Robert Lipsyte

Start Free Trial

Summary

Download PDF PDF Page Citation Cite Share Link Share

Born: January 16, 1938

Birthplace: New York, New York

Principal Works

Long Fiction

The Contender, 1967

One Fat Summer, 1977

Summer Rules, 1981

Jock and Jill, 1982

The Summerboy, 1982

The Brave, 1991

The Chemo Kid, 1992

The Chief, 1993

Warrior Angel, 2003

Raiders Night, 2006

Yellow Flag, 2007

Center Field, 2010

The Twinning Project, 2012

Twin Powers, 2014

Nonfiction

Assignment Sports, 1970

Free to Be Muhammad Ali, 1978

Heroes of Baseball, 2006

An Accidental Sportswriter, 2011

Biography

Robert Lipsyte is an award-winning sports journalist and author of books for both adults and young adults. Lipsyte's novels are frequently set in a sports milieu and his protagonists develop their self-worth through their immersion in the world of athletics, where they are tested to work hard and achieve more than they thought possible. Lipsyte was born in New York City in 1938 and was raised in Rego Park, a neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York. His parents were both educators: His father, Sidney, was a school principal who eventually rose to become the director of all New York City schools for students with emotional issues, and his mother, Fanny, was a teacher and guidance counselor in the New York public school system. At home, there was an emphasis on academic achievement and scholastic excellence over athletics and sports participation. Lipsyte has stated that he never played catch with his father. Rather, they bonded over trips to the library or a shared interest in a particular writer.

Robert Lipsyte.

By Cardsplayer4life, CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/), via Wikimedia Commons

As a teenager, Lipsyte participated in a Ford Foundation program, which allowed him to skip his senior year of high school. He went directly from his junior year at Forest Hills High School to Columbia University. In 1957, at age nineteen, he graduated from Columbia with a bachelor of arts. After graduation, he began his career in journalism as an editorial assistant at the New York Times. He had intended to keep the position as a summer job, a way to finance his trip to Los Angeles, California, where he hoped to make a name for himself as a screenplay writer. Instead, he remained at the Times, working his way up from the copyboy in the sports department to a reporter at age twenty-one. He enrolled in Columbia University's School of Journalism and earned a master's degree in 1959. He remained at the Times for fourteen years, working as a sports reporter and then a sports columnist. Even though he had only a passing interest in sports as a teenager, he was assigned in 1962 to cover the New York Mets' first spring training. This was particularly ironic because previously he had only attended two baseball games in his life. In 1964, he was asked to travel to Miami Beach to cover the heavyweight boxing championship between Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay, who later became known as Muhammad Ali, for the Times. Other members of the Times sports bureau did not want to attend because they mistakenly thought Liston would defeat Clay in a one-sided mismatch.

The journey to Miami Beach was a fortuitous one for Lipsyte. Not only did he get a promotion to full-time boxing reporter, but he also gained inspiration for his first book of fiction. After interviewing boxing manager Cus D'Amato two nights before the heavyweight match, Lipsyte outlined a boxing novel in his mind. He called it The Contender , and when that book was published in 1967,...

(This entire section contains 1190 words.)

Unlock this Study Guide Now

Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.

Get 48 Hours Free Access

it received widespread critical acclaim.

Lipsyte's tenure at the Times ended in 1971. He then became a radio commentator for National Public Radio from 1976 through 1982, and he wrote a sports column for the New York Post in 1977. He was a sports essayist for CBS Sunday Morning for four years, from 1982 to 1986, when he left to work at NBC. In 1989, Lipsyte won an Emmy Award for outstanding on-camera achievement for his hosting duties on WNET's The Eleventh Hour. He returned to the New York Times as a sports columnist from 1991 to 2002. He has written for American Health magazine and taught journalism at the college level. In 2013, he became the ombudsman for ESPN.

Major Works

Lipsyte admits that he was not an athletic youth. While he did play handball, he often found himself unable to enjoy the game because of the pressure to win. This is a theme that Lipsyte frequently addresses in his young-adult novels. His characters often discover that it is the training and the grueling practices that bring them the deepest satisfaction, not whether they land a knockout or score a goal. Lipsyte's The Contender (1967) addresses the principle of hard, physical work as salvation for a young African American man named Alfred Brooks, who finds purpose in his boxing training. Lipsyte reexamines this theme in three sequels: The Brave (1991), The Chief (1993), and Warrior Angel (2003). Lipsyte utilizes his personal experiences as plot points for his books. His in-depth conversation with Cus D'Amato inspired The Contender, and his time spent on reservations as an investigative reporter influenced its follow-ups, which feature an American Indian protagonist.

His most autobiographical work is the "summer" trilogy—One Fat Summer (1977), Summer Rules (1981), and The Summerboy (1982)—which chronicles the adolescence of Bobby Marks. The first of the three is the most reflective of Lipsyte's teen years, when he was bullied and ridiculed. As a youth, Lipsyte was overweight. When he was fourteen, he lied about his age so he could obtain a job as a lawn-maintenance worker. During that summer, he labored relentlessly and lost roughly forty pounds. It was a major accomplishment and the pride he felt for losing the weight was significant. However, the shame he felt for having to lose that weight was equally intense. On his website, Lipsyte revealed: "I had wanted to write about that summer since I'd lived it. But I was afraid of writing about it truthfully—how I hated my body, was ashamed of myself for being different, in my case for being fat." He described his body at that time as "the prison of my fat." One Fat Summer ranks among one of the most frequently challenged novels by organizations seeking to ban books from school and library shelves. Critics object to the sexually tinged fantasies that the loner Bobby indulges in.

When Lipsyte was diagnosed with cancer for the second time, in 1991, he drew upon his experiences to write The Chemo Kid (1992). In this science-fiction novel, an ordinary boy, Fred Bauer, is diagnosed with cancer. He undergoes an experimental treatment to combat the disease and discovers he has superpowers from the injected hormones. Fred battles drug dealers and strives to save the environment.

A recipient of numerous citations and honors for his work in children's literature, Lipsyte received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2001 from the American Library Association.

Further Reading

  • Lipsyte, Robert. "Boys and Reading: Is There Any Hope?" The New York Times, 19 Aug. 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/books/review/boys-and-reading-is-there-any-hope.html. Accessed 11 Jan. 2017.
  • Scott, David. "Robert Lipsyte Named EPSN's Fifth Ombudsman." ESPN Front Row, Apr. 2013, www.espnfrontrow.com/2013/04/robert-lipsyte-named-espns-fifth-ombudsman. Accessed 11 Jan. 2017.

Bibliography

  • "Biography." Robert Lipsyte, www.robertlipsyte.com/bio.htm. Accessed 11 Jan. 2017.
  • Lipsyte, Robert. "An Interview with ESPN's New Ombudsman, Robert Lipsyte." Interview by Dave Zirin. The Nation, 24 Apr. 2013, www.thenation.com/article/interview-espns-new-ombudsman-robert-lipsyte. Accessed 11 Jan. 2017.
Next

Criticism