A. J. Liebling

Abbott Joseph Liebling (October 18, 1904 – December 28, 1963) was an American journalist who was closely associated with The New Yorker from 1935 until his death. His New York Times obituary called him "a critic of the daily press, a chronicler of the prize ring, an epicure and a biographer of such diverse personages as Gov. Earl Long of Louisiana and Col. John R. Stingo." He was known for dubbing Chicago "The Second City" and for the aphorism "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." Liebling's boxing book The Sweet Science was named the greatest sports book of all time by Sports Illustrated. Liebling was a connoisseur of French cuisine, a subject he wrote about in Between Meals: An Appetite For Paris. Pete Hamill, editor of a Library of America anthology of Liebling's writings, said "He was a gourmand of words, in addition to food... he retained his taste for 'low' culture too: boxers and corner men, conmen and cigar store owners, political hacks and hack operators. They're all celebrated in [his] pages."

Early life

Liebling was born into a well-off family on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where his father worked in New York's fur industry. His father was a Jewish immigrant from Austria and his mother, Anna Adelson Slone, came from a Jewish family in San Francisco. After early schooling in New York, Liebling was admitted to Dartmouth College in the fall of 1920. His primary activity during his undergraduate career was as a contributor to the Jack-O-Lantern, Dartmouth's nationally known humor magazine. He left Dartmouth without graduating, later claiming he was "thrown out for missing compulsory chapel attendance." He then enrolled in the School of Journalism at Columbia University.

Career

Early years

After finishing at Columbia, he began his career as a journalist at the Evening Bulletin of Providence, Rhode Island. He worked briefly in the sports department of The New York Times, from which he supposedly was fired for listing the name "Ignoto" (Italian for "unknown") as the referee in results of games.

In 1926, Liebling's father asked if he would like to suspend his career as a journalist to study in Paris for a year.

Liebling later wrote that the unsuitable proposed marriage was a fiction intended less to swindle his father than to cover his own pride at being the recipient of such generosity.

Thus in summer 1926, Liebling sailed to Europe where he studied French medieval literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. By his own admission On July 23, 1949, The New Yorker published an article by Liebling entitled "Spotlight on the Jury" in which he opened by stating "The trial of Alger Hiss, which produced some of the best and some of the worst newspaper copy of our time" and concluded "This sort of thing obviously and apparently lessens the chance of a fair trial next time. Perhaps the secrecy of the jury room, like that of the voting booth, should be protected by law."

Last years

In 1961, Liebling published The Earl of Louisiana, originally published as a series of articles in The New Yorker in which he covered the trials and tribulations of the governor of Louisiana, Earl K. Long, the younger brother of the Louisiana politician Huey Long.

The Sweet Science Liebling's numerous boxing essays, many of which for The New Yorker, were collected in The Sweet Science, published by Viking Press in 1956. The book refers to Pierce Egan's early nineteenth-century prizefighting series Boxiana, quoted several times by Liebling in his introduction. The title also echoes "the sweet science of bruising", a phrase associated with Pierce Egan's nickname for boxing. The book covers American boxing in the early 1950s, including figures such as Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Archie Moore, while also portraying managers, trainers, cornermen, and other figures around the sport during a period when boxing was increasingly shaped by television.

The book became one of Liebling's best-known works with Sports Illustrated naming it the greatest sports book of all time. The Sweet Science was included at number 63 on Modern Library's list of the 100 best English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century, which described the book as combining portraits of boxers and trainers with attention to boxing history and lore.

Personal life

He married Ann Beatrice McGinn, a former movie theater ticket taker he had met while she was working in Providence, Rhode Island, on July 28, 1934. McGinn suffered from either bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, which caused her to have hallucinations and go into fugue states. Her illness required many lengthy and expensive hospital stays and when she was out of the hospital, she was often heavily sedated. Both Liebling and McGinn committed infidelities during their marriage.

In 1946 he and his wife separated. They divorced on August 30, 1949, in Reno, Nevada. Two days later he married Lucille Spectorsky, the ex-wife of Auguste Comte Spectorsky, in Virginia City, Nevada.

On December 19, 1963, Liebling was hospitalized for bronchopneumonia. He died on December 28 at Mount Sinai Hospital, and was buried in the Green River Cemetery, East Hampton, New York. The publisher also selected Liebling's 1955 New Yorker story "The Case of the Scattered Dutchman" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime writing. Library of America followed this first collection withby The Sweet Science and Other Writings, edited by Pete Hamill and for which the journalist and sportswriter W. C. Heinz called Liebling "the best essayist."

In 1995, the Boxing Writers Association of America created the A. J. Liebling Award, whose first honorees included Washington, D.C. sportswriters Sam Lacy and Shirley Povich.

Liebling's reputation has remained particularly strong among journalists, sportswriters, and food writers. New Yorker writer Anthony Lane, wrote favorably of Liebling, whose "delicately gluttonous writings on food keep wandering off (when he can tear himself away) into such equally pressing areas Paris, boxing and sex." Anthony Bourdain named Between Meals one of his favorite books, describing it as a benchmark for food writing.

His writing was often memorable, as was his eating, and he nicely combined the two passions in Between Meals (1962), of which the following extract gives a taste:

Liebling's papers are held at Cornell University.