The Fight: Norman Mailer (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Zaire in 1974, a nation filled with excitement and anticipation as it prepares to host the historic fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, is vividly described in Norman Mailer’s “The Fight” opening. Mailer introduces the story by emphasizing the cultural significance and widespread media coverage this battle attracted.

He has subsequently published both fiction and non-fiction and his books include Barbary Shore (1951), Advertisements for Myself (1959), The Presidential Papers (1963), An American Dream (1964), Armies of the Night (1968), Ancient Evenings (1983), and Tough Guys Don't Dance (1983). Does anybody hear me?" cried Ali. "Are we going to the dance?" If at all possible, it is probably most exciting to read this book without knowing the outcome of the fight. I thought I probably knew at first, but was then pleased to realize that I had been confusing The Rumble in the Jungle with The Thrilla' in Manila, in which Ali fought Joe Frazier, and that I did not know the outcome after all. The Referee...had been waiting. George had time to reach his corner, shuffle his feet, huddle with the trust, get the soles of his shoes in resin, and the fighters were meeting in the center of the ring to get instructions. It was the time for each man to extort a measure of fear from the other...Foreman...had done it to Frazier and then to Norton. A big look, heavy as death, oppressive as the closing of the door of one's tomb. Sì, forse l'Alì pubblico era uno spaccone, ma quella era la sua missione: ergersi a simbolo invincibile per dare forza e speranza alla sua gente. The closer a heavyweight comes to the championship, the more natural it is for him to be a little bit insane, secretly insane, for the heavyweight champion of the world is either the toughest man in the world or he is not, but there is a real possibility he is. It is like being the big toe of God. You have nothing to measure yourself by. stars. The thing about Norman Mailer, in my opinion, is that he sometimes thinks that he is to writing as what Muhammad Ali is to boxing and that he can do no wrong. By being the greatest writer of all time he makes reading a simple thing like a book about a very famous boxing match a more difficult read than it needs to be.We weten immers steeds dat dat grote gevecht eraan zit te komen – en zelfs als je weet hoe het afloopt, of als je zoals ik de prachtdocumentaire When We Were Kings (1996) over ditzelfde gevecht hebt gezien, zijn die gevechtsscènes heel sterk geschreven. Tientallen bladzijden lang gaat Mailer in op het geknok, hij beschrijft elke vuistslag, ieder samentrekking van Foremans of Ali’s spieren, en vooral beschrijft hij hoezeer boksen ook een mentale sport is. Ali die zowel de underdog als branieschoppende uitdager is; Foreman de grote, schijnbaar onverslaanbare favoriet. En hun onderlinge rolverdeling en hiërarchie, die zelfs tijdens het gevecht steeds verspringt. I wrote Mailer one last time. I’ve got to know, I said, what did you reply to Liston when he said that? It's not until the night of the three month-delayed fight and the twelfth chapter of the book that 'the Fight' really starts living up to its billing. Mailer's account of Ali's sombre dressing room - Bundini like a sulky child because Ali has rejected his choice of robe, Angelo Dundee scoring the soles of Ali's new boots with scissors to roughen them up and give him more of a grip on the canvas - is fascinating. And (courtesy of Plimpton) there's a glimpse into Foreman's preparations, his usual prayer ritual unchanged only because at least some members of team confess to praying not so much for Foreman winning as Ali leaving the ring still alive. Liebling’s story triggered a memory. My father kept scrapbooks of newspaper stories on sporting events, and I recalled a piece he had saved from the September 17, 1962, edition of the New York Post by a writer named Leonard Shecter headlined “The Prizefighter and the Author.” While Foreman (still many years away from being the cuddly, grandfatherly grill shill of popular imagination) quietly went about his training and media work, a hard, repetitive, punishment of heavy bags and quietly thoughtful press conferences, Ali treated his own obligations as one and the same thing, yelling and lecturing and haranguing the media and occasionally indulging in some gentle sparring in the ring.

The Fight, then, seemed to me an opportunity to learn more about this most revered of boxers. In the book, novelist-cum-journalist Norman Mailer recounts his experience of covering Ali’s most legendary bout: The Rumble in the Jungle. Oft described as one of the greatest sporting events of the twentieth century, this was the world heavyweight championship fight between Ali and George Foreman that took place in Kinshasa in 1974. The evening before the fight Mailer has a beer with George Plimpton, who covers the fight for Sports Illustrated before attending the press meeting of Foreman at the Hotel Memling. Then Plimpton and he set out for Ali's place to join his retinue. At 2 AM, they all leave for the stadium where the fight is scheduled to start two hours later. In Ali's dressing room, Mailer observes the mood. NOW, OUR MAN of wisdom had a vice. He wrote about himself. Not only would he describe the events he saw, but his own small effect on events. This irritated critics. They spoke of ego trips and the unattractive dimensions of his narcissism. Such criticism did not hurt too much. He had already had a love affair with himself, and it used up a good deal of love. He was no longer so pleased with his presence. His daily reactions bored him. They were becoming like everyone else’s. His mind, he noticed, was beginning to spin its wheels, sometimes seeming to repeat itself for the sheer slavishness of supporting mediocre habits. If he was now wondering what name he ought to use for his piece about the fight, it was out of no excess of literary ego. More, indeed, from concern for the reader’s attention. It would hardly be congenial to follow a long piece of prose if the narrator appeared only as an abstraction: The Writer, The Traveler, The Interviewer. That is unhappy in much the way one would not wish to live with a woman for years and think of her as The Wife. Norman Mailer was born in New Jersey in January 1923 and after graduating from Harvard, served in the US army from 1944-1946. His first novel, The Naked and the Dead, was published to immediate critical acclaim in 1948 - and has been hailed as 'the best war novel to emerge from the United States' (Anthony Burgess). Though he could never devote much time to the sport, Mailer loved baseball. But despite numerous references to the game in his work, he never wrote a long baseball piece. "You write like a dull whore with an honest streak, but if you ain’t afraid of a grand slam, come around when you get to New York, and we’ll have a drink or two.”Norman Mailer, “The Millionaire,” The Fight: Norman Mailer, by Norman Mailer, Vintage International, 1997, p.35-44 The book has an amazing cast of larger than life characters - Mohammed Ali, George Foreman, Hunter S Thompson, George Plimpton, Mobutu and Don King. Il secondo punto riguarda proprio il carisma di Alì, quasi soverchiante se paragonato a quello del riservato Foreman: Alì è stato in grado di usare la sua fama per ergersi a simbolo della lotta di classe, trasformando l'evento sportivo in un grande momento di aggregazio Anything else I write here will only recapitulate my praise for Mailer’s handling of the eponymous subject. Doubtless, too, those who’ve read Mailer—or who’ve merely formed unshakable judgments on the writing based on the public man of dubious character (yes, that’s settled)—already have their minds made up, rendering attempts at persuasion futile. No boxer fired up Mailer’s imagination like Ali did. “He is,” Mailer wrote in King of the Hill, “America’s Greatest Ego”—which might well have been true if not for Mailer himself. To Mailer, Ali was “the swiftest embodiment of human intelligence we have had yet, he is the very spirit of the 20th century.”And, writing about Ali in The Fight, Mailer proclaimed that “The World’s Greatest Athlete is in danger of being our most beautiful man.”

Rip Torn, who died Tuesday at the age of 88, will be remembered for his powerhouse roles in comedies like The Larry Sanders Show and Dodgeball. His hulking presence on screen was utilized by comedians for decades, providing a bellowing, albeit over-confident foil to neurotic comedy archetypes like the titular Sanders character in Garry Shandling's beloved HBO show. But before Torn became a comedy super-weapon, he found his place in the '70s American film movement as a strapping leading man in movies like The Man Who Fell to Earth, Payday, and the experimental Norman Mailer project, Maidstone.

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A strange mix of verbose waffle and taut, hard-hitting observation, The Fight does justice to the boxing match it chronicles while also diminishing itself. Mailer cannot take his own advice, not only in the 'God standing next to his sons' line, but in the principles of fighting. Mailer, it seems, sees writing as pugilism, yet writes that boxers and champions are liars. They have to be, because "once you knew what they thought, you could hit them" (pg. 43). In his machismo and his desire to surpass Hemingway, Mailer showed his opening, and because of his bluster and waffle you don't mind hitting him there and telling him he's not God after all. The Fight is a good book, but it could have been a great one. Mailer built Ali vs Foreman up into the mythology he wanted it to be; it's a good mythology, but it leaves the reader feeling as though there's something remaining, something that a less self-indulgent writer might have had the wherewithal to claim. The book is as much on the Foreman-Ali fight as it is on race relations, Norman Mailer himself and the press. If you like Muhammad Ali, are interested in his relation with both the press and his entourage, and are keen to read a high paced eye-witness report to Mobutu's Kinshasa, this is the book for you. Norman Mailer, “The Millionaire,” The Fight: Norman Mailer, by Norman Mailer, Vintage International, 1997, 43 Released in 1975, The Fight follows the legendary fight between Muhammed Ali and George Foreman – two names that are synonymous with boxing, even today. Set in the country of Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo), Norman Mailer turns the upcoming boxing match into a mystical dream – complete with little known religions (Mobutism), a dark and seamy country and two of the most famous and well-paid athletes in the world. Norman Mailer, “King of the Flunkies,” The Fight: Norman Mailer, by Norman Mailer, Vintage International, 1997, 130

But this isn't merely a sports book, I was quite surprised by Mailer's political commentary and astute observations about the state of Zaire. One might say that this book feels like a companion piece to Conrad's original novel about the heart of darkness, and there is a sense that nothing has changed since the days of King Leopold II and the trauma that came with that. It almost seems as if the Zairians traded one dictator for another, except one that doesn't maim them for his own enrichment. Sometimes, though, even champs get treated like bums. In 1982, Mailer told me how it happened to him. On arriving in Kinshasa and meeting the two fighters, the author sees Foreman as a formidable threat to Muhammad Ali, believing Muhammad could be seriously injured. He sees Muhammad training and becomes convinced that Muhammad is not at his best and unlikely to win the fight. Muhammad Ali. Of course I had heard of him before I read this book – almost everyone with even the slightest interest in sport has. A legendary figure who transcended boxing, and known simply as ‘The Greatest’. What I didn’t quite understand, however, was why he was this celebrated. 56 wins and 5 losses is pretty good, but by no means the best, and although I had heard the famous sound bites he produced, what did a bit of extra charisma do to elevate him above the outstanding fighters in the sport?The prose is clean and laconic, at once it makes you think of Hemingway and then Conrad's Heart of Darkness, considering its setting. Mailer isn't very subtle about his influences since he mentions both Conrad's masterpiece and Hemingway in the book, and he shares Hemingway's love for machismo. The book moves along nicely because of Mailer's storytelling gift, and his ability to immerse you into the atmosphere of Zaire. Mailer writes the fight itself very well; in these chapters he provides a masterclass in sportswriting. But the vast majority of the book is concerned with the build-up to the fight; Mailer builds the tension well enough, but his attempts to get into the two different personalities of Ali and Foreman skew towards baseless mythologising. The Fight is a much better read when Mailer delivers hints of the humanity hidden under the armour of the great fighting personalities: Foreman's monomania and silence, for example, or the slight whispers of doubt when Ali sees just how much punishment Foreman can put into a heavy bag in training. Mailer loved football, too, and let it slip on several occasions that he had played on the intramural team at Harvard. Another of Mailer’s favorite sports was bullfighting, though he never really developed his own style when writing about it. It’s hard not to imagine that he took up with it in the hopes that Hemingway would see what he had written and send him a fan letter.