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Monday, July 30th
'Nother Review / LWOT fight rundown with pics
Hi All,
First off, here's a review of THE FIGHTER:
http://www.curledup.com/thfightr.htm
I know I've posted lots of these and you might be getting bored of them ... well, to hell with you! I gots to do what I gots to do! Go read it and buy the stinking damn book, why not?
Also, this from my good buddy---I have to call him a good bud though I've never met him, because he's such a staunch supporter and a fine writer in his own right---Ryan Ross at LWOT, who offers a rundown of the fight and a few pictures. The last one was taken by Ailen of Soho like, 30 seconds after I got out of the ring; with my chipped tooth and befuddled, dazed expression I look somewhat like Moose from the Archie comic books: "Deeeeeerrrr, I just did a boxing-da match! Snuffle * snort * gleep!" What can I say, I was so heart-singingly happy to have it over with and be alive with most of my brain cells intact---ahhh, precious brain cells!---I look a wee bit goofy. That said, on the pantheon of "Craig's stupid-ass pictures" it ranks no higher or lower than my porcine-faced author photo or any of the atrocious pics you can find dotting my folks' house from me as a gawky kid or blubbery teen.
http://lwot.blogspot.com/2007/07/champions-of-lwot-craig-davidson.html
Anyway, my thanks to Ryan and LWOT. I'm off to do a spot of fishing at the local fishin' hole; with this big gap of time to fill in each of my days since I'm no longer training, I like to head down to the ole fishin' hole of an afternoon and read a book, bask in idyllic nature, and not get punched in the face. Although a trout did punch me just the other day, but I did say that thing about his mother spawning with a carp, so really, I had that coming.
All best, Craig.
Craig Davidson on 07.30.07 @ 03:46 PM EST [link]
Saturday, July 28th
Rocky Mountain News Review / Champion Blog
Hi All,
First, did you forget about my Nerve piece in that whole fight post below? Or get to the bottom of my long-ass post and forget that there was something else to read---or felt you'd read enough of my blithering for the day? Well, fair enough, but here's the link again:
www.nerve.com/screeningroom/books/downtime
...so, like, go check it out. Do me a solid.
Here's something my buddy sent me that he found on Edward Champion's site; it's really just a link to the blog post below, but I gotta say, the cockles of my heart were tickled:
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Boxer Scorned
DrMabuse | Uncategorized | Friday, July 27th, 2007
Craig Davidson offers this lengthy account of Tuesday night’s boxing match, observing, “Jonathan’s dating the singer Fiona Apple. So that’s pretty cool. I’m thinking, hell, even if he loses, he goes home with Fiona Apple. That’s got to go a long ways towards healing any hurts. Me, I got to go home to the hotel minibar.”
You know, if it’s any consolation to Craig, I was at the Rebar after-party and I happen to know that a few single women were there swooning for Mr. Davidson, with at least one of them asking me if “Craig was available.” I must aver that “available” meant a lot more than “Can I talk with him for five minutes?”
Comments (1)
1 Comment
Craig is definitely a hunk, and I know a few men were asking the same question about his availability.
Comment by Pamela — July 27, 2007 @ 2:00 pm
...ha! That's so humorous to me! Anyone of my highschool buddies would be laughing their bags off reading that. Craig Davidson, the fat kid who used to eat a bag of day-old donuts after rowing practice---you talk about your zero-sum endeavors---seen in anyone's eyes as a hunk. Bizarre. I mean, I thank Pamela for saying such a crazy thing; it's very nice, but I think only in the realm of writers and the literary arts could a 160lb bone-bag with floppsy red hair be considered hunkish. Maybe it's that I'm not currently growing any sort of facial hair, which makes me something of a rarity amongst bookish guys. Plus I'm heterosexual---I mean, I am so in conception, but it's like an spiderwebbed shovel in a dusty old garden shed: it is still technically a shovel, it's purpose is still digging, but it's been inert so long that purpose is starting to become hazy; if nobody's using it, it's just a flat metal scoop attached to a stick---which, it seems, is ... well, not rare, but less common in book circles than elsewhere, if the information I've been told is to be believed.
Or maybe it's like that idea from Bud Shulberg's THE HARDER THEY FALL: something in some women's hearts melt at the sight of a beaten fighter. They want to take them to bed, heal them. Of course, that was how Bud Shulberg saw it back in the 50s when he wrote the book; maybe that sentiment no longer prevails amongst women of today. If so I'm in trouble: the whole "beaten fighter" ticket seems to be the one I'm destined to ride.
Anyway, thanks to Ed and Pamela for making my day, in a strange and head-scratching way.
Craig Davidson on 07.28.07 @ 11:48 AM EST [more..]
Thursday, July 26th
Amateur Pugilistic Record: 0-2!
Hi All,
Well, back from NY. Good time, lots of flights in a short period of time, lots of listening to the same crappy loop of in-flight songs over and over until I was sick of the artists. Fergie is especially annoying to me, I've found. Her songs, recently, are spelling primers. You get "The Glamorous Life," where she spells it out:
G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S ...
...then you get "Fergalicious," where that horrendous word is spelled out. Over and over and over on United Airlines' only real music channel---the other one was playing gutbucket guitar music or a hootenany hoe-down or something, and the other one was the flight control deck---so I gotta say I was out of my mind by the time I landed here in Calgary.
I was also headachy from the fight, which is, I assume, what some of you are checking here to see about. Unless you're looking for my review/sexual self-excoriation piece (do I write any other kind for that particular publication?) in Nerve:
www.nerve.com/screeningroom/books/downtime
(BTW: I fucking LOVE that graphic Nerve used. I'm reliving that old emasculation as I write this)
Or maybe you're looking for some more recent emasculatory news, which I can happily provide.
Craig Davidson on 07.26.07 @ 01:53 AM EST [more..]
Saturday, July 21st
Quick Reviews Update
Hi All,
Finished my last boxing practice last night. Last kick at the cat, last whack at the heavy bag. Done. Now get to lounge about the weekend, write, play a few rounds of golf and let my body heal for Tuesday night, where it will get hurt again.
People have been sending me emails saying they've seen review-lets---not reviews, but mentions, the book cover, capsule descriptions that include the words "daring," "gritty," and "can be read in 4 hours"---for THE FIGHTER in Esquire, Maxim, and Player magazines. This is great, as for me, my writing, I think those venues might do a better job at getting the word out than, say, the NY Times. For me, anyway. Besides, I've already had my NY Times review experience and I'm not sure it's anything I'd put my hand up for and yell, "Me! Me! Over here, yes, again!"
Here's another online review, from Small Spiral Notebook:
www.smallspiralnotebook.com/bookreviews/2007/07/the_fighter_by_craig_davidson.shtml
All best, Craig.
Craig Davidson on 07.21.07 @ 10:56 AM EST [link]
Thursday, July 19th
Brooklyn Paper
Hi All,
Here's a link to an article about the fight; both I and Jonathan talked to the reporter, me on the phone and he in person. I believe DUMBO is a place, a district, in Brooklyn, where the fight is taking place.
The whole "in the same league" quote was not something I ever actually said. It's journalistic license, and that's fair enough, but I'd never insult someone like that. The bear/wolverine thing I did say, but anyone who's seen "RED DAWN"---which still holds the Guinness Record for most on-screen deaths in a movie---knows that wolverines are tough bastards. My main point was that Knox was a big fellow and Jonathan not so much so; me, neither, at this point.
I don't know about the whole slowed reflexes and whatnot. Randy Couture, UFC Champ, is 43; and Evander Holyfield is still boxing---and I'd have to admit doing it quite well, though I still wish he'd retire---is chugging along at 45 or something. And Foreman. So who knows? In the end, we both put in the work, we both trained hard, and we go in there and see what happens. I don't really like the whole "hype" aspect at this point, but it's needed and it's what we both signed on for so there you go.
It'll probaby come down to a matter of who can keep their cool best. Fights, that boxing ring, it's really a pressure cooker. It's tough to keep it together and do what you've learned to do---for me, anyway.
There's basically 3 types of sparring: technical sparring, where you work on things, basically shadowbox with another guy, try stuff out; then there's the next level of that, where you throw a little harder, try stuff, and sometimes you get your bell rung: a guy's trying a 4-punch combo and he's got to give it some gas just to see if it's working and you guard 3 of the 4 but that last one slips through and drills you; in that case you pull apart, he asks are you okay, you are, touch gloves, back at it.
Now the final level, which is basically what Jonathan and I will be doing, is, y'know, it's sparring. Where if one punch slips through, there's no "are you okays?", no glove-touches; it's more of the same unless you can stop it.
So those first two levels I can keep my cool alright. I can do the few things I've learned. The last level, though ... nope, I can't quite keep my shit together. I get hit and I need to hit back if I can and a fog comes over my thoughts and sucks me in and there I am until the bell rings. It's not terribly pretty, but that's the way it is. Not a natural, me. So I imagine it won't be long before Jonathan nails me one---my boxing technique isn't exactly one that favors defense---and the fog will drift in and off I'll go into it, gone, and if one of us doesn't get our jaws cranked into the cheap seats that's where I'll probably stay until the end of the fight, at which point I will be assaulted by the most desperate need for a beer felt by any man who isn't a raging alcoholic.
So if Jonathan can keep his powder dry---and his age may benefit him, there---he's got as good a chance as I do.
Anyway, the article:
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/30/28/30_28pensword.html
All best, Craig.
Craig Davidson on 07.19.07 @ 11:07 PM EST [link]
Wednesday, July 18th
Hey? Whassamattaforyou?
Why it been so long since-a you do-a one oo you little bloggie-tings?
I'm sorry, Uncle Guiseppe. I been busy!
Ahhh! I oughta whack-a you in the labonza!
Okay, so, enough of my defamation of the Italians, and sorry it's been awhile since I posted. Really, not a hell of a lot to post. Working on my first short story in years and it's going along really quite well. I'll get it worked on, then I'll go get in that fight in NY, then I'll come back and---pending looming brain damage---finish the story. Then I set it aside, give my novel a once-over, write another story (yeah, I've got a few in the ole hopper), go over the novel again, edit the first story, edit the second, then send 'em all out to the four winds and take a bit of a break.
Onto my last days before the boxing match with Jonathan Ames. This is good, as my body is pretty close to total failure with what I'm putting it through. I'm probably overtraining, but as I don't have a trainer to tell me so I just assume I'm doing what I need to do. I had someone call the other day for a pre-fight interview and she'd seen Jonathan training at Gleason's and she said: "He's looking good. Ripped." And I sort of wanted to tell her, being on the phone as we were and she not able to see me, that I'd be coming in looking like a big fat pile of beef tallow with a mop of red hair perched atop, so the physical differences between he and I should be interesting. Of course, that's not the case: I'll come in looking not so bad, but really, it's less how either of us look.
I was talking to someone about it the other day and he said I was the Ivan Drago of the pairup. I thought about it and said, "Oh my Lord, I sort of am!" I'm younger, taller, chemically enhanced (or was), and I'm a dirty rotten foreigner to boot. All I have to do is go kill Jonathan's last opponent, go around muttering "I must break you" and hunt Bridgitte Neilson up at wherever botox clinic she's currently holed up in and have her by my side to make the picture complete.
Anyway, just doing the final bits to round myself into shape. Going home every night with my shirt practically lacquered to my body with sweat. Sucking the blood out of raw steaks and tossing away the grey bloodless hunk afterwards (okay, so no). Actually, still having problems with the whole 'punching a fella' thing. I made up the following analogy ... I throw a punch the way a devout Mormon throws a blasphemy: half-heartedly, and against my inborn nature. That said, in sparring, I can chuck 'em; I just need the other guy to plaster me once or twice first and then I'm okay to go. Not to say I land a whole lot in return, but the juices are sparked. But then when I hit them I often feel poorly for doing so.
Okay, so, needed to make an entry as it's been awhile. Following is a link to the Canadian amazon page for THE FIGHTER, with its first review. Not on the US site yet; don't know why. A good, long, thoughtful review. Not an utter rarity for Amazon, but not altogether frequent, either.
http://www.amazon.ca/Fighter-Craig-Davidson/dp/0670064300
All best, Craig.
Craig Davidson on 07.18.07 @ 03:44 PM EST [link]
Saturday, July 7th
Fight Re-Scheduled; Interview
Hi All,
A few bits of miscellany. First, most important, the boxing match with Jonathan Ames has been rescheduled. The reason for this is: there is some arcane American Amateur boxing rule that states there can't be a ten-year difference between two boxers, or an under-35-year-old can't box an over-35-year-old, something like that, which totally screws Jonathan and I. Pros can do it---Evander Holyfield could fight a 22-year-old if he so pleased, and he's older that Jonathan---but amateurs, I guess the thinking is we're not totally versed in the sport (in my case, that's very true) and so these rules are set in place to try to make sure overt mismatches don't take place.
In any case, rules is rules and you can't buck them. So we can't box on that card down on the Hudson River, but Soho has arranged for an exhibition/book launch sort of a thing at Gleason's Gym in NY, Jonathan's home gym, on TUESDAY JULY 24th at 8:00. So, the same bout, just termed a "sparring exhibition" or some such. Should still be fun. Soho's looking at getting some booze into the joint, which should have the crowd well-lubed and hooting and hollering by the time we touch gloves.
My training is going well. Pretty brutal schedule, but I stick to it. Leave the house at 3pm, back at 8pm. Hit the gym, run laps, light workout, more laps, abs, to the boxing gym for circuit training or technique plus sparring. My body, surprisingly, is putting up with me abusing it like that. Hands a little sore, and when I first got back into training ALL of me was sore, but I've gotten over that hump. Weight has stabilized at 160 lbs; a lot of old friends thinking I look like I wandered out of the forest having been lost for months, but really, I feel pretty good. I think I'm right at about 180 so this is light for me, but since I'm doing a lot of cardio---I might get knocked out, but I don't think I'll be gassed out---it's good to be light. My body has turned very veiny (veinous?); all up and down my legs, my arms and shoulders, coming up my ribcage, over my biceps---veins everywhere. Coming up my hips, too, radiating from my ... well, my crotch; I can feel these two big vascular bundles on either side of my hip, little berries under there pumping blood. So, y'know, a little weird, this new bodily dynamic, but I don't mind for now. My body, I've come to realize, is really utilitarian; it seems designed just to keep moving along. Not dextrously, not flashily, not with panache or brute strength; just keep plugging along, doing what I ask (force) it to. An endurance body, which in this case is what I need.
But I'll tell you, once this fight is over I'm eating everything I can lay my hands on. Maybe I'll write a new book called THE GLUTTON. Just this guy who goes around eating everything, eating himself into the grave. LEAVING LAS VEGAS for the gourmand set. Chapter 1: French Fries. Chapter 2: Pastries. Chapter 3: Buffet-Hopping. Chapter 4: Pastries Redux. Etc.
Second bit: here is an interview conducted with Darran Anderson of the UK site BookMunch. Great questions and I thank Darran for taking the time to ask them. Still that old photo of me; I really need to get a new one!
http://bookmunch.co.uk//view.php?id=1845
All best, Craig.
Craig Davidson on 07.07.07 @ 12:24 PM EST [link]
Wednesday, July 4th
Novel done in draft; California Literary Review
Hi All,
Well, the post-THE FIGHTER novel is done in draft. It's printing away merrily as I type this, all 180,000 words and 700 pages of it. Of course, those numbers are going to come down in the revision process, after I set it aside for a month and go through the emotional divorcing procedures wherein I first become ambivalent to it, then openly skeptical, then disgusted by it all, then hateful of it, which is when I can pick it up again and ruthlessly edit the hell out of it, getting rid of all those silly nonsensical bits---the type of stuff that typically will find its way into this blog, for example---that I thought were the height of pathos or intelligence at the time of writing but now see in their true light: as things to be axed. In the meantime I've got a few short stories to write, a boxing match to prepare for, etc, etc.
Another review for THE FIGHTER, this one from the California Litarary Review. Very nice. Comparisons to Ellroy and McCarthy and Vollman, which are ... I don't want to call into question the opinion of the reviewer, in this case John Holt, because his opinion is as valid as anyone's I guess, but personally, well, it seems almost too kindly a stretch to make. This book, I swear ... the reaction to it is schizophrenic. You got people saying the nicest things about it, then you got people lambasting it, people refusing to publish it, people going this way, that way ... I don't know, makes it difficult to get a bead on where I stand as a writer, what progress, forward or backwards, I may have made or continue to make. It's fairly impossible to drum up any concrete conception of what I've done with these reviews I keep getting. Or maybe some writers get these sort of yo-yoing critiques of their work, I don't know. I try to keep as level-headed as possible about it and I do believe I'm getting better in the way I internalize it all, the way a butcher eventually becomes a bit desensitized every time he slices one of his fingers. You do get this emotional callusing effect taking over, but man, it's weird for me.
I really hope this next book, should it ever be published, gets a more understandable reaction. I mean, understandable to me, personally; conceivably everyone else gets what's happening here with this book, which is really just a more see-sawing version of what happened with RUST AND BONE and even THE PRESERVE before that.
In any case, my thanks, as always, to John Holt for his (very kind, in this case) review:
http://calitreview.com/2007/07/02/the-fighter-by-craig-davidson
All best, Craig.
Craig Davidson on 07.04.07 @ 02:55 PM EST [link]
Monday, July 2nd
LWOT
Hi All,
Lies With Occasional Truth---LWOT---is a very cool online journal that just relaunched. I've been included in online journals from time to time, and I would say that this is the coolest. It's run by Ryan Ross, the fellow who won my bloody fight pinney, in cahoots with some other scurvy dogs and I must say, they put out one fine rag. I love the author portraits, and the link to my book courtesy "Irish" Ira Weinstein. Plus my bio, which I gave the guys carte blanche to run with; any bio that references BLOOD SPORT, Jean Claude Van Damme's pinnacle of the genre and the movie that gave us the line "I'll show you a thing or two about a thing or two!" (and yes, Ryan, I believe it was a ripoff of THE QUEST) is cool by me.
So check it out and spread the good word:
www.lwot.net
All best, Craig.
Craig Davidson on 07.02.07 @ 08:10 PM EST [link]
Sunday, July 1st
French Reader Review (Fun With Babelfish)
Hi All,
So, this comes to me from a French reader. A story behind this one, too:
I'm in France, the quaint seaside villa of St. Malo where I ate many a crepe, and we do these signing table events. Which can be death. Nothing worse that someone picking up your book, looking at it, seeing the dust jacket photo and a little light comes into their eyes, they look at you in understanding---"This is you!"---and you nod, yes, yes, that's me, bigtime writer here, you're in the presence of greatness and you best respec' that, then they maybe read the back blurb, read the first page, then delicately, as if they're laying the hamster's dead body in a shoebox in prep for a backyard burial, set your book back, give you an apologetic look like, "Sorry, you didn't make the grade," and bobble off.
The French. Inveterate bobblers.
So anyway, me, I don't stand for that. Pawing up my books and suchlike, not buying them. And I do come from a horror genre background, small press horror at that, and we of that ilk are hard sellers. Like, cram a book down your gullet sellers. Shameless self promoters. Which is not as well-respected a skill amongst the literati.
Anyhoo, so that I started doing was, I started goading people into buying my book at the signers table. This mainly transpired as such:
POTENTIAL CUSTOMER PICKS UP MY BOOK. I LAUNCH INTO BROKEN FRENCH PITCH.
ME: "C'est un tres bonne livre. C'est ... magnifique! C'est ... fantastique!"
POTENTIAL CUSTOMER LOOKS AT ME AS S/HE MIGHT A TRAINED MONKEY TAUGHT TO SPEAK RUDIMENTARY PHRASES---WHICH I MORE OR LESS AM (HIGH-FIVE TO THE ONTARIO FRENCH IMMERSION SCHOOL SYSTEM!)
CUSTOMER: Tu parle Francais?
ME: Un petit peu. Un petit petit PETIT peu!
JOCULAR LAUGHTER ENSUES.
This goes on until I basically shame them into buying the book. More or less promising it will blow their minds, open new doors of understanding in their lives, usher them from the darkness of ignorance into the loving bosom of understanding offered by ... moi. Of course, the book does none of that. But they feel so ashamed, everyone thinking they'd be a real heel if they don't pony up the dough for the book, that I get them to buy it.
It's such a brutal hard sell, actually, that at some points I feel like that very minor gypsy woman character in the Simpsons, who always goes up to people and harasses them in the most simple style by pushing her wares at them and yelling:
"You buy! You buy!"
Let me tell you, it's pretty hhilarious---skating on the fringe of deeply uncomfortable---to sit there signing a book for a guy you basically hornswaggled into buying it, handing it over to him with a sunny smile and a "Merci!" only to have him accept it as he might a bagged dog turd, staring daggers at me like I'd parted him from 20 euros in some sort of devious pyramid scheme.
Of couse, I was signing with Charles D'Ambrosio and David Treuer and they were like, "Dude, WTF?" What a shill! Actually, by that point we all sort of knew each other so I don't suppose they'd have been terribly surprised at anything I may've done; hard-selling my books was not so odd, considering.
Anyway, what I did was, as a guarantee of satisfaction, or at least a means of revenge for dissatisfied readers, I put my email address in as I signed it and encouraged them to contact me if they liked/hated it.
So the other day I get an email from a guy named Marc, whose name I immediately remember as one of the fellows I shamed into buying the book---this being RUST AND BONE. So it's written in French and I can't quite read it perfectly, so I shoot it through Babelfish. You've got his critique below. And it's great because, in this case, the crude Babelfish translation seems to suggest he enjoyed it, even though I pushed and browbeat him into it. So that makes me feel a bit better, too, as quite honestly I never want to force myself upon people, unless it's in a open-air social experiment sort of a way, and plus the signing table is such a weird situation it almost calls for it.
My favorite Babelfish-mangled sentence fragment: "Thus this man who cannot have of child transfers his paternity on a bitch ..." Of course referring to the dog, Matilda, into whom James Paris invests all his parental energies in the story "A Mean Utility."
Second favorite fragment: "...and the speed with which a being can rock."
I like to think most of the beings in my books rock. Rock and roll, baby. Deal with it.
Ahhhh, the book signing table. The adventures you'll have!
Craig Davidson on 07.01.07 @ 12:30 PM EST [more..]
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