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The Devil and Sonny Liston | 
 enlarge | Author: Nick Tosches
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Category: Book
List Price: $28.00
Buy Used: $1.31
You Save: $26.69 (95%)
New (7) Used (46) Collectible (2) from $1.31
Rating:  61 reviews
Sales Rank: 531373
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.2 x 1
ISBN: 0316897752
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.83092
EAN: 9780316897754
ASIN: 0316897752
Publication Date: April 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The anti-Ali, Sonny Liston represents everything that is compelling and terrifying about boxing. An overwhelmingly powerful fighter, Liston rose from a desperately poor childhood to street criminal to world heavyweight champion. He then became the pawn of a series of criminal organizations and was shadowed throughout his life by government investigations, arrests, and the rumor of corruption. The Devil and Sonny Liston is not just the biography of a boxer; it is one of the greatest organized-crime stories ever told and confirms Toschess place as one of the most powerful and original writers of our time. Toschess acclaimed biography of Dean Martin, Dino, sold more than 110,000 copies From the rappers Wu-Tang Clan to writer Thom Jones, people are fascinated by Sonny Liston and by boxing in general. King of the World by David Remnick sold more than 100,000 copies. Tom Cruises Cruise/Wagner Productions is at work on a movie based on this book. A collection of Toschess best writing, The Nick Tosches Reader, is due out in 2000. Tosches is a contributing editor of Vanity Fair.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 56 more reviews...
 gossamers of tales, moons of understanding January 21, 2008
Jason Rhodes (Seoul, Korea)
If you rolled your eyes when you read the title of this review, then you'll want to steer clear of Nick Tosches overwrought, insipidly pretentious prose. Here's a snapshot:
"Truman Gibson told me a story, in that way he has of delicately spinning out a web that can be plainly seen only from a distance, the gossamer of a tale that seems to have no meaning in itself, but which, when the moon of understanding waxes, shines softly with the light of meaning that was there all along."
The writing is comical, but the source from which it springs is Tosches meglomania, which is what truly ruins the book, unless you want to read it as comedy, with Tosches as the unintended punchline. Because to Tosches, he is as historically significant as his subject, and for this reason his own ego keeps bumping into everything he tries to write about. Try this:
"Lowell was not in the best of shape. Like Frankie Carbo, like me, like a lot of people, he had diabetes, and the complications were getting the better of him."
There's Nick again, inserting himself into the story. I'm sorry he has diabetes, but he's not asking for sympathy. Oh no. You see, Nick's talkin 'bout diabetes. The big D. Lots of tough guys have it. Guys like Frankie Carbo, lord of the underworld. And guys like him. You know how it is.
And just in case you've come to the end of the book and you still haven't figured out that Nick Tosches is every bit as big and bad as Sonny Liston, don't worry, cuz he's not gonna hold back on you no more. He's just gonna come right out and say it. Try this one on for size:
"I write this on a cold night as one millenium, a dead wisp in that supernal breeze that we call time, becomes another. It is black outside, a little after half past four, when the joints too are dead. In the background--f*** the neighbors--the melancholy violin and viola, the mean self-threnody of Iggy Pop's "No S***," from his brutal, beautiful and courageous "Avenue B." I remember a night a few months back, at Manitoba's, a joint on Avenue B. I was there to read poetry, and Chuck Wepner, one of the last of the stand-up guys--a guy who fought not only both Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali, but also, for charity, a Kodiak bear--had come in to introduce me. 'This guy,' he said, 'writes like Sonny Liston hit.'"
By the end of it all, I realized that I'd just consumed far too many supernal gossamers, filigrees of wisdom, and wispy moons of understanding. More than anything, though, I realized that I'd had enough of Nick Tosches to last me until the Great Self-Threnody in the Sky. Come to think of it, though, Wepner may have been right. Reading Nick Tosches might be just about as pleasant as being hit by Sonny Liston. And you know how hard he hit.
 "Attention, attention must be paid this man!" November 6, 2007
Salvatore Rossellini
I remember, as a mere slip of a lad, tape-recording the Liston-Clay fight on my Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder. (I think it weighed more than I did.) I played that tape over and over. ...
"SONNY LISTON'S NOT COMING OUT!" excalimed Howard Cosell. "SONNY LISTON'S NOT COMING OUT! HE'S OUT! I'M NOW GOING UP INTO THE RING!"
Actually, I congratulate Nick Tosches on writing a book about Sonny Liston and not once mentioning Howard Cosell, who I simply *loooooooathe(d).*
As for Nick's book, you have to give him credit for the research he's done, he is thorough. But as a previous reviewer noted, he's a Jimmy Breslin/Damon Runyon wannabe. Of course that's not an unambitious wannabe gene to have, is it? So I can't really criticize Nick for aspiring to such obvious greatness.
The thing is, though, Nick manifests his hipness in an all too obvious way. Alas, there's nothing sadder than a hipster who tries too hard to be too hip.
Still, Nick was raised in Newark, New Jersey, as I was, he's about my age, and he's clearly a good, solid, interesting writer, so whaddya want? fugetaboutit -- da bum's okay!
In Hemingway's short story "A Clean Well-Lighted Place," the old man in the cafe is asked: "What are you thinking about?" To which he replies: "Nothing." Meaning: nothingness.
Indeed, this is the key that unlocks the mystery of Sonny Liston. In considering Sonny Liston, one inevitably looks into the abyss -- comes face-to-face with the personification of nothingness. ("Nada y nada y pues nada.")
Easily the most feared and ferocious of heavyweights, when he wasn't (probably) throwing both Ali fights, Charles Sonny Liston was nihilism to the 12th power. As such, I wish Nick had written a bit more about Liston from an existential point of view. His writing style is perfectly suited to such an approach. Put another way: I don't imagine it's a coincidence that Nick has also written biographies of Dean Martin and Jerry Lee Lewis, both of whom, each in his own unique way, has danced on the precipice of existential dread.
If you don't know Sonny Liston from Adam, or if you consider the only accceptable biography to be that of a famous, notable or "respected" individual (as opposed to a thug like Liston), then you're a square, daddy-o, and you should pass on this book, ex Post Toasties.
(Did you see what I did there? Huh? A little cereael humor -- "ex Post Toasties." ... I gotta million of 'em.)
If, on the other hand, you're consider Sonny Liston to be an important part of our cultural past and therefore worth paying attention to ("Attention, attention must be paid this man!"), then give my paisano Nick Tosches' bio of Sonny Liston a shot.
Meanwhile, there's no question Liston threw the second Ali fight. But what about the first one? Did he throw that one, too? If he did, one has to wonder what would have happened to Ali had he faced the full, "unfixed" fury of Liston.
Before the first, at the weigh-in, Ali went nuts, with most commentators (in hindsight of course) maintaining that this was meant to psyche out Liston. I don't believe it. I think Ali was scared witless of Liston; maybe not necessarily at the weigh-in but in his general psychological preparation for the fight. In fact, he was probably as surprised/shocked ed as anyone that he emerged from the fight victorious -- let alone survived it!
It's interesting how Nick points out that after the Mob's influence over boxing waned, many of the people involved in boxing, including the boxers themselves, longed for the days when they dealt with the Mob, as opposed to the real thieves, the compleat crooks, namely, the lawyers, corporatists and other buttoned-down nouveau riche hustlers we civilians are all now plagued with.
The Mob may have been rough, but as Mario Puzo once put it: at least back in the day you could get a decent bowl of spaghetti & meatballs in Las Vegas. Today? Fugetabout it!
 Stop the Hate. November 3, 2007
D. Snyder
All this negativity, wow. I thought this book was fantastic. It made me buy other books by this guy and I liked them as well. He's not my favorite author of all time, but this book was great. 5 stars.
 How does such and overrated writer continue to be so overrated? April 10, 2007
Tommy O.C. (New York, New York)
It's refreshing to read that so many others here can see through Tosches as the "literary" equivalent of a snakeoil salesman.
I've worked in the industry so I know that copywriters at least attempt to come up with the jacket- or cover-copy that will entice readers into buying the book. But a writer with Tosches' clout usually gets to write his own copy. So, with that in mind--DINO, while allegedly a depiction of how down-and-dirty Dean Martin really was (yes, the man was flawed and he did some bad things--but Frankie Sinatra did a LOT of MUCH worse things) is actually a book about an entertainer, Martin, who was a genuinely, physically and mentally tough man (the type who Sinatra pretended to be--Dino didn't need bodyguards to do his fighting) who was beloved by his female costars, who found him to be genuinely funny, charming, and a true gentleman. One alleged insult to a call girl quoted on the mass market cover--who flattered herself that she could take Dino for a ride--does not contradict this. He was streetwise and when he told Jerry Lewis "you can talk about love all you want, you're just a f**king dollar sign to me," it was in the context of having played second bananna to a narcissitic, juvenile cretin, for year. For example, Lewis was so obnoxious that, in an episode of the old Colgate Comedy Hour, he kept interrupting Martin to upstage Dino was he attempted to seen what was his hit song. Who wouldn't to throttle the little punk?
I see that Tosches' "biography" of Arnold Rothstein--the famous gambler who fixed the 1919 World Series--is subtitled to call this a story that's never been told before. Do an Amazon search. Do a Google search. Okay, Rothstein is not a household name but anyone who has read a few books on American gangsters has heard of Rothstein. "A.R.," as he was known, is NOT an overlooked figure in histories of the era.
Tosches is a "wannabe," as another post stated, and yet another post(s) commented on his faulty research skills, irrelevant digressions, and affected prose.
But you know what really got me pissed about this Liston book? Tosches states--as though it were an indisputable fact--that the last fight Rocky Marciano had, against the great Archie Moore, was fixed. Archie took a dive to preserve the Great White Champ's record.
Just like that. This is a historically significant allegation and one that has not been made before (at least not in any serious reportage). Does Toshces cite a source for this bombshell? God forbid. He makes this statement without batting an eye or even addressing why this charge has never been revealed by any of the truly great boxing writers who have preceded Tosches. I'm sure Bert Randolph Sugar, for one, would have touched on this years ago, if it had even a grain of truth.
In truth, Archie Moore's gripe was that the ref--after Moore had hit Marciano with a shot so hard it's said to have lifted the Rock several inches off his feet before he hit the canvas--gave the Rock the equivalent of a "long count," allowing the younger and stronger Marciano precious seconds to recover and knock out Moore.
Other boxing writers (Sugar, for one, I believe), some who were present at the fight, others who have seen the B&W film footage, respectfully disagree. Moore was a great champ, a great fighter, and a proud man. NO doubt about that. And he gave the Rock one hell of a fight. He came thisclose to winning the heavyweight title. So did Billy Conn against Joe Lewis. (Was that a fix, too?) It must be difficult to deck an opponent with a punch that would ended the fight against virtually any other opponent in that weight class and then see him, in true Marciano fashion, rise from the canvas, shake off the punch, and come back at you like a wrecking machine.
But Toshces' version? Hell, he just makes a statement out of "punchyland" that suits his biases. Were it true, it would be a helluva revelation, a story that would capture the attention of boxing aficionados--if it were only true.
Toshes is, indeed, a con artist. He tries to dazzle you with his footwork but has little to back it up.
Sonny Liston deserves a better biographer, one that keeps the spotlight on his subject and not on himself.
herein lies the issue... October 27, 2006
J. Burch
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
While the negative reviews here hold a certain amount of water, it must be understood that this is certainly not a "traditional" biography, if a biography at all. I came upon this book from the opposite direction as previous commentators, as an fan of literature with a passing interest in boxing. Tosches' entire ouevre reads much the same way as this text: pop cultural riffing, hyperbolic spiritual send-ups, flourishes of bizarrely germane quotes. But it all works.
I can safely admit that this won't serve as an effective biography for anyone hoping for detailed accounts of Liston's fights, but it is a wonderfuly tempered, passionate work. In terms of boxing studies, if you care at all for the style of Oates' "On Boxing," this is certainly worth a paltry $0.19.
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