Life often seems to be little more than a droning continuum irregularly interrupted by moments of intense feeling, excitement, and insight. In Cut Up on Copacabana, three interlocking sets of texts by professional boxer and professor of French literature David Scott ("Travel Notes," "Boxing Rings," and "Schoolboy Rites of Passage") explore such singular moments. Whether he is examining Mt. Fuji in the footsteps of Hokusai, reflecting on the "firsts" of childhood, or meditating on the meaning of the violence and rigorous discipline of boxing, Scott writes with extraordinary verve and candor.

What's the connection between the hands of Michelangelo's David and the leaning Tower of Pisa? - a flashflood in a Thai regional airport and the death of a fish in a road accident? - a scar on the shoulder and the beach at Copacabana? David Scott's stories explore such unexpected links, providing, like Hokusai, 36 ways in all of encountering - and accounting for - strange experiences - in travel, boxing and boyhood.