Benjamin Markovits

Conflicted genius

His children suffered the misery of several divorces and he fought one wife for a decade in court. But he’s incapable of writing a dull paragraph

issue 17 November 2018

Boxing writers sometimes try to make comparisons across weight groups. They used to say, for example, that Floyd Mayweather was the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. Saul Bellow for many years has had the reputation of the best page-for-page writer. Every paragraph has something that arrests you: an image, an insight, a line of dialogue, or a moral dilemma.

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