Review of "The Fight"

Fifty years can be a very short jump in time…

As I mentioned in a previous piece, Jake Paul just defeated Mike Tyson in a match where a much older fighter was expected to destroy a much younger and less experienced up and comer (Paul is 27; Tyson, 58). All the material and reviews I read before the fight supported that argument. I was almost tempted to put money down on it…but I did not. And I did not watch the fight. A part of me knew that all the experts and all the prognosticators were looking at the fight with the wrong ideas in mind. Many of them wanted a name they knew to take back what was once his; they wanted history to keep rhyming.

And this is why I was very intrigued when I finally found a used copy of “The Fight” this past month. This is the one Norman Mailer book that I felt unembarrassed to read in public, to the point where I had a very interesting conversation with a fellow passenger who could not stop staring at me on my commute. I was on my way to work when I noticed two out-of-towners staring at the cover. One of them said something that intrigued me after we began to speak about what I was reading:

“I am curious about it... And I don’t even read!”

I took his confession on the metro to heart as I explained why I loved the book, how it tied into the film based on the fight, “When We Were Kings,” and how I had always wanted to read it.

But his line stood with me.

Who would actually read this book?

Mailer flew out to Kishasa, Zaire, in 1974 to watch the world heavyweight match between the champion George Foreman and the former champion Muhammed Ali. This was the notorious “Rumble in the Jungle,” and the world was watching. Zaire had decided to put forward the millions of dollars promised to both fighters in order to put themselves on the metaphorical map. President Sese Mobutu was taking a gamble on the event, and they were all willing to roll the dice on what this would mean to Africans and the diaspora of Blacks who would see this as two men returning home to the motherland. At least, this is what Mailer’s theory is as he tries to understand the motives of the fighters and the government.

And this is a theoretical book. You often get the feeling that Mailer did enjoy the fight, but he could not resist adding all of his obsessions into the discussion. And you should know a little about what the man heading to Africa had been up to before he wrote this tome: published his first critical hit, The Naked and the Dead, at 25; stabbed his second wife, Adele Morales, almost taking her life (she forgave him); wrote a notorious essay called The White Negro (all about hipsterdom and its links to the black experience in America); helped found The Village Voice; won the Pulitzer Prize – his first one – for Armies of the Night (based on his participation on an anti-Vietnam War rally at the Pentagon); ran for mayor of New York City (he got 6% of the vote); head butted Gore Vidal backstage at the Dick Cavett Show; made an ass of himself protesting against the feminist movement (see link with Germaine Greer here); made a movie called Maidstone (no script was provided, but he did get actors to participate, including Rip Torn, who got into a serious fight with the writer-director-provocateur)…and then, to Africa.

It is hard for me to find my own focus as I write this, at least if I want to keep this to a respectable length that will not have you counting the number of minutes required to finish my review. The type of writing that Mailer engages in does not allow a reader to find their bearings. You do get quotes about the fighters that are dead on and work well at giving a picture of what these men could achieve both in and out of the ring:

The fight would then be a religious war. That was to Ali's advantage... The paradox, however, on meeting the Champion was that Foreman seemed more black...Foreman could be mistaken for African long before Ali.

And on and on it goes. This is deep and it does give you some picture of what these fighters represent...to Norman. But then, you often get phrases and asides like this:

Having been overpowered in his youth by the works of Karl Marx and Oswald Spengler, Norman used to love Germanic formulation. Years ago, he could have written, 'There are profound historic relations between the relinquishment of the center by Nimzovitch and Réti (with their subsequent inspiration upon the schools of Hypermodern and Dynamic chess)...'

Great, but what about the fight, Norman (no links provided by your faithful reader or writer here)?

And this displays another trait that may put off any devoted reader of boxing literature: he engages in illeism, meaning that he refers to himself in the third person. Now, this might have been the tone of the times. Hunter S. Thompson was also at the fight and perhaps Mailer wanted to show the gonzo king what he could do. But it becomes awkward and irritating to have to pull the lines apart and about and decide whether or not you are learning about the sweet science of boxing and the history of Zaire and colonialism, or if you are being taken for an uncomfortable ride into the mind of the author. Why not just let the fight be told as a fight?

Well, that was not his plan, and he knew that this was going to be something special. Ali was older and more experienced, but Foreman had the benefits of youth and recent wins against fighters – Ken Norton and Joe Frazier – that Ali could not best. And what happened next could not have been predicted by any of the pundits…except perhaps the football star Jim Brown, who was a friend of Ali and had called it early on for Foreman, but when he stood beside the ring and saw how the fight was progressing, gave it to the Louisville Lip.

Well, we all know the outcome of the Rumble in the Jungle, and you may enjoy Mailer’s tangents and ultraintellectualized takes on the sweet science. You may even forgive him for some of his rather condescending takes on his relationship to Black people in America and Africa. I can, and I appreciate his unique sensitivity on what boxing requires and how the minds of fighters work. This is an unorthodox book by a very unorthodox “pampered superbrat” (Martin Amis’ phrase of praise for the writer) author who is both missed and mythologized in the American literary world.

Do you want to take a ride into the mind of this icon?

Get in the ring…

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Thank you for reading!

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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