The Devil And Sonny Liston (2001) - Plot & Excerpts
I first became aware of THE DEVIL AND SONNY LISTON when I saw it on a list of the ten greatest books on sports. It is a biography of Sonny Liston, who was the heavy weight boxing champion of the world in the early 1960s. He won his title from Floyd Patterson and lost it a few years later to Cassius Clay, who very shortly after winning the title renamed himself Muhammed Ali. Liston was an unpopular champion and allegedly connected to the underworld. I remember listening to his fights on the radio with my father when I was a boy. The subject of his life intrigued me, so I bought a copy of Tosches' book. It has merit, but the details of Liston's story are not developed well enough for THE DEVIL AND SONNY LISTON to deserve consideration as one of the best books of its genre. Much of Liston's story is predictable. He was the child of southern poverty. He may have been the 24th of his father’s 25 children. His father was cruel and physically abusive. His mother was neglectful. He moved to St. Louis as a teenager, fell into petty crime and twice served short jail sentences in a Missouri penitentiary where he was introduced to boxing. He was strong, fearless and a natural puncher. Soon there was no one in the penitentiary who was willing to spar with him.He was released from prison the second time while still in his early 20s. (Identifying his exact age is not possible. His birthday is forgotten - even to his own mother). He returned to St. Louis. But still unable to read or write, his options were limited. He was in every way a natural target for the predators who then controlled boxing. Soon enough, Liston fell under their influence. This is where THE DEVIL AND SONNY LISTON becomes interesting. Tosches seems to want to write an expose. The problem is that he does not have the whole story. Instead, he peppers his readers with poorly connected facts and anecdotes. It is clear that Liston was "owned" by shadowy underworld figures, but Tosches is unable to pull back the screen so that we can get a good view. One senses that Tosches tried to research his book thoroughly, but he simply did not get to the root of it. One would not expect participants in organized crime to volunteer the facts of their criminal activities. But Tosches’ failure to assemble a more complete account of the facts is very unsatisfying, even if understandable. The fight game, in Liston’s time, was rife with criminal activity and Tosches believes, as did many of Liston’s contemporaries, that both of Liston's title fights with Ali were fixed. What a book this could have been if Tosches had penetrated the mystery around these fights and resolved the controversy. But he does not present any new information. Liston's personal story is grim. He was a dark and brooding presence. Unlike other fighters of his time, he drank heavily – even while in training. He gambled. He may have sold drugs and done some loan sharking. He was muscle for the teamsters on occasion. In these jobs, he was exploited. Most troubling of all, is something that he alone must take the blame for. He took what he wanted from women. Many were willing partners, but Tosches documents a handful of incidents where Liston seems to have raped a woman and then paid off her off. Tosches describes Liston as “a man born dead.” By this, I take it that Tosches is telling us that Liston never had a chance for decency or success. A close associate of Liston’s is reported to have said that Liston had no sense of right and wrong – almost as if he was not a full member of the human race. Tosches is effective in describing the aura of doom that seems to have surrounded Liston.Liston died in December 1970 in mysterious circumstances. Officially, Liston died from a heart attack. But there was evidence of heroin in his system. This was suspicious in that he was not known to use drugs and was known to have a deathly fear of needles. Some believed that he had been given a "hot shot" in order to eliminate him as a potential witness. Tosches suggests that he himself may believe this too. But no one is identified who would have had a motive and opportunity to administer the deadly dose. Nor does Tosches tell us what it was that Liston witnessed that would have caused someone to murder him. These and too many other questions are left unanswered. In the end, that is Tosches' failing. He leaves his job unfinished.
Just finished reading this and really liked it. It has the usual Tosches touches of excellent storytelling, amazing research and a dark subject, that make all of his books enjoyable for me to read. However, I don't know who in the hell I'd recommend it to. There's a good deal of writing in here about the history of the Mafia and their hands in the history of boxing, so maybe if you're into that kind of thing you'd dig it. Mostly I like it because it's a human story about a guy that can't quite transcend his lot in life even though, from the outside, it seems like he has an opportunity to grab success and break away from his past. But, you know, it's all inside him. That's what he can't fight. Like "Dino", the book gets you to care about an unsympathetic loner, that doesn't really seem to care about too many others.
What do You think about The Devil And Sonny Liston (2001)?
"Fuck this shit - adjournment for dick in the midst of this ever more precipitous and perplexing narrative. Let's talk cock. Let's talk all sorts of shit." (p. 134)I think you have to, if not like, at least respect a writer who has so little regard for the tried-and-truly-tired, faux-tasteful metaphors for competitive sports' sexual allure that he literally stops dead in the middle of his book to talk about how fucking huge Sonny Liston's cock was. Did anyone else get the vibe Tosches was into some serious Mandingo-flavoured cuckolding? Can't be just me.
—James
I have to say that this book was something of a slight disappointment to me. That's not to say that I didn't learn things about Sonny Liston that I did not know prior to going in, but my problems are more with the author himself and the way he approaches the subject.I have read a Nich Tosches biography before, his book on Dean Martin, so I should have been prepared. Tosches is one of those biographers who seems to approach his subject the way does his fictional ones. He takes the sketch he gets from his numerous interviews and bits of research and sketches the personality, usually zeroing in on certain aspects of that person's personality and running with it. I have seen other biographers do this, in both book and film (Oliver Stone's movies on Nixon and Jim Morrison being prime examples), and it tends to annoy me a bit. Tosches latches on to the darker side of Sonny Liston, the Bad Man, almost to the point of obsession, a times writing several paragraphs of first person narrative from Liston himself on how he felt when he walked into such and such a room and felt about such and such a situation, trying his best to sound Lison, with expletive laden sentences and jive-talking abbreviations and slang. The results, whether true to Sonny Liston or not, can be laughable and odd. (I remember he did the same with Dean Martin)Now to be fair, Liston was certainly a dark and brooding character, with a rap sheet a mile long and a history of violence beyond the ring. But as a biographer, at least the way I see it, your job is to present facts based on yoru research and interviews. Now of course you will have to fill in the blanks at times, and come up with the best sketch you can, but when you interject opinion and a bit of creative license here and there as all biographers do and must, I think that should be clear.To me, the Sonny Liston I see in the pages of this book, in pictures, films, and other sources I've read about him, paint a much more conflicted man than portrayed here - the brute, the Bear. People with Liston's history usually are, not just "born dead" as Tosches calls it.The books gives a great look into the influence the Underworld has in the boxing industry, especially of Liston's time, and may shock some readers with it's insinuations of fixs and rigged fights (some of which are the biggest in history) but context and a little more historical reference should be taken into account here as well. Worth a read but with caution!
—Jason
I didn't know much about Sonny Liston, and after reading this book, I still don't know much about him. It's odd when the subject of a biography makes cameos in his own book.If you are looking for a unique style of biography, this may be the one for you. The author spends far more time discussing the lives of people surrounding Liston than Liston himself. Granted, his history is nebulous and founded on conjecture, so there are not a lot of concrete facts with which to illuminate the reader. But, as Liston is an enigma, it would have been fascinating to have read the stories that some people told about him.I understand the technique. By describing the character of the people around him, the reader is supposed to make inferences about Liston himself. However, I would have liked to have read more about Liston himself.It could be that this wasn't the style of biography for me, or that I "...didn't understand what Tosches' was trying to do." That may be fair. I didn't. I like biographies, but I didn't like this one.If you are interested in boxing, you may appreciate this book more than I did. I spent most of the time frustrated and wondering why the book wasn't called "Where is Sonny Liston?"
—Steve Mikkelson
