Andrew Rihn

Bonnie Parker — my favorite poet. ❤️

Bonnie And Clyde YouTube video by Mick Harvey - Topic

happy Saturday to one of the great covers of Gainsbourg’s original 🫶

youtu.be/03XVu2TiNyg?...

Thank you - happy to share.

I visited Walcott’s plot last summer with my nephew. The cemetery also has this odd structure, which my nephew noticed looks very much like a boxing ring and wanted me to include here.

His stone is only a few feet from a newly built softball stadium. You can also see how separated his stone remains from the other cemetery plots.

Walcott is buried in Section A of the Dalton Cemetery.

What seems agreed upon is that while alone, Walcott was struck by a car and killed. Locals could not identify the body and he was buried in an anonymous grave.

Twenty years later, a local boxing fan connected the dots, located the grave, and purchased this headstone.

Details about Walcott’s death are fuzzy and the published accounts are conflicted. Here is one such account, published in the Massillon Independent, 1971.

They even wrote this follow-up the next day.

The two became separated around Mansfield, OH. The New Journal from Mansfield reported on this in December of 1935.

Like many boxers, retirement proved more difficult than his fights. By 1935, he was working as a janitor at Madison Square Garden.

In September 1935, Walcott travelled west with an agent, Morris Watnick, expecting to find work in Hollywood.

Walcott stood 5’1”, was the first Black welterweight champion, and made a career of difficult fights against larger men, including Joe Choynski, Rube Ferns, Honey Mellody, Joe Gans, and Sam Langford.

But how he ended up in Ohio is a whole other story.

Today marks the 153rd birthday of hugely talented and criminally overlooked Barbados Joe Walcott.

Born in British Guiana, he grew up in Barbados, spent much of his adult life in Boston, but is buried in the small town of Dalton, Ohio.

I posted some teaser info about some of the art discussed in the book

bsky.app/profile/andr...

Working title:

Boxing’s Brutal Appeal: Striking Images of Spectacle and Violence

Thank you — a novel this year and an essay collection next year. Keeping myself busy!

You’re right that a postwar boxing novel could have shown signs from the war.

I recall him saying that he’d started the novel before the war, but put it off until after. Its timeframe is a little ambiguous, but it’s supposed to be sometime in the 30s.

If I noticed anything, it was how conscientious Schulberg was in constructing the book. From the endings of chapters (a lot of ‘big’ lines there), to how he front-loaded references to real fighters — clearly he planned it all out pretty tightly.

tbh, my first read of it was very quick to the point of being cursory — I was reading to find some information for an essay (on the death of Ernie Schaaf).

So this time, I could really slow down and read into Eddie and all the nuances of his ethics and character

Writing as thinking is key (for me, anyway). Part of why I wanted to do the more public book club this year.

Thank you — it’s a long way off, but I am excited.

💯

The ethics and morality are so key in the story — and the fact that Eddie constantly thinks himself above Nick and Vince and the rest, but to someone like Toro, they all look alike in the end.

I’m so glad you enjoyed it @garelitlover.bsky.social

It’s a tough ending for sure.

He’s in bed with Shirley. She was introduced earlier in the book, as someone who only sleeps with broken down, defeated and hopeless boxers. That’s what he refers back to, about realizing what it says about him.

We’re under a tornado watch until 5:00pm and I just signed a book contract.

Nonfiction essays on boxing, violence, and art. Look for it in 2027.

Three weeks left to go in March. I’ll be posting a little about the 1956 movie adaptation, and some general thoughts about the book as a whole.

If you’ve been following along — thank you! And if you’ve been reading along, I hope you’ve enjoyed THE HARDER THEY FALL.

End of the book means I can tally up all the real names mentioned in the book — 82 by my counts (though I may have missed some).

Interesting to see Schulberg frontload so many references, then let the fictional story take over.

The one name never mentioned: Primo Carnera.

The second is a quick scene with Vince outside Toro’s hospital room. Vince tells Eddie he wants to help Toro. Eddie is impressed. Only later does he learn that Vince’s “help” amounts to purchasing his contract and planning a humiliating tour where he plans to let Toro be beaten.

It’s a bleak ending. For me, two points drive it home. One in this obvious moment, when Eddie thinks to give Toro some of his own money, but halves the offer before he’s even said it.