The Abysmal Brute

The Abysmal Brute is a novella written by Jack London and published as a book in 1913, although it had previously appeared in a magazine.

Sam Stutener is a boxing manager in the city of San Francisco. He travels to a small cabin in the woods in Northern California to meet retired boxer Pat Glendon.

Pat lives with his son, Pat Glendon Jr., who is also learning to box and shows great promise. However, the young man does not know how to function in the city, since he is dedicated to hunting and fishing in the forest, as well as reading poetry.

Sam returns to San Francisco with Pat Jr. and there he initially begins to compete with lower ranked boxers. He wins the first fights with tremendous ease and speed, so Sam asks him to make their fights last a little longer and agrees on which round will be the knockout.

The young boy's career begins to take off, even winning international fights. This causes him to appear in many newspapers. However, they make a somewhat negative description of him and describe him as very unsociable. He is nicknamed The Abysmal Brute.

Despite Sam's promises to protect him and support his career, he is placing bets behind Pat's back and profiting from it...