Fat City - Leonard Gardner

Fat City by Leonard Gardner / ISBN 9781590178928 / 200-page paperback published by New York Review Books Classics

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Fat City is a vivid novel of allegiance and defeat, of the potent promise of the good life and the desperation and drink that waylay those whom it eludes. Stockton, California, is the setting: the Lido Gym, the Hotel Coma, Main Street lunchrooms and dingy bars, days like long twilights in houses obscured by untrimmed shrubs and black walnut trees. When two men meet in the ring—the retired boxer Billy Tully and the newcomer Ernie Munger—their brief bout sets into motion their hidden fates, initiating young Munger into the company of men and luring Tully back into training. In a dispassionate and composed voice, Leonard Gardner narrates their swings of fortune, and the stubborn optimism of their manager, Ruben Luna, as he watches the most promising boys one by one succumb to some undefined weakness; still, “There was always someone who wanted to fight.”

"A beautiful, admirably plainspoken novel about two boxers whose paths cross in the shabby California town of Stockton in the late 1960s. Both men want more from life than they've been allotted, and both will be disappointed. But the telling of this disappointment is heartbreaking, as is the fact that Gardner never wrote another book." —Patrick deWitt, The Week

"Sometimes, somehow, someone gets it right. The reissue of Fat City, Leonard Gardner’s pitch-perfect account of boxing, blue-collar bewilderment and the battle of the sexes, is cause for celebration, and reflection." —Paul Wilner, San Francisco Chronicle

"A slim, taut book that has earned its status as a classic by dint of its immaculate, evocative prose, a compassionate but dour view of the human condition, and the absolute credibility of its depiction of the sport of the busted beaks. . . . Though Fat City was written long before cellphones or the Internet, its human apparatus is state of the art. With this new edition, new generations of readers and writers will discover it, learn from it, and find both wincing pain and deep pleasure. Gardner’s achievement lives on precisely because Fat City is not depressing. The tale is dark, but it is charged with energy. It is seductive, engaging, and lit, despite the odds, by a vitality that is in itself a form of hope. We come away from it burnt clean." —Katherine Dunn, Slate