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Hooking Off the Jab: Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway, and Boxing

Bill Lowenburg

NORMAN MAILER ONCE PUBLISHED A BOXING PIECE ENTITLED “The Best Move

Lies Very Close to the Worst.” In it, he explained how some strategies in boxing,

like some in chess, simultaneously offer the greatest rewards as well as

the greatest risks. Given Mailer’s penchant for mixing it up both in and out

of the ring, in physical as well as literary scraps, hooking off the jab seems an

apt point of departure for a brief commentary on his best-known written

pieces on the sport. Boxing also played a central role in Ernest Hemingway’s

persona. He also wrote about it, socialized with boxers and—to a much

greater degree than Mailer—fancied himself as an accomplished fighter. Part

II of this essay provides commentary on Hemingway as a boxer. The final

section offers a fantasy ring match between the two would-be heavyweight

literary champions, based on a passage from Mailer’s book, The Fight. Two

recent essays, which further explore the topic of boxing as it relates to

Mailer’s career were published in the Fall 2008 Memorial Issue of The Mailer

Review: “He Was a Fighter,” by Barry Leeds, and “Fighters and Writers,” by

John Rodwan.

I. MAILER ON BOXING

The expression “hooking off the jab” refers to an advanced-but-risky technique

in boxing which, when properly executed, can be an effective offensive

weapon. The boxer first throws a left jab, followed immediately by a left

hook. Because the hook approaches the opponent’s head from an angle,

rather than straight-on like a jab, there is the chance the hook will be

outside of his field of vision distracting the recipient with its sting, especially if the jab lands solidly. The hook is a power punch and according to some

trainers the most dangerous punch in boxing. Along with not being

easy to see, when properly thrown it conveys a considerable amount of the

thrower’s weight, distilled into the diameter of his fist. All of this takes place

in much less time than it has taken to describe. The caveat for hooking off

the jab is the fighter throwing it leaves himself open to a right-hand counter, if not properly executed. My trainer, the venerable Earnee Butler, would

demonstrate the consequence by gently planting his fist into the opposite

palm, as if catching a softball. Butler, who taught Larry Holmes how to box,

would then point to the canvas and declare, “End of fight.”

Mailer’s unprecedented writing on boxing took similar risks in that he

wove oblique story angles and quirky digressions into his delivery. While he

did not risk being knocked out by a right-hand counterpunch, as a writer he

risked its literary equivalent, the reader who snaps the book closed and never

returns. Mailer’s unorthodox approach to writing about boxing works much

more often than not. Unlike the after-effects of a ring knockout that often

leave the victim with no memory of what has happened, Mailer’s accounts

provide readers long-lasting visual, sensory, and emotional images.

From the early 1960s on, following the publication of his seminal essay,

“Ten Thousand Words A Minute,” boxing emerged and endured as a central

facet of Mailer’s persona. Even though his writing about boxing comprised

only a fraction of Mailer’s immense body of work, when he died in November

2007, many of the headlines from across the United States and around

the world referenced boxing. “Norman Mailer was a True Heavyweight,” declared

Bill Gallo in the New York Daily News. “Two-fisted Mailer Finally

Counted Out,” announced the Irish Times. “Stormin’ Norman Loses Last

Fight,” stated the London Sunday Mail.

Mailer was introduced to boxing in the early 1950s by Al Morales, the father

of his second wife, Adele. Morales had been a professional lightweight

in his younger years and he often sparred with his son-in-law, teaching him

the fundamentals of the sport. Morales who worked in the printing department at the New York Daily News, later in life became a friend of News boxing writer and cartoonist Bill Gallo. He reported to Gallo that Mailer “was a pretty willing scrapper,” who “no matter how many jabs he took on the snoot, keeps coming” (Gallo). This description is confirmed by Sal Cetrano, a friend of Mailer’s who often boxed with him in the 1970s in the Gramercy Gym in New York City. Cetrano described Norman as a game but-

not-gifted boxer who did not shy away from receiving a punch in order

to deliver one.

By the late 1950s, Mailer had attended a number of prize fights in New

York City and had done considerable reading on the history of the sport and

the lives of its champions. One of his sources was Englishman Pierce Egan’s

Boxiana. Published in five volumes between 1813 and 1828, the massive work

included biographical sketches of fighters, round-by-round descriptions of

key fights, and ringside observations about the spectators. Similar observations

subsequently appear in Mailer’s writing about boxing. His study of the

sport during the 1950s nourished Mailer’s growing interest in existential philosophy

and his exploration of the place of violence in modern life. Along

with his new knowledge, his social circle expanded beyond literary friends

to include people in and around boxing. This led to some of Mailer’s most

important writing (Dearborn 124).

Mailer’s essay, “Ten Thousand Words A Minute,” describes the first Liston-

Patterson heavyweight championship match held in Chicago in 1961, as

well as the death of welterweight champion Benny Paret following a savage

beating by Emile Griffith. A brief excerpt from that account provides an example

of the way Mailer combined visual and auditory details with his interpretive

comments to build a scene which will endure in the mind of the

reader:

And Paret? Paret died on his feet. As he took those eighteen

punches something happened to everyone who was in psychic

range of the event. Some part of his death reached out to us. One

felt it hover in the air. He was still standing in the ropes, trapped

as he had been before as he gave some little half-smile of regret, as

if he were saying, ‘I didn’t know I was going to die just yet,’ and

then, his head leaning back but still erect, his death came to

breathe about him. He began to pass away. As he passed, so his

limbs descended beneath him, and he sank slowly to the floor. He

went down more slowly than any fighter had ever gone down,

he went down like a large ship which turns on end and slides second

by second into its grave. As he went down, the sound of Griffith’s

punches echoed in the mind like a heavy ax in the distance

chopping into a wet log. (466)

“Ten Thousand Words A Minute,” also includes Mailer’s personal impressions,

misadventures, and fantasies. A landmark essay, it not only demonstrates Mailer’s chops as a boxing writer, it provides the stylistic template for his later, longer boxing pieces. Of these, the two best known are King of the Hill, which describes the first Ali-Frazier fight, held at Madison Square Garden in 1971, and The Fight, a book-length account of the epic Ali-Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle,” held in Kinshasa, Zaire in 1974.While the two later and longer pieces are better-known, if they had never been published, “Ten Thousand Words A Minute,” stands on its own as a classic boxing

essay and an indicator of Mailer’s emerging, highly personal,

idiosyncratic style of reportage. This approach served as a model for many

of the New Journalists of the Sixties and beyond. What may be most remarkable

about the piece is that it was written in four weeks in late 1962,

only twenty-two months after Mailer had stabbed Adele, spent seventeen

days in Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward, and was thought by close

friends to be “in worse shape than he had been in before the stabbing” (Dearborn

188). The illogical associations Mailer suggests in “Ten Thousand Words

A Minute” come across with a manic clarity suggesting the essay could only

have been written by someone careening in and out of control. Mailer’s behavior

of that period seems to confirm that was the case. Even more remarkable

than this single achievement is that he recovered from the

condition and went on in the succeeding four-plus decades to produce a

huge body of work.

Following the motifs established in “Ten Thousand Words A Minute,” in

both King of the Hill and The Fight, Mailer takes the side of Muhammad Ali,

around whom he spins a socio-political-mystical web combining factual reportage

and fantasy. Numerous passages echo scenes in “Ten Thousand

Words A Minute”: Mailer claims at times to believe his own actions may

somehow mystically influence the outcome of the fight. In one of The Fight’s most memorable scenes, Mailer describes himself scaling around a partition dividing the balcony of his seventh-floor hotel room from the adjacent balcony. It is the middle of the night, he is drunk— he takes the risk to show symbolic support for underdog Muhammad Ali (The Fight 124). The succinctly and dramatically described incident will

make the reader’s palms sweat when Norman—as he refers to himself in the

text—relates how both sides of the partition had to be squeezed to avoid tumbling backward and down. As exciting as the account is the stunt was not witnessed by anyone, nor is the report supported by internal evidence in the text. An objective reader may fairly ask whether the description could have been fictional. The point is largely moot, as this and similar anecdotes in all three of Mailer’s major boxing pieces make for

compelling reading and demonstrate fine examples of his stylistic technique.

While Mailer’s pure boxing writing has received universal accolades with his description of events in the ring and his analysis of fighters’ strategy, it is

not without an occasional shortcoming. At times it reveals the lack of a comprehensive

understanding of strategy and technique which a veteran fighter or trainer would possess. In spite of the claim by Mailer’s close friend and former light heavyweight champion Jose Torres that Mailer “could even be

a champion of the Golden Gloves” (Mills 381), by Mailer’s own admission,

his personal skill level in the ring and the abilities of his sparring partners in

the Gramercy Gym were limited to the fundamentals. Of his workouts there

he wrote, “Some of us ventured into combinations, but never too far”

(Mailer, “The Best Move” 61). Mailer’s incomplete “body knowledge” may

have placed limitations on his ability to interpret what he saw taking place

in the ring when observing a match.

An example of Mailer’s limited experience as a boxer is reflected in his

account in The Fight of the intense first round of the Ali-Foreman battle in

Zaire. While illuminating, it is also reductive. In the chapter entitled “Right

Hand Leads,” Mailer attributes Ali’s advantage in the opening round to his

effective use of right-hand lead punches. While the unorthodox strategy was

a key element of Ali’s success, a careful analysis of the round shows that Ali was able to land the punches which caught Foreman by surprise due to subtle lateral movement, which Mailer never notes. By gliding around the perimeter of the ring and then reversing direction, Ali induced Foreman to “open up” his stance, leaving himself vulnerable to Ali’s right. Equally important, Foreman had been expecting Ali to rely on his trademark left jab, the greatest in the history of the sport.

Boxing as a creative endeavor shares something with other art forms such

as writing, photography, and music, in that sometimes what is not shown directly can be more effective than stating the obvious. Ali hinted and his reputation almost guaranteed that he would come out jabbing. Foreman could not afford to ignore the jab and Ali capitalized on Foreman’s anticipation by occasionally leading with his right hand. The surprise strategy earned Ali the early psychological and tactical advantage,

eventually resulting in an eighth-round knockout of the seemingly invincible

Foreman.

To Mailer’s credit, according to archivist and biographer J. Michael

Lennon, there is no evidence Mailer used anything other than his ringside

observations and notes to write his boxing accounts.He apparently did not

have the luxury of reviewing film or tape of the matches. Given the methods

Mailer used to write his boxing pieces, his descriptions of the Ali-Foreman

fight and others are remarkable works of reportage and analysis. The

minor deficiency noted in Mailer’s analysis above, relating to Ali’s lateral

movement, becomes evident only upon repeated viewings of the first round

in Zaire. On the whole, the comment in the British newspaper, The

Guardian, is true: “probably no one has written better about boxing than

Mailer has.”

II. HEMINGWAY AS BOXER

Whether Ernest Hemingway was, as he might have put it, “any good” as a

boxer depends in large part upon the personal relationship the source had

with Hemingway. To some, he was the uncrowned heavyweight champion.

To others, he was fake. It is impossible, of course, to make an objective assessment

without motion picture evidence and, apparently, none exists. The

brief accounts that follow are not all-inclusive but are offered to show the

range of opinions that will come to the attention of anyone seeking a definitive

answer on the subject.

Eyewitness accounts of Hemingway boxing vary greatly and many are

provided by observers who had little or no boxing experience either as spectators

or participants. Many storytellers clearly had reasons to compliment

Hemingway. Max Perkins, editor to both Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald,

once told Morely Callaghan—a central figure in the Hemingway boxing

myth—that Hemingway had knocked out the middleweight champion of

France with one punch. He had not. This was prior to Callaghan lacing on

the gloves in the summer of 1929 and stepping into the ring with Hemingway

at the American Club in Paris. As soon as Callaghan did, he realized

Hemingway was not a real boxer. Fitzgerald, too, figures prominently in the

Callaghan story, which will be related shortly (Callaghan 124).

Another anecdote from that period, by painter and writer Wyndam Lewis,

is typical of the uninformed accounts. Like Hemingway, Lewis was an ambitious

young writer and a member of the expatriate social circle living in

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
                 Hooking Off the Jab: Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway, and Boxing
                                     Bill Lowenburg
+NORMAN MAILER ONCE PUBLISHED A BOXING PIECE ENTITLED “The Best Move
+Lies Very Close to the Worst.” In it, he explained how some strategies in boxing,
+like some in chess, simultaneously offer the greatest rewards as well as
+the greatest risks. Given Mailer’s penchant for mixing it up both in and out
+of the ring, in physical as well as literary scraps, hooking off the jab seems an
+apt point of departure for a brief commentary on his best-known written
+pieces on the sport. Boxing also played a central role in Ernest Hemingway’s
+persona. He also wrote about it, socialized with boxers and—to a much
+greater degree than Mailer—fancied himself as an accomplished fighter. Part
+II of this essay provides commentary on Hemingway as a boxer. The final
+section offers a fantasy ring match between the two would-be heavyweight
+literary champions, based on a passage from Mailer’s book, The Fight. Two
+recent essays, which further explore the topic of boxing as it relates to
+Mailer’s career were published in the Fall 2008 Memorial Issue of The Mailer
+Review: “He Was a Fighter,” by Barry Leeds, and “Fighters and Writers,” by
+John Rodwan.
+I. MAILER ON BOXING
+The expression “hooking off the jab” refers to an advanced-but-risky technique
+in boxing which, when properly executed, can be an effective offensive
+weapon. The boxer first throws a left jab, followed immediately by a left
+hook. Because the hook approaches the opponent’s head from an angle,
+rather than straight-on like a jab, there is the chance the hook will be
+outside of his field of vision distracting the recipient with its sting, especially if the jab lands solidly. The hook is a power punch and according to some
+trainers the most dangerous punch in boxing. Along with not being
+easy to see, when properly thrown it conveys a considerable amount of the
+thrower’s weight, distilled into the diameter of his fist. All of this takes place
+in much less time than it has taken to describe. The caveat for hooking off
+the jab is the fighter throwing it leaves himself open to a right-hand counter, if not properly executed. My trainer, the venerable Earnee Butler, would
+demonstrate the consequence by gently planting his fist into the opposite
+palm, as if catching a softball. Butler, who taught Larry Holmes how to box,
+would then point to the canvas and declare, “End of fight.”
+Mailer’s unprecedented writing on boxing took similar risks in that he
+wove oblique story angles and quirky digressions into his delivery. While he
+did not risk being knocked out by a right-hand counterpunch, as a writer he
+risked its literary equivalent, the reader who snaps the book closed and never
+returns. Mailer’s unorthodox approach to writing about boxing works much
+more often than not. Unlike the after-effects of a ring knockout that often
+leave the victim with no memory of what has happened, Mailer’s accounts
+provide readers long-lasting visual, sensory, and emotional images.
+From the early 1960s on, following the publication of his seminal essay,
+“Ten Thousand Words A Minute,” boxing emerged and endured as a central
+facet of Mailer’s persona. Even though his writing about boxing comprised
+only a fraction of Mailer’s immense body of work, when he died in November
+, many of the headlines from across the United States and around
+the world referenced boxing. “Norman Mailer was a True Heavyweight,” declared
+Bill Gallo in the New York Daily News. “Two-fisted Mailer Finally
+Counted Out,” announced the Irish Times. “Stormin’ Norman Loses Last
+Fight,” stated the London Sunday Mail.
+Mailer was introduced to boxing in the early 1950s by Al Morales, the father
+of his second wife, Adele. Morales had been a professional lightweight
+in his younger years and he often sparred with his son-in-law, teaching him
+the fundamentals of the sport. Morales who worked in the printing department at the New York Daily News, later in life became a friend of News boxing writer and cartoonist Bill Gallo. He reported to Gallo that Mailer “was a pretty willing scrapper,” who “no matter how many jabs he took on the snoot, keeps coming” (Gallo). This description is confirmed by Sal Cetrano, a friend of Mailer’s who often boxed with him in the 1970s in the Gramercy Gym in New York City. Cetrano described Norman as a game but-
+not-gifted boxer who did not shy away from receiving a punch in order
+to deliver one.
+By the late 1950s, Mailer had attended a number of prize fights in New
+York City and had done considerable reading on the history of the sport and
+the lives of its champions. One of his sources was Englishman Pierce Egan’s
+Boxiana. Published in five volumes between 1813 and 1828, the massive work
+included biographical sketches of fighters, round-by-round descriptions of
+key fights, and ringside observations about the spectators. Similar observations
+subsequently appear in Mailer’s writing about boxing. His study of the
+sport during the 1950s nourished Mailer’s growing interest in existential philosophy
+and his exploration of the place of violence in modern life. Along
+with his new knowledge, his social circle expanded beyond literary friends
+to include people in and around boxing. This led to some of Mailer’s most
+important writing (Dearborn 124).
+Mailer’s essay, “Ten Thousand Words A Minute,” describes the first Liston-
+Patterson heavyweight championship match held in Chicago in 1961, as
+well as the death of welterweight champion Benny Paret following a savage
+beating by Emile Griffith. A brief excerpt from that account provides an example
+of the way Mailer combined visual and auditory details with his interpretive
+comments to build a scene which will endure in the mind of the
+reader:
+And Paret? Paret died on his feet. As he took those eighteen
+punches something happened to everyone who was in psychic
+range of the event. Some part of his death reached out to us. One
+felt it hover in the air. He was still standing in the ropes, trapped
+as he had been before as he gave some little half-smile of regret, as
+if he were saying, ‘I didn’t know I was going to die just yet,’ and
+then, his head leaning back but still erect, his death came to
+breathe about him. He began to pass away. As he passed, so his
+limbs descended beneath him, and he sank slowly to the floor. He
+went down more slowly than any fighter had ever gone down,
+he went down like a large ship which turns on end and slides second
+by second into its grave. As he went down, the sound of Griffith’s
+punches echoed in the mind like a heavy ax in the distance
+chopping into a wet log. (466)
+“Ten Thousand Words A Minute,” also includes Mailer’s personal impressions,
+misadventures, and fantasies. A landmark essay, it not only demonstrates Mailer’s chops as a boxing writer, it provides the stylistic template for his later, longer boxing pieces. Of these, the two best known are King of the Hill, which describes the first Ali-Frazier fight, held at Madison Square Garden in 1971, and The Fight, a book-length account of the epic Ali-Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle,” held in Kinshasa, Zaire in 1974.While the two later and longer pieces are better-known, if they had never been published, “Ten Thousand Words A Minute,” stands on its own as a classic boxing
+essay and an indicator of Mailer’s emerging, highly personal,
+idiosyncratic style of reportage. This approach served as a model for many
+of the New Journalists of the Sixties and beyond. What may be most remarkable
+about the piece is that it was written in four weeks in late 1962,
+only twenty-two months after Mailer had stabbed Adele, spent seventeen
+days in Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward, and was thought by close
+friends to be “in worse shape than he had been in before the stabbing” (Dearborn
+). The illogical associations Mailer suggests in “Ten Thousand Words
+A Minute” come across with a manic clarity suggesting the essay could only
+have been written by someone careening in and out of control. Mailer’s behavior
+of that period seems to confirm that was the case. Even more remarkable
+than this single achievement is that he recovered from the
+condition and went on in the succeeding four-plus decades to produce a
+huge body of work.
+Following the motifs established in “Ten Thousand Words A Minute,” in
+both King of the Hill and The Fight, Mailer takes the side of Muhammad Ali,
+around whom he spins a socio-political-mystical web combining factual reportage
+and fantasy. Numerous passages echo scenes in “Ten Thousand
+Words A Minute”: Mailer claims at times to believe his own actions may
+somehow mystically influence the outcome of the fight. In one of The Fight’s most memorable scenes, Mailer describes himself scaling around a partition dividing the balcony of his seventh-floor hotel room from the adjacent balcony. It is the middle of the night, he is drunk— he takes the risk to show symbolic support for underdog Muhammad Ali (The Fight 124). The succinctly and dramatically described incident will
+make the reader’s palms sweat when Norman—as he refers to himself in the
+text—relates how both sides of the partition had to be squeezed to avoid tumbling backward and down. As exciting as the account is the stunt was not witnessed by anyone, nor is the report supported by internal evidence in the text. An objective reader may fairly ask whether the description could have been fictional. The point is largely moot, as this and similar anecdotes in all three of Mailer’s major boxing pieces make for
+compelling reading and demonstrate fine examples of his stylistic technique.
+While Mailer’s pure boxing writing has received universal accolades with his description of events in the ring and his analysis of fighters’ strategy, it is
+not without an occasional shortcoming. At times it reveals the lack of a comprehensive
+understanding of strategy and technique which a veteran fighter or trainer would possess. In spite of the claim by Mailer’s close friend and former light heavyweight champion Jose Torres that Mailer “could even be
+a champion of the Golden Gloves” (Mills 381), by Mailer’s own admission,
+his personal skill level in the ring and the abilities of his sparring partners in
+the Gramercy Gym were limited to the fundamentals. Of his workouts there
+he wrote, “Some of us ventured into combinations, but never too far”
+(Mailer, “The Best Move” 61). Mailer’s incomplete “body knowledge” may
+have placed limitations on his ability to interpret what he saw taking place
+in the ring when observing a match.
+An example of Mailer’s limited experience as a boxer is reflected in his
+account in The Fight of the intense first round of the Ali-Foreman battle in
+Zaire. While illuminating, it is also reductive. In the chapter entitled “Right
+Hand Leads,” Mailer attributes Ali’s advantage in the opening round to his
+effective use of right-hand lead punches. While the unorthodox strategy was
+a key element of Ali’s success, a careful analysis of the round shows that Ali was able to land the punches which caught Foreman by surprise due to subtle lateral movement, which Mailer never notes. By gliding around the perimeter of the ring and then reversing direction, Ali induced Foreman to “open up” his stance, leaving himself vulnerable to Ali’s right. Equally important, Foreman had been expecting Ali to rely on his trademark left jab,  the greatest in the history of the sport.
+Boxing as a creative endeavor shares something with other art forms such
+as writing, photography, and music, in that sometimes what is not shown directly can be more effective than stating the obvious. Ali hinted and his reputation almost guaranteed that he would come out jabbing. Foreman could not afford to ignore the jab and Ali capitalized on Foreman’s anticipation by occasionally leading with his right hand. The surprise strategy earned Ali the early psychological and tactical advantage,
+eventually resulting in an eighth-round knockout of the seemingly invincible
+Foreman.
+To Mailer’s credit, according to archivist and biographer J. Michael
+Lennon, there is no evidence Mailer used anything other than his ringside
+observations and notes to write his boxing accounts.He apparently did not
+have the luxury of reviewing film or tape of the matches. Given the methods
+Mailer used to write his boxing pieces, his descriptions of the Ali-Foreman
+fight and others are remarkable works of reportage and analysis. The
+minor deficiency noted in Mailer’s analysis above, relating to Ali’s lateral
+movement, becomes evident only upon repeated viewings of the first round
+in Zaire. On the whole, the comment in the British newspaper, The
+Guardian, is true: “probably no one has written better about boxing than
+Mailer has.”
+II. HEMINGWAY AS BOXER
+Whether Ernest Hemingway was, as he might have put it, “any good” as a
+boxer depends in large part upon the personal relationship the source had
+with Hemingway. To some, he was the uncrowned heavyweight champion.
+To others, he was fake. It is impossible, of course, to make an objective assessment
+without motion picture evidence and, apparently, none exists. The
+brief accounts that follow are not all-inclusive but are offered to show the
+range of opinions that will come to the attention of anyone seeking a definitive
+answer on the subject.
+Eyewitness accounts of Hemingway boxing vary greatly and many are
+provided by observers who had little or no boxing experience either as spectators
+or participants. Many storytellers clearly had reasons to compliment
+Hemingway. Max Perkins, editor to both Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald,
+once told Morely Callaghan—a central figure in the Hemingway boxing
+myth—that Hemingway had knocked out the middleweight champion of
+France with one punch. He had not. This was prior to Callaghan lacing on
+the gloves in the summer of 1929 and stepping into the ring with Hemingway
+at the American Club in Paris. As soon as Callaghan did, he realized
+Hemingway was not a real boxer. Fitzgerald, too, figures prominently in the
+Callaghan story, which will be related shortly (Callaghan 124).
+Another anecdote from that period, by painter and writer Wyndam Lewis,
+is typical of the uninformed accounts. Like Hemingway, Lewis was an ambitious
+young writer and a member of the expatriate social circle living in