'The Professional' by WC Heinz

I came across this republication of the original 1954 book in the library, and after I read the glowing introduction by Elmore Leonard, I decided that I had to read it. Leonard praised Heinz's writing style and dialogue mannerisms extensively, and cited Heinz as a major influence on his writing style. Another positive review for this book comes from Ernest Hemingway, who said "THE PROFESSIONAL is the only good novel about a fighter I've read and an excellent novel in its own right."

Apparently, Hemingway didn't read a lot of books about fighters.

'The Professional' is about a middleweight boxer named Eddie Brown who is at a training camp for a title fight in upstate New York, and is being shadowed by narrator/sportwriter Frank Hughes for a magazine article he is working on. For a book that is about boxing, not much boxing takes place. Instead, the reader is treated to a pretentious, boring look at what a boxer and his coterie go through during a training camp.

Looking back, it occurs to me that a training camp is not really like the montages seen in all the Rocky movies, and even it were, it would not really translate that well in book form. It does, however, make for a boring read that celebrates the elements of boxing that are overlooked for a good reason. In the same way that I would not want to read a book about the pit crew of a racer, reading about the training camp of a boxer is like reading about watching paint dry: You can do it, but why would you want to?

I will say this, however, the characters in this novel are all fully developed and quite interesting. Unfortunately, all they seem to do is sit around and shoot the breeze. This made for a long and arduous read that was utterly unsatisfying and incredibly pretentious. While boxing purists may argue that the subtle nuances of a training camp are what makes the sport of boxing so great, I say that regardless of one's opinion of boxing and all of it's facets, 'The Professional' lacks the key element of what makes a novel great: a good story.

All in all, 'The Professional' does more than disappoint, it reveals Heinz's attitude towards both boxing and writing.

And both of those can be summed up in one word.

Pretentious.