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Nice stuff by Thomas Hauser on John L. Sullivan
By Thomas Hauser
Next month will mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of John L. Sullivan.
In recent decades, Sullivan has faded from memory. To many, he’s now more myth than reality, a sporting Paul Bunyan. In a way, that’s fitting because, in his era, Sullivan was a near-mythic figure as large as Babe Ruth, Joe Louis, and Muhammad Ali were in their prime. He was America’s first mass-culture hero and the most idolized athlete who had lived up until his time.
Good writing about Sullivan is hard to find. His autobiography (like much of the contemporaneous writing about him) is unreliable. The best book on the subject is John L. Sullivan and His America by Michael Isenberg (University of Illinois Press, 1988). Isenberg mined the mother lode of Sullivan material and crafted a work that’s superb in explaining the fighter as a social phenomenon and placing him in the context of his times. Twenty years after publication, it’s still the standard against which Sullivan scholarship is judged.
By Thomas Hauser
Next month will mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of John L. Sullivan.
In recent decades, Sullivan has faded from memory. To many, he’s now more myth than reality, a sporting Paul Bunyan. In a way, that’s fitting because, in his era, Sullivan was a near-mythic figure as large as Babe Ruth, Joe Louis, and Muhammad Ali were in their prime. He was America’s first mass-culture hero and the most idolized athlete who had lived up until his time.
Good writing about Sullivan is hard to find. His autobiography (like much of the contemporaneous writing about him) is unreliable. The best book on the subject is John L. Sullivan and His America by Michael Isenberg (University of Illinois Press, 1988). Isenberg mined the mother lode of Sullivan material and crafted a work that’s superb in explaining the fighter as a social phenomenon and placing him in the context of his times. Twenty years after publication, it’s still the standard against which Sullivan scholarship is judged.
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