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     stand.And if he could beat Frazier in the rematch  we would have
     at last a national hero who was hero of the world as well. (''King'' 92–92)
+Ali was a national hero, for his moral and physical courage.His heroismhad
+fascinated Mailer for years. In a short piece, “An Appreciation of Cassius
+Clay,” he wrote: “[I] don’t want to get started writing aboutMuhammad Ali,
+because I could go on for a book” (''Errands'' 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....” (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” (Leeds 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 ~91–
+!. This announces, I believe, an attractive new modesty in Mailer.
+Such modesty pervades “The Best Move Lies Close to the Worst,” in
+whichMailer recounts his adventures and misadventures in boxing in a consistently
+self-deprecating manner. Boxing with José Torres is described thus
+(''Time 1048''):
+  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.
+The story, in a mildly oversimplified form, has circulated for years that
+Mailer gave Torres writing lessons in return for boxing lessons. Actually,
+B A R R Y H. L E E D S { 389
+Mailer first began to learn boxing under the tutelage of the father of Adele
+Morales, his second wife. In the “Sixth Advertisement for Myself,”Mailer
+states:
+  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. (''Advertisements'' 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 LegsMcNeil for Details!, Torres responded,“No fucking difference”
+(''Details'', nd., 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” (''Details'' 85).
+ Another regular at the Gramercy Gym in the 1980s was Sal Cetrano,who
+is mentioned ~though not by name! in “The Best Move.” In a hitherto
+unpublished interview with J. Michael Lennon (dated May 24, 2007),
+Cetrano disarmingly recounts a series of anecdotes regarding his experiences
+with Mailer, Torres, and Ryan O’Neal.
+Cetrano first met Mailer by accident on Broadway in 1980, and the first
+thing they talked about was the Paret/Griffith fight. Subsequently, Cetrano
+wroteMailer a letter which was reciprocated by a postcard that simply said,
+“Be at the Gramercy Gymat 10:30AM Saturday.” Sal had been in the Golden
+Gloves as a kid, but he“weighed about 145 pounds and everyone seemed bigger.”
+His solution to this problem, since “I had been a distance runner as a
+kid,” was to keep opponents at arm’s length. Of the relationship between
+Mailer and Torres, he describes it as one of “power to power: Norman was a
+king of literature; Jose a king of boxing.”
+When asked byMichael Lennon of the parallels betweenMailer as boxer
+and as writer, Cetrano responds ~with deprecating laughter as risking a cliché!
+that he’s “existential” in both:“He does things to their fullest.” Although
+Norman had a “wonderful teacher in Jose,” he’s not a fast boxer.“He wades
+in and clubs you to death.” This suggestion of Mailer’s legendary fearlessness will echo for anyone who knows his life and work, in every act or stunt
+as well as every piece of prose.