Carlo Rotella

by Alex Richmond

books

When describing a book about boxing, it's very tempting to use metaphors like "prose that goes 10 rounds without showing any signs of weakening," or "heavyweight," or "packs a serious punch," or "total knockout." You get the idea. In this case, the cliches are true. Though he goes in deep, author Carlo Rotella takes more of a writerly, intellectual approach to his pugilistic subject, even though he's sat ringside often enough to get stained from the blood and sweat of the fighters he so closely follows. In Cut Time: An Education at the Fights (Houghton Mifflin), Rotella boils down boxing to two central facts: hurt and craft. Though he doesn't spell it out quite so literally, there are similarities between the professions of writing and fighting. There's training, following one's instincts and fierce competition, even though you don't often win. Rotella's prose does, though, and it sure as hell doesn't hurt.

Rotella writes about the distance of televised fights, and how watching a boxing match on TV is a weak substitute for being there. He describes his Sicilian grandmother's failing instincts to navigate her way onto an escalator, and how the carefully bundled packages of pasta she gave him after their visits together used to embarrass him, then became a point of pride during his bus rides home. He finds haiku in Larry Holmes' commentary. All of these share meaning and become the same point of Rotella's work: There's an old school and a new school. The old school has ways of doing things that may seem strange, but they work, and they work for good reason. Not everyone may get it, but new-school upstarts should always look to their older predecessors to get a clue about how to get it right, be it fighting or anything else.

Though he's so on the inside of the boxing world, Rotella doesn't fight. He even describes himself as "built physically to flee predators," and outs himself as both a Yalie and a Harvard man (another wholly different set of tough crowds). OK, so he's bookish, but not a nebbishy wuss. Like a great fighter who carefully chooses where his punches land, he makes sure each word has context and meaning, landing with force.

Carlo Rotella reads Wed., Sept. 10, 6:30 p.m., free, Independence Branch of the Free Library, 18 S. Seventh St., 215-685-1633.

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