The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Fighters and Writers: Difference between revisions

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coming forward. Don’t get discouraged. Be relentless. Don’t stop moving

your hands. Break the others guy’s will.”

One of Newfield’s intellectual heroes writes about boxing as though it

reflects the process of finding or creating meaning in an absurd world.

Albert Camus describes boxers as “gods with cauliflower ears,” giving some

indication of the respect he has for athletes who, like Sisyphus, persevere

through ultimately pointless endeavors. He also transmutes physical combat into the equivalent of a matter of language, viewing a fight as though

it were an argument. Fighters’ representative capabilities—their amply

documented tendency to be regarded by spectators as the embodiment

of a race, an ethnicity or a nationality—offers writers plenty of material

to work with beyond mere athleticism. Camus explains how, for those in

attendance at a fight he witnessed in Algeria between Amar from Oran and

Pérez from Algiers, the boxers became stand-ins for their respective cities

and how their bout became an extension of an ongoing rivalry between the

two places. “Thus a page of history is unfolding in the ring. And the tough

Oranese, backed by a thousand yelling voices, is defending against Pérez a

way of life and the pride of a province.” Spectators’ responses to fighters’

struggles often have more to do with such allegiances rather than with

what the contestants actually do in the ring, and in describing boxers’

moves Camus finds a parallel with disputation. “Truth forces me to admit

that Amar is not conducting his discussion well. His argument has a flaw:

he lacks reach. The slugger from Algiers, on the contrary, has the required

reach in his argument. It lands persuasively between his contradictor’s eyes.”

What writer wouldn’t want to have such a reach?