The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer's The Fight: Hemingway, Bullfighting, and the Lovely Metaphysics of Boxing: Difference between revisions
TWietstruk (talk | contribs) m inserted first citations area |
TWietstruk (talk | contribs) m added additional information about author under byline |
||
| Line 2: | Line 2: | ||
{{MR04}} | {{MR04}} | ||
{{Working}} <!-- EDIT BELOW THIS LINE --> | {{Working}} <!-- EDIT BELOW THIS LINE --> | ||
{{byline|last=Cirino|first=Mark}} | {{byline|last=Cirino|first=Mark|Mark Cirino is an author and academic. He teaches American literature at the University of Evansville.}} | ||
{{dc|dc=A|LTHOUGH NORMAN MAILER’ S THE FIGHT IS OSTENSIBLY REPORTAGE}} about the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman championship heavyweight boxing match in Zaire on 30 October 1974, we learn more about Mailer and his aesthetic and artistic values than we do about either fighter. We also learn far more than Mailer’s thoughts on boxing; we glean a broader metaphysical and philosophic notion of action and danger, and the writer’s own role in recording it in prose. One of Mailer’s methods for capturing his Zaire experience is to employ Ernest Hemingway as a ghostly father figure, a ''doppelgänger'', both an inspiration and a nagging reminder of his own inadequacies. Hemingway, whose suicide was thirteen years before the fight, is still active in Mailer’s text, who was enjoying a consciously Hemingwayesque project in Africa. | {{dc|dc=A|LTHOUGH NORMAN MAILER’ S THE FIGHT IS OSTENSIBLY REPORTAGE}} about the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman championship heavyweight boxing match in Zaire on 30 October 1974, we learn more about Mailer and his aesthetic and artistic values than we do about either fighter. We also learn far more than Mailer’s thoughts on boxing; we glean a broader metaphysical and philosophic notion of action and danger, and the writer’s own role in recording it in prose. One of Mailer’s methods for capturing his Zaire experience is to employ Ernest Hemingway as a ghostly father figure, a ''doppelgänger'', both an inspiration and a nagging reminder of his own inadequacies. Hemingway, whose suicide was thirteen years before the fight, is still active in Mailer’s text, who was enjoying a consciously Hemingwayesque project in Africa. | ||