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Pound for
Pound
Toole, F. X.
(Author)
ISBN:
006088133X
Ecco
Published
2006-08
Hardcover, $25.95 (384p)
Fiction |
General
Reviewed
2006-05-15
PW
| |
 Toole, who died before seeing the
Oscar-winning movie adaptation of his short story
"Million Dollar Baby," weighs in posthumously with this
bruising smoker of a novel. (The novel was "shaped,"
notes James Ellroy in the introduction, from a 900-page
manuscript by Toole's agent and a freelance editor.) Dan
Cooley, a onetime contender who has outlived his wife
and children and whose life revolves around his
grandson, Tim Pat, goes off the rails after Tim Pat is
killed in a traffic accident. As Cooley vacillates
between booze-fueled suicidal thoughts and fantasies of
homicidal vengeance, Hispanic teenager Eduardo "Chicky"
Garza y Duffy begins his troubled ascent in the amateur
boxing world. That these two men, separated by thousands
of miles, ethnicity and generations, will become the
vehicle for one another's redemption is inevitable, but
Toole's unsentimental prose and knack for creating
tragic characters (whose sufferings, in turn, lead to
plausible triumphs) overcome the ready-made plot.
Cooley's thesis-that prize fighting, for all its
apparent brutality, is a sport that rewards wisdom,
skill and (at times) fair play-informs Toole's writing;
the result is a stunning cap to a short but brilliant
writing career.(Aug.)
Copyright © 1997-2005 Reed Business
Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights
reserved.
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