The Gloves
A Boxing Chronicle
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2.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Robert Anasi's The Gloves offers a gritty, spirited inside look at the world of amateur boxing today.
The Golden Gloves tournament is center stage in amateur boxing-a single-elimination contest in which young hopefuls square off in steamy gyms with the boxing elite looking on.
Anasi took up boxing in his twenties to keep in shape, attract women, and sharpen his knuckles for the odd bar fight. He thought of entering "the Gloves," but put it off. Finally, at age thirty-two-his last year of eligibility-he vowed to fight, although he was an old man in a sport of teenagers and a light man who had to be even lighter (125 pounds) to fight others his size.
So begins Anasi's obsessive preparation for the Golden Gloves. He finds Milton, a wily and abusive trainer, and joins Milton's "Supreme Team": a black teenager who used to deal guns in Harlem, a bus driver with five kids, a hard-hitting woman champion who becomes his sparring partner. Meanwhile, he observes the changing world of amateur boxing, in which investment bankers spar with ex-convicts and everyone dreads a fatal blow to the head. With the Supreme Team, he goes to the tournament, whose outcome, it seems, is rigged, like so much in boxing life today.
Robert Anasi tells his story not as a journalist on assignment but as a man in the midst of one of the great adventures of his life. The Gloves, his first book, has the feel of a contemporary classic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A world away from the pay-per-view bonanzas where hype and egos reign are the musky neighborhood gyms and foulmouthed trainers who nurtured those big-time boxers. In this lyrical look at the world of amateur boxing, freelance writer Anasi chronicles how jabbing and jump-roping at a grubby gym in San Francisco's Tenderloin district developed into a life-altering quest to compete, in his early 30s, in New York's storied amateur boxing tournament, the Golden Gloves. It's not an easy journey: his trainer, for example, a blunt, boisterous Puerto Rican named Milton, throws him into sparring sessions he's bound to lose while peppering him with insults from ringside. Of course, Anasi notes, that's not how trainers see it. "Instead they mention 'good rounds,' 'going easy,' 'working with someone,' " he writes. "As in the romance around sex, the stereotyped, delicate language serves to cloak a more brutal reality." Anasi cloaks nothing, and his forthright style serves to highlight not only boxing's brutal reality, but also its beauty and allure. He tells fascinating stories of the other characters he meets and illustrates their lives in and out of the ring. This attention extends to the irrepressible Milton, whose unorthodox style Anasi comes to respect, even as he recognizes his trainer's faults and limitations. Absorbing and honest, with prose an effortless mix of facts, poetic descriptions and personal vignettes, this book will appeal even to those with no prior knowledge of the ring. What John Feinstein has done for higher-profile sports, Anasi has done for amateur boxing.
Customer Reviews
"Readable" is the only praise I can give this book...
In fact, to be perfectly honest, the only thing that really kept me reading it is that I actually know some of the people involved in the story (I met Robert Anasi’s trainer, Milton, at a Muay Thai gym I trained at in the 90’s. I’m also pretty certain I met his first trainer, Julio, at Kingsway). Other than that, this book was a bit of a letdown. Stylistically, Anasi’s writing was uneven and inconsistent, and his insistence on not using quotation marks for much of the dialogue was annoying. The only thing more annoying than his lack of quotation marks was when he did use them, usually to quote someone who was quoting someone else. The prose at the beginning and end of the book is peppered with enough five and ten-dollar words to make Anasi appear pretentious, though most of the material in the middle wasn't too bad, which indicates to me that there wasn't a whole lot of time spent on editing.
Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the book, though, is the lack of a central theme, which made it feel incoherent and pointless. To be clear, the book is indeed about boxing, but the execution fell a bit short. I was expecting something that delved into the philosophy of the sweet science; Anasi’s insights derived from his experiences training for and competing in the Golden Gloves. Instead, the entire book is a collection of anecdotes with no real point, except for the fact that the writer likes boxing. Well, that's great. I like boxing too, but I don't exactly feel that my training and the various characters I meet at my gym warrant a memoir. At times the author goes off on tangents that delve deep into the sport of boxing, but do nothing for the central story, and made me wonder if he was simply injecting filler to satisfy a minimum word requirement (I thought about hanging myself several times when he related the story of Curtis Summit and... went... on... at... length... about the trials and tribulations he faced during his career).
Overall, I guess it was entertaining enough because I did finish it (despite having to put it down several times), but I can't say I would recommend it.