Rabe Rave

- By Jules Chametzky

From the first paragraph of David Rabe's new essay we know we are into something exact, profound, with echoes of all the great epic accounts of the human situation.

Perhaps that is an overblown response: As its subtitle tells us, the piece is about prize-fighting, boxing, "the sweet science." The temptation to cliche about the sport is ever-present. The subject has been written about ably by A.J. Liebling and Norman Mailer, though Mailer is predictably macho and always all-knowing. What Rabe gives us, no surprise, is the sorrow and the pity of it all, as well as some idea of what drives the fighters and what they are searching for in this brutal business besides, obviously, the money and glory, if it comes. He gives us the sad Floyd Patterson, Joe Frazier stripped down to his iron body and will, the hapless Jerry Quarry, blooded target for the furious Frazier, but above all he gives us "The Bear," Sonny Liston. Liston, Rabe discovered, had the gift of ironic expression that spoke volumes: of his father, he says he never gave him anything but a beating, and of the business and world of professional boxing, he says, memorably, "They so mean they steal your sweat."

Having boxed himself in his youth, David Rabe speaks with authority: the practitioners of the sweet science are not paragons, they are in it for the money, but he knows enough about that world to save them from mere thuggishness. They may be victims in a brutal business, where the money usually goes to those who steal your sweat. But they also know they are testing their own souls and those of their opponents. When Liston goes down, as they all do, one way or another in the ring or in time, we get Rabe's final comment on our mortality. "The changes in our tissues measure time."