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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.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08leed}} | {{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.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08leed}} | ||
{{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” (reprinted in {{harvtxt|Mailer| | {{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” (reprinted in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1998a}}), 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}} | ||
I believe it’s best to confront the central issue here at the outset. Mailer has, indeed, perceived gladiatorial confrontation and violence as a central metaphor for his own artistic and personal struggles for growth, fulfillment, salvation. As he muses retrospectively upon a turning point in his career during his crises of the early 1960s, | I believe it’s best to confront the central issue here at the outset. Mailer has, indeed, perceived gladiatorial confrontation and violence as a central metaphor for his own artistic and personal struggles for growth, fulfillment, salvation. As he muses retrospectively upon a turning point in his career during his crises of the early 1960s, | ||
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Ali ''was'' a national hero, for his moral and physical courage. His heroism had fascinated Mailer for years. In a short piece, “An Appreciation of Cassius Clay,” he wrote: “[I] don’t want to get started writing about Muhammad Ali, because I could go on for a book.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=264}} He went on to condemn Ali’s exclusion from boxing because of his conscientious objection to the Vietnam War and concluded: “Therefore we are all deprived of an intimate spectacle which was taking place in public—the forging of a professional artist of extraordinary dimensions . . . he was bringing a revolution to the theory of boxing.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=264}} And when I asked him, “now that it’s pretty well documented that Ali has been damaged by boxing, do you love the sport as much as you did?” Mailer responded, “Well, I don’t think I love it as much as I used to. One reason is because he’s out of it.”{{sfn|Leeds|2008|p=1}} | Ali ''was'' a national hero, for his moral and physical courage. His heroism had fascinated Mailer for years. In a short piece, “An Appreciation of Cassius Clay,” he wrote: “[I] don’t want to get started writing about Muhammad Ali, because I could go on for a book.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=264}} He went on to condemn Ali’s exclusion from boxing because of his conscientious objection to the Vietnam War and concluded: “Therefore we are all deprived of an intimate spectacle which was taking place in public—the forging of a professional artist of extraordinary dimensions . . . he was bringing a revolution to the theory of boxing.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=264}} And when I asked him, “now that it’s pretty well documented that Ali has been damaged by boxing, do you love the sport as much as you did?” Mailer responded, “Well, I don’t think I love it as much as I used to. One reason is because he’s out of it.”{{sfn|Leeds|2008|p=1}} | ||
All of this of course points directly to Mailer’s most significant work on boxing, ''[[The Fight]]''. Suffice it to say that Mailer’s obsessive preoccupation with existentialism and Manichean polarities, his newly found fascination with African mysticism and the concept of ''N’golo'' (or force), his vision of Muhammad Ali as artist and hero, find their serendipitous confluence here. | |||
As in virtually all of his work after 1968, Mailer treats a factual situation, and the people involved, in terms of highly subjective and fascinating digressions. Thus, in addition to an in-depth account of the fight and the circumstances preceding and following it, the reader is offered observations on African religion and politics, allusions to Hemingway, Hunter Thompson, and George Plimpton, and further candid insights into Mailer himself: the status of his projected big novel, his compulsion to walk parapets, his hatred of jogging. Most amusing, however, is the self-deprecating anecdote in which Mailer, returning late at night along a jungle path on which he had been doing road work with Ali, hears a lion roar. He proceeds through a series of serio-comic reactions, culminating in the fantasy that he is about to be eaten by “Hemingway’s own lion” waiting all these years for a fit substitute, and the final recognition that the lion he hears is probably caged in the city’s zoo.{{sfn|Mailer|1975|pp=91–92}} This announces, I believe, an attractive new modesty in Mailer. | |||
Such modesty pervades “The Best Move Lies Close to the Worst,” in which Mailer recounts his adventures and misadventures in boxing in a consistently self-deprecating manner. Boxing with José Torres is described thus: | |||
{{quote| | |||
He was impossible to hit and that was an interesting experience-you felt as if you were sharing the ring with a puma.... Over ten years of boxing with José Torres I was able to catch him with a good right hand lead twice, and the first occasion was an event. He ran around the ring with his arms high in triumph, crying out, “He hit me with a right—he hit me with a right!” unconscionably proud that day of his pupil.{{sfn|Mailer|1998a|p=1048}} }} | |||
The story, in a mildly oversimplified form, has circulated for years that Mailer gave Torres writing lessons in return for boxing lessons. Actually, Mailer first began to learn boxing under the tutelage of the father of [[w:Adele Morales|Adele Morales]], his second wife. In the “Sixth Advertisement for Myself,” Mailer states: | |||
{{quote|I was doing some boxing now. My father-in-law had been a professional; he was always putting on the gloves with me. . . . I was in nice shape, and my senses were alert.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=331}} }} | |||
Most interesting in the later collaboration are the parallels that Torres and Mailer found between the two occupations. When asked if there is a difference in the discipline required for writing and boxing (in an interview with Jessica Blue and Legs McNeil for ''Details''), Torres responded, “No fucking difference.”{{sfn|Blue|McNeil|1984|p=86}} But earlier in the same interview, he tells of how Mailer “told me that writing was about truth. . . . He knew that boxing was the opposite. It’s about cheating and deceiving and lying, and he said that it’s a very hard transition. . . . You’re cheating the other guy by feinting with a left and cheating with a jab.”{{sfn|Blue|McNeil|1984|p=85}} | |||
===Citations=== | ===Citations=== | ||
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* {{cite magazine |last=Kennedy |first=Kostya |date=November 19, 2007 |title=The Pugilist at Rest |magazine=Sports Illustrated |pages=28–29 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite magazine |last=Kennedy |first=Kostya |date=November 19, 2007 |title=The Pugilist at Rest |magazine=Sports Illustrated |pages=28–29 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite journal |last=Leeds |first=Barry |date=2008 |title=A Conversation with Norman Mailer |journal=Connecticut Review |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=1–15 |ref=harv }} | * {{cite journal |last=Leeds |first=Barry |date=2008 |title=A Conversation with Norman Mailer |journal=Connecticut Review |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=1–15 |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite AV media |people= | * {{cite AV media |people=—. Centrano, Sal. |date=May 24, 2007 |title=A Conversation with Sal Cetrano |trans-title= |medium=Audio Tape |language= |url= |access-date= |archive-url= |archive-date= |format= |time= |location= |publisher=Unpublished |id= |isbn= |oclc= |quote= |ref={{Sfnref|Leeds Audio|2007}} }} | ||
* {{cite book |last= Mailer |first= Norman |date= 1959 |title=Advertisements for Myself |url= |location= New York |publisher= Putnam | * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1959 |title=Advertisements for Myself |url= |location= New York |publisher=Putnam |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last= Mailer |first= Norman |author-mask=1 |date= 1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location= New York |publisher= Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last= Mailer |first= Norman |author-mask=1 |date= 1965 |title=An American Dream |url= |location= New York |publisher= Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1967 |title=An Appreciation of Cassius Clay |url= |magazine=Partisan Review |issue=Summer |page=264 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1967 |title=An Appreciation of Cassius Clay |url= |magazine=Partisan Review |issue=Summer |page=264 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Reprinted in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1972|p=264}}. | ||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1968 |title=The Armies of the Night|url= |location= New York |publisher=NAL |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1968 |title=The Armies of the Night|url= |location= New York |publisher=NAL |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1993 |title=The Best Move Lies Very Close to the Worst |url=https://classic.esquire.com/article/1993/10/1/no-3-the-best-move-lies-very-close-to-the-worst |magazine=Esquire |pages=60–64, 186 |access-date=2020-09-25 |ref=harv }} | * {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1993 |title=The Best Move Lies Very Close to the Worst |url=https://classic.esquire.com/article/1993/10/1/no-3-the-best-move-lies-very-close-to-the-worst |magazine=Esquire |pages=60–64, 186 |access-date=2020-09-25 |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date= 1966 |title=Cannibals and Christians |url= |location= New York |publisher= Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date= 1966 |title=Cannibals and Christians |url= |location= New York |publisher= Dial |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date= | * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date= 1962 |title=Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters) |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1955 |title=The Deer Park |url= |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite | |||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1972 |title=Existential Errands |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little, Brown |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1972 |title=Existential Errands |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little, Brown |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1975 |title=The Fight |url= |location=Boston |publisher=Little, Brown |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=September 1998 |title=Fury, Fear, Philosophy: Understanding Mike Tyson |url= |magazine=Spin |pages=40–44+ |access-date= |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=March 19, 1971 |title=King of the Hill |url= |magazine=Life |pages=18F-36 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Reprinted in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1972}}. | |||
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=July 1963 |title=Some Children of the Goddess |url= |magazine=Esquire |pages=62–69, 305 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Reprinted in {{harvtxt|Mailer|1966|pp=104–130}}. | |||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1998a |title=The Time of Our Time |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1984 |title=Tough Guys Don’t Dance |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |date=1978 |title=A Transit to Narcissus |url= |location=New York |publisher=Howard Fertig |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Millett |first=Kate |date=1970 |title=Sexual Politics |url= |location=New York |publisher=Doubleday |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite magazine |last=Neyfakh |first=Leon |date=November 19, 2007 |title=The Id (and Imp) of American Literature |url= |magazine=The New York Observer |page=8 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | |||
{{Refend}} | {{Refend}} | ||
{{Review}} | {{Review}} | ||
{{DEFAULTSORT:He Was a Fighter: Boxing in Norman Mailer’s Life and Work}} | {{DEFAULTSORT:He Was a Fighter: Boxing in Norman Mailer’s Life and Work}} | ||
[[Category:Articles (MR)]] | [[Category:Articles (MR)]] | ||