Rating: 
Summary: A Little Known Great
Review: "Fat City" is a novel that delivers an uppercut of grit, sadness and human endurance to the reader. Harsh, powerful, and poignant this novel is beautifully rendered in taut prose. It is remarkable how in theme and style Gardner's writing resembles the paintings of the 1930's artist, George Bellows, who also depicts the struggles of boxers and urban poor both in the blood speckled ring and in tenement strewn wastes of American cities. Bravo Gardner, you have your equals in Selby, Melville and Hemingway! But one wonders why this talent has not come into the ring another time and graced his readers with another novel?
Rating:
Summary: Heavyweight Classic
Review: "Fat City" is a novel that delivers an uppercut of grit, sadness and human endurance to the reader. Harsh, powerful, and poignant this novel is beautifully rendered in taut prose. It is remarkable how in theme and style Gardner's writing resembles the paintings of the 1930's artist, George Bellows, who also depicts the struggles of boxers and urban poor both in the blood speckled ring and in tenement strewn wastes of American cities. Bravo Gardner, you have your equals in Selby, Melville and Hemingway! But one wonders why this talent has not come into the ring another time and graced his readers with another novel?
Rating:
Summary: A Jab Through the Soul
Review: A vivid, compelling tale, replete with memorable characters -- a punch drunk pugilist and pickled crop picker -- in unsettling scenarios. You, I. . . almost every one of us has hit bottom and asked how'd this happen, is there no way out? These guys hit harder than most, and we feel every bump along the way. For them, there are no easy outs. As for us, we come away appreciating our lot in life just a little bit more.
Rating:
Summary: All but Forgotten Masterpiece
Review: Billy Tully and Ernie Munger are two young men living in the Northern California delta town of Stockton. Their world is the violent one of boxing, but their struggles for survival are more universal than just any conventional story about men battling professionally in the squared circle. You do not have to be a fight fan to appreciate this arresting work.Leonard Gardner has followed the rule of thumb laid down years ago of "Write what you know." Gardner grew up in Stockton and knows the lower middle class world he describes with graphic brilliance. He was an amateur boxer, giving him a knowledge of how men struggle to survive in that competitive and highly dangerous world. Gardner's story craft is straight out of Albert Camus, in many ways reminiscent of his epic novella, "The Stranger." His descriptions of dingy bars and dreary hotel rooms ring with clarity, transferring readers to a world of existential survival where some cling to hope while others have long since given up. Tully was on the verge of being a contender but lost a major fight, hit the bottle, and quit boxing. He got a job as a short order cook. After going to the local high school gym to work out he meets Ernie Munger. At 18 Ernie is eleven years Tully's senior. He becomes so impressed by Munger's moves that he recommends that he visit Lido Gym and look up his former manager. When Munger begins boxing amateur Tully's interest increases and he is motivated to launch a comeback. Tully and Munger seek extra money by working as field pickers under a broiling sun. Tully finds temporary romance with Oma, a woman he meets in a bar with such a propensity for alcohol that he moves out of her dingy hotel room and back to his own, warned by his manager that she will destroy his concentration as he prepares for a main event bout in Stockton. Meanwhile Munger impregnates a young local woman, marries her, and with additional incentive, turns professional. Gardner wrote the screenplay for the electrifying film version directed by John Huston, which starred Stacy Keach, Jeff Bridges and Susan Tyrell. It matches the tenaciously gripping, Camus-like existential reality of the book.
Rating:
Summary: The stunning story of two boxers in Northern California.
Review: FAT CITY is a spare and stunning song-of-a-book about the small victories and epic desperations of two boxers in Northern California. Set in the 1960s, the story turns alternately from one boxer to another, from the fields in which they labor to the rings in which they fight, from the bars in which they talk and drink to the beds in which they sleep. Gardner writes of the hopes and hardships of the two men with a gritty and pithy elegance of the highest degree. And he punctuates the highs and lows of the mens' lives with simple and profound insights presented with the breathtaking rhythm and timing of a boxer. This is a sad and beautiful novel
Rating:
Summary: The REAL DEAL!
Review: Gardner writes about about boxing as well, if not better, than any boxer could. I could feel the punches, the sweat, the pain and the fatigue kicking in as Gardner takes us into the later rounds. A must read, particularly if ya got any fight in ya!
Rating:
Summary: True Art
Review: I was amazed by this book. The characters and the story took me by the throat and kept me right where I was until I had finished the book. I am only sad that it took me so long to discover it. I am a boxing fan, I'll lay that out here, but, still, I think even someone who hates boxing would like this novel. The characters Gardner paints are real, full of life, and it seems impossible not to care about what is happening to them. this is a book that anyone who likes the garbage Rick Moody writes should read. it'll clean the gunk out of your blood and set you on the right track.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece of a novel
Review: It really is. I have read, I'd guess, 250-300 novels by contemporary writers since I read a glowing review of FAT CITY in a San Francisco newspaper years ago, sometime in the early 1970s, and bought the novel, mainly because I was brought up in San Jose, California, and wondered what could a writer find in the humble tank town of Stockton to write about. When I finished reading it I just looked out the window, so moved was I by the characters in the novel, and by Gardner's storytelling prowess. And to this day -- going on 28 years later -- I swear that I have not read a contemporary novel that has affected me as profoundly as FAT CITY did, and still does whenever I reread it, which is every year or two. Gardner's craft is wonderful to read -- the cadences of his sentences are gorgeous; you find yourself wanting to read it out loud to yourself, just to relish the drum beat of the syllables. (The only other writer I can think of who constructed sentences that way in English is Joseph Conrad.) Gardner's understanding of his characters, and of human nature, makes you shake your head and smile, even as his characters are blindly reeling toward sad destinies. This is American literature of the finest kind -- and though Gardner has not published a novel since FAT CITY in 1969, I know that a whole lot of people hope that he will again. He has the gift and this novel is proof.
Rating:
Summary: Fat City
Review: Leonard Gardner's short novel, "Fat City", set in Stockton, California in the mid-1950's, appeared in 1969. Gardner wrote the screenplay for the movie, directed by John Huston, in 1972. The book remains in print in a series of novels based in California called "California fiction". I came upon this book by chance. It is little-known but a treasure. The book is about boxing and low life, faded dreams, lack of prospects, booze, rooming houses, failed relationships in a small California town. The two primary characters are Billy Tully and Ernie Munger. Billy at age 29 is a washed-up fighter who has lost his wife and several jobs and is sinking deeply into alcohol and oblivion. Ernie is 19 years old and a boxer who may have potential. He marries a young women named Faye, after getting her pregnant, and takes up the ring as a professional in order to support his wife and child. The paths of the two men cross in the gym at the beginning of the book and their careers take parallel courses. Billy had lost an important fight in Panama some years earlier when his manager, Ruben Luna, forced him to travel alone to Panama in order to save on expenses. He makes an attempted comeback at the age of 30 and actually wins a decision in a brutal match with an aging Mexican fighter. He returns to fighting to try to save himself from depression over the loss of his wife, his lack of prospects, and his loneliness. Ernie Munger is young and works at a gas station. Although he has some boxing potential, his skills appear limited. As had been the case with Tully years earlier, Ruben Luna sends Munger out of town, (to Las Vegas) for a fight to save on the expenses. This is Munger's first professional fight which proves more successful for him than did Tully's fight in Panama.
The book ends darkly, but with a hint of the possiblity of personal growth and true independence for Munger. The descriptions in this book of bars, of women, of cheap hotels, of the training for fights, and of the fights themselves is compelling. This is a strong picture of boxing at its seamiest which yet captures the fascination that this sport holds for many -- myself included. There are also many scenes in the book of the life of seasonal, agricultural workers in northern California. One of the most memorable portions of the book occurs when Tully and Munger sign on for day work in picking nuts. Tully climbs upon a ladder on a tractor and beats the nuts from a tree with a stick where they fall on Munger's head as he gathers them into a bag. The rage and the frustration of both men is palpable. Gardner writes with a spare understated style which does not moralize. The characters and their experiences speak for themselves. It is highly effective. There is a picture here of despairing men with small visions but also a real sense of underlying humanity, of hope, and of valuable, if fallen ideals. This will be a rewarding novel for the reader who wants to go slightly off the routine path.
Rating:
Summary: Fat City
Review: Leonard Gardner's short novel, "Fat City", set in Stockton, California in the mid-1950's, appeared in 1969. Gardner wrote the screenplay for the movie, directed by John Huston, in 1972. The book remains in print in a series of novels based in California called "California fiction". I came upon this book by chance. It is little-known but a treasure. The book is about boxing and low life, faded dreams, lack of prospects, booze, rooming houses, failed relationships in a small California town. The two primary characters are Billy Tully and Ernie Munger. Billy at age 29 is a washed-up fighter who has lost his wife and several jobs and is sinking deeply into alcohol and oblivion. Ernie is 19 years old and a boxer who may have potential. He marries a young women named Faye, after getting her pregnant, and takes up the ring as a professional in order to support his wife and child. The paths of the two men cross in the gym at the beginning of the book and their careers take parallel courses. Billy had lost an important fight in Panama some years earlier when his manager, Ruben Luna, forced him to travel alone to Panama in order to save on expenses. He makes an attempted comeback at the age of 30 and actually wins a decision in a brutal match with an aging Mexican fighter. He returns to fighting to try to save himself from depression over the loss of his wife, his lack of prospects, and his loneliness. Ernie Munger is young and works at a gas station. Although he has some boxing potential, his skills appear limited. As had been the case with Tully years earlier, Ruben Luna sends Munger out of town, (to Las Vegas) for a fight to save on the expenses. This is Munger's first professional fight which proves more successful for him than did Tully's fight in Panama.
The book ends darkly, but with a hint of the possiblity of personal growth and true independence for Munger. The descriptions in this book of bars, of women, of cheap hotels, of the training for fights, and of the fights themselves is compelling. This is a strong picture of boxing at its seamiest which yet captures the fascination that this sport holds for many -- myself included. There are also many scenes in the book of the life of seasonal, agricultural workers in northern California. One of the most memorable portions of the book occurs when Tully and Munger sign on for day work in picking nuts. Tully climbs upon a ladder on a tractor and beats the nuts from a tree with a stick where they fall on Munger's head as he gathers them into a bag. The rage and the frustration of both men is palpable. Gardner writes with a spare understated style which does not moralize. The characters and their experiences speak for themselves. It is highly effective. There is a picture here of despairing men with small visions but also a real sense of underlying humanity, of hope, and of valuable, if fallen ideals. This will be a rewarding novel for the reader who wants to go slightly off the routine path.
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