A famous author--Hemingway?--prescribed, as a remedy for writer's block, the exercise of writing one simple sentence, declarative and true. I have no idea how "The Pugilist at Rest" came to be written, but, from the first time I read it, I've liked to imagine Thom Jones at an impasse and, taking Hemingway's advice (if it was Hemingway), composing the sentence
Judging a prizefight is a very subjective thing.
This sentence occurs in the story at the end of a description of a boxing bout between a couple of marines at a marine corps boxing "smoker." The contestants are the narrator, a skilled boxer and former middleweight champion of the 1st Marine Division, now a smoker and "borderline alcoholic," and another marine with a reputation such that no one will agree to fight him. The narrator is a decorated Vietnam combat veteran suffering a long slide and the story indicates he wants to prove to himself and his buddies that he isn't finished yet. At the start of the fight, he is tagged by innumerable heavy blows, but, after getting knocked down once, he gets back on his feet and begins a rearguard campaign of counterpunching. His opponent continues to crowd him, occasionally landing another ferocious punch, but now he's a little arm weary, and in the middle rounds the fight tilts toward the narrator, who keeps landing solid left jabs--more than 400 of them, he suspects. Nevertheless, he occasionally gets trapped on the ropes, where the stronger, fitter man pummels him. This continues until by the end of the fight both men are too exhausted and brutalized to hurt one another any further. The referee declares the narrator the winner, but he doesn't think it means much. Judging a prizefight is a very subjective thing.
The narrator is not the stereotypical jarhead boxer. He alludes to Homer, the ancient Greek philosophers, St. Paul, Dostoevski, and the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. The description of his match against the other marine is preceded by an extended meditation on a work of art from antiquity, "The Boxer at Rest" (shown above). The narrator speculates that the unknown sculptor had in mind Theogenes, a renowned Greek athlete, and explains that what was then known as boxing was not governed by "the kindergarten Queensbury Rules" of today. Instead, the fighters were strapped to large stones, to immobilize them, and placed practically nose to nose. At a signal, the fight would start, and it ended when the loser was dead. It is said that Theogenes won more than 1400 such bouts. The narrator observes, in what he would put forward as another simple and true sentence: Then, as now, violence, suffering, and the cheapness of life were the rule.
Since the meditation on the statue precedes the boxing match, it might be said that it functions as a thesis: here is a proposition (that violence, suffering, and the cheapness of life are the rule, as suggested by the statue), and here is the proof (the vicious boxing match that is then described). But it could as well be said that the significance of the statue is explanatory, inasmuch as it tends to illuminate the narrator's earlier career in the marines. He had been a semper fi marine. Gung-ho. Believed in all the patriotic and soldierly ideals inculcated in basic training. He could have had a desk job, but he turned it down, insisting instead that he be assigned to an infantry unit, and then, under the influence of a charismatic and admired peer, he trained to be a "recon marine," which meant learning to parachute out of airplanes so that you could drop down behind enemy lines to execute dangerous reconnaissance missions. The part of the story preceding the meditation on the statue is highlighted by the narrator's account of his first recon mission, which, in its lavish and harrowing detail, is the counterpart of the similarly arresting narration of the boxing bout.
The narrator's unit is dropped into a northern province of South Vietnam, near the demilitarized zone. The mission is "no big deal," the main purpose being acclimation. But on the morning after the drop, the narrator's team gets ambushed in an open field. When the firefight begins, the narrator is investigating a possible NVA tunnel on the edge of the field, so he is separated from the other marines. Incoming mortar shells kick up loose earth which clogs his rifle, rendering it inoperable. These circumstances contribute to his survival as he is during the fight either not noticed or forgotten by the North Vietnamese soldiers. He can only watch, and what he sees might be called unspeakable, though he describes it with almost clinical precision. The narrator is in particular affected by the death of his charismatic friend and that of another marine who, on the day he's killed in this firefight, was less than two weeks shy of completing his tour of duty. The narrator's ideals are routed by rage and grief. It seems clear that what I called above his "long slide" began on the day of that firefight, his third in country.
It's tempting to say that "The Pugilist at Rest" seeks to persuade the reader of the lesson of the statue--that "then, as now, violence, suffering, and the cheapness of life were the rule." Yet his description of the statue suggests an ideal that one might place against this harsh fact. The figure of the seated boxer stirs the narrator because he detects in it the artist's conception of what a person might aspire to in even a hellish life: dignified resignation, endurance, excellence in the performance of necessary tasks. The real pathos of the story derives from the chasm between this ideal and what actually happens to the narrator. He got hit in the head too many times and the long slide accelerates. He's afflicted with headaches, seizures, depression, and the effects of countless and powerful prescription drugs. Out of desperation, he considers submitting to brain surgery. He rarely leaves his house. A VA nurse delivers a couple of terriers who are trained to watch people like him as they sleep, and to rescue them in the event that they have a seizure in bed, which would put them at risk of being smothered in the bedding. And then this pyrotechnic story ends with a desolating dead fall:
If they fuck up the operation, I hope I get to keep my dogs somehow--maybe stay at my sister's place. If they send me to the nuthouse I lose the dogs for sure.
"The Pugilist at Rest" may be read online at lithub, here. The author's NYT obituary, published on October 18, 2016, makes plain that the story is to a considerable degree autobiographical.
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