The Bruiser Read Free Page B

had fought hard for freedom and found it another jail.
    It is a measure of how miserable Tully had become that he considered boxing as way out of writing, rather than the reverse. In the end, he came to the conclusion he’d reached more than two decades before and chose writing over boxing. Tully instead promised to speak to Al Jolson, who had both the interest and means to promote a young boxer. Tully’s decision not to buy Armstrong’s contract seems not to have hurt Armstrong in the least. Armstrong fought another ten years and for a few months in late 1938 simultaneously held the World’s Featherweight, Welterweight, and Lightweight Championships. Armstrong was elected to the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1954.
    Boxing was one thing; writing about boxing was another. In his 1934 Esquire essay “The Manly Art,” Tully wrote, “The great book of the prize ring is yet to be written. The man who will write it will be one who has been smeared withits blood.” While litterateurs as diverse as George Bernard Shaw and Ernest Hemingway had tried, none had boxed and could hope to really convey what it was like inside the ropes. Two years later, tired of waiting for an honest novel of the ring, Tully decided to write it himself.
    By early September he had a first draft and had built up a head of steam in the writing of a novel about a young boxer named Shane Rory. He could feel it in his bones, the boxing novel was going to be good, very good. This one would restore his good name and get him the respect that he felt was his due. The past year had been one of survival, but now there was hope and he could finally feel his long depression beginning to lift. Two weeks later he was knocked off the tracks.
    Tully’s son, Alton, had been arrested for assaulting a 16-year-old girl. It was not the first such incident and the news made headlines across the country. Concerned friends tried to lift Tully’s spirits, and it is worth noting that another former drifter-turned-boxer, Jack Dempsey, phoned with the offer of $10,000 to help with legal expenses. Tully was devastated, and work on the boxing novel came to a halt. Instead, he returned to the question he’d faced most of his adult life: What to do about Alton? In the past, he’d come to the boy’s defense, but this time, against all paternal instinct and the advice of Alton’s attorneys, he insisted Alton plead guilty. This Alton did and was sentenced to San Quentin for one to fifty years.
    Tully looked to crawl from the wreckage with a new book. He sounded out Maxwell Perkins, who had become renowned as the editor of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, on a boxing book but was torn between the novel about Shane Rory or a history of the ring. He felt it necessary to convince the legendary editor that he was nota has-been. “I’ve played in bad luck the past few years, and have done considerable movie work, but I’m by no means out of the running as a writer.”
    Tully was far from a has-been, but his year-end royalty statement punctuated a bad year. Ladies in the Parlor , his previous book, had earned him just $200 in the past six months of 1935. Perkins declined a boxing history but asked to see the novel. Tully returned to the Shane Rory manuscript, now titled The Bruiser , he’d been working on before the tribulations of autumn. Perkins was not enthusiastic about the draft he received of The Bruiser , and, for the time being, the two went their separate ways.
    With a solid draft of The Bruiser in hand, Tully began shopping the book around. Having immersed himself in boxing, he flew to New York in April to work with Jack Dempsey on a play based on the legendary champion’s life. Waiting for him on his return was a letter with the happy news that his 1934 federal tax return was going to be audited.
    Tully first sent The Bruiser to Boni, the publisher of two of his earlier novels, who wanted the manuscript so badly