Shadow-Box - Hardcover

Logue, Antonia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802116477 ISBN 13: 9780802116475

Publisher: Grove Pr, 1999

Synopsis

The world's first black heavyweight champion experiences bigotry, fights for love, and struggles with fame in a novel that spans the first half of the twentieth century, in a novel based on the life of Jack Johnson. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

Reviews

The dual metaphor of shadow-box (a shallow container to display items/to spar with an imaginary opponent) figures luminously in Irish writer Logue's notable debut, an epistolary novel focusing on a trio of outrageous historical figures whose adventures span three continents and two world wars, spawning acquaintance with such notables as Marcel Duchamp and William Carlos Williams. Logue imagines the 1946 correspondence between celebrated modernist poet Mina Loy and Jack Johnson, legendary black heavyweight boxing champion. What could they possibly have in common? The answer is Arthur Cravan, writer, critic, surrealist gadfly, nephew of Oscar Wilde, semiprofessional boxer and either the prototypical performance artist of this century or an unregenerate con man. Among his finest "works" was a faux prizefight he and Johnson once staged in Barcelona to raise money for Cravan's passage to America. In New York, he courted Loy, their passionate affair culminating in a Mexican marriage at which Johnson served as best man. Shortly thereafter, Cravan disappeared, reportedly drowned off the Guatemalan coast. Decades later, Loy and Johnson's letters detail their life stories and many painful, nostalgic Cravan anecdotes, each trying to make sense of their cumulative losses and triumphs. This correspondence between a brilliant femme fatale and a debauched egotist veers toward self-justification, self-promotion and self-obsession. Johnson relates bitter, blow-by-blow accounts of his battles in and out of the ring; Loy counters with tales of her daring escape from societal and marital chains, and her assault on literary mores. Several missives are included from the notorious Cravan, and his and Loy's daughter, Fabienne, but it is Johnson and Loy's vivid, excitable voices that breathe life into characters who seem fully engaged only when they are on public display. Logue's depiction of their world, where even the shadows are shadowboxing, is imaginatively conceived and elegantly executed. (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An exuberant, audacious debut inspired by the extraordinary life of Mina Loy, a modernist poet and painter prominent in the century's first decades. The story is composed of a series of lengthy letters exchanged in 1946 between the by-then elderly Loy and the great boxer Jack Johnson, who became, in 1908, the first black heavyweight champion of the world, now living in exile. Theyre tied together by their mutual fascination with Arthur Cravan, the nephew of Oscar Wilde; Cravan had been the great love of Loy's life and one of Johnson's closest friends. At heart here is the mystery of Cravan's disappearance; soon after marrying Loy in 1918, Cravan vanished while sailing and was presumed drowned. Loy's letters to Johnson offer a swift-paced, vivid memoir, first of her life before Cravan, and then of her short, intense life with him. Loy, a great, rather ethereal beauty, spent her early years as a participant in many of the most revolutionary artistic movements: a painter herself, she was for a time the lover of Henri Matisse; a poet and essayist, she had a turbulent affair with Marinetti, the Italian Futurist. Irish writer Logue does a deft job of catching the intellectual excitement and controversy surrounding the arts in the preWWI period, and her glimpses of its luminariesfrom Matisse to Apollinaire to Mabel Dodge to Marcel Duchampare witty and convincing. As a counterpoint to Loys recollections are Johnson's frank, vibrant letters about his intensely controversial career, the profound racism that he battled, and its sad costs. Cravan, an art critic, semiprofessional boxer, and tireless advocate of the new, remains a somewhat shadowy figure here, more important for having been so intensely loved then for his own achievements. Other voices emerge briefly, including that of Fabienne, Loy's daughter by Cravan, and, most audaciously, of Cravan himself. Logue's version of his actual fate provides a bittersweet coda. A wonderful portrait of the modern avant-garde in its youth, and a complex, intensely romantic narrative of a great passion and its lingering effects. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Logue, a young Irish writer, makes an impressive debut with this ambitious first novel. The story unfolds through the letters of celebrated modernist poet and artist Mina Loy and Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion of the world. Mina and Jack met nearly 30 years earlier at Mina's wedding to boxer, art critic, and Dadaist Arthur Cravan, nephew of Oscar Wilde. Shortly after their marriage, Cravan left pregnant Mina on a Mexican beach and sailed off to Chile to avoid World War I. In their letters, beginning in 1946, Mina and Jack relive their lives up until they met Cravan and share what has happened since. The plot is far reaching and historically accurate; Logue is adept at giving unique voices to Mina and Jack and effectively conveying the story through their correspondence, offering the reader a unique perspective on the social, artistic, and political climate in the United States and abroad in the early part of the century. For all libraries.ADianna Moeller, OCLC/WLN Pacific Northwest Svc. Ctr., Lacey, WA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802116477
• ISBN 13: 9780802116475
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 308