Grimmish by Michael Winkler
A metatextual, experimental novel about the life and legend of Italian-American boxer Joe Grim, Michael Winkler's Grimmish is a paean to pain in all its forms
Just when you think you’ve read it all, a book comes along to disabuse of such notions. Michael Winkler’s Grimmish is an extraordinary novel, unlike anything you’ll have read this year or in many years. It focuses on the life and legend of Italian-American boxer Joe Grim who toured Australia in 1908-1909, a fighter whose main talent was the ability to take punch after punch, and apparently relish it and the effects. Thought by many to be a medical miracle, what didn't kill him appeared to make him stronger.
Like the fighters Joe faces, Grimmish is not a novel to pull its punches. It’s a paean to pain in all its forms, reminding readers that not only is it unavoidable but at times necessary. Yet in his experimentation of form, Grimmish also becomes about the telling of stories, and how we shouldn’t let the truth get in the way of the best ones. There is a 'review' of the book, meanderings on philosophy, a merging of fiction and non-fiction (causing the reader to question everything), and a number of quotations from other texts, some of which may even be genuine, and substantial footnotes that are integral to the whole. In terms of both subject and style, Winkler’s writing is as robust as Joe Grim himself. If you like your fiction vital and visceral, then Grimmish fits the bill.