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. But, against his own good sense and despite his best efforts at self-sabotage, he shows up for the run. Accompanying them is Ali’s personal bodyguard Pat Patterson …’a Chicago cop no darker than Ali, with the solemn even stolid expression of a man who has gone through a number of doors in his life without the absolute certainty that he would walk out again. By day, he always carried a pistol; by night – what a pity not to remember if he strapped a holster over his running gear.’ Mailer sums up the whole story arc in half a page: ‘…two fighters would each receive five million dollars, while one thousand miles away on the edge of the world-famine Blacks would die of starvation.’ A Black Muslim revolutionary [Ali] ‘fighting a defender of the capitalist system’ [Foreman]. What Mailer is trying to capture is the magic that surrounds a big fight: the rituals, the superstitions, the whole game. We still see it today with the UFC. It’s the story which gets built around the fighters and their entourage and the varied characters which the fight attracts. The question then becomes: why do we need to create a narrative? Why can’t the actual fight speak for itself? Maybe because many times it doesn’t. But this time, as everyone knows, it did. Rumble in the Jungle. Finally, we come to the fight. Mailer offers a luxurious forty-page description, which I won’t paraphrase too much because there are so many brilliant metaphors and observations. But I will give you one example. It’s long, but worth it. Pay attention to how subtly Mailer ramps up the pace and type of words he is using – short, sharp, percussive - to match the relentless onslaught of Foreman: ‘They sparred inconclusively for the first half-minute. Then the barrage began. With Ali braced on the ropes, as far back on the ropes as a deep- sea fisherman is braced back in his chair when setting the hook on a big strike, so Ali got ready and Foreman came in to blast him out. A shelling reminiscent of artillery battles in World War I began…Foreman threw punches in barrages of four and six and eight and nine, heavy maniacal slamming punches, heavy as the boom of oaken doors, bombs to the body, bolts to the head, punching until he could not breathe…and come in again, bomb again, blast again, drive and stream and slam the torso in front of him, wreck him in the arms, break through those arms, get to his ribs, dig him out, put the dynamite in the earth, lift him, punch him up to heaven, take him out, stagger him – great earthmover he must have sobbed to himself, kill this mad and bouncing goat.’ Enough has been said on Ali. Deservedly so. But Foreman’s life is just as interesting: poor southern upbringing, Olympic gold medallist, Heavyweight World Champion, bankrupt, preacher, successful entrepreneur. I’ll give him the last word: “We fought in 1974 - that was a long time ago. After 1981, we became the best of friends. By 1984, we loved each other. I am not closer to anyone else in this life than I am to Muhammad Ali. Why? We were forged by that first fight in Zaire, and our lives are indelibly linked by memories and photographs, as young men and old men”. Further. “What's not realized about good novelists is that they're as competitive as good athletes. They study each other - where the other person is good and where the person is less good. Writers are like that but don't admit it.” - Norman Mailer. Norman Mailer (1923 – 2007) was an American novelist and journalist who became associated with the genre of creative nonfiction. Despite being a liberal political activist, he was infamous for his aggressive personality. He was married six times. "[his] relentless machismo seemed out of place in a man who was actually quite small – though perhaps that was where the aggression originated." - from Mailer’s obituary. When We Were Kings is the 1996 Oscar-winning documentary which documents the events surrounding the Rumble in the Jungle. Obviously, Ali is magnetic and worth a view just for him, but it also extensively features (an older) Mailer. The Fight (1975) by Norman Mailer: Feel the punch of a heavyweight. Mailer is no ‘bad joke’ – he writes with a reckless candour foreign to today’s nice guys. Norman Mailer. Photograph: Ken Regan/NMWC. In this newspaper Norman Mailer was recently written off as “a bad joke”. Mailer, with his oeuvre as big, brash and brilliant as the American century that birthed him! The goad cannot pass unchallenged, so here I am in Mailer’s corner, pouring water in his mouth and rubbing his shoulders till he gets back up for another round. There are two kinds of reader I can imagine loving The Fight as much as I do: those who have an interest in boxing, and everybody else. Mailer’s account of the 1974 Heavyweight Championship fight in Zaire between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman has all the dramatic tension of a novel even though we know how it’s going to end. Mailer is no disembodied observer: “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.” Mailer has been sunk in unfashion since a literary generation of American Nice Guys derided him and his peers as the Great American Narcissists. With writing this incandescent, though, one can wait in confidence for the decrees of public taste to veer back around. From the opening paragraph, Mailer’s pugilistic prose comes out swinging to mark the human glory of Muhammad Ali: “Women draw an audible breath. Men look down . They are reminded again of their lack of worth.” The stink of testosterone is high, with nary a female in sight as Mailer stakes out both camps in the weeks before the fight, drinking and bantering with Don King, Hunter Thompson, Joe Frazier. Mailer realises he is not there merely to cover a fight. With a reckless candour foreign to today’s eggshell-walking writers, he probes “his own outsized feelings of love and – could it be? – sheer hate for the existence of Black on earth”. The fight itself reads as a planet-quaking clash between two black gods. Little wonder Mailer has such sympathy for these titans: he fell on his ass a few times, but he only ever wrote like a heavyweight. The Fight by Norman Mailer book review. On the 26 March 1974 in Venezuela, George Foreman defended his heavyweight title against Ken Norton. Muhammad Ali sat ringside with commentator Bob Sheridan; even as a non-combatant, Ali dominated the event. Ali greater than the sport itself, given the role he played in reviving boxing. Nevertheless, through years of exile, after his refusal to fight in South-East Asia, Ali received little thanks; the boxing establishment froze him out. His own sense of justice always acute, as his response as a youth, living in Louisville, to the murder Emmett Till in Mississippi (1955) indicates. A name change and subsequent religious conversion followed, built on an outlook shaped by Marcus Garvey, a philosophical interest emanating from his father, Cassius, Sr. And it would be back in Africa, 40 years ago, that Ali would remedy a personal injustice with universal relevance. In discussion with Sheridan March 1974, Ali mentioned a provisional fight planned with Foreman; it would take place later that year, sponsored by the government of Zaire, for a substantial purse. Ali appeared pessimistic it would happen; he did not believe Foreman could defeat Norton. Ali`s predictions famously accurate but wrong this time, it was not Ken Norton`s night. The fight in Caracas lasted two minutes into the second round. Ali located next to a microphone is heard shouting instructions, and pleading with Norton to hit Foreman with “rights!” Norton in response to Ali`s exhortation throws a connecting right. Ali roars, “there you go Kenny!” an inadvertently ominous exaltation. But Ali saw something in that one- sided encounter that he could use in Zaire. Ali, the Professor of boxing, had formulated a strategy to defeat the younger, stronger and harder punching opponent. Ali adroitly belittled his own attributes in interview with Sheridan after Foreman`s display; in which he clinically highlighted the Champs strengths, an objective appraisal, in which Ali also logically identified why he would prevail in Zaire. The Rumble In the Jungle became a David v Goliath encounter, with Ali assuming the role of David to Foreman`s Goliath. But the Biblical David had far more advantages than disadvantages. The same true of Ali. David the expert marksman had his sling and stones, which he used to destructive effect, Ali had the loose ring ropes from which he precariously kept out of range and sprung stinging like a bee, with lighting hand speed and accuracy. True, Ali tried to use the ropes in a similar fashion against Joe Frazier in their first encounter but the tactic would be perfected in Zaire. Ali in an audacious and unorthodox approach would throw an abundance of right hand leads in Zaire at Foreman. In doing so he made George very angry but unlike Ken Norton, Ali survived and knocked George out. How he did so, is explored among other things by Norman Mailer in ` The Fight` . No mere account of a boxing match, just as Melville’s `Moby Dick`, is not simply a treatise on deep sea fishing. Mailer`s status as a writer clearly opened doors that would otherwise have been closed to a sports journalist. Mailer after all was the doyen of New Journalism; his early account of the 1960 Democratic convention became a template for this journalistic style/approach (there is even a cameo appearance by Hunter Thompson). Mailer`s standing as a writer bizarrely becomes a feature of the book, the theme highlighted as Mailer interacts with the various characters that inhabit the text. There is a good deal of Mailer evident, he references himself often, describing his various antics. The most precarious while imbued with booze, he climbs outside his apartment on a thin ledge. He also goes for a training run with Ali, a wasted aerobic endeavour, though it produces a brilliant piece of prose. Mailer`s ego legend; though it never outshines the protagonists (how could it?) and the access he gets assures that ` The Fight` is exciting, emotional and a humorous read. Mailer examines a breathtaking range of issues, not always linked to boxing. Unsurprisingly there is a discourse on race in the USA. Mailer returning to a theme he explored in 1957, ` The White Negro`, in which he romanticised the African-American experience. In `The Fight` there is an examination of the Black Power Movement, a disappointing development according to Mailer. In this text he moves away from the precepts of his 1957 thesis, though it was not always clear what Mailer was driving at. The same true when he links the theme to Father Tempels thesis Bantu Philosophy , connections also to Janheinz Jahn`s, `Muntu, the New African Culture. ` This area of `The Fight` perhaps indicative of Mailer`s early interest in Oswald Spengler. Mailer examines the situation in Kinshasa, Zaire providing insight into the Cult of President Mobutu Sese Seko “all powerful warrior”. This issue recently explored by Thomas Yocum, who highlighted developments in Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo) post, the Foreman v Ali encounter. Yocum describes the early policies of Mobutu, observations also found in ` The Fight`. Mailer highlights the arbitrary arrest of criminal suspects and subsequent executions in order to engender widespread fear. The book contextualises social, economic and political factors which act as the back drop to this boxing match, which was after all, designed to strengthen the Cult of Mobutu. ` The Fight` confronts the ethical issue of this multi-dollar sporting/media event taking place, a thousand miles from famine. Mailer is clearly an admirer of Ali (`The Prince of Heaven`). Though he does indulge in waspish commentary, when analysing Ali`s poetry (`prophetic boxing doggerel – the poem as worthless as the prediction was often exact`). A well executed and amusing critique, which is worth contrasting with the equally waspish George Plimpton (companion of Mailer in Africa and source), who makes emotional reference to Ali`s poetic prowess in the movie ` When We Were Kings` . Although Mailer concedes that Ali`s genius extended beyond the square ring, the Greatest he informs us, “could talk at the rate of 300 new words a minute.” The most eloquent commentary (high praise indeed) on Ali comes from an erudite Don King, not a man noted for left-wing leanings, in passing he told Mailer that he learnt much from reading Karl Marx. If Mailer was supporting Ali, he did not lack objectivity; he clearly thought Ali was going to lose. And the substantial portrayal of Foreman a sympathetic one, which highlights Foreman`s incredible power as a boxer, while encompassing his intelligence, humour and capacity for self deprecation. He is depicted as a boxer with maximum confidence (and force) but little arrogance. Foreman was injured while training, forcing a delay in the fight. His sparring, thus limited. Foreman famously did a good deal of training on the heavy bag, which Mailer describes in detail, “Foreman hit the heavy bag with the confidence of a man who can pick up a sledge hammer and knock down a tree.” Foreman indeed was a dangerous opponent (an understatement, 20 years later he would cure a bout of hiccups in any heavyweight fighter). But Ali`s `rope a dope` approach transformed him, as Mailer points out, into a reed caught by the wind, impossible to hit with a sledgehammer. George of course connected enough to easily wilt lesser men but Ali was the Greatest. As George discovered to his cost, Ali had undergone plenty of work on the heavy bag and didn’t come to dance in Zaire, as he had promised but to fight fire with fire. The best compliment one can give Mailer is to say the book does complete justice to the fight. His description of the bout beautifully outlined, especially his depiction of round five. Mailer and Plimpton were with Ali`s entourage in the dressing room prior to hostilities, a very pessimistic camp according to Mailer. Everyone sad and low, except Ali. There is an amazing account of the fighter rallying his followers for the battle ahead while falling out with Bundini over his dressing gown. Ali proving himself a master of psychology and the double bluff; during his interaction with Doc Broadus, a close associate of Foreman, in attendance at the Ali dressing room to observe proceedings. Prior to the fight Foreman`s camp joined together to pray. Apparently, one of George`s trainers, Archie Moore, (Emeritus Professor of Boxing) during this moment of contemplation, said a little prayer for Ali, Moore feared the Greatest might be killed by his man in the ring that night. Ali of course survived; in 8 rounds he experienced more life than your average mortal knows in an entire lifetime. Like Icarus he may have flown too near the sun but his flight enhanced the lives of millions and contributed to social change in the USA. Muhammad Ali the greatest exponent of the orthodox jab was not a man of the left, as Mailer points out Ali in 1974 was a “conservative” and no doubt remains so today. But regardless of political orientation, race or creed, Muhammad Ali is a hero to me and one whose feet were never made of Clay. #TBR20 No. 2: The Fight by Norman Mailer. So, what to make of Norman Mailer? I am mostly baffled. The Fight is the first Mailer book I’ve read, and as I’d two copies lying around, it was time I got round to it, particularly as I’ve always been a huge admirer of Muhammad Ali. And in some ways, The Fight is truly excellent, in others it is preposterous, and in another respect, really quite ugly. Let’s get the good stuff over with before I get too depressed with the dislikeable. The book is long form reportage on the classic fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire (now DR Congo), what has become known as the “Rumble in the Jungle”. Ali was the challenger, trying to reclaim the title stripped from him in 1967 when he refused the US Army draft to fight in Vietnam. Since his return to the ring in 1970 Ali had lost to both Joe Frazier and Ken Norton, and though he had avenged both defeats, he was very much the underdog. Foreman had come to dominate the heavyweight division, destroying both Norton and Frazier, and was renowned for his fearsome punching. There was genuine concern that Ali, seen as over the hill, could come to serious harm, yet he knocked Foreman out in eight rounds having soaked up tremendous punishment using his “rope-a-dope” strategy to wear Foreman out. Mailer on boxing is excellent, he knows his stuff and how to communicate it. The section on the fight is a bravura display of sports writing, I’ve watched that bout several times and yet felt that I learnt much more from Mailer’s account. Here, I like his audacity in combining a description of the sense of time for boxers with a justification for the length of his description of the fight. It seems like eight rounds have passed yet we only finished two. Is it because we are trying to watch with the fighters’ sense of time? Before fatigue brings boxers to the boiler rooms of the damned, they live at a height of consciousness and with a sense of detail they encounter nowhere else. In no other place is their intelligence so full, nor their sense of time able to contain so much of itself as in the long internal effort of the ring. Thirty minutes go by like three hours. Let us undertake the chance, then, that our description of the fight may be longer to read than the fight itself. We can assure ourselves: It was even longer for the fighters. This authorial intrusion, however, leads to part of the problem with the book: it’s Mailer himself. He is writing about two hugely famous boxers in Foreman and Ali, with egos to match their heavyweight status, and beside them the book is populated with many more characters and egos; from Ali’s camp, there are Bundini Brown and Angelo Dundee, in Foreman’s, legendary figures like Archie Moore and Sandy Saddler, there is the bombastic and it seems ever-present boxing promoter Don King, the dictator of Zaire, Mobutu, plus appearances from other writers such as George Plimpton and Hunter S Thompson. Yet, Mailer inserts himself, Norman, front and centre into the narrative. That might just about be excusable if he had an interesting role to play, but he doesn’t, so what we get is Norman’s ridiculous childish exploits writ large in the midst of one of boxing’s most famous episodes. For example, Norman realises that the balcony of his hotel has no railing preventing him from falling off, but that there is a thin wall preventing access to the balcony of the adjacent room. Norman believes that if he could swing from one balcony to the other successfully, this would somehow add to the “magical equation” that will help Ali to win. It is preposterous and frankly embarrassing. When later he writes “Norman has few vanities left”, I laughed out loud. Really actually literally. The most uncomfortable aspect of the book is Mailer’s attitude towards black people and culture, the otherness with which he seems to perceive “Blackness” is really quite ugly, and I can’t just put it down to “the times he lived in”. This was the mid-seventies, Mailer had founded the Village Voice magazine, issues around race cannot have been unfamiliar to him, yet his attitude comes across as a strange hybrid of fascination and distaste. He seems to assume that being black is a homogeneous condition, in a way that would never apply to being white. This leaves him blind to some of the really interesting wider issues around the fight. An African country under dictatorship is hosting one of the biggest sporting events in history, why? International prestige? Mailer doesn’t really address this. To distract the populace from domestic issues? The fact of it being a dictatorship poses questions about why this is so, is the country inherently unstable? Many African states were arbitrarily created by departing colonialists and contain multiple ethnic groupings, a heterogeneity Mailer misses entirely. The fact that this fight is in Africa between two African Americans could raise lots of questions about the African diaspora, Mailer doesn’t seem to notice, he’s too busy getting drunk and swinging between balconies. I think this illustrates Mailer’s strange attitude to race, it’s a description of trainer Dick Sadler massaging Foreman’s body between rounds: Sadler’s touch has all the wisdom of thirty-five years of Black fingers elucidating comforts for Black flesh, sensual are his fingers as he plucks and shapes and shakes and balms, his silver bracelet shining on his Black wrist. “Black” is mentioned three times (and yes, the initial capital each time is Mailer’s), yet is entirely unnecessary, the interest in the massage lies in Sadler’s knowledge of boxing’s impact on the body and his skill in soothing and recuperating his man. That Sadler and Foreman are black is irrelevant to this. Mailer’s focus on the sensuality of the moment and the jarring repetition of “Black” highlights his attraction and repulsion. Aside from that there are some notable gaps in his account. The fight was delayed for several weeks because Foreman sustained a cut eye in training, there is speculation that the two fighters were prevented from leaving Zaire during the delay in case they didn’t come back. Mailer vaguely alludes to this in passing but it isn’t addressed properly – probably because he couldn’t wait to get back to America, and was well away from it all. So, where to go from here? Do I read any more Mailer, is it worth going any further? The Executioner’s Song maybe? At the time of Gary Gilmore’s execution, the most intimidating boy in my primary school class was also called Gary Gilmore, so I’ve always been intrigued by that story. What do you think, would you recommend more Mailer, or should I step away now?