Synopsis
Billy Tully and Ernie Munger are two second-rate boxers who live in a backwater town in California and seem unable to stop their steady slide into mediocrity and despair. Billy works as a hired hand and drinks away whatever little money he gets; Ernie makes an unhappy marriage and slips into depression. They meet through their manager, Ruben Luna, and never manage to become friends or competitors. Bleak and depressing, 'Fat City' serves well to portray two of the countless lost souls of Leonard Gardner's bleak world.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1996-10-01 | | Series: | California Fiction | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Length: | 183 pages | | Height: | 8.5 in | | Width: | 5.8 in | | Thickness: | 0.5 in | | Weight: | 8.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
Fat City is a novel set in the world of small-time boxing in Stockton, California in the 1950s. Leonard Gardner's deeply affecting portrayal of the anxieties and hopes of his characters achieves an unexpected universality that reaches out to readers well beyond the bounds of this world. The conviction, authenticity, and economy of means that characterize the novel found wide admiration among reviewers upon its first publication in 1969. Subsequently made into a film by John Huston, Fat City is an American classic.
Industry Reviews
"He has got it exactly right....'Fat City' affected me more than any new fiction I've read in a long while."
advertisement - Joan Didion
"The sleazy world of third-rate boxers is explored in this short, expertly written first novel....Recommended to public libraries who want good short fiction; it will have special appeal for young men."
Library Journal - Robert H. Donahugh (09/01/1969)
"The triumph of the book is its action. Running, fighting, loving, weeding, harvesting, these men stay in motion in order not to be doomed. So powerfully does Gardner record their actions that we recall their lives, not their defeats."
New York Times Book Review - Leo Litwak (08/31/1969)
"If [the story] sounds grim and depressing, it is, and yet Gardner's complete surrender to his material gives ['Fat City'] whatever gripping power it has."
Saturday Review - Maurer (09/13/1969)
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