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The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/He Was a Fighter: Boxing in Norman Mailer’s Life and Work: Difference between revisions
The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/He Was a Fighter: Boxing in Norman Mailer’s Life and Work (view source)
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{{Byline|last=Leeds|first=Barry H.|abstract=Boxing has provided a significant moral paradigm throughout much of Norman {{NM}}’s life and work. Mailer’s significant writing about boxing begins with ''[[The Presidential Papers]]'' in the long and riveting essay entitled “Death,” originally titled “Ten Thousand Words a Minute,” one of his “Big Bite” columns for ''Esquire''. Not only does this piece prefigure and announce the new mode of Mailer’s nonfiction writing in the late 1960s and 1970s, notably ''[[The Armies of the Night]]'', it is the key to his fascination with boxing.|note=This essay consists largely of previously published material with substantial additions and emendations. |url=https://prmlr.us/ | {{Byline|last=Leeds|first=Barry H.|abstract=Boxing has provided a significant moral paradigm throughout much of Norman {{NM}}’s life and work. Mailer’s significant writing about boxing begins with ''[[The Presidential Papers]]'' in the long and riveting essay entitled “Death,” originally titled “Ten Thousand Words a Minute,” one of his “Big Bite” columns for ''Esquire''. Not only does this piece prefigure and announce the new mode of Mailer’s nonfiction writing in the late 1960s and 1970s, notably ''[[The Armies of the Night]]'', it is the key to his fascination with boxing.|note=This essay consists largely of previously published material with substantial additions and emendations. |url=https://prmlr.us/mr02lee}} | ||
{{dc|dc=B|oxing has provided a significant moral paradigm}} throughout much of Norman Mailer’s life and work. In his seminal essay entitled “Death” in ''The Presidential Papers'' (1963), Mailer uses the first [[w:Sonny Liston|Sonny Liston]]/[[w:Floyd Patterson|Floyd Patterson]] championship bout as a point of departure from which to develop a profound series of perceptions about the American national temperament, particularly that of blacks. In ''[[King of the Hill]]'' (1971) and more strikingly in ''[[The Fight]]'' (1975) he deals nominally with a specific championship bout, but goes beyond journalism to find certain normative precepts in the sport. But there is another level on which boxing informs and conditions Mailer’s vision: In his fiction, most notably ''[[An American Dream]]'' (1965) and ''[[Tough Guys Don’t Dance]]'' (1984), boxing experiences help define the protagonists. Stephen Richards Rojack and Tim Madden respectively find “the reward of the ring”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|p=16}} applicable to their existential quests for self. Ultimately, Mailer’s views on boxing are far from simplistic. From the powerful account of [[w:Benny Paret|Benny Paret]]’s death in the ring at the hands of [[w:Emile Griffith|Emile Griffith]] to his statements to me about the ill-fated conclusion to [[w:Muhammad Ali|Muhammad Ali]]’s career to his 1988 article on [[w:Mike Tyson|Mike Tyson]], “Fury, Fear, Philosophy,” Mailer has found in this arena of ritualized violence a rich source of perception about the human condition. In fact, in his 1993 essay in ''Esquire'', “The Best Move Lies Next to the Worst,” he deals with his own boxing experiences at the Gramercy Gym with [[w:José Torres|José Torres]], [[w:Ryan O’Neal|Ryan O’Neal]] and others. The title of the piece comes from the comparison of boxing to chess.{{sfn|Mailer|1998a|pp=1045–1052}} | {{dc|dc=B|oxing has provided a significant moral paradigm}} throughout much of Norman Mailer’s life and work. In his seminal essay entitled “Death” in ''The Presidential Papers'' (1963), Mailer uses the first [[w:Sonny Liston|Sonny Liston]]/[[w:Floyd Patterson|Floyd Patterson]] championship bout as a point of departure from which to develop a profound series of perceptions about the American national temperament, particularly that of blacks. In ''[[King of the Hill]]'' (1971) and more strikingly in ''[[The Fight]]'' (1975) he deals nominally with a specific championship bout, but goes beyond journalism to find certain normative precepts in the sport. But there is another level on which boxing informs and conditions Mailer’s vision: In his fiction, most notably ''[[An American Dream]]'' (1965) and ''[[Tough Guys Don’t Dance]]'' (1984), boxing experiences help define the protagonists. Stephen Richards Rojack and Tim Madden respectively find “the reward of the ring”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|p=16}} applicable to their existential quests for self. Ultimately, Mailer’s views on boxing are far from simplistic. From the powerful account of [[w:Benny Paret|Benny Paret]]’s death in the ring at the hands of [[w:Emile Griffith|Emile Griffith]] to his statements to me about the ill-fated conclusion to [[w:Muhammad Ali|Muhammad Ali]]’s career to his 1988 article on [[w:Mike Tyson|Mike Tyson]], “Fury, Fear, Philosophy,” Mailer has found in this arena of ritualized violence a rich source of perception about the human condition. In fact, in his 1993 essay in ''Esquire'', “The Best Move Lies Next to the Worst,” he deals with his own boxing experiences at the Gramercy Gym with [[w:José Torres|José Torres]], [[w:Ryan O’Neal|Ryan O’Neal]] and others. The title of the piece comes from the comparison of boxing to chess.{{sfn|Mailer|1998a|pp=1045–1052}} | ||
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Penultimately, he faces Shago Martin, who in a scene of intimate violence redolent of sexual connection (“I got a whiff of his odor . . . a smell of full nearness, as if we’d been in bed for an hour.”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|p=182}}) teaches Rojack something about nobility and forgiveness and passes on to him the phallic power (as epitomized in Shago’s totemic umbrella) necessary for his climactic confrontation with Barney Oswald Kelly. | Penultimately, he faces Shago Martin, who in a scene of intimate violence redolent of sexual connection (“I got a whiff of his odor . . . a smell of full nearness, as if we’d been in bed for an hour.”{{sfn|Mailer|1965|p=182}}) teaches Rojack something about nobility and forgiveness and passes on to him the phallic power (as epitomized in Shago’s totemic umbrella) necessary for his climactic confrontation with Barney Oswald Kelly. | ||
Insofar as each of these characters has allegorical as well as literal value in the novel, Rojack’s struggles with them may be seen as confrontations with the worst aspects of himself, which he must overcome and purge. On a larger scale, his progress is a peculiarly American one, a repudiation of the false American dream of meretricious corruption and an embracing of a new, true American Dream of authenticity of self. Rojack comes to represent what was best in the American character after WWII, what was shamelessly corrupted, and what Mailer suggests may be redeemed by courage, discipline, and a commitment to selfless heterosexual love. And he does this with the aid of representatives of marginalized groups: Shago and Cherry. | |||
''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' is a lesser novel: a pale reflection, a distant echo of the masterful ''An American Dream''. But a few points are worth touching on. Again, Tim Madden has been an amateur boxer in his youth. He does fight and defeat Spider Nissen and Stoodie, the badness twins, with the aid of “Stunts,” his dog, who dies with Spider’s knife in his heart. But despite initial, ambiguous appearances, Tim does not hurt, does not kill women, or kill anyone for that matter. But Patty Lareine, his wife, does kill Jessica Pond. In fact, two women are murderers: Madeleine Falco also shoots her husband, the corrupt Chief of Police Alvin Regency. Significantly, Tim Madden refuses the tempting suggestion of Patty Lareine that he kill her then husband, Meeks Wardley Hilby III, and by the novel’s end is capable of compassionate tenderness toward the suicidal, homosexual Wardley. Further, Tim establishes an almost friendly relationship with Patty’s hostile, dangerous black lover, Bolo Green (a.k.a. “Mr. Black”). Most important, like Rojack at the conclusion of ''An American Dream'', Tim is shown to fight his true battle with himself and his own fears and weaknesses. | ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' is a lesser novel: a pale reflection, a distant echo of the masterful ''An American Dream''. But a few points are worth touching on. Again, Tim Madden has been an amateur boxer in his youth. He does fight and defeat Spider Nissen and Stoodie, the badness twins, with the aid of “Stunts,” his dog, who dies with Spider’s knife in his heart. But despite initial, ambiguous appearances, Tim does not hurt, does not kill women, or kill anyone for that matter. But Patty Lareine, his wife, does kill Jessica Pond. In fact, two women are murderers: Madeleine Falco also shoots her husband, the corrupt Chief of Police Alvin Regency. Significantly, Tim Madden refuses the tempting suggestion of Patty Lareine that he kill her then husband, Meeks Wardley Hilby III, and by the novel’s end is capable of compassionate tenderness toward the suicidal, homosexual Wardley. Further, Tim establishes an almost friendly relationship with Patty’s hostile, dangerous black lover, Bolo Green (a.k.a. “Mr. Black”). Most important, like Rojack at the conclusion of ''An American Dream'', Tim is shown to fight his true battle with himself and his own fears and weaknesses. | ||