Charles Farrellhas spent his professional life moving between music and boxing, with occasional detours. He has managed five world champions, and has played and recorded with many of the musicians he most admires-Evan Parker and Ornette Coleman among them. His first book,(Low)life: A Memoir of Jazz, FIght-Fixing, and the Mob, was published by Hamilcar in 2021. Farrell lives outside of Boston.
“Wow. A story everyone in the fight game can relate to, and a story everyone who thinks they know the fight game should read. This is a real dive into the dreams, hopes, insanity, and business of the Wild West of all professional sports—boxing!”—John Lepak, COO, KRONK “Some people know the fight game, and some people know how to write. Charles Farrell is one of the only people in America who truly knows both. That's why he's my favorite boxing writer. Read this book and he'll be yours, too.”—Hamilton Nolan, writer for The Guardian and author of The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor “Charles Farrell is certainly, without question, among the greatest boxing writers of all time— not merely because of his unique and unmatched experience in the dark underbelly of boxing, but because of his intellect, his craft (he is an artist, first) and his honesty. Charles is not always right—no one is, not about boxing—but he is often brilliant, and always unflinchingly honest about the essentials, the essence. He educates and elucidates and pulls back the curtain on a world slightly more real than reality. In the litmus test for a great writer, I’m smarter, wiser, better, for having read him.“—Sam Sheridan, film producer and author of A Fighter's Heart and The Fighter's Mind “On boxing, Charles Farrell is the best writer we have. I learned this many moons ago when I read my first Farrell piece and he has only gotten better. So what’s the secret sauce? Near as I can figure: (a) command of the subject, (b) lucid prose, (c) unique insights into an opaque and exploitive world, a world most fans never see. Also, he’s funny. Really funny. To label Farrell a ‘boxing writer,’ however, would be an injustice. He’s a writer, a remarkable one, and his sensibility is equally revelatory and readable about music, politics, and what A. J. Liebling lovingly dubbed ‘the low life.’ These essays all feature boxing but it would be a mistake to think that’s all they address. Rather, they are concerned with marginal people who live in extremity from choice and need, and suffer because of it. Farrell’s clear-eyed compassion for fighters might be the reason he didn’t get rich off boxing but it also is a big part of why his work will endure.”—Robert Anasi, author of The Gloves: A Boxing Chronicle Praise for (Low)life: A Memoir of Jazz, Fight-Fixing and the Mob “With deadpan humor, whip-smart insights and some damn fine sentences, Charles Farrell has written a classic chronicle of life in the twilight world, on par with masters of the genre like Damon Runyon, Mezz Mezzrow, Nat Hentoff and Nick Pileggi. A truly great read.”—Debby Applegate, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, and author of Madam: The Life of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz-Age ""To scrape the heavens with your art, to plunge into the sordors of the world with your business: not even Charles Farrell can explain Charles Farrell. But he’s better qualified to try it than anybody else, and you owe it to yourself - I might even say it’s your duty as an American - to experience (Low)life. Elegant, unexpected, seeking always the real behind the real, Farrell’s prose hits like the precision fists of... blows like the wild trumpet of... I give up.""—James Parker, The Atlantic