From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Pugil
This article covers both the collected version in Pastoral Scanlines and the standalone web edition. The web edition features alternate character names.
Pugil is a prose work by C. W. Smith first collected in the 2020–2025 omnibus Pastoral Scanlines. A standalone digital edition was later released with substantially revised character names.
Narrative
In the Pastoral Scanlines edition, the story follows Leif, a baker and prizefighter, and Katita, a sleepless writer. The narrative unfolds across three principal locations: a bakery, a two-on-one combat sequence, and the public baths, where the alarm-clock baptism motif emerges.
Versions
The standalone web edition renames both protagonists: Leif becomes Max, and Katita becomes Adria. [citation needed] The textual divergence exemplifies a broader pattern in C. W. Smith's oeuvre: Leif and Katita recur across his works in transformed states, sometimes renamed, always recognisable through profession, sensory signature, and spatial relationship.
Connection to the novel
Pugil does not adapt the novel, but extends its central preoccupations: surgery as transformative intervention, isolation and intimacy, and analogy as the structure of thought. The prizefighter and insomniac enact a microcosm of the recursive devotion that characterises Leif and Katita as "instruments of return" across Smith's wider oeuvre.