The BarfighterThe Barfighter
Title rated 0 out of 5 stars, based on 0 ratings(0 ratings)
Book, 2009
Current format, Book, 2009, , All copies in use.Book, 2009
Current format, Book, 2009, , All copies in use. Offered in 0 more formatsAfter he lands in anger management class after starting a bar brawl, former Army-trained boxer and journalist Lee Cheskis meets a former gang member wanting to change his life through boxing and finds himself thrust into the seedy world of professional boxing.
At 41, Lee Cheskis is a part-time junior-college instructor and day laborer. He learned to box in college. Drafted in 1965, he boxed to avoid being sent to Vietnam. Articles he wrote after his discharge about the Bay Area counterculture won him a job with the New York Times, but his career and his marriage ended in four years. Now, two decades later, he's living in a garage apartment, unloading moving vans, working out in a boxing gym, and getting into fistfights in bars. In a court-mandated anger-management class, he meets and subsequently becomes the manager of a gangbanger who wants to learn to box.
When he was an Army boxer fighting to stay out of Vietnam, Lee Cheskis obeyed a brutal reflex, and only years later does he learn the tragic consequences. Staggered by regret, he throws himself off a career ladder at The New York Times to express his rage in bar fights against other troubled souls. Ultimately Cheskis seeks redemption guiding the career of L.A. gang member and promising heavyweight Marvin “Quick” O’Brien. The Barfighter takes the reader on an often whimsical journey deep inside the heart of boxing, which can turn from sweet to savage with the snap of a punch, and where a sport that’s not a game becomes an existential microcosm of the world around it. The story takes the reader from Folsom Prison to the fight capital, Las Vegas, stopping in diverse locales that include the now-shuttered infantry post of Fort Ord, California, Ken Kesey’s hot tub, the L.A. County Jail, and the Café de la Paix in Paris.
At 41, Lee Cheskis is a part-time junior-college instructor and day laborer. He learned to box in college. Drafted in 1965, he boxed to avoid being sent to Vietnam. Articles he wrote after his discharge about the Bay Area counterculture won him a job with the New York Times, but his career and his marriage ended in four years. Now, two decades later, he's living in a garage apartment, unloading moving vans, working out in a boxing gym, and getting into fistfights in bars. In a court-mandated anger-management class, he meets and subsequently becomes the manager of a gangbanger who wants to learn to box.
When he was an Army boxer fighting to stay out of Vietnam, Lee Cheskis obeyed a brutal reflex, and only years later does he learn the tragic consequences. Staggered by regret, he throws himself off a career ladder at The New York Times to express his rage in bar fights against other troubled souls. Ultimately Cheskis seeks redemption guiding the career of L.A. gang member and promising heavyweight Marvin “Quick” O’Brien. The Barfighter takes the reader on an often whimsical journey deep inside the heart of boxing, which can turn from sweet to savage with the snap of a punch, and where a sport that’s not a game becomes an existential microcosm of the world around it. The story takes the reader from Folsom Prison to the fight capital, Las Vegas, stopping in diverse locales that include the now-shuttered infantry post of Fort Ord, California, Ken Kesey’s hot tub, the L.A. County Jail, and the Café de la Paix in Paris.
Title availability
About
Details
Publication
- Sag Harbor, NY : Permanent Press, 2009.
Opinion
More from the community
Community lists featuring this title
There are no community lists featuring this title
Community contributions
There are no quotations from this title
There are no quotations from this title
From the community