herein lies the issue... | The Devil and Sonny Liston

"Attention, attention must be paid this man!" | The Devil and Sonny Liston | Nick Tosches

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	• The Devil and Sonny Liston Nick Tosches Little, Brown and Company, 2000 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 61 reviews view larger image
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Stop the Hate.

All this negativity, wow. I thought this book was fantastic. It made me buy other books by this guy and I liked them as well. He's not my favorite author of all time, but this book was great. 5 stars.

herein lies the issue...

While the negative reviews here hold a certain amount of water, it must be understood that this is certainly not a "traditional" biography, if a biography at all. I came upon this book from the opposite direction as previous commentators, as an fan of literature with a passing interest in boxing. Tosches' entire ouevre reads much the same way as this text: pop cultural riffing, hyperbolic spiritual send-ups, flourishes of bizarrely germane quotes. But it all works.

I can safely admit that this won't serve as an effective biography for anyone hoping for detailed accounts of Liston's fights, but it is a wonderfuly tempered, passionate work. In terms of boxing studies, if you care at all for the style of Oates' "On Boxing," this is certainly worth a paltry $0.19.

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"Attention, attention must be paid this man!"

I remember, as a mere slip of a lad, tape-recording the Liston-Clay fight on my Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder. (I think it weighed more than I did.) I played that tape over and over. ...

"SONNY LISTON'S NOT COMING OUT!" excalimed Howard Cosell. "SONNY LISTON'S NOT COMING OUT! HE'S OUT! I'M NOW GOING UP INTO THE RING!"

Actually, I congratulate Nick Tosches on writing a book about Sonny Liston and not once mentioning Howard Cosell, who I simply *loooooooathe(d).*

As for Nick's book, you have to give him credit for the research he's done, he is thorough. But as a previous reviewer noted, he's a Jimmy Breslin/Damon Runyon wannabe. Of course that's not an unambitious wannabe gene to have, is it? So I can't really criticize Nick for aspiring to such obvious greatness.

The thing is, though, Nick manifests his hipness in an all too obvious way. Alas, there's nothing sadder than a hipster who tries too hard to be too hip.

Still, Nick was raised in Newark, New Jersey, as I was, he's about my age, and he's clearly a good, solid, interesting writer, so whaddya want? fugetaboutit -- da bum's okay!

In Hemingway's short story "A Clean Well-Lighted Place," the old man in the cafe is asked: "What are you thinking about?" To which he replies: "Nothing." Meaning: nothingness.

Indeed, this is the key that unlocks the mystery of Sonny Liston. In considering Sonny Liston, one inevitably looks into the abyss -- comes face-to-face with the personification of nothingness. ("Nada y nada y pues nada.")

Easily the most feared and ferocious of heavyweights, when he wasn't (probably) throwing both Ali fights, Charles Sonny Liston was nihilism to the 12th power. As such, I wish Nick had written a bit more about Liston from an existential point of view. His writing style is perfectly suited to such an approach. Put another way: I don't imagine it's a coincidence that Nick has also written biographies of Dean Martin and Jerry Lee Lewis, both of whom, each in his own unique way, has danced on the precipice of existential dread.

If you don't know Sonny Liston from Adam, or if you consider the only accceptable biography to be that of a famous, notable or "respected" individual (as opposed to a thug like Liston), then you're a square, daddy-o, and you should pass on this book, ex Post Toasties.

(Did you see what I did there? Huh? A little cereael humor -- "ex Post Toasties." ... I gotta million of 'em.)

If, on the other hand, you're consider Sonny Liston to be an important part of our cultural past and therefore worth paying attention to ("Attention, attention must be paid this man!"), then give my paisano Nick Tosches' bio of Sonny Liston a shot.

Meanwhile, there's no question Liston threw the second Ali fight. But what about the first one? Did he throw that one, too? If he did, one has to wonder what would have happened to Ali had he faced the full, "unfixed" fury of Liston.

Before the first, at the weigh-in, Ali went nuts, with most commentators (in hindsight of course) maintaining that this was meant to psyche out Liston. I don't believe it. I think Ali was scared witless of Liston; maybe not necessarily at the weigh-in but in his general psychological preparation for the fight. In fact, he was probably as surprised/shocked ed as anyone that he emerged from the fight victorious -- let alone survived it!

It's interesting how Nick points out that after the Mob's influence over boxing waned, many of the people involved in boxing, including the boxers themselves, longed for the days when they dealt with the Mob, as opposed to the real thieves, the compleat crooks, namely, the lawyers, corporatists and other buttoned-down nouveau riche hustlers we civilians are all now plagued with.

The Mob may have been rough, but as Mario Puzo once put it: at least back in the day you could get a decent bowl of spaghetti & meatballs in Las Vegas. Today? Fugetabout it!

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The anti-Ali, Sonny Liston represents everything that is compelling and terrifying about boxing. An overwhelmingly powerful fighter, Liston rose from a desperately poor childhood to street criminal to world heavyweight champion. He then became the pawn of a series of criminal organizations and was shadowed throughout his life by government investigations, arrests, and the rumor of corruption. The Devil and Sonny Liston is not just the biography of a boxer; it is one of the greatest organized-crime stories ever told and confirms Toschess place as one of the most powerful and original writers of our time. Toschess acclaimed biography of Dean Martin, Dino, sold more than 110,000 copies From the rappers Wu-Tang Clan to writer Thom Jones, people are fascinated by Sonny Liston and by boxing in general. King of the World by David Remnick sold more than 100,000 copies. Tom Cruises Cruise/Wagner Productions is at work on a movie based on this book. A collection of Toschess best writing, The Nick Tosches Reader, is due out in 2000. Tosches is a contributing editor of Vanity Fair.

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