AMERICA AT LARGE:Old friends are hard to forget, especially in places which evoke so many fond memories

A COUPLE of weeks ago I was asked by an interviewer to name my favourite sports book, I replied that AJ Liebling's The Sweet Sciencewas "a book I find myself reading again and again for pure pleasure – and inspiration". There have been a few such books in my lifetime, works that I first encountered in my teens that I've repeatedly returned to over the ensuing decades, and had the interviewer's query not limited it to sports books I would no doubt have expanded my answer, for essentially the same reasons, to include a trio of old friends – Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, and JP Donleavy's The Ginger Man– in the same exalted company.

Last night the Library of America hosted a gala reception at the staid old (it was founded in 1868) New York Athletic Club. The invitation described the affair as "A Night at the Fights", and the occasion was the recent publication of At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing, which my colleague John Schulian and I edited for LoA.

In addition to some distinguished movers and shakers from New York's literary and boxing worlds, the attendees included the novelist Colum McCann, who wrote the foreword to At the Fights, several contributors to the book – among them Thomas Hauser, Robert Lipsyte, Larry Merchant, and Gay Talese – as well as descendants and survivors of others, including James Baldwin, Joe Flaherty, WC Heinz, John Lardner, Dick Schaap and Budd Schulberg.

It was a special location and, for me, a special place, since whatever influence I might have had in determining the venue may at least in part have been intended as a homage to a man who was 3,000 miles away, in all likelihood seated before a crackling fire at his 18th-century manor in Westmeath.

Not even his legions of admirers might immediately associate the name of James Patrick Donleavy with the world of sport, but my first in-the-flesh meeting with the great man came 16 years ago at ringside of the Lennox Lewis-Justin Fortune fight at The Point.

On that occasion we discussed a few shared beginnings. Decades apart, we had both lived for a time in the same Boston neighbourhood, and even frequented the same pubs. And, in our 20s, we had each had our first book published by the same French-born publisher, Olympia Press’s Maurice Girodias, who had then proceeded to market both books under the leering guise of pornography.

When Donleavy asked me that day whether I'd ever considered reissuin g Only Skin Deep, I wondered why. "Because," he said, "I now own Olympia Press." (He had been awarded the rights to the catalogue as the result of a protracted court battle over The Ginger Man.) A decade and a half later, the Authors Guild had established a program called backinprint.com, for the re-publication of books by copyright-holding authors who could provide evidence of reversion of rights by the original publisher. Last autumn Donleavy (in his capacity, says the letter, as "the rightful and legal owner of The Olympia Press") signed over those rights, and Only Skin Deepwill be published for the first time in 43 years next month.)

Mike Donleavy will probably never be mistaken for a sportswriter, but the resolution of the entire plot of what may be his finest novel this side of T he Ginger Man( The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman) hinges on the triumph of a 100 to 1 shot named Tinker's Revenge at the Punchestown races; on one of my visits to Levington Park several years ago he revealed that his stable there had included a horse that had competed, with its New Zealand rider, in the Olympics Games. And if a single characteristic can be ascribed to the sundry protagonists who populate Donleavy's fiction, it is the shared capability of meting out a swift punch in the nose – a gift acquired by their creator in his own youthful apprenticeship in Boxing Room of the New York Athletic Club.

As a student at New York's Fordham Prep, before the Naval service that would presage his matriculation, on the GI Bill, at Trinity College, his association with the young Brendan Behan, and ultimately, The Ginger Man, Donleavy had accompanied a classmate to the NYAC. There, he would demonstrate sufficient aptitude in the ring that he was eventually be made a junior member of the exclusive club.

On a wall in the drawing room at Levington Park hangs a 70-year-old photograph of Joe Louis in the process of knocking out one of his Bums of the Month. The place of honour accorded the photo comes not from Donleavy’s admiration of the Brown Bomber, though admire him he did, but because the third man in the ring is Arthur Donovan, the man who taught JP Donleavy to box.

In America today, Donovan is recalled primarily as the father of Art Donovan, an All-Pro tackle for the Baltimore Colts who gained even greater fame in retirement for his starring role in beer commercials, but Donovan pere was the most celebrated referee of his day. He worked fights involving heavyweight champions Max Baer, James Braddock, and Max Schmeling, as well as those of Sugar Ray Robinson, Benny Leonard, and Henry Armstrong. He once refereed a fight involving the next generation’s premier referee, Ruby Goldstein.

But his principal claim to fame was that he was the third man in the ring for 18 of Joe Louis’ fights. And for several of the Louis fights Donovan didn’t work, Frank Fullam, his assistant coach at the NYAC, fulfilled the referee’s role.

Under the tutelage of Donovan and Fullam, Donleavy developed sufficient proficiency in the ring that he and his classmate Tommy Gill were frequently asked to perform at "smokers" for the delectation of the club membership, who would then demonstrate their gratitude by throwing a few bucks to the participants. So while he never boxed professionally, for several years, he recounted in his 1994 memoir The History of the Ginger Man, the young Donleavy earned his spending money in the ring.

In that same book Donleavy recalled a visit to New York after several years in Ireland, in the course of which he dropped by the site of last night’s gathering: “I went through my first workout since my years in Dublin, where all my punches thrown were in pubs and on the street. And here in the good old boxing room of the New York Athletic Club, such blows and swings were now exercised under the guise of the gentlemanly art of self-defence.

“But even so, within a few minutes, some collegiate boxing champ invited me into the ring for what was purported to be a friendly sparring match but was to clearly beat the absolute bloody bejeezus out of me. And suddenly one felt highly inconsiderate blows raining upon one from all sides. Until I let loose a right under the man’s heart which landed like a ton of cement and quickly corrected his sporting manners. And bent double, the collegiate champ gasped, ‘Nice shot.’”

So even though he wasn’t there at last night’s reception, I found myself thinking of Donleavy and hoisting a glass in his honour: Mike, this one’s for you!