Backlisted - Fat City by Leonard Gardner

Episode Date: August 5, 2021

Perhaps the greatest boxing novel ever written, Leonard Gardner's Fat City was first published in 1969; it was shortlisted for the National Book Award; Joan Didion and Denis Johnson are amongst those who have sung its praises. The book was made into a film in 1972 starring Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges, directed by John Huston from a screenplay by Gardner himself. In this episode Andy, John and Nicky explore both the novel and the film and the ways in which Gardner shows the reader the whole of a society through the prism of sport. We also hear from the author as to why he has never published another novel. Plus in this episode John reignites his love of D.H. Lawrence with Frances Wilson's acclaimed new biography Burning Man, while Andy shares an extract from Leonora Carrington's magical novel The Hearing Trumpet, read by actress Siân Phillips.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)06:06 - The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington11:19 - Burning Man by Frances Wilson17:10 - Fat City by Leonard Gardner* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. When you're working out at Planet Fitness, it's a judgment-free zone, so you can really step up your workout. That's why we've got treadmills. And our team members are here to help, so you can be carefree with the free weights.

There are also balance balls, bikes, cables, kettlebells, and TRX equipment. But, like, no pressure. Get started for $1 enrollment and then only $15 a month. Hurry this $1 enrollment sale of Planet Fitness and July 18th. $49 annual fee applies. See Home Club for details. you know i have a theory which uh which i developed when I was writing Tilting at Windmills, that anything is a sport if you cross the Rubicon and make the decision to decide it is a sport

and surround it with the apparatus of commentary and scoring and competition and so i have no problem with any of these newfangled sports that appear in the olympics and actually you only have to watch them for two three minutes and you're you're going look and like the jargon around the skateboarding at first it's quite funny but then you sort of pick it up yourself, don't you? Oh, he's alley-ooped it. What does that mean? Anyway, have you been enjoying it? You must have been, you two. Nicky must have been. Oh, I'm absolutely loving it.

Setting my alarm for 6 a.m. No, it's great. Actually, I'll tell you one thing I have been enjoying, which is good because we're going to be talking about it later, but it's actually quite enjoying the boxing. I'm not really into boxing normally, but there's a British boxer called Benjamin Whittaker, who at this point is, I think, in line to the silver or gold medal.

And he's just got this amazing ability to kind of duck and weave. And I keep just watching him, and I'm doing that movement while I'm watching, you know, kind of weave and duck. Yeah, he's fantastic. I've been loving the boxing too. And the rugby, obviously. Oh no, that just shouldn't be in there.

I'm sorry. Rugby should not be in the Olympics. Rugby sevens is great. It's brilliant. Rugby, golf, football, tennis, do one. I feel you might be right about the football. I can't really see the point of the football. But the rugby sevens is great.

And also, Fiji get to win a gold medal. That's got to be a good thing that's true and there's been many decades worth of campaigning which the international olympic committee refused to acknowledge but really come on chess should be in the olympics it should be you're laughing but it should be it's a it's a sport you use your brain. You know, it's the brain sport. Do you know what? We watched the Queen's Gambit. That was absolutely thrilling. It was.

It was. It was thrilling. It's tense. And now over to Gabby with the chess. It's very tense. Our regular listeners will be totally... Amazed. Shocked.

Amazed by this light-hearted chat john do you want to do you want to uh explicate what's happening we have a we have an edition of the podcast where it's just us us three and we we we've got a book that we've all all three of us have read and uh and i think all of us love which is do the intro the intro. Do the intro. I'm not normally on the podcast, so this is a treat for me too. Let's not let them know that there's no guest. It's just they can greek and dawn on them as we go along. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books.

Today you find us in the Californian city of Stockton, sometime in the 1950s. It's a grey day and the sun is sinking below the low flat skyline. It's a sad and run-down place full of dingy bars and walk-up hotels. Across the street, the dry wind, heavy with peat dust from the surrounding fields, blows leaves and papers along the gutter. We turn into the harbour inn and make for one of the empty stools at the bar. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund books they

really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of Tilting at Windmills, How I Tried to Stop Worrying and Love Sport. Well, I am. It's true. It's a book. I love that book. And today, for the first time in 144 episodes, we have no guest. Or rather, we're talking about a book, but we have no guest joining us. Or rather, we three are the guests. And we got together to discuss a book that we, well, as John was just saying, I think we all admire, but in the tradition of Batlisted, we agree never to discuss anything before we actually record.

So I don't know what the other two are going to say, but I'll think less of them if they don't admire it. So we'll see what happens. No pressure. The book is Fat City, the only novel by the american writer leonard gardner it was first published by farrah strauss and giroux in 1969 and acclaimed subsequently as one of the greatest boxing novels ever written memorably adapted for the screen uh starring starring Stacey Keech and the very young Jeff Bridges by the director John Houston in 1972. Fat City is built around the parallel careers of two boxers,

Billy Tully, aged 29, who is trying to come back from retirement, and Ernie Munger, an 18-year-old hopeful who so impresses the out-of-condition Tully when they spar together that he suggests the boy present himself to Reuben Luna, his former trainer. The book charts their entwined trajectories in and outside the ring, Tully's battles with drink and loneliness, among his attempts to balance commitment to Faye, who he marries when she falls pregnant, with those to his career as a boxer. In the 53 years since it was first published, the intensity and

realism of Gardner's portrait of American blue-collar life has won praise from writers as different as Joan Didion, Ross MacDonald, Raymond Carver, and Dennis Johnson, who described it as deep in the sorrow and beauty of human life. But let's not slope off to our seedy hotel rooms before asking the usual question. Andy, what have you been reading this week? Well, I tried to choose a book that I considered to be the very opposite of boxing. And so I've gone for... The opposite of boxing.

That should be the subtitle of this novel. So I've gone for a novel called The Hearing Trumpet by the surrealist painter and artist's muse leonora carrington it's believed this was written in the early 1960s but no one's quite sure because as to so many things to do with leonora carrington's life it's it's it's lost to history and her own myth making she was a very young muse to the surrealists specifically max ernst and um she published several volumes of short stories which i've also read in the last few weeks which were totally fascinating they're all available at the moment in a book called complete stories which is published by the dorothy project in the states but they were available i remember them in the 80s and 90s

being published by Virago. Yeah. House of Fear is one of those volumes, and there's another one called The Seventh Horse. She also wrote an essay called Down Below, which is absolutely incredible about her incarceration in an insane asylum against her will. So if you can find those, read those.

But The Hearing hearing trumpet is her longest novel um it's about a 92 year old woman called marion leatherby um and we're going to hear a little bit of it in a minute read by the actress sean phillips who isn't quite as old as that but is a veteran actor the performance is absolutely wonderful and the casting is absolutely wonderful. So I just wanted to share with you the beginning of the novel. But it's so still unusual to read a book about, written by an older woman, somebody so old, which is so strange and so full of comedy and also magic. I've just been reading David Keenan's novel Monument Maker,

which is informed by all sorts of alchemic and magical ceremonies. And actually, Leonora Carrington's work is as well. It seems fair to say that all her work is informed by her status as a witch of some kind. So The Hearing Trumpet starts off as one kind of book and then rather like Lolly Willows by Sylvia Townsend Warner goes somewhere totally horrible and unexpected. No spoilers. Anyway, I absolutely love this.

It's in print at the moment from Penguin. It's got a really good introduction by Ali Smith, which explains several things within the book. Also, you can totally see why Angela Carter loved Leonora Carrington's writing. They certainly have something in common. But here is the very beginning of the book, read by Sian Phillips, and this is available on the audiobook of The Hearing Trumpet. When Carmela gave me the audiobook of The Hearing Trumpet. exceptionally pretty, being encrusted with silver and mother-of-pearl motifs,

and grandly curved like a buffalo's horn. The aesthetic presence of this object was not its only quality. The hearing trumpet magnified sound to such a degree that ordinary conversation became quite audible even to my ears. Here I must say that all my senses are by no means impaired by age. My sight is still excellent, although I use spectacles for reading, when I read, which I practically never do. True, rheumatics have bent my skeleton somewhat.

This does not prevent me taking a walk in clement weather and sweeping my room once a week on Thursday, a form of exercise which is both useful and edifying. Here I may add that I consider that I am still a useful member of society, and I believe still capable of being pleasant and amusing when the occasion seems fit. The fact that I have no teeth and never could wear dentures does not in any way discomfort me. I don't have to bite anybody, and there are all sorts of soft, edible foods easy to procure and digestible to the stomach. Mashed vegetables, chocolate and bread dipped in warm water make the base of my simple diet.

I never eat meat, as I think it is wrong to deprive animals of their life when they are so difficult to chew anyway. That sounds brilliant. Oh, it's so great. It's so enjoyable, so unusual. And yeah, so that's The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington, The Antidote to Boxing. Not that you need an antidote, but anyway.

John, I know what you've been reading, but come on. Punish me some more. I have to say, this is not much to do with boxing, of you i know what you've been reading but come on well i've punished me some more i've been i have to say this is not much to do with boxing uh although it is incendiary in many ways burning man the ascent of dh lawrence by francis wilson francis wilson wonderful wonderful biographer of dorothy wordsworth and thomas de quincy and i guess this is a book she starts up this by saying you know she kind of comes back to Lawrence. She says Lawrence has been kind of dumped by the Academy.

You know, he was the first author to be cancelled. People aren't reading or studying him anymore. I'm not sure whether that's entirely true, but there's definitely, as we know, the legacy of D.H. Lawrence is a controversial one. I cancelled him many years ago. This is, oh, I just think this is one of the best literary biographies I've read in a very long time,

maybe ever. I am obviously partial to Lawrence, but like Frances Wilson, I sometimes struggle to communicate what it is about Lawrence that I find appealing. And that's what this book is in a way. She comes up with an amazing, it's 10 years in Lawrence's life.

He didn't live very long as we know. Between 1915, when the rainbow has been found guilty of obscenity to 1925, which is only five years before he dies. It takes place in kind of, she sort of structures it around, her structure for the book is is Dante's Inferno so there's Inferno which is kind of London Purgatorio which is set mostly in Italy

his travels in Italy and then Paradiso which is set in in New Mexico it's it manages not to talk about Lady Chatterley's Lover in fact, if anybody who's reading this book wanting close sort of line-by-line analysis of the novels is going to be disappointed because she, like I think I, and I know Jeff Dyer and other people who are Lawrence fans, what's great about Lawrence are the letters, the criticism, the travel books, the poems in particular. And she makes an amazing case for Lawrence in this book as a kind of this febrile, creative person

who comes from a very, very ordinary working-class background and becomes the kind of central figure in a kind of, I suppose, in a cult. You know, Middleton Murray, Richard Aldington, H.D. There's an extraordinary sequence, a book that I think is long out of print, called The Autobiography of Morris Magnus, this sort of con man, friend of Norman Douglas' out in Italy.

So there's a lot of original research in the book. There's some great writing. I'm going to just read a tiny little bit from the beginning to give you the flavor. If you're interested in Lawrence, even if you're not interested in Lawrence, I think this book makes the case better than anything I've read for why Lawrence's work remains important and relevant now.

There was a great review of the book in the Literary Review who said, it's a book that performs a rare, by David Whittaker saying, it performs a rare and laudable task of saving a writer posthumously from himself, which I really like. Okay, here's a little bit. The Lawrence I've returned to of my own middle years, this time as a biographical subject, is composed of mysteries rather than certainties. Where once I found insight, I now find bewildering levels of naivety. For all his claims to prophetic vision, Lawrence had little idea what was going on in the room, let alone in the world. His fidelity as a writer was not to the truth, but to his own contradictions, and reading him today is like tuning into a radio station

whose frequency keeps changing. He was a modernist with an aching nostalgia for the past, a sexually repressed priest of love, a passionately religious non-believer, a critic of genius who invested in his own worst writing. Of all the Lorentzian paradoxes, however, the most arresting is that he was an intellectual who devalued the intellect, placing his faith in the wisdom of the very body that throughout his life was failing him. Dismantle his contradictions, however, and you take away the structure of his being. D.H. Lawrence, the enemy of Freud, impressively defies psychoanalysis. So how can biography do justice to Lawrence's complexities? Just as writers of fiction might provide a disclaimer declaring that what follows is a work of imagination not based on real characters

and writers of non-fiction might provide a disclaimer declaring that what follows is not a work of imagination and very much based on real characters, I should similarly state that Burning Man is a work of non-fiction which is also a work of imagination. I should further declare that I'm unable to distinguish between Lawrence's art and Lawrence's life which was equally a work of imagination and nor do I distinguish Lawrence's fiction from his non-fiction. I read his life, which was equally a work of imagination, and nor do I distinguish Lawrence's fiction from his non-fiction. I read his novels, stories, letters, essays, poems, and plays as exercises in auto-fiction, which genre he pioneered in order to get round the restrictions of genre. Art for my sake, he quipped, but he was being entirely serious. Accordingly, his letters are stories, his stories are poems, his stories are poems, his poems are

dramas, his dramas are memoirs, his memoirs are travel books, his travel books are novels, his novels are sermons, his sermons are manifestos for the novel, and his manifestos for the novel, like his writings on history, his literary criticism, and the tales in this book are accounts of what it was like to be D.H. Lawrence. I loved it. Hey, that sounds great. I'm so annoyed to say. That sounds really good. She's saying it's all one song. She's saying it's all one song, isn't she?

And she does it brilliantly. She really delivers on that sort of polemical introduction. That's great. It's reminded me of why I do love and detest Lawrence, but I can't stop being interested in him. The book chat will continue on the other side of this message. You hear people shouting, come on, Billy, there? It's just too good, isn't it?

It's just right. Because the hero, one of the main characters, the protagonist of Fat City by Leonard Gardner, is called Billy Tully. I'm going to ask you both first. I'd never read this book before. Had either of you read this book before? Not even heard of it.

I had not read it, i was a i had watched the film at a very impressionable age you know that kind of early in my early 20s and for a long time it was a it was one of those touchstone films i'd you know that i'd say to people it's okay to make a film that is full of sadness and longing and and doesn't have clear kind of you know narrative payoff at the end so i was really really excited to read the book and i don't know what you felt nikki but it certainly it didn't disappoint me it's i think an extraordinary book i think one of the interesting thing is i i read the book and then as soon as i finished reading the book i think one of the interesting thing is i i read the book and then as soon as i finished reading the book i then watched the film literally turned the page over

put the film on and i think if you've watched the film you have read the book in many ways they are very very similar i mean it's a very very true representation, isn't it? I've got things to say about this later. It's really interesting, Nicky. I saw the film about, oh, I don't know, 15 years ago, maybe. And so my context of it was not as a boxing film. No. It was as a kind of John Huston does new Hollywood, early 70s, you know,

an old Hollywood veteran takes on the trappings of younger filmmakers. And I thought the film was just terrific, terrific film, terrific film. I'd never read the book. And then when the idea of doing this came up for Batlisted, I thought, well, that'd be interesting. So I read the book and then I watched the film again.

And I really loved them both. And I couldn't choose one or the other as the best version. But I will say this, and I'd like to see what you think about this. You know, the novel gets talked about as one of the greatest, if not the greatest novels ever about boxing. And the film gets mentioned as one of the best films about boxing. And we'll talk about other boxing films. But I think there is a difference, Nicky.

You're right. The film is a very faithful adaptation of the novel. And Leonard Gardner adapted it himself and wrote the script. But the film is about boxing and the novel is not about boxing. I don't think the film is about boxing either. Okay, great. But I think you're right. I think it's not about boxing.

That's at the heart of it. It's about so much more, isn't it? What is it about, Andy? What's the book about? What's it about? It's about everything that goes into why you would get into a ring and box. It's about lives that lead you to do that because you don't have the alternatives of doing anything else. While simultaneously seeing that within the ring you might have something that can not deliver you to a better life, although that's part of it, but bestow self-respect, allow you to earn self-respect.

And one of the things I love about the novel is, of course, why I as a sports agnostic can get with it, why I as a sports agnostic can get with it is that it indicates that actually there is no rocky story going to play out for you you aren't going to get deliverance or redemption you're the only redemption on offer to you is is maybe you get to keep going and maybe you don't even get that that's the the n, isn't it? I think Gardner said there were 80,000 people in Stockton and there were loads and loads of boxing clubs, but there were no champions.

Stockton never produced a champion. And the usual boxing film or story is a kind of redemptive story. Even, I think the greatest boxing real boxing movie of all time raging bull is a kind of it's a it's a pretty grim redemption in terms you know but it is a it is it is a redemptive story and i think that's one of the things i've always loved about the fat city film is that it doesn't it's clearly not a redemptive story in the same way. And the thing that the film doesn't have, laying my cards on the table,

is it doesn't have the central Steinbeckian sequence. Absolutely. Where Billy Tully is having to work literally with his, you know, working his fingers almost literally to the bone in the, you know, in the fields doing you know cutting onions and and and there's something about the difference between the three things that drive him that the desire to be in the ring and maybe to win and to compete the desire need to have love and companionship and and and work to earn money i don't think i've read a book that's so

that that manages that that sort of triple thing so so well and convincingly and there's a fourth thing as well no yeah probably the desire to forget it all yeah by drinking yes yes that's true the desire to make the pain stop i guess the difference is that the boxing uh john you what you say about boxing being work in the in the film the boxing is work in the book boxing is the alternative to work and it's fine i'm not saying one is right wrong one is better they're both fantastic but it strikes me that houston felt that he could subvert a boxing movie in a way that leonard gardner in the novel includes boxing as part of a a selection of the lives of working people this is is the author Leonard Gardner talking about what originally inspired the book and the title of the book.

I grew up in Stockton, California, which was a very good fight town. And only one guy that I can recall ever got up to the point of getting a world championship fight. Never got up to the point of getting a world championship fight. There were some hard-fought fights there in Stockton, and quite a number of the fighters actually were farm workers. One of our stars was a Filipino fighter. He'd work out in the fields, you know.

He was known to be an expert asparagus cutter, so during asparagus season he'd be out there working. There were people like that who weren't making big money, but were making fair money and maybe had jobs on the side. That's what my title, Fat City, actually was referring to. The good times up at the top. I'm in Fat City. And it was just what my guys would hope for, what they were aspiring to. And it was just like smoke. It was just this dream that they couldn't reach. No heavyweight championship of the world is going to be on offer to these guys, however well they do. It's not just about sport, as you've said, but it's about mediocrity, these guys however well they do it's not just about sport as you've said but it's about mediocrity isn't it and actually andy this is why i'm guessing one of the reasons why you like this

right no one is that good at boxing even the sort of young upstart ernie munger isn't that good at boxing right do you think that books about mediocrity are more interesting than books about champions what a great question tell you what well i think i'm going to bounce that immediately to my colleague john mitchinson who has read more boxing books than i have there is something not not my favorite boxing book but it's a great line although it is a disputed line joyce carolotes on boxing she said boxing isn't a but it's a great line although it is a disputed line joyce joyce carolotes on boxing she said boxing isn't a metaphor it's the thing itself and i i've always i've always clung to that richard ford also claimed that he said that the novelist also said that he said it first so okay literally a literally slug fest over that quote seconds out

it is true that that that is something about but there is something particularly about boxing which is you know the the old kind of roman versus greek sport that roman sports tend to be you know kind of games but team team sports and greek sports tend to be individuals if you are and you know that that that some of the great right sports writing i think i i was looking at al liebling's book this the sweet science is because the the brutality of boxing the fact that two two human beings are attempting to knock one another unconscious in a ring um it's the sort of the and to not do that you know you you were talking before nikki you're saying about moving around and that the skill and the art of boxing which is why it's known as the sweet science that

that it's it's as much about defense as it is as about attack it's as much about not being hit as it is hitting yes it's very easy to see how that gets metaphorically applied to all kinds of things but having boxed a little bit as a kid and my my grandfather and my father both boxed there's nothing nothing prepares you nothing in that i've ever done prepares you for the the the adrenaline both horror and attraction of being in a ring and having and when somebody hits you and hits you really hard, you know, as I say, when he hits you, the great line about Tyson, you stay hit. It's very, very, very primal. I mean, I think the only way you're having to confront, you're literally having to confront existential reality.

Because if you don't move, you're going to get hit again. And you don't want to get hit and put on your back. Even, you know, we were, I was a kid. You know, we had big puffy gloves. But it's knowing that somebody's trying to hit you in the head. It's not what most of our life is like. It might metaphorically feel like that. But actually, when somebody's trying to do it, it's… So, I think the mediocrity is…

Going back to your point about mediocrity, is that everybody… Most boxers who get into the ring, by definition, are going to be mediocre. They're not going to be great champions. most boxers who get into the ring by definition are going to be mediocre they're not going to be great chat most most boxers aren't champions it's why people would train and do that and want to do that who aren't and that's what that's the fascinating thing isn't it that this book and film are both about yeah i mean i would say nikki that that in a sense raging bull is also a film about mediocrity you know you can

be a champion and you can still be an arsehole those both those things can happen even though there might be understandable reasons why you know it made me think of johnny it made me think of last train to memphis and careless love by yes which we talked about on backlisted you know there's a champion, Elvis Presley. We get to see him win the title fight and then we get to hang around while a series of terrible things happen to him. And some of which are his doing

and others of which aren't. When we were preparing for this episode, I was thinking about Jonathan Rendell's's book now jonathan rendall's book which is called this bloody mary is the last thing i own which i think was published in the 90s and um rendall died like probably about 10 years ago maybe a bit less than that and you know had a something of a reputation That's a really great book that nobody talks about anymore. This Bloody Mary is the last thing I own. And that's about the relationship between mediocrity,

knowing you're mediocre, pretending you're not mediocre, by pretending you're not mediocre, pretending you're not mediocre becoming something other than mediocre so by telling yourself your own myth you you can potentially you can potentially lift yourself out of mediocrity we've got a clip from the from the film which seems to sum this up this is uh the young fighter ernie mung. He's backstage in the dressing room before his first big fight. And he's getting ready to go out there. And he's talking to one of the other fighters who've been brought along for the night. Who's about 15 years old, isn't he?

Yeah. Yeah, well, he's supposedly legal. But then somebody goes, hey, he's 15, right? So you're, and this is exactly that it's like can you talk yourself into being a winner here we go hope i didn't leave my fight in the bedroom hey don't tell reuben this but i was out getting me a little last night hope i'm in shape too that don't make no difference it don't matter if you're dead drunk you got two hands you can beat this dude i don't care who he is. It's all in your mind.

I hope so. Hope ain't never done nothing. It's wanting to do it. You gotta want to win so bad you can taste it. If you want to win bad enough, you win. There ain't no way in hell this dude's gonna beat me. Because he's too old, I'm too fast, I'm gonna be all over him. I'm gonna kick his ass so bad every time he takes a bite of food tomorrow, he's gonna think of me.

He's gonna know he's been in the fight. Because I'm gonna hit him with everything. I'm not just gonna beat that mother. I'm gonna kill him. You want to know what makes a good fighter? What's gonna know he's been in the fight because i'm gonna hit him with everything i'm not just gonna beat that mother i'm gonna kill it you want to know what makes a good fighter the fact is believing in yourself the will to win you want to kick ass you kick ass hope you're right you don't want to kick ass you want to get your own ass look look i want to kick ass don't worry about that you got to want to kick ass so bad there ain't no manager trainer peel that can do it for you i want to kick ass as bad as you do. Then go on out there and kick ass. All right. First spot, Ernie Munger.

The point is, listeners, they both lose their fights. There's no, even talking a good game, right, is not going to win you a good game. And that's, I love that sequence because he kind of amps it up a bit from the book um because it's it's the that's the only bit of i could have been a contender you know it's the only bit of of that kind of motivational boxing speak uh in in the book uh the rest of it is is is incredibly i think incredibly subtle and maybe at this time i might read there's an amazing bit where billy Tully gets hit

and his vision of the world literally splits in two. Go on, read it. Do you want to give us a bit? I'll do the blurb in a minute, but give us a bit of the prose. Yeah, it's just, I mean, just going back to this thing about what's it like being hit.

This I felt was pretty good. On his back, he's been hit, right? He's been hit. This is against Arcadio Lucero, who's this extraordinarily kind of brilliantly performed in the film as well, but it's a great kind of tight, the sense of these guys who for a living get hit, go and hit people and get hit for a living.

It's what they do. It's their job. He's been knocked down early in the fight. fight on his back struggling to stay upright on horizontal legs he looked up at the lights and the brown and blue gathered drapery way up at the apex of the ceiling where a giant gold tassel hung the whole scene shattered by a zigzag diagonal line like a crack in a window he did not remember rising or how he got through the round all he remembered were the lights the gold tassel and the shattered drapery then the eye smarting shock of ammonia in lucero's corner where he had followed him after the bell and where ruben

had come to lead him back to his own stool the zigzag line cut the ropes cold water cascaded over his head he felt the drag of a cotton swab through a wound over his eye when he looked up at reuben's face he could not see his chin there was a sparkling vagueness to everything and pain shifted from the top of his head to his temples and the base of his skull the ammonia passed again under his nose and now he could see reuben's chin but it was off to the side of his face. That's probably enough. I mean, he gets back up and continues fighting.

But it's just, I think it's just... Can you hear how spare the style is, right? Can you hear how many jabs of single-syllable words there are in that? It's so plain, but so rhythmical and balanced it that it's such terrific um prose i think and and you know it does like you say he does describe the the boxing with real precision but the the the point of the book is you're, yeah, I mean, poor Tully, you know, you're in this guy's mixed up head for a lot of the book. And the fighting in a funny kind of way is as close as he gets to a kind of track. That vision of the crack and reality is the closest he gets to a sort of transcendent experience. But as you said, it isn't all about boxing.

And to think this is a boxing book, that might turn some people off it. And I think that's really important. You don't have to be a fan of boxing or like boxing at all to enjoy this book. Why don't we listen to Leonard Gardner himself talking about the ways in which the book is, where boxing is part of the book, but it's not a book about boxing. Everything seemed to be included, you know, like you wanted fair pay for farm workers and, you know, get out of Vietnam and all of that. I felt devoted to the cause, you know, and I certainly was against exploitation of farm workers, and I still am, and it still goes on.

I had a bit of a social purpose, as I wrote, and I think that helped me choose my material and kept me going, you know, until I got it finished. Some of these guys were just very strong men who could work all day out in the sun doing stoop labor and then come to the gym, knock each other around, you know, get in shape for their fights. I got interested in writing when I was about 14,

and I remembered there'd be a lot of really poor people on the streets, farm workers in the late afternoon would be by the hundreds just standing on the sidewalk with nothing to do, watching the cars go by. It was a big part of the life of my little town, and I wanted to write about it since I was in my teens. Seventeen, I started to work in a gas station. Just happened to be in Skid Row, but I knew a kid that worked there, and when they needed another attendant, he told me about it, and I got the job. Then I got acquainted with winos who would come and stand around the station, and I wanted to write about winos.

And when I started writing Fat City, I put a lot of pieces together that I had collected and thought of writing about someday. That's great I mean I don't know about you Nick but for me that is that is the thing that really the contextualizing of boxing yeah good the contextualizing of hard labor the contextualizing of the relationships and the contextualizing of drinking no one thing is contextualizing anything else that's the point that's why it's such a great book because because you're being given a snapshot of a way of life that the uh that facilitates all those things uh for the for very much worse rather than better

when you take away you know i always talk about the feeling you get in a book and the feeling the sort of memory of this book is definitely in the fields picking, you know, waiting. He does this brilliant, sets this brilliant scene of I'm looking for some work. I'm going to tap up whatever bus driver is looking for farm laborers. And then they go and spend a really,

really rough day in the field and it's hideous. And then you go and box. And that feels to me like the sort of the scene setting of the book more than anything, more than in the ring or it's hideous and then you go and box and that feels to me like the sort of the scene setting of the book more than anything more than in the ring or anything like that in that uh in that excellent paris uh review interview that they did for 50 years of of um fat city uh the guy who introduces it says to say fat for cities about boxing we'd like saying that in search of lost time is about parties in paris or moby dick is about wailing so i think i think that's exactly i think that is exactly true it's it's it's a it's about it's just i mean you know stockton was his town he's writing about

his town and what people's lives and aspirations were you know they were full of um you know full of mexicans and and and people who were who were working at absolutely kind of shitty jobs and then going and training in the evenings one of the things i noticed it in the novel is the way that billy tully wants to give the best possible account of himself in the ring but he kind of doesn't care what he does in the field. You know, he's prepared to cut corners in the field, not literally, but you know what I mean. He's prepared to be a bit lazy and kind of to, you know, he doesn't want to be defeated by the fact that he's competitive with other men, other men who are working harder than he is. He doesn't like to see that but when it comes down

to it where is a place that he can be proud that is one of the things about that character well he can't be proud in the fields and he can't be proud in a bar and he can't be proud in the terrible hotel room that he lives in and he can't be proud in a relationship the only place he could ever be proud potentially was in the boxing ring place he could ever be proud, potentially, was in the boxing ring. Yeah. But that seems to have been denied him repeatedly. There's that very first scene

where he meets Omer and Earl. Earl, who's with Omer at the bar, having her screaming in his ear all the time. He just says, I don't claim to be nothing more than I am. You maybe can fight. I'm an upholsterer. And then Fully Tully goes, that's the way. He just says, I don't claim to be nothing more than I am. You maybe can fight. I'm an upholsterer. And then Fully Tully goes,

that's the way it goes. One man's got muscles, another's got steel. It all comes out the same. And I think that sort of sense of entitlement, when he says to Omer later on, when he kind of is, you know, you can depend on me.

It's like weird sense of honour that he has. But he's so unreliable totally unreliable totally unreliable is it worth setting up the characters a bit because i think we've been talking about them is it worth sort of reading the blurb let me read the blurb so this is the this is the the the jacket copy on the us first edition our context for talking about it is it's the great boxing novel but you know that's not how it well when it's published it doesn't have that framework around it so let's see what they said so the jacket copy starts with this quote this is the best first novel i've read in several years a beautifully balanced piece of work

satisfyingly complex in structure with a spare musical style a great deal lies beneath the surface of this book as with with all first-class fiction, the only way to find out what is to read it. So writes Frank Conroy, the author of Stop Time in Praise of Fat City, and his statement is typical of the remarkable outpouring of enthusiasm for Leonard Gardner's extraordinary first novel. A few of the many comments from noted writers who read the novel in advance of publication appear on the back flap, wasting no time directing you there. Anyway, it goes on to say, Fat City is a novel about the indestructibility of hope, the anguish and comedy of the human condition. It tells the story of two young boxers out of Stockton, California,

Ernie Munger and Billy Tully, one in his late teens, the other just turning 30, whose seemingly parallel lives intersect for a time. Set in an ambience of glittering dreams and drab realities, it tells of the two fighters' struggles to escape the confinements of their existence and of the men and women in their world. Fat City is a novel about the sporting life like no other ever written, without melodrama or false heroics, written with a truthfulness that is once painful and beautiful. Fat City won the Joseph Henry Jackson Award as a work in progress several years ago, and since then Leonard Gardner has been supported in his writing by a Saxton Fellowship, a McDowell Colony Fellowship and a grant from the National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities. He lives in Mill Valley, California.

And then there are quotes on the flat from Joan Didion and the great and the good. I mean, I think that's a really pretty great blurb, actually. You know, because best boxing novel, as Nicky just said, I probably wouldn't have read this. Why? You know, that's not going to be for me. You know, if they wanted to pitch it to me, they should have said best novel about loneliness and failure,

and then I would have been all over it. Nicky, was it what you were expecting? Yes, I suppose it was because I don't think you would have picked, and it's just worth saying you guys did pick this book, which is unusual. Normally the guests pick the book. But I don't think you would have picked something that was a triumph over adversity novel. I think this is a kind of pain and mediocrity and uh you know loss and kind of uh alcohol and depression and kind of the triumph of adversity that's what it is

a deep look into kind of masculinity in the uh in the 50s that feels like that feels like more more on point i'd say but do you think it was dated in that respect? I didn't feel dated to me at all, did it? Or did it? I think there were elements that are dated. You know, the bits around language, around race and the female characters, which are not just the female characters, but the men's opinion of the female characters felt of their time and definitely the language around race felt of its time.

That doesn't mean you can't read it. No, no, I would say both those things are snapshots of the characters he was writing about rather than his take. Actually, it's funny you should say that. Let's hear another clip from the film because here's a clip of the characters played by Stacey Keech and Susan Tyrell. They're in a bar when we join them. And the thing that Nikki was talking about is perfectly

illustrated here. You know, they've had a few drinks. That's the point. They've had a few drinks. Marrying him was the biggest mistake of my life he had unnatural desires he did white races in his decline started downhill in 1492 and columbus discovered civilis what do you want to do white men are animals we're not so bad white man is a vermin of the earth come on that's a lie don't tell me what to do i don't care who hears me i know i'm making a

nuisance of myself all these goddamn mexicans sitting there they don't know who their real friends are i have with them what are you going on about don't tell me why don't you take your hands off me you are liable to get backhanded right off that stool. You see if I care one bit, that's all I need. You go ahead and don't make her feel so good. Come on, get it out of your system. Go on. If it'll make her feel good, punch me in the face. Oh, God almighty.

My child, take some teeth out while you're at it. I still got a few left in there. The other's one I didn't know could leave me. Come on, I wouldn't hit you. Come on. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry thing you need bobby for me to spoil i'm sorry will you listen to me god damn it i am sorry so what are you sorry you know what that that reminds me of when we took my quite young son to a screening of whatever happened to baby jane and i have a clear memory of uh us watching it and laughing our heads off and my son turning to me he's quite young he's about 10 and saying is this funny you know when i watch fat city i find it really funny i mean it's very painful and but the performances of stacy keach and susan tyrell there are so um large but true right they get together after that scene she said she said she's playing a she's not she her argument was, I'm not acting large. I'm playing the part of a woman who acts large,

who is encouraged by her drinking and her insecurity to kind of dramatise any situation in which she finds herself. It's interesting. Gardner was worried that she was a little over the top in the role because he obviously I mean quite uniquely he was he was he was there right the way through shooting with Houston it's interesting 50 years later when he he's reflecting on it and in the Paris review he said no actually no I look back and I see the genius of what she was doing. And it's interesting because she, neither she nor Stacey Keats were known really as film actors at that stage. They were both kind of classical, classically trained stage actors.

And obviously Jeff Bridges, I think it was his second movie. With the characters in the film, there's like, it feels, so there's the two boxers, there's the trainer, and there's Omar, who's, in fact, there's two women, they both have their partners. But it feels like

there's a sort of divide, there's the people who can really act, and then there's everyone else. I don't know if you feel like that. There's a lot of people who aren't as good as the core team.

Yeah, but that's part of the texture of it, isn't it? I mean, the idea that he, that't it? The idea that Houston was casting people to

make it feel authentic. I mean, it does feel authentic, right? I mean, you don't feel you're watching actors, maybe apart from Susan Tyrell, I don't know, but it's such a fantastic performance. It's as close as Houston got to Cassavetes.

You know, that kind of very naturalistic, semi-improvised feel. The film definitely, I mean, I don't think it is in any way semi-improvised. And, you know, you're talking about Ruben Luna, who is the coach. That's another great performance by Nicolas Colosanta, who is a staple. I mean, he was in Raging Bull, but he's also, he's coach in Cheers. Yeah, he is. So early audition for that role. I think that slight feeling that you get there, Nicky, is right, that the minor characters definitely feel like they're they're

they're just they're just ordinary people who've been we've been dragged in and given lines it's um that doesn't uh doesn't interfere with my pleasure in the in the film i think it gives it a kind of authenticity which it might otherwise not have but the feeling that those people are all trapped that's one of the things that the book is about the book or the film it doesn't matter really we haven't really talked about ernie you know he's the young fighter who wears his way out even if he won a few fights where's his where's his way out it's not that he's trapped by his behavior necessarily he's trapped by the society in which he's in which he's growing up he's trapped by america in the period that we're talking about. And to some extent, I don't think it has dated.

I mean, it's sort of like, you know, these are the things you can aspire to. Well, they're pretty low rent. And if they don't work, what do you got? You got boxing or you got drinking or you got... Yeah, will he escape the sort of the spiral of despair that Billy Tully's in? Why does Leonard Gardner set those two stories in parallel?

Why are they there? One, you have one, the sort of aging boxer, and one, the new hope, who isn't, neither of them are very good. They both have relationship problems in that one doesn't want to be, the young hope doesn't really want to be in a relationship and all of a sudden she's pregnant and they're married but so so why are they juxtaposed together

i said my my take john is that that they're you know they're different ends of the race they but they both think there's a way way out The point of the book is there is no way out. It's so fantastically against the grain of the idea that you would fight your way out of the ghetto and you would achieve self-respect and the love of others. It's saying, well, no, that's just not going to happen. You can have a few good fights, but at the end of others is saying, well, no, that's just not going to happen. You know, you can have a few good fights, but at the end of it, you'll still be living on your own.

Could I just read a little bit? Yeah, yeah, great. Is that okay? So this is from the, we're talking about Billy Tully. He's moved in with the character that we just heard in that clip. This is the end of chapter 16. And if you imagine they're together in that bar we just heard them in. They sat in silence, all facing ahead,

while an overhead fan with all like blades revolved slowly through the heat, angry. Tully frowned a while into the mirror so that nobody would think he was stupid enough to be happy with Omar. Soon Esteban's women began to sigh with obvious impatience and so they all went down the street. Tully pressed against her as they entered a packed bar where a bald-headed man with sideburns and a blonde woman with a worn pretty face were picking electric guitars and singing, why don't you love me like you used to do? Why do you treat me like a worn out shoe? My hair is still curly and my eyes are still blue. Why don't you love me like you used to do? That night in the room, Tully experienced a desperation he was afraid he could not contain.

He felt as if his mind might shatter under the stress of Omar's presence. He could not bring himself to speak, and when she spoke he could not listen. At the sound of her voice he felt he had to get away. Yet because he could not love her, she more defenseless and he more bound as assuagement for the loss of his liberty he longed for a closer attachment in bed beside her he lay motionless repelled by the thought of contacting her with even a toe but her hand sought him though he did not yield it moved with proprietary assurance until he turned, his foot tangling in the sheet and pulling it from their bodies as he thrust his leg between hers with the savagery of one administering punishment. His exertions made no discernible impression.

He was so excruciatingly aware of his structure, of each troubled limb, of each restless joint, that he longed to thrash about in search of some position of ease. But he moved slowly, carefully, in order not to disturb her. As he inched up an arm, straightened a leg, his muscles seemed to pulse on their bones in an agony of confinement he was balked his life seemed near its end in four days he would be 30. so good it's brilliant isn't it isn't that a fantastic writing you know and spare like we were saying earlier but also what a great book, both of you. This is about the body. It is.

What does the body give us in these different situations, sex or fighting or running or working? How are we defined by our physical capabilities? Yeah, it's that thing he he's he likes i mean you know you're going back to your question nikki about the the the why these guys i mean it's it's the struggle thing is they're both they're both they're both he said somewhere i think in that interview struggle is dramatic and that people who've got nothing have to the very act of just keeping alive is struggle it's just a very very um i i think his you know he does find the poetry and the gutter and all that he does you know he's such a beautiful and and and exact

writer but the i i was struck by that thing and in the blurb saying about the you know the what was it something about hope being you know indestructible i don't know i don't know what i don't know that that's what fat city tells you i wish it did so let me just give you leonard gardner's biography really interesting i've got a little i've got a little fact that i reckon john mitchinson doesn't know that he's going to lose his mind over so let's see what happens Yeah, really interesting. And then I've got a little fact that I reckon John Mitchinson doesn't know that he's going to lose his mind over. So let's see what happens. So Leonard Gardner was born in Stockton.

His stories appeared in the Paris Review and Esquire and Brick magazine, the boxing magazine. His screen adaptation of Fat City was made into a film in 1972 and then after that he worked as a writer for independent film and television and he won prizes including a peabody award for his work on nypd blue and in 2008 he was the recipient of the aj liebling award who you mentioned earlier john in relation to the sweet science, which was given by the Boxing Writers Association of America. And he's still with us, which is brilliant. He's in his 90s and he's technically claims he's still writing a novel.

Indeed. Indeed. John, do you know who recruited Leonard Gardner to work on NYPD Blue? Who was it,y tell us it was david milch who was teaching fat city who taught fat city as a a set text when he was a professor at and and if listeners don't know david milch is the was the showrunner of nypd blue but more famously the showrunner of andy and my favorite long form drama, Deadwood Deadwood the guy who created Deadwood was

heavily influenced by Fat City and actually Johnny can't you see the link between the two things that you know the sense of two enclosed communities with no way out

and the idiosyncrasies of the people who have to find space within them. That's really what both those things are about. I was so thrilled by that. And also that kind of, you know, the language. Milch's kind of love for that sort of almost Shakespearean kind of soliloquy, which I have to say, you know, Gardner. I'm really struck that the two the two writers milch was the one and the other one is obviously dennis johnson um who was totally fell under the spell i mean he said that it was the fat city was the book that made

him want to be a writer and you can you can you can sort of definitely see i mean it's it's a weird thing isn't it and you're going to go on to this but you would have thought that somebody who'd written a a book of this quality would write other books why didn't he i must just say this this the clips we've heard of lennon gardner are taken from an interview from 2015 with Max Larkin, which is included on the Indicator Edition DVD of the film of Fat City. Oh, right, great. And the edition is really, really great. And the whole interview with Leonard Gardner is fascinating.

I wish we had time to include more of it. But anyway, to answer your question, John and Nicky, here is Leonard Gardner has just been asked why, given Fat City was shortlisted for the National Book Award and was praised by all these people, why didn't he go on to write more? Well, I don't really know. My agent seemed to know how these things affect people.

He seemed to feel that I probably felt I had to follow it with something as good or better, and that froze me up. I let enough time go by where then I was desperate for money, too. And people might think there's big money in novels, but I didn't find that to be so. And I wasn't even offered an advance on my next one. If I'd asked for it, I probably would have got it.

I don't know. But I got the movie offer to write the screenplay for Fat City, so I took it. And then there were other movie offers. I worked on a couple of other films. And time was getting away from me, and I kept needing money. And I worked on NYPD Blue. And I could have given you this interview with the understanding that you wouldn't ask me why

and didn't write another novel because I can't answer it. And it's painful to always have to feel that you're a combination of failure and success. I mean, my book now is getting a lot of attention, so I'm successful in some way and whatever in the other. I won't say I'm a failure. I was really moved by that, actually. He's very much like

one of his own characters. You know, do you read Fat City as a prediction of how Leonard Gardner's life panned out, or do you read it as, you could see it differently, you could see, well,

you've got to have your championship belt, you've got to write a novel as good as Fat City. And I think Leonard Gardner says something like, well, you know, I've got this to show for it, you know. You know, it's almost like somebody getting the jitters, right? Like a fighter getting the jitters. Like Simone Biles deciding she can't perform because if she goes onto the mat not feeling she can succeed, because if she goes onto the mat

not feeling she can succeed, she's likely to fail and be terribly injured. So, you know, that boxing metaphor, writing as boxing, that feels strong here as well. Hey, I've got a quiz for you. Would you like a quiz? Yeah. Is it about one book authors? Well, no, it's not, Nicky, because that wouldn't be fair, would it?

We could, I mean, we were talking about one book authors. Like, so Leonard Gardner is in the same category as Emily Bronte in that respect. But they're not often compared. Mary Shelley? No, it's not about one of the quarters no john houston made the film of fat city and he uh made a career out of making films from seemingly unfilmable novels and several of which we've probably talked about on backlisted before but i was going to give you guys this this is, you know, in your bout,

you can have the choice of the terms of engagement, which is this. You can either, I can either give you the name of the film and you have to tell me the author, or I'll give you the author and you have to tell me the name of the film directed by John Huston. I only know one other film directed by him. John, you go first. Go on then. What I want is the name of the film directed by John Huston? I only know one other film directed by him. John, you go first. Go on then. What I want is the name of the film directed by John Huston

based on the book by this author. Dashiell Hammett, 1941. The Maltese Falcon. That was the only one I knew. Okay, okay, okay. Nicky, Herman Melville. Moby Dick. Yes, Moby Dick, yes. okay okay okay nikki herman melville moby dick yes she's right one all okay all right and john mitchinson i'm gonna ask you for the exact title of the film that john houston made and the book was by god can i guess this one go on then

did he do a film called The Bible you're close but you're not right it's an adaptation of the book of Genesis but what's it called either of you All About Eve no that's good

very good but no it was called The Bible in the Beginning. Oh, no, brilliant. All right. So I'll give this to Nicky because it's a very famous film and it's starred Michael Caine and Sean Connery and it was based on a novel by Rudyard Kipling.

Michael Kipling. And it starred Michael Caine and Sean Connery, and it was made in the 70s, and it's on telly all the time in the afternoons, and it's about keeping his head in a box. I don't know. And a bag. Pass. The man who would be king.

The man who would be king. I'm going to ask Mitchinson now which, because I know you love it, which story by James Joyce did Houston make an adaptation of in film? The Dead. From Dublin. The final film he made, an incredible

film if anybody's seen that. Well, I'm going to call that a draw. Thank you, guys. Now, the final bell sounds. We must return to our separate corners and declare a unanimous decision in favour of Leonard Gardner. And thanks, as always, to Nicky Birch,

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