Ninety Freaking Three

Today we send our heartiest birthday wishes to Budd Schulberg, the author, fistic enthusiast and all-around No Mas All-Star who turns 93 years young today (that's Budd on the right getting a little work in back in the day). I-Berg and I recently saw ole Budd at the Salita fight last Thursday, and let me tell you something - he doesn't look a day over 90 (ba-dump-bump). Seriously though, he's still out there ringside at a fight near you, scoring the rounds and taking no shit from nobody. He's a true living legend, and as far as I'm concerned he doesn't get the credit he deserves from the literary community, not that I imagine he cares much about that. But let me just say that if flippin Zuleika Dobson belongs on the Modern Library's Top 100 novels list, then The Harder They Fall does too. It's not only the best boxing novel ever written, it's also one of the great American novels of the 20th century.

But that's an argument for another day (and perhaps, another place). If you're unfamiliar with Budd Schulberg, then I suggest you familiarize yourself pronto, although you are already probably more familiar with him than you know. On that count, I'll just say "I coulda been a contender" and leave it at that. Beyond the silver screen, however, Schulberg had a marvelous career in print, the aformentioned The Harder They Fall (which made it to film as Bogey's last picture), What Makes Sammy Run, The Disenchanted, and countless boxing pieces, all rendered in Schulberg's characteristically taut and vibrant prose that has long been an ideal to which Large has applied himself daily.

For the No Mas set, I recommend checking out his collection Sparring with Hemingway, if you can get a hold of it, or the more recent boxing collection Ringside. Today, to celebrate all things Schulberg, I want to print this excerpt from his introduction to Sparring with Hemingway, a passage that fills me with excitement and inspiration and in and of itself could serve as the No Mas mission statement. Happy Birthday Budd, and the sincerest thanks.

From Homer to Hazlitt, Arthur Conan Doyle, and George Bernard Shaw, from London and Lardner to Hemingway, from A.J. Liebling and Nelson Algren and Norman Mailer, Pete Hamill, and Joyce Carol Oates, from Athens to Zaire (where even Dr. Hunter Thompson found his way), we seem irresistibly drawn to these ceremonial combats.

We find ourselves at one with John Milton, that most unexpected of fight fans, who wrote in Samson Agonistes:

I sorrowed at his captive state
but minded
Not to be absent at that
spectacle.

Let's get it on! the old master seems to be saying if we translate him into twentieth-century vernacular. I'll be looking for him, along with the ghosts of Homer and Lord Byron, at the next writers conference at Caesar's Palace, or MGM Grand, or wherever the next epic encounter captures the imagination of the writers who see The Fight as a microcosm, an intensification of the life forces we struggle to understand.