Boxer's last work has punch

Pound for Pound. F.X. Toole. Ecco/HarperCollins. $25.95. 366 pp.

Six years ago, one of the country's premier literary publishers -- Ecco -- almost single-handedly reinvigorated boxing stories as a writerly genre with an astonishing collection by a previously unpublished writer.

The book was Rope Burn and its author was F.X. Toole. Today, both are recalled mainly because one of the collection's stories, Million Dollar Baby, was adapted into Clint Eastwood's multiple Academy Award-winning film.

F.X. Toole was the pseudonym of a onetime fighter named Gerry Boyd, who was born in Long Beach, lived in Los Angeles and had a 22-year career as a trainer and cut man, mostly on the local boxing circuit. (In the interest of full disclosure, Boyd and this reviewer -- who spent several years as a boxing writer -- were friendly acquaintances.)

Toole was 70 when his first book came out. Two years later, he died after emergency heart surgery. His last words were, "Doc, get me just a little more time. I gotta finish my book."

Pound for Pound is a fascinating, frequently engrossing version of what that book might have been. As James Ellroy points out in his introduction, the manuscript Toole left behind ran to some 900 pages. Toole's agent, Nat Sobel, and freelance editor James Wade shaped this version -- and did a discreet and respectful job of it.

What Toole finally would have made of this material is anybody's guess. As a novel, Pound for Pound is a lot like one of the four-round amateur fighters Toole describes with such authority: There's enough talent to keep you interested, but not quite enough science to go the distance with the pros.

The characters here will be familiar to anybody who read or watched Million Dollar Baby. Dan Cooley is an ex-fighter, now a trainer and cut man and proprietor of a Hollywood auto body shop and gym. Dan is raising his grammar-school-age grandson, Tim Pat, whom Dan teaches to box.

The boy has heart and talent and then begins working his way through youth competitions. After winning one, he's struck by a car and killed. It's a pure accident -- nobody's fault -- but Dan is unhinged by his grief, descends into heavy drinking, stalks the Chicana schoolgirl who was driving the car and comes within a hairsbreadth of killing her. Unable to do that, he plots suicide, but is drawn back from the abyss by the necessity of caring for a dog he rescues from the side of the road. The animal, it turns out, has been used as a sparring partner for pit bulls and has had its vocal cords cut.

Meanwhile, in San Antonio, a parallel narrative unfolds involving a talented fighter named Chicky Garza, the grandson of the boxer whose dirty tactics ended Dan's own career in the ring and denied him his shot at a title. How Dan ends up training Chicky and comes to terms with the grandfather and the girl who accidentally killed Tim Pat forms the book's breakneck conclusion.

Pound for Pound contains some of the most lucidly crystalline descriptions of boxing and the day-to-day training of fighters ever written. There are finely detailed descriptive passages about Los Angeles, particularly the working end of Hollywood, where Dan's house, body shop and gym are located. F.X. Toole was an extraordinary talent and the short stories in Rope Burn are among the best American boxing fiction ever written. As a novel, Pound for Pound is like a promising career cut short by misfortune. Read it for its touching conviction, and muse on the record of some classy fighter who had the heart but never quite got his shot.

The Los Angles Times is a Tribune Co. newspaper.