The Abysmal Brute (annotated)

The Abysmal Brute is a boxing fiction classic by Jack London that tells a breezy tale showing the crookedness of the methods of prize-ring managers specially in fleecing the prize-ring public in betting. The hero is a successful young giant who has been trained by his father in the mountains, and who thinks the game is played square until enlightened by a young woman reporter. Then follows a whirlwind wooing, exposing of the frauds and retirement. In 1910, when the story was written, London had become a famous writer but he was worried that he had exhausted his ideas. The Abysmal Brute was based on one of several plot outlines he bought from Sinclair Lewis, an admirer of London who was at the beginning of his career. [2] Other stories by Jack London about boxing are his novel The Game, published in 1905, his short story "A Piece of Steak" of 1909, and his short story "The Mexican" of 1911 Sam Stubener, a boxing manager in San Francisco, travels to a remote log cabin in northern California on getting a letter from retired boxer Pat Glendon, who lives there with his son, Pat Glendon Jr, a promising young boxer. Pat Jr fights well; otherwise, he knows little of city life; he hunts and fishes in the forest, he reads poetry and avoids women. Sam brings Pat Jr back to San Francisco. Although Sam and Pat both know he could win a fight with a top boxer, the conventions of boxing require that Pat has to start with a boxer of lower rank. In his first three fights, he knocks out his opponent immediately with one punch. Sam tells Pat to make his fights last longer; since Pat says that he is master of his opponent "at any inch or second of the fight", they agree on which round the knockout will happen. Pat's career takes off, winning fights worldwide. The newspapers, who interpret his detachment from the real world as unsociability, call him "The Abysmal Brute." Sam protects him from the corruption in boxing. Pat is not aware that Sam is using his knowledge of the timing of the knockout in a betting syndicate. Pat is interviewed by Maud Sangster, a journalist from a family of millionaires, at the Cliff House, San Francisco. They immediately fall in love. Maud tells him she has heard in which round he will knock out his opponent in his next fight, and Pat wonders how his agreement with Sam became known. He tells her the knockout will be in a later round; this is to be a secret. When his opponent is knocked out in the round originally agreed with Sam, Maud is angry with Pat. He tells her his opponent faked the knockout; he is beginning to realize the corruption in the game, and says he is quitting boxing, although Sam has arranged a fight against top boxer Tom Cannam.