Lose the menu,” said Eugene. “I ain’t eating.” “You will disappoint my guests,” said Oyster Boy. “They were looking forward to…to meeting you.” “Not the deal,” said Eugene Biggs. “The deal’s done.” You’ll hurt my feelings if you leave.” His voice was full of pleading, maybe even of grief. “My deal didn’t include oysters,” said Eugene.”

Bacon County Georgia. “Three months before his eighteenth birthday Eugene Biggs had left high school, and left his daddy’s small farm not far from the Okefenokee Swamp in South Georgia — Nobody had ever told him he was expected to leave but he had always known it. He was grown and now he had to make his own living — There simply were no jobs to be had. Maybe work here and there for a day or two, or even a week, but nothing steady. So he did what the people in South Georgia had been doing since before the Great Depression —He got on the Greyhound bus and went to Jacksonville, Florida. —in a week he was working at the Merita bakery on the loading docks. -before getting a job in a pulp mill on Talleyrand Avenue which paid a little better. From there he went to work for a roofing company spreading hot tar with a mop, and from there to a construction company mixing cement. — one night his daddy’s brother, Carter Biggs, had come to see him in his room. —He did not approve of his nephew bouncing from job to job. —told you when you come I was gone hep you if I could. Don’t go to that mud job tomorrow. Go to the yard and see the foreman in the sheet metal shop. He’ll put you on as a metalworker’s hepper.” “You got the job if you at the yard in the morning at seven-thirty.” Eugene was at the yard before seven and when he saw the foreman, he got the job. “Grab the toolbox, boy.”

Budd Jenkins. —“Ever box, kid?” “What?” “Box. Did you ever box? You know, fight in the ring?” “No sir.” “You know anything much about it?” “No sir, I don’t.” Budd grinned: “I do.” —God, did he talk about fighters. —he talked about what they had, what they didn’t have, who they were. “Some got heart, some got talent, some got both. Take Rocky Marciano. Everybody that ever fought him, beat him. But he retired undefeated, right?” “Marciano would take five punches to land one. But Jesus, what a hitter. Archie Moore was the only guy to ever take him off his feet. But he got off the canvas and whipped the shit out of Moore. All on heart. There was no quit to him. — Willie Pastrano, light-heavyweight champion of the world. Couldn’t hit for shit. All points, ... guys like Scott LaDoux. He’d maul you, brawl you, butt you till you bled, step on your feet, and thumb you blind. But he only wanted to win. “Take Cleveland Williams. —Ed Sullivan had Sonny Liston on when he was champion. Ed says to Sonny, he says, ‘Who hit you the hardest since you been fighting?’ And Sonny says, ‘That be Cleveland Williams.’ — Great fighter with lousy luck and lousy managers. But Sonny just says again, ‘Cleveland Williams.’ ‘What did he hit you with?’ ‘He hit me with a right hand, he hit me with a lef hand. An I think he kicked me two or three times, too.’ — “Muhammad Ali comes to mind. Half the time he had his hands at his hips, and he always carried his left too low. By all rights, somebody should have taken his head off, but nobody did. Ken Norton and Smoking Joe Frazier come close to doing it, but the point is they didn’t. —You never lean straight back from a punch. A good fighter’ll kill a guy that leans like that. But nobody killed Ali. Why is that? I’ll tell you why is that. With Ali’s speed, you can carry your hands anywhere, in your fucking pockets if you want to, and you got his balance it don’t matter which way you lean —“If you’re carrying the right shit in your fists or heart or both, you can come from anywhere if you lucky enough to have the right people see you and bring you along. —welterweight like Mark Breland and heavyweight like Mike Tyson. —Breland had a solid mother behind him who kept a solid home. He got off the street and into a gym when he was young where the right people, good fight people, saw him and he went all the way to a gold medal in the Olympics. —managed right all the way, and as a pro he’s undefeated —“Mike Tyson? The best young heavyweight in the world. —Apprentice fucking criminal is what he was before he was old enough to jack off. But who happens to see him? Cus D’Amato, who was Floyd Patterson’s manager, took Floyd all the way to the championship of the world. take Tyson home with him, raise him, train him, treat him like a son, even adopted the fucking kid, and made a fighter out of him that’s as savage as anybody who ever pulled on a jock. —Smoking Joe Frazier said, not built like a heavyweight. But how did Smoking Joe’s son, Marvis, who is built like a heavyweight, do against Mike Tyson? —

Eugene —“had never met anybody like Budd Jenkins, never seen this kind of passion and enthusiasm in his life. It was this kind of love for something, anything, that he had always wanted, but he had not known it…. Sometimes you give him the edge without even knowing it. Take what happened when Emile Griffith met Benny ‘Kid’ Paret in Madison Square Garden. But never put the mouth on a guy unless you know enough about him to know how he’s going to react. ‘Kid’ Paret starts lipping off about how Emile is a fag, a sucker of dicks, because see, Emile Griffith had this high voice and on top of it he designed women’s hats — made Griffith mad as murder, and it happens that he fights better mad than any other way. So when Emile got the Kid into the ring he killed him.” “Beat him to death. See, Griffith got him in a corner in the twelfth round and the Kid was out on his feet but he couldn’t fall because Griffith had him hung on the top turnbuckle and kept him up with punches, while he killed him.” —Budd had been a fighter, ranked seventh in the world before a broken right hand healed badly and he had to quit with a record of thirty and three. — he spent his free time at a fight gymnasium on Forsyth Street looking for a young fighter he could manage, one with heart or talent or both, one he could take all the way to the top. —Budd turned to him and said, “You can come down to the gym if you want to. You wanta do that?” “Damn right I do,” —he wanted to go anyway, to see the gym, to see the men who had made themselves special in the world by living with punishment and pain, giving and receiving it. That moment he walked into the gym his life changed direction and he was never the same again. —fists that were only blurs, too, or moving in and out on heavy bags delivering punches that landed with an unbelievable sound — He told Budd that he did not see how anybody could stand to be hit like that. “Conditioning,” Budd said. “But you don’t even feel punches in the fight. The next day, yes. Not in the fight though.” —Budd asked him if he wanted to get in the ring and try his hand at sparring. —when he came out of the ring Budd asked him if he wanted to be a fighter. The answer was easy. “That’s what I want to be,” — It’s crazy but it seems like that’s what I always wanted to be and just didn’t know it.” — after a month he could double, even triple with his jab, and he could hook with either hand and became especially good at dropping his right over his opponent’s left jab. But mostly what he had was speed, the ability to move, and he also had the ability to see and anticipate. — You got no punch, kid, but it’ll come.” But it never did. After winning two more fights at the Beaver Street Arena, Eugene won in Atlanta and in Atlantic City and in Detroit. All on points. After six fights, he stepped up in class and won twice in Jersey City. On points. “So you’re not a banger,” said Budd. “Don’t let it get to you. It’s plenty going for you anyway. You’re a smart fighter with twice the speed any fighter deserves. And you don’t cut and you got a good chin.” —early morning Eugene did six miles of road work, and in the evening he worked out at the gym. At the shipyard, he spent his time napping or watching Budd do what little work had to be done, because Budd insisted that he rest. —After every win, Budd had insisted on buying him a whore. He had told him that from the beginning. “Every man needs pussy,” Budd said. “But I’m old-fashion about fighters and fucking. The only time you fuck is when you fight and win. No other time. Ever.” — Other than several equally brief encounters with a variety of farm animals, everything he knew about sex he had learned from Budd’s whores. —The phone rang… “He’s ready, we’ll do it.” Silence again, Budd listening. “He’s always in shape. He’ll give you a good show. How long I know you? Fifteen, sixteen years? I ever tell you wrong? You damn right I don’t. It’s done then…and, Joey, thanks. Take care.” A boy fucked up his hand in his last workout before a match and had to pull out.” He smiled, but even the smile looked grim. “They want you. Think you can go Saturday night?” “You know I can go. Where is it?” “New York? On the undercard at Madison Square Garden.” “The boy you’re going against is a real comer. A lotta people interested in him. He’s a punch away from being ranked. “Kid, you’ll be fine.” But Eugene was not fine, and he knew he was in over his head when he caught the first solid punch—a right-hand shot over the heart—from his opponent, Manny “Machine Gun” Mitchel —On the stool after the first round, Eugene said: “Goddam, can he hit.” “Did you come here to fucking fight or talk?” “You want to be somebody? You want to get out of that shipyard and live like a human being? The whole country’s looking at you.” He slipped the mouthpiece back in. “Don’t let me down, son.” In the second round, right hook on the point of the chin, and Eugene felt every muscle in his body turn loose in instant darkness. Eugene opened his eyes to the bright lights of the dressing room, lying on a training table.—“Hey, it ain’t the end of the world. So you’re thirteen and one instead of fourteen and 0, so what? You’re the same fighter you always were.” —An awkward, wildly swinging kid caught him on the chin with a glancing blow in the third round and Eugene was out... — month later they went to Orlando and Eugene was knocked out again. Something had happened back in Madison Square Garden and whatever it was had taken his chin away. —offered a fight in New Orleans. “The purse is good,” said Budd, “and this may be where you’ll turn everything around.” From the way he said it, Eugene knew that Budd did not believe… —around boxing just long enough to know what he had become: the kind of fighter that other fighters could build a string of wins on. — In the corner after the fourth, Budd was beside himself. “Dammit, you’ve got this guy confused as a ten-dick dog! Just hold with what you got, you’re doing it! —charged off the stool for the fifth round and walked squarely into a straight right hand that landed flush on the point of his chin — he watched the other fighter raise his hands in the bright ring lights that were fading rapidly to darkness. —“You’re so fucking bad,” Budd screamed, entirely out of control now, “that…that…you could knock your own self out!”

And that’s it for Budd…he splits. —“That’s right, go ahead and cry, you lousy bas—” In the middle of the word, his right, taped fist shot upward and across, catching the right side of his chin. He had not known he was going to do it, and later he could not remember even thinking about such a thing. — Budd had been right. He could, by God, knock himself out.”

Knockout in N’Oleans— Eugene now in the scene, with the freaks and the geeks… you met Jake earlier and Oyster Boy (Mr. Blasingame ), Pete his best bud, ex-boxer who knocked him out and finished him, his “girl” Charity [Not] doing her research, Pete’s girl Tulip, her teddy bear sex act for the Teachers’ conventioneers, the kink and the hard drugs, sordid stuff. But the chance to manage and train a young Cajun fighter, Jacques Deverouge from Baton Rouge. “Laissez le bon temp rouler!” saves Eugene & IMO the book, until finally Eugene just has to say no to NO and get out.

More Highlights— https://www.goodreads.com/notes/20110...-

[Kaij Lundgren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this one up blind based only on the description. An aspiring young boxer is cursed (or is it gifted?) with the unusual ability to knock himself unconscious with one punch. He makes a living "performing" in seedy underground dens of hedonistic excess, where perverts and freaks of all kinds pay to watch him punch himself in the face. If that all sounds a little silly to you...it is.

The depravity described in these pages is alternately disturbing and absurd (sometimes both at once!), to the point where it is sometimes difficult to know just how seriously I'm meant to take all of it. Both a stirring tale of the redemptive power of self respect and a lurid pulp thriller, the novel has a hard time focusing on any one tone or theme.

But I found the entire thing very well-paced and entertaining throughout. There's some fun psychoanalysis at play and a worthwhile message of self-worth at it's core, and I really liked the ending. I will give Harry Crews' other books a look.

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

At one stage Eugene Talmadge ‘Knockout’ Biggs’s promoter boasts that the young boxer from rural Georgia has had 72 successive knockouts. It may be a correct statement but those knockouts are actually of himself.

After a dodgy start in the sport his best friend Pete, an ex-boxer himself, discovers that Biggs has the ability to knock himself out, and using that unique ability he plys his trade amongst the higher echelons of New Orleans society.

Like most of Crews’s fiction this is fast, unforgiving and violent as it meanders through boxing lore, snuff films and kinky sex. Though Biggs seems on the road to the top, a young man from the country, learning his way around, trying to make a fortune. But things go wrong of course, appearances are deceiving and despite his courage and ingenuity intrigue and danger await.

It’s more satirical than Crews usually is, spiky, and yet less humorous. It lacks those typical character descriptions that are a highlight; it has the usual cast of misfits but we don’t get into their psyches as in his best work.

It’s strength is in its originality, and in telling a moralistic tale of Biggs’s career, a would-be contender, becomes disheartened, sees himself as being without worth, and becomes a plaything for others.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Harry Crews' writing. I loved the concept of this story and the fact that it took place in NOLA. The first 3rd had me going out of my mind, it was so vivid and thrilling. The middle chunk I was racing through waiting for what was next.... but then it kind of petered out. Didn't end with a punch (ha ha).
I just wanted Crews to *go there*. He brought his usual philosophies on the grotesque and brutal nature of the south, masculinity, and survival in such an exciting way with such a unique story. Maybe he had already said more than he meant to and pumped the breaks. I wish I could have felt it go all the way

[Michael Tower · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You don’t feel anything in the fight except maybe the first couple of punches. But son, the real point is to not get hit. Stick and move, go side to side, develop a left jab that’ll keep a guy off you. Too many goddam fighters train to take a punch. Fuck taking. In this business, just like the Good Book says, it is better to give than to receive.”

[Delfin Lopez · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We all stop being good sooner or later. It ain't nothing but a thing."

[Patrick O'Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me forever to read this book. I don't know why. I just wasn't into it, or it wasn't working for me, or there was other books I wanted to read more. It sat under my bed for weeks, then I'd take it out, read a few chapters and put it away for another spell of down time. I like Harry Crews' style, I've read some of his other work and thought highly of them. Like I said, I'm not sure why it took me so long to read. Although I have to admit I first thought the plot a little lame - a washed out boxer with a glass jaw knocks himself out for a living. But that's just the surface - the strip club barkers draw to gain the crowd's attention. The book is about a lot more. However it took until I was halfway through to figure that out. Maybe I'm a little dense. Maybe I just didn't like the protagonist. Maybe it just wasn't time until it was time and then it all fell into place.

[Patty]

This was just excellent. My first full Crews novel (I'd only previously read a long excerpt). Might also be my first real boxing novel. Somehow manages to be filled with abberant behavior and social misfits and still manages to seem matter-of-fact and "normal." As I said elsewhere, kind of feels like a cross between Flannery O'Connor and Thomas Pynchon. Can't wait to read more Crews.

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange book. Seems filled with homoerotic tension. Still putting together all the clues in this one. Wild ride and further evidence of Crews' uninhibited brilliance.

[Tom Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

penguin i am on my knees begging you to republish more harry crews

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me anxious, uncomfortable and left in despair about halfway through.
Happily am left uplifted that a corrupt perverse world did not break our man.

[Aaron Baseley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, sharp, snappy, like a right jab to the chin. This book is full to the brim with humour and Southern charm despite its morbid subject matter. Part of what makes it so good is that Crews takes such a laughable concept— a man making a career out of punching himself in the head— and handles it with all severity and sensitivity of one who grasps fully the morbid drives that make it impossible to dismiss the idea as pure fiction. There are some lulls in the story, and the ending could have built to a stronger crescendo of despair, but mostly the atmosphere is immaculate. I like to think of this as the book equivalent of Kubrick’s Eyed Wide Shut mixed with Aranofsky’s Requiem for a Dream— secret, salacious societies and a building sense of dread. The only difference is that this one, unlike RFAD, is surprisingly and beautifully sanguine in its final moments: all the machinations of worldly evil pitted against two clenched fists. Knock yourself out!

[Will Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I didn’t like this book, but as the story progressed and I began to understand the protagonist more I actually enjoyed it. The ending seemed somewhat abrupt, and I would have liked to see it play out a little differently, but overall it still made sense with the story, so I can’t complain. Good book.

[Dom Lovatt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I'd rather knock myself out than have read this. It was just a nothing novel. Boo hiss.

[Roma · Rating 4 out of 5]

i saw an article in the cut the other day about whether the boxer movie is dead. if it is, a luca guadagnino adaptation of this could bring it back.