The Guardian Arts blog takes on the sport of boxing in literature: “Literature and boxing shouldn’t go together. One is concerned with refining our consciousness; the other with trying to clobber someone into unconsciousness as artfully and as swiftly as possible. Yet of all sports writing it is boxing that seems to have inspired some of the best in journalism and literature. … Something as primal as boxing naturally provides a rich abundance of enduring metaphors concerning power, fear, life and death …”
Among authors and works mentioned: George Bernard Shaw’s novel Cashel Byron’s Profession (1883); some of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories; Joyce Carol Oates’ writing; Jack London; Nelson Algren; Dashiell Hammett; Bartley Gorman’s King Of The Gypsies; and of course Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer. The comments name and discuss more pugilistic prosodists.