Ivan G. GoldmanCritiques

Well, this was disappointing. The story started out interesting, but the writing itself didn't really hold up. After a while, Lenny just seemed seemed wishy washy and I didn't really care what happened to him (which made it difficult to finish. In fact, I didn't for quite a while. I just refound it in my libray and remembered that it still hadn't gotten all the way through it. and gave it another go. Meh.

Bento lost it all when he went to jail. Sussman almost loses his life. Philyaw loses his temper and finds a new employee. The rich have fame and fortunes. Drug-dealers have hard-earned cash. And the cop has blue skin! But it all makes perfectly believable, imperfect sense, as author Ivan Goldman collects an unlikely group of characters together, and the Debtor Class begins. Unspooling lives weave together in unexpected ways, and the color blue can be sadness, survival, beauty or even folly, depending on your point of view.

The Debtor Class centers around the modern world’s most unlikely heroes—its debt collectors. The novelist peoples their world with fine characters, colors them deeply in shades of genuine humanity behind wholly believable bantering, and sets them loose on a rich man about to lose his fortune. But loss can be faced in many different ways, and Job’s patience combines with the Buddha’s serenity as these characters face their tragedies and learn to hold more loosely to their dreams. Perhaps that was Job’s problem in the end—that he held on too tight and needed to be freed to be redeemed.

In the Debtor Class, readers can smile, laugh, frown and weep; they might even feel blue. But hope springs eternal when humanity runs deep, and the sort of faith that friends have in each other might one day even move mountains. It’s an enthralling read, that really doesn’t want to let go when the last page is turned.

Disclosure: I was given a free preview edition and I offer my honest review.

Sick Justice: Inside the American Gulag
By Ivan G. Goldman
Potomac Books
Reviewed by Karl Wolff

The American justice system is broken. Ivan G. Goldman, novelist, journalist, and blogger, unearths the moral rot and rampant corruption within the American justice system. His new book, Sick Justice: Inside the American Gulag, despite its sensational title, a scathing, well-researched, and highly readable indictment involving compromised ideals, damaged lives, and obscene profiteering. Last year, I reviewed Goldman's magical realist (sort of) satire Isaac: a Modern Fable. Having read his fiction, I didn't know what to expect from his investigative journalism. There are a few similarities: the love of boxing, a dark view of human nature, and a zeal to see justice done.

Sick Justice accomplishes many great things in its muckraking. Throughout the book, Goldman traces the lives of ordinary individuals damaged and thrown into America's sewage system, our jails and prisons. He states America has 2.3 million people behind bars, equal to Houston's population. How did we, as a nation, get to this place? The overcrowded prisons, the punitive sentencing, and the for-profit prison industry are investigated and explored. The reader will learn about California's wealthy and corrupt prison guards union and their campaign for stricter sentencing. From a perspective of self-interest, that just makes sense. When you work in an industry, you want to keep your job by increasing the amount of raw material harvested. From a moral perspective, that's kind of evil, especially when we are talking about the lives of real people. Because of fear-mongering, political connections, and overstuffed union coffers, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) has more power and clout than the state's teacher's union. (Guess which one we're supposed to hate? And guess who earns upwards of $100,000 per year?) On the other end, Goldman also profiles Law Enforcement Officers Against Prohibition (LEAP), a law enforcement organization against the disastrous War On Drugs.

Beyond the frightening prison world, there is an illuminating account of runaway prosecutors and paid informants. Prosecutors have specific legal privileges and immunities, along with the ability to bribe informants in cases. Public defenders have no such power. It seems, at present, that the system is rigged to benefit the prosecution, despite the usual amount of innocent people sentenced for crimes he or she didn't commit. Within the justice system itself, defendants get placed in Catch-22 situations. For example, say you, dear reader, are accused of a crime you know you didn't commit. Standard operating procedure would involve a plea bargain for a lower sentence. But that implies guilt, which is impossible, since you didn't commit a crime. Unfortunately, the judge looks down on those pleading innocent. If one pleads innocent but is found guilty, that involves a stiffer sentence. Luckily, the murderer or rapist who is your cell mate will be getting a lower sentence since he made a plea bargain and informed on some of his lower-level associates. (Unlike the reigning mythology that has one believing that once the cops catch the lower-level bad guys, then they will squeal and rat on their superiors.) Luckily criminals don't see incarceration as a networking opportunity.

And on and on. From one aspect of a broken, corrupt, morally bankrupt system to the next. Although clarification is needed, since Goldman remains sensible and just in his muckraking. While he decries minimum sentencing and how it hobbles judges from doing their job, he also holds a realist's perspective on human behavior. Many individuals he profiles do not resemble saints, with most facing jail time for illegal behavior. He asks the important question, central to jurisprudence, "Does the punishment fit the crime?" With prisons overflowing with non-violent offenders, are punitive measures like the "Three Strikes" laws really actually effective? Or are these measures simply fear-mongering tactics used by career politicians for an effective re-election campaign?

The for-profit prisons is the most perplexing issue as well. A recent phenomenon among conservative and libertarian politicians, the concept makes no sense whatsoever. As someone who has muscled through Ayn Rand's ninth-rate science fiction libertarian gospel, Atlas Shrugged, even her characters draw the line of privatization at police and judges. Even Ayn Rand, that anarcho-capitalist temper tantrum one poorly written passage away from a psychotic break, even warns against privatizing the police force. In Rand's ideal world, citizens would only pay taxes on cops and judges. But what's behind privatized prisons? Goldman lays it out, "The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a secretive, right-wing lobbying group of corporations and legislators that works to privatize most of the known universe, including the penal system." For a group with a boring name, ALEC represents a clear and present danger to American social cohesion. The last place anyone should want a profit motive should be prisons. (How will this for-profit mentality effect prison guards? Especially those guarding incarcerated individuals more than willing to drop a C-note for added privileges or a turned head during something horrible?) Luckily the profit motive in the military and health care systems have turned out fine, making things operate smoothly and cost-efficient. Or not.

This is one of the best books of the year. Not just because Goldman and I share the same ideological perspective. Unlike the shrill politicking and fear-mongering on social media sites, Goldman writes with precision and empathy for his subjects. He also leavens the book with literary references ranging from Solzhenitsyn to Tolstoy to Victor Hugo. Like Solzhenitsyn three-volume Gulag Archipelago, Goldman paints a group portrait of a system broken, corrupt, and obscene. The book achieves brilliance with its collection of modern corruptions and Stygian depravities, collecting all the major problems in one place. It is succinct, it is damning, and it is compelling.

Out of 10/10

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In the Bible, there is the story of Abraham, the great patriarch of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In his most memorable story, he is asked by God to sacrifice is son Isaac; just as he is about to deliver the killing blow, an angel appears and stays his hand. In the process, it seems, the angel inadvertently granted Isaac eternal youth, and he’s been wandering the earth ever since. As centuries have passed, Isaac has gotten used to the solitude of immortality, but his thousands of years can’t prepare him for the passion that overtakes him when he falls in love with beautiful Ruth. Ruth is a talented scholar who once wrote a brilliant paper about Mary Shelley and Frankenstein. Isaac, now using the pseudonym Lenny, knows he can’t have a serious relationship with Ruth – serious relationships end in disaster, usually when the woman discovers the nature of his secret – but he can’t ignore her, either, since she has fallen into the clutches of the Beast, Isaac’s nemesis who has been wandering through time with same durability as Isaac. In the form of a wealthy eccentric called Borges, the Beast whisks Ruth away to an academic think tank where she can dedicate her life to research. Isaac is determined to save her, but first he’ll have to overcome his own fears and frailties.

I spent most of this book being either bored or annoyed. It starts out decently enough. Ruth meets Lenny as she escapes a truly terrible first date, and the two hit it off immediately. But the story quickly gets bogged down in Lenny’s waffling. He wants to be with Ruth but he can’t. He wants to run from the Beast, but he also wants to stand up to him. For an immortal that lived through so much history, Lenny isn’t all that interesting. His reflections on the past are brief glimpses, a peek into fogged memories that do little to impress the weight of so many years upon his character. As he admits to himself at one point, he’s been alive all this time and never done anything important, and in all likelihood that isn’t going to change.

If Isaac/Lenny is adrift in time, Ruth too is without roots. Her mother gave her away, and she grew up in foster homes without forming lasting family relationships. As a scholar, we’re told that she’s wonderful and amazing, but I didn’t see much evidence of it in her in-text citations. Never mind. I honestly didn’t care much about her. Even though she’s narrating half of the story, she never felt like a real person, only a locus for the showdown between Isaac and the Beast.

The story tried to build up to this faceoff between the two men, but it takes forever to get there and then the payoff is incredibly weak. The final third of the book is underdeveloped and rushed, and the overall narrative can be quite jumbled and distracting. By the time the author made a cameo in his own book, I was ready to clock out from this ‘modern fable’.½

An OK book, I found myself just biding my time until I was finished. I'll pass this book along to someone else. I'm sure others may find the book enjoyable, it just wasn't for me.

This was an okay book for me. Okay, if not bordering somewhat on the dull side.

I didn't like the narrative structure of one central character's story having "x" amount of pages while the other gets a smaller "y" amount of pages. I'm sure the author probably had the book in that particular format as a means of showing the story in both Ruth and Lenny's points of view, but it just doesn't do the reader any favors.

The story itself seemed promising for the first half of the book, but got a bit sluggish in the second half of the book (especially the very late addition of Borges/The Devil/whoever the hell he was supposed to be in this book...). I didn't mind the humor, but it was one of those blink-and-miss type with the odd throwaway line or two in a wall of text.

A lively tale that follows Biblical Isaac in the 21st Century!

How does a man, more than a few thousand years old, deal with that old devil Satan. You'd think with the wisdom of the ages, wouldn't you?

But Isaac, who goes by the name Lenny, finds himself emotionally immature and falling in love. With a woman named Ruth. The pair must make some difficult decisions. Ones that will effect not only them, but others about them.

Will they choose wrong? Or will, somehow, they best that old temptor, Satan who calls himself Borges.

Uh uh uh! I'm not going to tell!!!

You'll want to get this book, hold on tight, and prepare for a wild ride. Full of nuance, wit and passion, I can do no less than give Isaac a modern fable...

...five stars and...

...a big Thumbs Up!

****Disclosure: this book was provided by Early Reviewers in exchange for an independent and non-biased review.

Lenny, is the biblical Isaac who ultimately receives eternal life after God tells his father, Abraham not to sacrifice Isaac but a ram instead. This seems to set the stage for an interesting story line with many allusions to historical events one might encounter had they lived for such a long time. While this happens to a certain extent in the novel, the main conflict is Lenny's love affair with a professor of literature, Ruth. Ruth senses that something is very different about Lenny, but I was irritated with how the story didn't really unfold to reveal how Lenny never seems to age!

Ruth's academic specialty is the author, Mary Shelley and her famous work, Frankenstein. I'm sure there are many literary allusions involved in this work that I am missing because I haven't read Shelley, but even so the ending feels like it comes too quickly. While I enjoyed the wittiness of the novel and the cleverness of the plot, I was disappointed with the last half of the book which seems to end before reaching its true potential. The introduction of the beast, for example, was very engaging but I was disappointed with the lack of climax! This novel feels like an idea without depth, ultimately a disappointing read.

[This review also appears on Bookin' It.]

I have to confess, I didn't quite get the "modern fable" aspect of this book.  Perhaps I'm not as well-read as I should be.  Lenny is the Biblical Isaac, granted eternal life after being spared from sacrifice by his father Abraham.  This isn't as great as it might seem, as Lenny outlives those he grows to love, and so tries to avoid relationships.  Then he meets Ruth, a brilliant academic whose forte is Mary Shelley and Frankenstein.   I enjoyed Lenny and Ruth and their love affair, but I wasn't quite sure I understood Borges (who offers Ruth a job that's too good to be true) and "The Beast" characters.  The tone was witty and sarcastic and not at all preachy - worth a re-read to see if I "get it" better the next time.

© Amanda Pape - 2012

[I received an advance reader edition of this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.  It will be passed on to someone else to enjoy.] ½

This fable was a quick and entertaining read. I enjoyed the first 2/3 of the book, but the last 1/3 felt a bit rushed and convoluted. The characters themselves fell a bit flat, but this piece did not feel as though it were written with character development as the main goal. Nevertheless, for a character that has lived for thousands of years, we find out surprisingly little about how he occupied that time, which is disappointing.

The dialogue was witty, and I enjoyed the author's amusing self-insertion. For a story about a biblical character, the amount of religious overtone in the book was spartan _ I never felt "preached to" as I sometimes do when reading religious-themed works. Overall, an enjoyable read.

I received a review copy of this book through the LIbraryThing Early Reviewers Giveaway.

I am sorry but I cannot say that I enjoyed this book. In fact, I couldn't finish it. It was nothing like I expected and certainly is not a book I would have bought. Just not my cup of tea.

Isaac: a modern fable
By Ivan Goldman
The Permanent Press
Reviewed by Karl Wolff

In contemporary Los Angeles we meet Lenny and Ruth, two disenchanted citizens thrown together after Ruth has a disastrous blind date. Lenny works security for a movie mogul while Ruth toils in the underbelly of the academic system. She aspires to become a professor at a prestigious university and have some attention paid to her dissertation on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. On the other hand, Lenny desires to not fall in love. For Lenny, love, like jail time, would be disastrous, because his secret would be revealed. While Ruth reluctantly admits she's an orphan with a troubled past, Lenny refuses to reveal who he really is. This is because Lenny is Isaac, as he eventually admits to Ruth, "Yes, that Isaac."

That Isaac is the Isaac from the Bible. Ivan Goldman's Isaac: a modern fable puts a twist on the Biblical story. After the angel stays Abraham's hand, Isaac is granted eternal life and eternal youth. He becomes a kind of Wandering Jew, witnessing and experiencing history across the earth and over millennia. While contemporary Los Angeles is the primary setting, we read about Lenny's past in 17th century Spain and the Eastern Front during the Second World War. But Lenny doesn't wander for fun and amusement, he travels widely to escape the path of the Beast. The Beast takes the form of a man and is a truly scary character. During the Second World War, the Beast guards a Russian train heading towards the gulags. The crowded cattle car reeks and the faces inside look horrifying in their desperation and agony. On a whim, the Beast throws a nearby child into the cattle car. In another era, he beat a donkey to death with Lenny as an eyewitness, thus earning his nickname.

Ruth and Lenny alternate as narrators, with Lenny trying to avoid the Beast and Ruth dealing with Borges, a wealthy eccentric associated with an academic think tank. Goldman, no relation to screenwriter William Goldman, also makes a small cameo at a cocktail party, regaling Ruth with a story about how Budd Schulberg worked for the OSS and apprehended Leni Riefenstahl. Goldman fills the novel with such witty touches and wry observations about modern life. The novel is also an example of the Permanent Press's expanding its publishing horizon. This is one of their first forays into the speculative fiction genre. The fantasy elements coalesce around Goldman's satiric vision and bon mots. It's a supernatural romance for an intelligent audience, those not wanting to bother with the hysterics of sparkly Mormon vampires.

Out of 10:8.5, or 9.0 for fans of supernatural romance

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The story was a bit slow in the beginning, but once it picked up I was hooked. I enjoy stories about the Bible and Biblical characters and this one was unique in that the main character (Lenny, aka Isaac) was placed in modern times in Hollywood. Each chapter was told by the perspective of a different character (Ruth, Lenny, Borges). I would like to have seen more distinction in the character voices--I could tell they were all told from the same author--to give the story a bit more variation. Overall I enjoyed it-easy read and very interesting.

Early Reviewer ARC

Isaac: A Modern Fable by Ivan G. Goldman

I have read many stories about people who have lived extended lives, for various reasons, but this was one premise I have not come across before. Isaac was spared from death at his father's hand, and apparently anyone else's. He's been around for almost 4,000 years now, has seen and done most of what there is to do. Despite all that time, he has still not come up with any answers, or even real good questions. He tends to drift by, getting by but not really living.

This was the first book I have read from this author. It was a little confusing at first, because it seemed to start in the middle of Lenny's (Isaac's) train of thought as he watched the woman who would become the love of his life for the first time. The author also switches viewpoints throughout the book, mostly between Lenny and Ruth, but also another toward the end. While uncommon, this device served the story very well.

I thought things dragged a bit in the middle, when you had a pretty good idea what was coming, but it seemed to take too long to get to it. Lenny has a few places where he is thinking about some of the experiences he's had, but his thoughts are too jumbled to really be able to relate to or make sense of. I would have liked more about the things he's seen and lived through. I will admit, I liked his explanation to Ruth toward the end, that the mind wasn't designed to store so much data.

I thought when I started this book, even when I requested it from Early Reviewers, that there would be a lot of religion and theological commentary. Surprisingly, there were very few overt 'sermons' or anything preachy at all. There was very little about religion at all. Then, toward the end, the main theme kind of 'hit' me, and all the implications. You know, the more I think about it, the more I like this book. The middle was a bit slow, but the end was really good.

Highly recommended, I enjoyed it very much, and will read more by Mr. Goldman.

A modern fable of Isaac, son of Abraham, who is given the 'gift' of eternal youth. While living in Hollywood, Isaac meets Ruth and falls in love with her. Although the story seemed a bit confusing at first, everything comes together in the end. It left me with questions, which, in turn, made me read it again. Mr. Goldman has a way with words, and his style is very interesting. The well-written story is full of humor, sarcasm, and irony.

Isaac, son of Abraham, is not dead, contrary to the Biblical story. Ageless, he can never stay in one place too long nor become too close to the locals. If he believes in God at all, he believes himself forgotten, discarded, to wander through the world. What he does believe in is the Beast--something/someone he flees in terror without knowing precisely why.

Lenny (aka Isaac) meets up with Ruth in L.A., unaware that the Beast is very much present and plotting. They connect when Lenny rescues her from a super disaster blind date. Within days they are lovers and life-mates which, of course, means Lenny must dump her.

Broken-hearted, Ruth gets an incredible (if it's too good to be true, it is.) job offer in NYC and ends up the star of the literary world. Unfortunately, life begins to fall apart in short order and Lenny comes to the rescue again.

The Barfighter is a book I received for review from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, quite a while ago. I'm miserably behind on my reviews from LT, which probably explains why they haven't given me any books in the last several months. I'm trying to get caught up as quickly as I can, but there are just too many books out there, calling my name!

The Barfighter switches between 1965 and 1985. Our main character is Lee Cheskis, who started out as an Army boxer during the Vietnam War. Boxing for the Army was a way for men who had the talent to avoid being shipped overseas. Lee had the talent. Fast forward to the 80's, and Lee is in anger management, drifting through life, working part-time at the local college to pay the rent. He meets Marvin O'Brien in anger management and, when the boy shows promise as a fighter, decides to become O'Brien's manager to try to make a pro out of him.

Boxing is not my thing. I don't like it, I don't watch or follow it in any way, I basically, like Lee's girlfriend Lorraine, think it's a brutal sport. I don't see the point in putting two men in a ring to beat the shit out of each other and see who falls down first. So I'm not sure what prompted me to select this book for review. Maybe the Vietnam War aspect. I've always been interested in that conflict, but, unfortunately, Lee never even sees Vietnam.

This book is dude lit, if there is such a thing. We women have both chick lit and women's fiction (which I see as two different things, one being lighter and "fluffier" than the other, but both focusing on women and their relationships, usually with other women). This book does the same for men...focuses on their relationships, especially how Lee interacts with his fighter, his former sparring partner during the war, the promoters, trainers and managers he works with and comes across in his work, even random men he beats in bar fights.

The book is largely written from Lee's point of view, however there are brief instances when the point of view (although third person omniscient) switches to Valaitas, Lee's commanding officer during the war and a fellow trainer afterwards, and, at the end, to Quick O'Brien's, Lee's fighter. These switches in point of view were a bit confusing. We're used to seeing Lee's perspective and, when the POV shifted, I had to keep checking back to see if it were Lee or Valaitas who was thinking and doing these things. At the end, when the POV switched to O'Brien, I was puzzled. We'd never seen things from his perspective at all during the course of the novel, so why did it end with him? I have some ideas about that, which involve spoilers, so I don't want to get into them here, but ultimately, I didn't like the POV switch. We didn't know enough about either Valaitas or O'Brien for them to work for me as the main POV. And the ending, from O'Brien's POV, was rather abrupt. I wanted it to be tied up a little more neatly, but that's life I guess.

Overall, the book was good. Three out of five Whatevers. Someone who enjoys boxing more than I do would probably REALLY enjoy the book. There were quite a few typos for my taste, but I have a bound galley, so I'm hoping those were fixed by the time the book went to press. The book would be great for boxing enthusiasts, reluctant readers of the male persuasion, maybe even as a Christmas gift for Dad or an uncle who remember the golden days of boxing.½

Lee Cheskis, the protagonist of Ivan Goldman's 'The Barfighter,' would fit well in a pulpy hard-boiled detective novel. He's help back by the ghosts of his past, longing for the gal that got away, and gets himself into sticky situations because of his inability to avoid danger.

Cheskis is a pretty captivating character, especially since Goldman's story is set in the mid-'80s boxing culture. Using his experience with the sport, Lee helps a colleague in his anger management class begin an amateur boxing career. Things get bumpy from there.

While the novel is ham-fisted at times, Goldman keeps the narrative trotting along. He uses a liberal amount of simile, almost rivaling Chandler at times, and it comes off pretty well. I was surprised at how interested in and concerned for Cheskis I had become, even when the novel sagged a bit. And the ending? Fantastic.

“Barfighters were a minority species in Cheskis’s anger management class. Rather than fight each other, most violent men find it safer and more gratifying to assault their wives and children.”

Now that is a great way to begin a book and it was glancing at those first two sentences that finally persuaded me to put aside my prejudices (Do I really want to read a book about a bunch of idiots beating each other up?), prejudices that had kept this novel loitering about my shelves like a bruiser up a back alley for an unconscionably long time.

Set in the sleazy world of the LA fight scene, The Barfighter tells the tale of an intelligent, sensitive man haunted by guilt about a betrayal that apparently saved his skin at the cost of his best friend’s. Persuaded he is damned, Lee Cheskis quits a good job, a good wife, and a good life, and sinks into a sordid round of brawling, boozing, and patchwork employment in an attempt to lose himself and his own self-loathing in the seamy underside of the sport that triggered his act of treachery. Instead, he finds himself and something approaching a precarious kind of redemption.

Sleazy? Sordid? Seamy?

Do I really want to read a book about a bunch of idiots beating each other up?

Yes, you do.

This is a book about boxing for people who find boxing baffling, but one that won’t fail to stir fight fans, too. Like a great populist storyteller, Goldman takes us into a world most of us are never likely to know and explains precisely how it works, except that the small time losers and big time grifters portrayed here are a hell of a lot more interesting than the legal apparatchiks and other assorted rich people who normally litter up the bestseller list.

Better still, Goldman can write. The overall tone is hard-boiled with a liberal conscience and, like most hard-boiled voices, it’s the voice of a romantic confronted with a world that is not manifestly kind to romantics. Personally, I gave up on hard-boiled about a decade ago when its most celebrated contemporary exponents seemed to degenerate into windy egoism, but Goldman revives my faith.

He is good on boxing banter, great on repartee (there are some lovely one-liners), less good on discursive philosophical dialogue. But then he’s not writing about philosophers. He’s writing about fighters and fighting, something that he does superbly. The big set piece boxing matches pull you in like a whirlpool, even when you come from a place of total ignorance. And by God, you want the goodies to win, too, despite the fact that Goldman makes it painfully clear that there are precious few winners in boxing and that, when it happens, winning is generally compromised and always ephemeral. He also does a lovely line in satirizing the mores of TV-land, and engineers a generous, if slightly self-indulgent, cameo appearance for Ken Kesey and Neal Cassady.

Perhaps his greatest trick is making the reader care about people who are superficially so terrifying that the prospect of meeting them in ordinary circumstances would be enough to recommend relocating to a different hemisphere. The transformation of the principal professional fighter from a resentful street kid into a heart warming human being is particularly well done, lightly sketched but effective, subtle but powerful. He also contrives to put Cheskis into situations that are either patently dumb (unprovoked barroom brawls) or utterly appalling (the scene in the holding pen of the county jail, standing his ground against a collection of homicidal maniacs who don’t like white college professors, will remain with me for a long time) without giving any sense of macho braggadocio.

In some ways, The Barfighter is a small story, but it is immaculately plotted and manages to say a lot of big stuff along the way, neatly exploiting –without becoming ponderous– the metaphorical potential of a predatory world in which a few fat cats feed off the blood and sweat of individuals who are often nasty but, in their own broken way, always heroic.

I’ve never read a boxing book before –or better a book set in the boxing world– so inevitably it’s films that come to mind for comparisons . . . Somebody Up There Likes Me, Rocky, Raging Bull. For authenticity and seriousness of intent, The Barfighter is nearer Raging Bull than any other boxing film I know, but oddly enough it was a different cinematic image that came to mind when I was reading the book, one that pitched it halfway between Rocky and (not Somebody Up There Likes Me, but another Paul Newman film) Cool Hand Luke.

I’ve virtually no recollection of Rocky apart from a sort of deranged exultancy during what I would guess was the climactic fight sequence, but I felt something of that reading The Barfighter, only here it was better because the experience seemed real and expressed more than the mere victory of a Hollywood underdog. As for Cool Hand Luke, the scene I found myself thinking of was not the one when George Kennedy beats Newman to a pulp, but the one with the eggs. The act of eating fifty boiled eggs is lunatic, but our man turns it into a triumph of the human will that ends with that beatific smile. Same here. People are beating each other up, which is just plain daft, yet the way Goldman presents it, you suddenly understand that old saw about ‘the noble art’.

For the most part, The Barfighter explores experiences that most sane people would make strenuous efforts to avoid, but when someone elicits the attendant emotions, life seems a little larger, a little wider, a little louder, and you go away grateful that Goldman has taken you into his world.

Do I really want to read about a bunch of idiots beating each other up? Yes, they’re not idiots and there is something rather more sublime going on here than simply beating each other up.

Although I am somewhat of a boxing fan, I didn't love this book. I think my husband would actually enjoy it more than I did. I'll see if he'll read it and I'll post his review as an edit to this one. Stay tuned!

A very interesting tale of a boxer. Even though I am not a fan of boxing, I found this book to be a pleasant read.

A compelling read that's fun along the way. Fast-paced and intelligent at same time. Surprises, well-rounded characters. A fine novel on second chances centered in the world of boxing.

I ended up really enjoying this book; the protagonist came off as real, and I was engaged in him and the story from the beginning. From the moment I picked it up, it was keeping me up late even when I just didn't have time to read. I even enjoyed reading about the boxing, which was a new reading subject entirely for me. On the whole, the mix of people and places was a fascinating collage of character and thought, and I'd recommend it. I did have two problems with it, though---the first is that far too many of the characters sound and act the same, to the extent that they tend to blend together. The only exceptions to this are the protagonist and his girlfriend, and those other characters having more separation from one another would really have strengthened the book. My only other criticism comes with the ending; the last few lines of the book (literally) are just too easy, and somewhat corny, I'm afraid. I don't mind him ending the book at the point he chooses...but the last sentence is just too much.

Overall, for folks interested in sports-related books or in boxing, I'd recommend this. On the whole, it's also a pretty interesting character, though I have to say that this makes it all the more disappointing that the other characters blend together so easily.

At first I had trouble getting into this book. Some of the character descriptions seem to be centered around racial and socio-economic stereotypes. The book begins in 1984, so maybe the writer was trying to capture the mindset of people at the time? Also the timeline of the story at the beginning is a little confusing. Putting aside the Vietnam flashbacks sprinkled in, the first chapter takes place in May 1984, then the third chapter goes back to February 1984, and the rest of the book comes after May 1984. In my opinion it should have just been put in order because the May 84 chapter is the weakest and there's no clear reason why it's out of order.

However, it is clear that Ivan G. Goldman knows boxing. His descriptions of boxing matches made me feel I was sitting there watching each punch. A few of the matches were a quick paragraph summary, and since the fights were the best parts I wished he had described them fully. People who love boxing will like the behind-the-scenes look into the dirty world of the sport that's not just a game, and they will like this book.½