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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 | coming forward. Don’t get discouraged. Be relentless. Don’t stop moving | ||
your hands. Break the others guy’s will.” | 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? | |||