Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner

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Overview

Sixty-nine-year-old F.X. Toole has exploded onto the literary scene with this astonishing collection of stories drawn from his own experience in boxing. In these powerful and moving tales, he reveals a vicious netherworld of athletes and trainers, corrupt promoters, and other assorted denizens of East L.A., all players in a dirty business where victory, like defeat, comes with a dark and painful price.

Toole's dialogue crackles and bites, and the flawed warriors he creates cannot help but remind us of our own too-fragile humanity. He brings a new understanding to the violence and purity of the "sweet science", opening a window into the fighter's soul that can never be closed.

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Overview

Sixty-nine-year-old F.X. Toole has exploded onto the literary scene with this astonishing collection of stories drawn from his own experience in boxing. In these powerful and moving tales, he reveals a vicious netherworld of athletes and trainers, corrupt promoters, and other assorted denizens of East L.A., all players in a dirty business where victory, like defeat, comes with a dark and painful price.

Toole's dialogue crackles and bites, and the flawed warriors he creates cannot help but remind us of our own too-fragile humanity. He brings a new understanding to the violence and purity of the "sweet science", opening a window into the fighter's soul that can never be closed.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers
F. X. Toole is, in fact, a great new writer, but he's no newcomer to his subject matter. With twenty-two years logged in and out of the boxing ring as a trainer and "cut man," there's no better craftsman to tell these "stories from the corner." Compelled to continue in the game that is boxing-an often dangerous, corrupt business, where winners are often not what they appear-Toole's five tales and a novella clearly ring with authenticity, mapped out in the four corners of the ring and in the dark chambers of a fighter's heart. The hard-earned sweat drips off the pages, the punches sting, and the sound of leather meeting flesh claps out. Toole is a gifted artist and a very real contender in the world of fiction.

"The best boxing short fiction ever written."
— James Ellroy, author of L. A. Confidential
"Rope Burns is utterly fascinating, a complete and generous vision of a world most of us can never approach, still less enter."
—Joyce Carol Oates, author of Blonde

Bart Schneider
It's been a long time since I read a book that made me stand up so often to get in sync with the way the characters move. Never before has a book made me want to buy a speed bag to hang in the basement...The writing in Rope Burns is crisp and jablike, and you get the feeling that Toole has trained a long time for this debut. Clearly, he can go the distance.
More Reviews (10) Fewer Reviews
Dan Rather
Rope Burns is not just fight fiction at its finest, it is excellent fiction, period.
James Ellroy
Rope Burns is the best boxing fiction since Leonard Gardner's Fat City. It's the best boxing short fiction ever written. F.X. Toole is the brilliant love child of Sonny Liston and a rabid pit bull. Rope Burns is a hymn to ferocious longing and loss.
Joyce Carol Oates
F.X. Toole is a writer to break the heart. Rope Burns is utterly fascinating, a complete and generous vision of a world most of us can never approach, still less unpredictable and suspenseful, but most of all they are achingly real. Toole reads like one who has journeyed to Hades and back, bursting with tales to tell of what he has seen. He's the Archie Moore of his craft.
New York Post
Move over Frank and Malachy McCourt. A new gray-haired, streetwise Irish-American writer appears to be ready to burst upon the publishing world.
Publishers Weekly
The story of the 69-year-old author of this astonishing first fiction collection is a salutary one; he wrote between gigs tending boxers in their corners as a "cut man" (who stanches the blood flow and allows fights to continue), finally got a story published by a small literary magazine, was spotted by a keen-eyed agent and achieved book publication. It's amazing it took so long, because Irish-born Toole, now living and working in Los Angeles, is a natural. His knowledge of the bizarre world of professional boxing is encyclopedic and utterly persuasive, his prose is as tight as a well-laced pair of gloves and his protagonists, in this collection of five stories and a novella, are mythically heroic (and occasionally evil) but convincing archetypes. "The Money Look" is an exquisite turning-the-tables yarn at the expense of a cynical crook of a fighter; "Black Jew" is a telling tale of humble ambition woven with the lure of big money. A lacerating account of a courageous, deeply endearing hillbilly woman fighter and her sad fate, "Million $$$ Baby," is arguably the best story in the book. "Fightin' in Philly" is an almost equally moving tale of the toll the ambition to be a title fighter takes on a man. Another innocent torn up by the fight game is portrayed in "Frozen Water." Only the title novella, "Rope Burns," falls somewhat behind the sterling standard set by the other stories, with their firm authority and dead-on dialogue. It is more ambitious, even operatic, in its pitting of an almost superhumanly noble Olympic contender against a low-life East Los Angeles gang member at the time of the Rodney King riots. Like all of Toole's stories, it's breathlessly readable, even though the climactic bloodshed feels forced, as if Toole's cool narrative style cannot bear so much melodramatic freight. But make no mistake, the man is a heavyweight fiction contender. Agent, Nat Sobel. 6-city author tour. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|
Library Journal
A boxing cut man uses swabs, pressure, ice, and home-mixed salve to stop his fighter's bleeding between rounds. Toole, 70, whose experience as a cut man inspired this hard-boiled debut collection of contemporary fight stories, writes with blunt authority about this world. His strongest tales feature old trainers or cut men like himself, wisely noble holdovers from boxing's Hibernian age. Toole's old-fashioned modern stories often deal in broad ethnic types--hillbillies and homeboys, "4-dollar whores," Irish trainers exclaiming "Jaysus!"--but the real fight world is littered with such contrasts. His coldly plotted novella "Million $$$ Baby" begins like the most familiar old pulp story of the grumpy veteran trainer and the eager would-be student; then Toole freshens the clich by making the boxer an innocent young woman from the Ozarks. Here and there, though, Toole's authenticity breaks down, as in the unconvincing stories that lean heavily on black street dialog, "Frozen Water" and "Black Jew." Overall, his tales distinguish themselves by staying in the heartbreaking thick of it, never using boxing na vely as a savage metaphor for life (some life!). As a storyteller, Toole is both sentimental as a bar song and as cruelly precise as the sport he chronicles. Recommended for large fiction collections.--Nathan Ward, "Library Journal" Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\
Allen Barra
Toole's prose is sharp and jablike, and at its best comes at you with the rhythm of a good gym fighter working on the speed bag. Toole has a talent for illuminating the thoughts of the near illiterate but streetwise... this is an impressive collection...
—The New York Times Book Review
The New Yorker
Riveting stories...A less confident author might try to dress up such simple material with flashy prose. But Toole is a traditionalist, enamored of boozy romanticism and colorful vernacular, and when he throws a punch it usually finds its target.
Valberg
[A] magnificent debut...You may feel you've gone a couple of rounds yourself after this emotional wallop of a read.
—Entertainment Weekly
Kirkus Reviews
A debut collection of six stories about the world of boxing, from an insider who finds beauty in its ugliness, sweetness in its savagery.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780060198206
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 9/1/2000
  • Edition description: 1 ED
  • Pages: 256
  • Product dimensions: 6.58 (w) x 9.57 (h) x 1.05 (d)

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One



The Monkey Look



I stop blood.

I stop it between rounds for fighters so they can stay in the fight.

Blood ruins some boys. It was that way with Sonny Liston, God rest his soul. Bad as he was, he'd see his own blood and fall apart.

I'm not the one who decides when to stop the fight, and I don't stitch up cuts once the fight's over. And it's not my job to hospitalize a boy for brain damage. My Job is to stop blood so the fighter can see enough to keep on fighting. I do that, maybe I save a boy's title. I do that one little thing, and I'm worth every cent they pay me. I stop the blood and save the fight, the boy loves me more than he loves his daddy.

But you can't always stop it. Fight guys know this. If the cut's too deep or wide, or maybe you got a severed vein down in there, the blood keeps coming. Sometimes it takes two or three rounds to stop the blood, maybe more-the boy's heart is pumping so hard, or he cuts more. Once you get the coagulant in there, sometimes it takes another shot from the opponent right on the cut itself to drive the blood far enough from the area so the stuff you're using can start to work. What I'm saying is there are all kinds of combinations you come up against down in the different layers of meat. When a good cut man stays ahead of the combinations, he can stop most cuts, but not every one.

Fights can be stopped for a lot of reasons. A football eye swollen shut can stop a fight. But fights aren't stopped just because a fighter is cut. It's where he's cut. Below the eye, or alongside it, that won't usually stop a fight. Neither willa cut if it's in or above the eyebrow, or up in the forehead, or in the scalp. Broken nose? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. A cut in the eyelid, because of possible damage to the eyeball and the threat of blindness, that can stop a fight quick. So will blood pumping down into a boy's eyes. Blood can blind a fighter, maybe cost him the fight, or worse, because when he can't see he starts taking shots he wouldn't otherwise take, and now he ends up on his ass blinking through the lights and shadows of future memories.

Boy gets cut, I always crack the seal of a new, one-ounce bottle of adrenaline chloride solution 1:1000 When it's fresh, it's clear like water but has a strong chemical smell. The outdated stuff turns a light pinkish color, or a pale piss-yellow. When that happens, it couldn't stop fly blood. I might pour adrenaline into a small plastic squeeze bottle if I need to use sterile gauze pads along with a swab, but I never use adrenaline from a previous fight. I dump it, even if three quarters of it is left. This way it can't carry blood over from another fight, and none of my boys can get AIDS from contaminated coagulant. I'd give AIDS to myself before I'd give it to one of my boys.

Trainers and managers and fighters call me. They know me from when I used to train fighters. But I got too old and was walking around with my back and neck crippled up all the time from catching punches with the punch mitts. Boxing is a game of half steps and quarter inches, a game where old men belong as much as the young. Without its, there couldn't be fights. Fans think boxing is about being tough. For members of the fancy, the fight game is about getting respect.

My first fight working the corner of Hoolie Garza came after his trainer talked to me, Ike Goody. Ike was a club fighter in the fifties, but like most first-rate trainers, he was never a champ. With the exception of Floyd Patterson, I don't remember another champ who ever made a champion. Hoolie Garza is a twenty-six-pounder, a smart featherweight Mexican boy who thinks he's smarter than he is. Ile was born in Guaymas, a port on the Gulf of California inside Baia. He was raised illegal in East Los Angeles, where he fought, with his big brothers for food. His real name is Julio Cesar Garza, but as a kid he was nicknamed Juli -- in Spanish it's pronounced "hoolie." Juli was Americanized to Hoolie, the way Miguel, or Michael, is sometimes Americanized into Maikito.

After the Korean War, I went to school in Mexico City on the G.I. Bill. I wanted to learn Spanish, maybe teach it. So I hung around with Mexicans rather than other Americans. Some of my friends were bullfighters. I had a fling with the daughter of the secretary to the president of Mexico, a natural blonde who drove a car with license-plate number 32. She, God bless her, was one of the ways I learned Spanish on several levels and in different accents. I usually keep my Spanish to myself, like a lot of Latinos in the U.S. keep their English to themselves. But if they find out and ask about it, I tell them I was a student in Mexico and Spain both, and I say, "Hablo el espanol solo si me conviene-- I speak Spanish only when it's to my advantage." They always smile. Some laugh out loud and wag their finger. A lot of Latino fighters coming to fight in L.A. use me in their corner; some fly me to Vegas. I'm as loyal to them as I am to an American or to an Irishman, which is why I never bet on a fight I'm working -- not on the boy I'm working with, and not on the other fighter. This way, if I somehow screw up and cause my boy to lose, it can never be said that I did business...

Rope Burns. Copyright © by F. X. Toole. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Table of Contents

Member of the Fancy: An Introduction 1
The Monkey Look 13
Black Jew 37
Million $$$ Baby 61
Fightin in Philly 103
Frozen Water 141
Rope Burns 155
Between Rounds: An Acknowledgment 237

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Sort by: Showing all of 3 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted June 17, 2001

    GOOD BOXING BOOK

    Thoroughly enjoyed these stories. Well-written and to the point. Will reread most of the stories.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted October 19, 2000

    A Whole New World for Some Readers

    Francis FX Toole's new book is a collection of short stories and novellas based on his experience around the world of Boxing. For readers unfamiliar with this world, as I was, this is another planet altogether. The characters in this book have all learned to 'step into the pain' as Toole says. These are people who operate antithetically to conditioned response and they illustrate well the culture that has grown up out such aberrant behaviour. Natural response causes us to avoid pain-making situations so the people who train for fighting can truly feel and act in a way that most of us have never experienced. Mr. Toole does a marvelous job introducing us to these fascinating characters and tells their stories in a moving and empathetic way. He takes us into the ring corner and into the dressing rooms and gyms to show us the work and determination that allows these people to do the sport they so love. There is a tiny bit too much sentimentality and some cliched behaviour in these tales but they never get in the way of spinning a great yarn.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted October 2, 2000

    Amazing

    What more can you say than amazing, absolutely amazing.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
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