User:Chelsey.brantley/sandbox: Difference between revisions

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They carried canes and magnifying glasses. They told me to evaluate each

punch from the shoulder. “Let your elbow be the judge,” Robert Penn Warren said; “Sting like an irony,” from Booth of Chicago. They told me that if I win I’ll get an honorary degree from Kenyon and a job at one of the best gyms in the Midwest. Like a Greek chorus they stood beside my training ring and sang in unison, “Don’t slug it out, move and think. Speed and reflexes beat out power. To the victor goes the victory.”

“Scram.” I yelled, spitting my between-the-rounds mouthwash. “Get lost you crummy bastards. You shit on my poems and laughed off my stories,

now you want some of my body language. Go study the ambiguities of

Harold Robbins.” I was mad as hell but they stood firm taking notes on my weight and reach. Finally a group of kids carrying “Free Rubin Carter” signs ran them back to the bus.

The press is no help either. They are so tired of promoting Ali against a bunch of nobodies that to them I’m just another Joe Bugner. They rarely call me by name. “Mailer’s latest victim to be” is their tag. The ''Times'' calls me a “man with little to recommend him. Slight. almost feline, with the gestures of a minor poet, this latest in a long series of Mailer baiters seems to have no more business in the ring with the master than Stan Ketchel had with Jack Johnson.No one is interested in this fight. The Astrodome will be bare, UHF refuses to televise, and Mailer has scheduled a reading for later that night at the University of Houston. Norman, why do you keep accepting every challenge from the peanut gallery? Let’s stop this Christians versus Lions until there is a real contender. Now, if the Pynchon backers could come up with a site and a solid guarantee, that might be a real match.”

[[Category:Short Stories (MR)]]

@@ Line 29: / Line 29: @@
 They carried canes and magnifying glasses. They told me to evaluate each
 punch from the shoulder. “Let your elbow be the judge,” Robert Penn Warren said; “Sting like an irony,” from Booth of Chicago. They told me that if I win I’ll get an honorary degree from Kenyon and a job at one of the best gyms in the Midwest. Like a Greek chorus they stood beside my training ring and sang in unison, “Don’t slug it out, move and think. Speed and reflexes beat out power. To the victor goes the victory.”
+“Scram.” I yelled, spitting my between-the-rounds mouthwash. “Get lost you crummy bastards. You shit on my poems and laughed off my stories,
+now you want some of my body language. Go study the ambiguities of
+Harold Robbins.” I was mad as hell but they stood firm taking notes on my weight and reach. Finally a group of kids carrying “Free Rubin Carter” signs ran them back to the bus.
+The press is no help either. They are so tired of promoting Ali against a bunch of nobodies that to them I’m just another Joe Bugner. They rarely call me by name. “Mailer’s latest victim to be” is their tag. The ''Times'' calls me a “man with little to recommend him. Slight. almost feline, with the gestures of a minor poet, this latest in a long series of Mailer baiters seems to have no more business in the ring with the master than Stan Ketchel had with Jack Johnson.No one is interested in this fight. The Astrodome will be bare, UHF refuses to televise, and Mailer has scheduled a reading for later that night at the University of Houston. Norman, why do you keep accepting every challenge from the peanut gallery? Let’s stop this Christians versus Lions until there is a real contender. Now, if the Pynchon backers could come up with a site and a solid guarantee, that might be a real match.”
 {{Review}}
 {{DEFAULTSORT:Inside Norman Mailer}}
 [[Category:Short Stories (MR)]]