Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} the Fight by Norman Mailer the Fight by Norman Mailer

Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Fight by Norman Mailer The Fight by Norman Mailer. By: Stephanie Kent. In The Fight, we follow Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Norman Mailer during the suspenseful weeks leading up to 1974’s “Rumble in the Jungle” matchup between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Even the most casual of fight fans are familiar with the historic bout, but Mailer unveils a behind-the-scenes story that’ll have readers convinced the fight could go either way by the time the heavyweights step into the ring. The Fight begins with an ode-like chapter on Muhammad Ali, and what it’s like to behold him in person as he trains. From the start, the book paints a picture of a frustrated Ali, bored with training, lacking his usual luster. Held up beside 25-year-old champion George Foreman’s camp, the Louisville Lip immediately assumes the role of underdog in this telling. Mailer writes about himself as a central figure in The Fight. The character Norman is respected by both fighters; by Ali who fancies himself a poet, and Foreman, who’s rumored to be working on a debut book himself. As a member of the press corps, he gains incredible access to the athletes. In one epic chapter, Mailer joins Ali for a run, surprised at the easy pace and short length of the roadwork (the ageing, hungover Mailer even manages to keep up for the first half!). Mailer uses this insider access to look at the fighters — their sparring sessions, their apparent strategies, even their confidence levels — side by side. All signs point to defeat for Ali. The play-by-play of the fight is the most exciting chapter in the book. After a hundred pages detailing sparring, mindset, and training regimens, Mailer watches in awe Ali’s audacity to throw lead right hands in the early rounds. He marvels at the rope-a-dope, and shares the crowd’s mania when Foreman hits the canvas in the eighth round. These pages are some of the best boxing writing in history. Reading The Fight in 2019 (which was first published in 1975) is both joyful and challenging. In our era of too many belts, professional boxing is reckoning with itself; it’s thrilling to read of a time when the whole world would stop to watch a boxing match. On the contrary, much of the prose feels dated in 2019. It’s impossible to write of 1970’s Kinasha an the fight itself without writing of race, but Mailer writes it in big, broad strokes that resonate naive at best and offensive at worst in the current social climate. Most who pick up The Fight already know how that it ends with a victorious Muhammad Ali. The gain in reading it in the twenty-first century doesn’t come from the suspenseful telling, or the lesser-known encounters Norman Mailer had during his time in Zaire. The Rumble in the Jungle had all the makings of an incredible tale: a fallen hero, over-the-top sidekicks, adoring fans with a catchy war cry (Ali, bomaye!). As such, it’s worthwhile to revisit this myth-like boxing story, an enduring one that’s thrilling to consume forty years later and paints a picture of what boxing might once again become. THE FIGHT by Norman Mailer (1975) The Fight is acclaimed American journalist Norman Mailer’s account of the 1974 heavyweight boxing championship between then champion George Foreman, and former champion Muhammad Ali, which became infamous as ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’. It is so many tales in one. Naturally the focus is on the fighters, their training, the psychological warfare they employ, and of course, the fight itself. But there are other subplots: racism and redemption, colonialism and post-colonialism, nationalism, and perhaps above all, the craft of journalism. The story begins in Zaire, Africa, with both fighters already in camp. Mailer begins with a portrait of Ali: ‘There is always a shock in seeing him again. Not live as in television but standing before you, looking his best…Women draw an audible breath. Men look down. They are reminded again of their lack of worth.’ We soon get a glimpse of Mailer’s poetic insights. Here he is on Ali’s sparring partner, Jimmy Ellis: ‘Other champions picked sparring partners who could imitate the style of their next opponent…Ali did this also, but reversed the order. For his second fight with Sonny Liston, his favourite had been Jimmy Ellis, an intricate artist who had nothing in common with Sonny. As boxers, Ellis and Liston had such different moves one could not pass a bowl of soup to the other without spilling it.’ Ali is told that Foreman is the favourite: “They think he’s going to beat me?” Ali cried aloud… “Foreman’s nothing but a hard-push puncher”…Now Ali stood up and threw round air- pushing punches at the air. “You think that’s going to bother me?” he asked, throwing straight lefts and rights at the interviewer that filled the retina two inches short…The funk of terror was being compressed into psychic bricks. What a wall of ego Ali’s will had erected over the years.’ And that’s another curiosity of this book: Mailer refers to himself throughout in the third person. Here he is (referring to himself) finding his story: ‘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.’ There is perhaps something unsettling about a privileged white man writing about two black fighters, both from impoverished backgrounds, and fighting in an impoverished country. Mailer questions his own sincerity: ‘But his love affair with the black soul, a sentimental orgy at its worst, had been given a drubbing through the seasons of Black Power. He no longer knew whether he loved Blacks or secretly disliked them, which had to be the dirtiest secret in his American life.’ He refers to this latent racism as his ‘illness’, and as medicine, undertakes an intensive study of African philosophy. The book is as much about Mailer rediscovering and reaffirming, through the fighters, his admiration for black people. ‘For heavyweight boxing was almost all black…So boxing had become another key to revelations of Black, one more key to black emotion, black psychology, black love…Of course, to try to learn from boxers was a quintessentially comic quest. Boxers were liars. Champions were great liars. They had to be. Once you knew what they thought, you could hit them. So their personalities became masters of concealment.’ Mailer then turns his attention to Foreman: ‘He did not look like a man so much as a lion standing just as erectly as a man.’ ‘Other champions had a presence larger than themselves. They offered charisma. Foreman had silence. It vibrated about him in silence…His violence was in the halo of his serenity…One did not allow violence to dissipate; one stored it. Serenity was the vessel where violence could be stored.’ Mailer gives wonderful, pages-long descriptions of Foreman sparring and hitting the heavy bag: ‘These were no ordinary swings…a hundred punches in a row without diminishing his power – he would throw five or six hundred punches in this session, and they were probably the heaviest cumulative series of punches any boxing writer had seen…The bag developed a hollow as deep as his head.’ Here is a clip of Foreman hitting the heavy bag: ‘…the rich even luxuriant power of Foreman’s fist. He did not just hit hard, he hit in such a way that the nucleus of his opponent’s will was reached. Fission began. Consciousness exploded. The head smote the spine with a lightning bolt and the legs came apart like falling walls.’ Wow! - Foreman’s power as elemental, nuclear, unstoppable. At a press conference, Foreman is asked whether he likes being the champ: “I think about it and I thank God, and I thank George Foreman for having true endurance.” The inevitable schizophrenia of great athletes was in his voice. Like artists, it is hard for them not to see the finished professional as a separate creature from the child that created him. The child (now grown up) still accompanies the great athlete and is wholly in love with him, and immature love, be it said.’ What a great insight: the deep-down child in awe of what he has become. Remember that next time an athlete (or in this case, the very writer!) refers to themselves in the third person. Compare Foreman’s subdued press conferences to Ali’s: ‘The ring apron in Nsele was six feet above the floor…Ali sat on the apron, his legs dangling, and Bundini stood in front. It looked like Ali was sitting on his shoulders…While he spoke, Ali put his hands on Bundini’s head, as if a crystal ball (a black crystal ball!) were in his palms; each time he would pat Bundini’s bald spot for emphasis, Bundini would glare at the reporters like a witch doctor in stocks.’ Mailer decides to accompany Ali on one of his 3 A.M. runs. In complete contrast to Ali, Mailer spends the night before eating and drinking and gambling.

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