Hooking Off the Jab

Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway and Boxing

Authors

  • Bill Lowenburg Author

Keywords:

Ernest Hemingway, boxing and literature, literary masculinity, sports writing, New Journalism, authorial persona, boxing culture

Abstract

Boxing was an essential element of the identity of both Norman Mailer and Ernest Hemingway, although writing about boxing comprised only a fraction of their immense bodies of work. Given Mailer’s penchant for mixing it up both in and out of the ring, in physical as well as literary scraps, hooking off the jab seems an apt point of departure for a brief commentary on his best-known written pieces on the sport. Boxing also played a central role in Ernest Hemingway’s persona. He, too, wrote about it, socialized with boxers and—to a much greater degree than Mailer—fancied himself as an accomplished fighter. Part II of this essay provides commentary on Hemingway as a boxer and Part III offers a fantasy ring match between the two would-be heavyweight literary champions, based on a passage from Mailer’s book, The Fight.

Author Biography

  • Bill Lowenburg

    Bill Lowenburg is a research assistant for Michael Lennon’s authorized Mailer biography. He analyzed Mailer’s boxing writing and examined the role boxing played in Mailer’s life. He studied boxing for six years with Earnee Butler, Larry Holmes’s mentor, and worked as a sparring partner and trainer for professional and amateur boxers. He is the author of Crash Burn Love: Demolition Derby and currently working on his second book, Larry Fink: The Intuitive Eye. This past year, he published an excerpt from The Intuitive Eye in The International Journal of Photographic Art and Practice. A high school librarian, photography teacher, and former history teacher, he holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University and was a 2010 recipient of a scholarship to the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Provincetown, MA.

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Published

2026-03-25

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2010): Literary Warriors

Section

Articles