Put Up Ya Dukes

Not a lot of people can take a punch and write about it. Usually, it's one or the other. This is probably why Dashiell Hammett's hardboiled style of the 1930s has held up so well: It's obvious he enjoys describing violence and knows what he's writing about. Hammett's military service and private investigator work pale, however, next to the life and times of one Eugene Robinson. As the author of Fight!: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-Kicking But Were Afraid You’d Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking, Robinson brings his own experience as a prize-winning fighter (second place overall at the 2004 California Submission Fighting Championships) and aficionado of boxing, Shotokan karate, wrestling, jujitsu, Kenpo karate, Muay Thai, catch wrestling, and Brazilian jujitsu. The guy is everything you were taught not to be in kindergarten: He likes to hit people and he does not play well with others. But far from being a mindless thug, Robinson has been expressing his rage musically for years in Oxbow, the heavy crypto-punk band he fronts, usually in his underwear. Intentionally terrifying, Robinson looks like a beast but writes like a poet, with an infectious love of fighting for fighting's sake.

Robinson joins RE/Search Publications' V. Vale and James Stark in conversation.
Thu., Nov. 8, 6 p.m., 2007