BOOKENDS

"FIGHTING for Fun" is typical both of its kind and of the magazine it appeared in, The Saturday Evening Post; and no one who is neither a devotee of boxing or of the "Post" should attempt it. It has ever the inescapable capital 'I' of the humble boy who has made good, of the self made man, and of the athlete who is also a scholar, that irritates; and yet it has much that is enjoyable. Unlike Gene Tunney, Eddie Eagan ever sets himself up as a demigod, he has his weaknesses; and he never parades his "culture" and education.

The story of his life runs along with the speed of a prizefight from the University of Denver to Yale to the Harvard Law School to Oxford with the major interest ever on the boxing ring. One is always conscious of the somewhat loveable big-boy who is the author. The whole book is virile and thoroughly masculine, even when the author describes an evening spent with a group of "aesthetes" at Christ Church College where he war greeted with a lily. And always American, he does not escape that particularly American kind of snobism about titles. When he boasts that of the three boxers in Burke's Peerage, three are his personal friends, he is little short of ridiculous. And one is becoming a bit weary of people the Prince of Wales calls by their first names, to say nothing of those who make the discovery that under all their reserve Englishmen are really "fine fellows."

But, despite these minor irritations, "Fighting for Fun" is a story of healthy, Vigorous sport, untainted by professionalism, and of a vivid, if a bit egocentric, personality. Although he can hardly be considered as a great literary artist, Eddie Eagan has written a terse, straight-forward narrative, both interesting and refreshing.