Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: August 01, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 1489435
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Hailed as 'one of the greatest chroniclers of the mythical American outlaw life' (Entertainment Weekly), James Carlos Blake turns to the blazing story of Stanley Ketchel, the legendary ragtime-era middleweight boxing champion and daring rakehell, whose brief and meteoric life burned with violence and tragedy in and out of the ring. The Killings of Stanley Ketchel is a sweeping and powerful literary adventure by one of our most daring novelists.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
A very well written life of a middleweight boxer who succombs to a tragic end. The author weaves in some interesting characters of the time, especially Heavyweight champ Johnson. Written with a very quick pace.
Rated by buyers -
As always, Blake writes with wicked verve and electricity as he gives his account of the Stanley Ketchel saga. Part travelogue, part compelling character study, part epic flaying of the American soul, The Killings of Stanley Ketchel takes the reader all over the American West in its very first half, and then on to New York and back again as Blake traces the antic doings of Stanley Ketchel, the mercurial if short-lived middleweight champ. It's a dynamic rendering that depicts its subject in full, but centers on Ketchel's growing obssession with restoring the heavyweight crown to the white race after it has been captured by the impertinent, outspoken, and outlandish African-American, Jack Johnson.
One caveat for the reader: I felt Blake took a little too much poetic liberty with his re-creation of the Ketchel-Johnson heavyweight championship bout in Colma, California in 1909. Blake's rendering has Ketchel's infamous double-cross decking of Johnson being so punishing that the champion is down and almost out for a count of 8. Johnson then recovers, lunges at Ketchel, and knocks him cold (and minus some teeth) for 15 minutes with a thunderous right. Johnson thus retains his crown but leaves Ketchel, although battered practically beyond recognition, hungering for another shot at him. This is a gross over-exaggeration of the facts. Ketchel did knock Johnson down in the 12th round, but Johnson barely brushed the canvas before he was back on his feet, walloping Ketchel with that lethal right. The fight film shows this. But it must be conceded that it better serves Blake's fictional potrayal of the obsessive Ketchel to have him come within a hair of victory only to be manhandled in a way he had never experienced before.
More accurately presented in the book is the most famous of Johnson's fights, the one against the Great White Hope, Jim Jeffries, in Reno on July 4, 1910. Blake conveys vividly the total dominance of the grey champion over the former champ, and the agony and despair of the virtually all-white crowd as they share Jeffries' humiliation. The aftermath of the fight, with Johnson, Ketchel and the racist author Jack London all driving down to a negro brothel, is made up entirely out of whole cloth, but really does no disservice to the truth of Ketchel's life in the same way that the misrepresentation of the Ketchel-Johnson fight did.
It's probably quibbling too much to even bring up the above elements. The book is, after all, a novel, one that features a fascinating main character and an extremely colorful, if almost relentlessly violent, storyline posted on an amazing American landscape. Blake brings to life the early twentieth century in hardscrabble America, and in doing so does that thing which he always does so well, which is to reveal the teeming, dark underbelly of the American dream -- or is it the American nightmare?
Rated by buyers -
I just finished this book. Bravo James Carlos Blake! This was masterfully conceived. I love the old days. I love boxing. I love great writing. This book has all of those, and more.
LONG LIVE STANLEY KETCHEL!
Buy this book.
Rated by buyers -
In this engrossing novel based on the life of middle weight boxing champion Stanley Ketchel the Ragtime era of the early 1900's is brought vividly to life. The story begins with Ketchel running away from home and riding the rails as a teen-aged hobo after a fight with his step father which he believes has resulted in his death. It progresses smoothly into his discovery as a boxing prospect while working as a bouncer in a saloon out West. It then chronicles his rise and astonishing record of wins and K.O.'s both in and out of his weight class. The descriptions of the fights are edge-of-your-seat exciting and gory in places. His womanizing ways are also marvelously and entertainingly evoked. The dialogue is crisp, realistic, and humorous throughout which is one of this author's major strengths along with painting a vivid picture of that time period. Boxing fans and readers who like historical/biographical novels will really get their money's worth out of this book!
Rated by buyers 
-
I've been reading reviews. The more I read, the more I see that readers are believing this novel is Stanley Ketchel's biography. It may be well written as readers who are fans of Mr Blake's stories, will attest. But, do not be regaled, into believing this, smarmiest of the smarmy tale. The elder Mr. Kiecal was not Stanley's step-father. Stanley Ketchel did not leave home because of any violence between he and his father. At 12 years of age, his mother gave him permission to leave home. He was not an alcoholic, he seldom drank at all, he was a prankster, and he only smoked cigars, when he attended social events. The factual tale, is fabulous without benefit(?) of fiction. So, please, don't settle into this story. This fictional composite, dabbles more, in folk-lore, than what actually happened in this courageous, and powerful young man's short life. Thank you, and please remember. This is written from imagination. Creative, but predominantly, a fabrication, none the less.
Find other books like this one:
