The Set Up

Joseph Moncure March’s 1928 narrative poem The Set-Up, the inspiration for Robert Wise’s celebrated 1949 film noir, follows Pansy, a gifted Black prizefighter navigating the brutal American boxing underworld. Told in propulsive, syncopated rhyming couplets, this hard-boiled Jazz Age tragedy captures the world of prizefighting in 1920s New York.

This Korero Press edition reproduces March’s original 1928 text and pairs it with specially commissioned artwork by Erik Kriek, the award-winning Dutch comic artist. A visually striking illustrated classic for readers of narrative poetry, boxing writing, film noir and Jazz Age culture.

Joseph Moncure March (1899–1977) was the first managing editor of The New Yorker, where he helped create its Talk of the Town section. He is best known for his Jazz Age narrative poems The Wild Party and The Set-Up. March later worked as a Hollywood screenwriter, turning Howard Hughes’ silent Hell’s Angels into a talkie, before writing documentaries for the US State Department and features for The New York Times Magazine. Erik Kriek is an award-winning Dutch illustrator, designer and comic artist. Known for his Gutsman comics and acclaimed graphic novels including In the Pines and The Exile, he created the specially commissioned black-and-white illustrations for this Korero Press edition of The Set-Up.