The King of White-Collar Boxing

Literary Nonfiction. David Lawrence's memoir, THE KING OF WHITE COLLAR BOXING, is a charged and urgent piece of writing filled with electric metaphors-picture Hearns and Hagler rushing to the middle of the ring and slugging it out incessantly-that kept me reading compulsively. The book moves at breakneck speed through the worlds of shady business and privilege, boxing and rapping, a year or so in prison and fears of brain damage as he desperately tries to make his mark following his own code of ethics. All along we witness the inside of a fantastically manic and narcissistic brain pinballing between deep seeded inadequacy and visions of grandeur and honor as he propels himself down the social/economic ladder on a redemptive mission to find the place where things make the most sense and he feels most at home: in the ring with the basic mantra of 'kill or be killed' and subsequently putting words to pages until I, a completely satisfied reader, end up rooting for him.