Reviews
What makes McLennan such a good writer about manhood is that he loves and respects other men as they are, rather than finding in them the reflections of his own self-regard. Tent Boxing invests not only its rather disturbing subject matter – two men fighting head to head while others watch – with a strange unsettling beauty, it also persuades us that nothing is ever as brutal, or as ugly, as it seems. This is a masterful book by an author whose eye and ear never fail him, mostly because he never forgets that what matters in a book is not the writer but the world.
Wayne McLennan is that rare thing, a person who has lived life to the full and can write. One of the great contradictions about writers is that they must devote so much time to the creation of their works that they inevitably live an existence alienated from the vast majority of humanity.
Few experiences prepare an unformed youth for life so completely as standing inside a tent, witnessing an over-ambitious amateur engage an aged but still dangerous trained fighter in something only remotely related to the art of boxing. I stood there many times. Roaring like a fool. I’ve never kicked the habit. Neither has Wayne McLennan and he has transferred the experience to print in what may be the read of the year. Get it.
Tent Boxing is a much more narrow, more personal exploration of the themes of camaraderie and organized violence than is Preston’s book. But while the author, Wayne McLennan, comes at the subject from a more experienced place than does Preston, he’s still after the same question: Why? Why at 50-years-old, with a wife and a successful business and a brain one bad hit away from permanent damage would a man spend a summer baking in the Queensland heat, going from town to town with a carnival tent full of fighters taking cheap paydays to box puffed up half-drunk locals?
McLennan describes how he found his way from Australia to Alaska (yes, he really does row there), while revealing himself to be a writer of rare force and scope.
Like all chancers he tells a mean tale – his is bolshie bar-room prose, but each episode is constructed with the care and style of a short story, lingering in the mind long after you’ve closed the book
McLennan writes (in no particular order, in 15 travel essays) about a long list of improbable jobs (bank clerk, gold panner, boat skipper, bartender, wild pig hunter) and places he has experienced by full immersion: Australia, Costa Rica, Pacific Northwest, Nicarauga, London, France, Spain, Estonia. His rich language brings to life great adventure without arrogance (well, maybe a little, in his belt notching adventures with the opposite gender), not sparing himself or anyone else in his path an honest and colorful appraisal. He takes on dangerous expeditions as if it never occurred to him not to do so, not a question or hesitancy in his mind, and travel becomes his rites of passage into finding purpose outside the routine everyday too many rest of us accept.
Rowing to Alaska itches beneath the skin and hammers in the heart for anyone who wants something more out of life – in either the living of it or even just the reading about it.
TENT BOXING WAS A REGULAR feature of agricultural shows from the early part of the last century until the late 1960s, when new laws required that tent boxers work under the same conditions as professionals and most of the troupes went out of business. Wayne McLennan, himself an ex-professional boxer, discovered that there were still troupes operating in Queensland and came all the way from his adopted home in Holland to travel with Bells Touring Boxing Troupe.
Wayne McLennan is a rare thing – a man who is equally at home and accomplished drinking in the world’s toughest bars as he is writing prose. Captured here in 15 story-length chapters – each one a separate episode that has only McLennan as its continuous reference point – we travel with the author as he works his way around the globe undertaking a series of demanding jobs in romantic yet remote corners.
Comparisons with Hemingway will probably follow, but McLennan has his own superior gifts. A truly exciting writer, brave enough to show how complex men can be.
A fascinating book … McLennan gets caught up in Basque separatist riots in Pamplona; becomes a deck-hand on a fishing boat in Alaska; trades gold illegally in Costa Rica, twice; becomes the master of a lobster vessel off the Mosquito Coast… he excels in describing the quiet moments of travelling… and his good nature informs the character of his writing, which is balanced and considered throughout.
Testimonials
What Readers Are Saying
Outside a Bar in Amsterdam I got talking to a guy and we shared a couple of drinks while we swapped life-stories. His were more exiting than mine, sometimes hard to believe, but I did.
He mentioned that he’d written a couple of books and told me the titles, so on return to the UK I ordered them, courtesy of Amazon, but put off reading for a few days. This is because in the past I’ve met several people who can tell a great story when talking but when committing it to the page get too clever, too complex and lose the directness, the rawness and the momentum that kept you hooked in the first place. Always a disappointment.
Not a problem here though-I’ve just finished ‘Rowing to Alaska” and have enjoyed it immensely. It may be that the chapters are disjointed, as someone earlier has suggested, but I think it’s none the worse for that and reflects a life that ricocheted like a pinball from one adventure to the next.. I wouldn’t have wanted it to flow smoothly and liked being taken by surprise by each part.
There’s a depth of description and reflection that made the characters and the countries come alive and an honesty that doesn’t pull any punches. There isn’t any self-glorification and the accounts of physical hardships and good friendships took me with it.
I’ve left a day or so between chapters as I found the images stayed with me and I wanted time to enjoy them before moving on.
A great book to travel with… unless you want to stop travelling. The language was descriptive, inspiring, and quite funny at times. Thank you for leaving this book to find me! I plan to pass it on to others, but I may insist that they return it to me as I hope to draw from it for future writings of my own.