Related topics: •  Book Review: Little Girls in Pretty Boxes

Looking for a Fight: A Memoir
By Lynn Snowden Picket
The Dial Press
286 pp $23.95

In her book Looking for a Fight, New York-based journalist Lynn Snowden Picket chronicles her brief if harrowing foray into the world of amateur boxing. The author has deployed her narrative gifts in a similar vein before, digging deep beneath the skin of her subject matter, and to similar effect. For her vivid memoir, Nine Lives: My Year-long Odyssey in the Workplace, Picket toiled as stripper, Las Vegas cocktail waitress, advertising copywriter, and Hollywood publicist -- to name just a few of her occupations -- before embarking on her riveting first-person accounts of America's idiosyncratic occupations.

With writing that is at once spare and evocative, Picket captures the gritty sights, sounds, smells, and even impacts of boxing from inside the ring, from the crimson to rust-colored spatters of blood staining the mat, to the unexpected brute force packed in a fellow boxer's punch.

Picket began her yearlong odyssey at Gleason's Gym, the famous Brooklyn venue that has hosted the likes of such boxing legends as Jake LaMotta and Muhammad Ali. In the course of her apprenticeship, as Picket trained a journalist's keen eye on her surroundings she found herself bumping up against some uncomfortable truths about herself, in particular her reasons for going into boxing in the first place.

"Stunned by the recent dissolution of my marriage, and angry with my ex-husband, I was infuriated to find myself suddenly alone. Worse than that was the knowledge that I was now being perceived by my family and friends as vulnerable, helpless, and victimized, someone to be pitied and worried over," she writes.

Personal revelations are skillfully woven into the text yet never overpower the book's central aim: In essence, Picket offers the nonpugilist a detailed peek into the world of training and sparring. Notwithstanding the adrenaline highs and the feeling -- for a woman -- of exploring rich, uncharted territory, there are genuine reasons to be unnerved by this undertaking, not the least of which is the risk of severe physical injuries, among them boxing-induced dementia, eye and kidney damage, and broken bones.

"Duck under the ropes of a boxing ring, and the first thing you'll see is blood. There are bloodstains everywhere on the cream-colored canvas; old bloodstains appear as rusty brown patches; the new ones are bright red," writes Picket, describing her first steps into the ring at Gleason's. "There are speckles and blobs, smears and drips, in colors that range from deep brown to watery vermilion. My first thought is that I am looking at coffee stains, but then my mind shakes loose, and my stomach does a slow, nervous flip. It occurs to me that signing up for boxing lessons is not like signing up for an advanced aerobics class."

While the book does a thorough job of surveying the dangers inside the ring, the emotional transformations the narrator undergoes make up its most gripping material. In the beginning, Picket is introduced to Hector, her trainer, who teaches her how to wrap her hands and assume the boxer's familiar stance -- a deceptively simple pose that nonetheless requires intense focus, stamina, and concentration -- even for a marathon runner like Picket. The book follows a straight chronological line, which takes the reader through hours of grueling toning, from countless situps to hitting the heavy bag to actual sparring with often-reluctant male partners. Despite their discomfort at having to spar with a mere woman, her male counterparts manage to land several battering blows on a number of occasions, a lesson Picket learns the hard way.

"Now is the time to pull my hands up to protect myself, but the effort seems too great, the logistics too complicated to execute in a split second, so I dumbly wait for his fist to rocket into my temple," writes Picket about one sparring session. "Then it happens; a strange noise implodes inside my skull, a dull roar, a muffled shattering, a sound like something falling and striking the floor. I don't see stars, or planets, but there's a definite impression that a plug has been kicked out of its socket. I take a heavy step sideways to stop myself from falling."

After six months, Picket finds herself absorbing the unabashed macho attitudes of the predominantly male gym. In fact, she is thrilled when Hector points out that she has learned to hit like a man. "So there it was," writes Picket. "I wanted to be like a man. As a woman I was vulnerable, and vulnerability led to pain."

As Picket hones her skills, she finds she can sustain an intensely focused level of sparring that turns increasingly violent, and she is able to inflict as well as receive pain. Ironically, this peak of performance marks the moment when she begins to have serious doubts about the nature of her new sport. In an oddly belated revelation, she realizes that boxers are "trained, indeed encouraged, to be aggressive and violent."

Not one to be easily deterred from a chosen path, Picket continues to train, despite the onset of debilitating panic attacks she associates with her training. Eventually she seeks help from Mike Tyson's hypnotist and manages to quell the attacks, albeit temporarily. When her panic attacks come back in full force, the weary reader -- feeling somewhat battered herself -- has a right to demand why Picket would choose to go ahead with her first pro match, a contest she succinctly describes as "purgatory."

Finally, at book's end, Picket decides to renounce all claims to the female pugilist's crown: "I have my proof, I went the distance, and now it's time to stop," she writes. She ends her book with a look at the damage that boxing can inflict on the body.

In her afterword, Picket discusses the phenomenon of boxing-induced dementia and other dangers, including widespread eye and kidney damage. (Readers who were not planning to pick up a boxing glove will likely find enough reasons to stay away from the ring altogether.) Although there are fewer deaths in boxing than in some other sports, such as hang gliding, scuba diving, and mountaineering, it's an activity that carries grave risks of permanent damage for men and women boxers alike.

Although it took guts and strength to fight, it took just as much courage to quit. Let's hope, in Picket's case, that she didn't lose too much of her health in the quest.

-- Anne E. Stein is the former managing editor for Inside Triathlon magazine. As a cyclist, she has written for Sports Illustrated for Women, Bicycling Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune.

First published July 2, 2001
Last updated October 31, 2007
Copyright © 2001 Consumer Health Interactive