It was first published in the winter of 1928[1] by Pascal Covici, Inc., after the success of March's first poem The Wild Party (1926) which became a succès de scandale after it was banned in Boston for lewdness.
"Chapin's portrait shows a stolid black figure sitting in his corner between rounds and staring meaninglessly into the ring, eyebrows drawn down low on a much-pummelled face, boxing gloves reposing gently on his knees.
Meanwhile, his middle-aged white handler leans back on the ropes in a carefree, hard-to-read posture is he gesturing to some pal in the crowd?
We first encounter fighter-managers Cohn and Ed MacPhail in Herman Brecht's bar, where they are due to meet Tony Morelli.
This edition also featured an introduction by the American poet and critic Louis Untermeyer and black-and-white illustrations by the artist Paul Busch.
I was appalled by this accusation, and it rankled – the more so since I had always regarded anti-Semitism as a prejudice espoused by morons and illiterates; a viewpoint so unreasonable that no educated or right-thinking person could entertain it.
The truth is, my own attitudes have changed with the times, just as everyone else's have, and today I find the Jewish character I created forty years ago distasteful too.
[10] In his memoir he recalls: ‘I was really disgusted to find that the hero of the picture was no longer a Negro fighter: they had turned him into a white man!
Ah, Hollywood… !’[11] A new edition of The Set-Up was published by Korero Press in 2022, with an introduction by Masha Thorpe and illustrations by Erik Kriek.