Jump to content

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer's The Fight: Hemingway, Bullfighting, and the Lovely Metaphysics of Boxing: Difference between revisions

← Older editNewer edit →
JHadaway (talk | contribs)
82 edits
m Changed inverted date and page number for citation 9
m add sfn on page 130 to replace parenthetical
Line 35: Line 35:
In rounds two through five, Ali uses the infamous rope-a-dope, which absorbs punishment as Foreman punches himself out, using the great{{pg|129|130}}champion’s strength against himself. The parallel between Ali’s strategy and the matador’s gambit is evident. Hemingway quotes the bullfighter El Gallo as shunning exercises that would increase his strength: “What do I want with strength, man? The bull weighs half a ton. Should I take exercises for strength to match him? Let the bull have the strength”.{{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=21}}As this remark suggests, rather than the simple-minded machismo that Hemingway is too frequently reputed to value, the virtue of the effective matador comes in mastering the fear that will inevitably arise when a man encounters a beast that dwarfs him. The successful matador must control his thoughts and emotions and rely on his skill and knowledge to subdue his opponent. Ali faces something precisely equivalent in Zaire. During a training sequence in ''When We Were Kings'', Ali yells out, “He’s the bull. I’m the matador,” clearly deferring to Foreman the trait of power and aggressiveness, and assuming for himself the wit, the knowledge, and the artistry needed to prevail.  
In rounds two through five, Ali uses the infamous rope-a-dope, which absorbs punishment as Foreman punches himself out, using the great{{pg|129|130}}champion’s strength against himself. The parallel between Ali’s strategy and the matador’s gambit is evident. Hemingway quotes the bullfighter El Gallo as shunning exercises that would increase his strength: “What do I want with strength, man? The bull weighs half a ton. Should I take exercises for strength to match him? Let the bull have the strength”.{{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=21}}As this remark suggests, rather than the simple-minded machismo that Hemingway is too frequently reputed to value, the virtue of the effective matador comes in mastering the fear that will inevitably arise when a man encounters a beast that dwarfs him. The successful matador must control his thoughts and emotions and rely on his skill and knowledge to subdue his opponent. Ali faces something precisely equivalent in Zaire. During a training sequence in ''When We Were Kings'', Ali yells out, “He’s the bull. I’m the matador,” clearly deferring to Foreman the trait of power and aggressiveness, and assuming for himself the wit, the knowledge, and the artistry needed to prevail.  


Mailer’s hagiography of Ali, then, becomes the more vital when we go beyond his admiration for the fighter to recognize why this admiration was so profound. Ali’s preparation for the Foreman fight (in the 234-page Vintage edition of ''The Fight'', the opening bell to the knockout is confined to pages 177–210; thus, in a book called ''The Fight'', only fourteen percent of the book chronicles the fight{{efn|Mailer’s pacing might have been a model for '' When We Were Kings'', an 89-minute film of which the fight itself spans 7:14, or about 8%.}}follows El Gallo’s logical yet somewhat counter-intuitive training procedure. Mailer reports that Ali confesses, “Foreman can hit harder than me”.{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=16}}During the uninspired sparring session that opens ''The Fight'', Ali’s strategy is presaged. Since he knows he cannot compete with Foreman’s strength, Ali contrives to use Foreman’s strength against him. Mailer chronicles this strategy meticulously, writing of Ali that “part of his art was to reduce the force of each blow he received to the head and then fraction it further”.{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=4}}Art? An art to getting hit in the face? If so, it is coupled by fractioning, a melding of the art of war and the sweet science of boxing. Ali consciously courts the same dichotomy that Mailer proposes. Skipping rope in his training quarters, he barks out, “I’m a brain fighter. I’m scientific. I’m artistic” (''When We Were Kings''). The marriage of art and science continues when Mailer describes “the second half of the art of getting hit was to learn the trajectories with which punches glanced off your glove and still hit you”.{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=5}}If the study of trajectories is associated with physics, Ali the artist is associated with dance and writing and theatre. This almost suicidal strategy—unappreciated, Mailer suggests, by lesser minds like sportswriters and fight critics—recalls the “calculus” with which {{pg|130|131}}Hemingway claimed he wrote ''Across the River and Into the Trees'', destined for dismissal by ignorant critics. Mailer is unapologetic about twinning art and boxing: he references Joyce’s ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'', Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch,” ''Moby-Dick'', and even Hemingway’s ''A Farewell to Arms'', reaching to masterpieces of art and literature to evoke athletic performance.  
Mailer’s hagiography of Ali, then, becomes the more vital when we go beyond his admiration for the fighter to recognize why this admiration was so profound. Ali’s preparation for the Foreman fight (in the 234-page Vintage edition of ''The Fight'', the opening bell to the knockout is confined to pages 177–210; thus, in a book called ''The Fight'', only fourteen percent of the book chronicles the fight{{efn|Mailer’s pacing might have been a model for '' When We Were Kings'', an 89-minute film of which the fight itself spans 7:14, or about 8%.}}follows El Gallo’s logical yet somewhat counter-intuitive training procedure. Mailer reports that Ali confesses, “Foreman can hit harder than me”.{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=16}}During the uninspired sparring session that opens ''The Fight'', Ali’s strategy is presaged. Since he knows he cannot compete with Foreman’s strength, Ali contrives to use Foreman’s strength against him. Mailer chronicles this strategy meticulously, writing of Ali that “part of his art was to reduce the force of each blow he received to the head and then fraction it further”.{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=4}}Art? An art to getting hit in the face? If so, it is coupled by fractioning, a melding of the art of war and the sweet science of boxing. Ali consciously courts the same dichotomy that Mailer proposes. Skipping rope in his training quarters, he barks out, “I’m a brain fighter. I’m scientific. I’m artistic.”{{sfn|Gast|1996}} The marriage of art and science continues when Mailer describes “the second half of the art of getting hit was to learn the trajectories with which punches glanced off your glove and still hit you”.{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=5}}If the study of trajectories is associated with physics, Ali the artist is associated with dance and writing and theatre. This almost suicidal strategy—unappreciated, Mailer suggests, by lesser minds like sportswriters and fight critics—recalls the “calculus” with which {{pg|130|131}}Hemingway claimed he wrote ''Across the River and Into the Trees'', destined for dismissal by ignorant critics. Mailer is unapologetic about twinning art and boxing: he references Joyce’s ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'', Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch,” ''Moby-Dick'', and even Hemingway’s ''A Farewell to Arms'', reaching to masterpieces of art and literature to evoke athletic performance.  


Mailer extends this articulation to propose that Ali has a physiological understanding of receiving violence that is almost hair-trigger in its fineness. “It was a study,” he writes, “to watch Ali take punches”.{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=5}}Mailer sees Ali “teaching his nervous system to transmit shock faster than other men could”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=4}}and possessing the ability to “assimilate punches faster than other fighters,” as Ali “could literally transmit the shock through more parts of his body or direct it to its best path”.{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=5}}After watching a Foreman training session, Mailer concluded, “it seemed certain that if Ali wished to win, he would have to take more punishment than ever before in his career”.{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=53}}As Mailer mentions during his commentary in ''When We Were Kings'', “It was as if he wanted to train his body to receive these messages of punishment.”  
Mailer extends this articulation to propose that Ali has a physiological understanding of receiving violence that is almost hair-trigger in its fineness. “It was a study,” he writes, “to watch Ali take punches”.{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=5}}Mailer sees Ali “teaching his nervous system to transmit shock faster than other men could”{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=4}}and possessing the ability to “assimilate punches faster than other fighters,” as Ali “could literally transmit the shock through more parts of his body or direct it to its best path”.{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=5}}After watching a Foreman training session, Mailer concluded, “it seemed certain that if Ali wished to win, he would have to take more punishment than ever before in his career”.{{sfn|Mailer|1975|p=53}}As Mailer mentions during his commentary in ''When We Were Kings'', “It was as if he wanted to train his body to receive these messages of punishment.”  
Retrieved from "https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman_Mailer%27s_The_Fight:_Hemingway,_Bullfighting,_and_the_Lovely_Metaphysics_of_Boxing"