The Fight: Norman Mailer (Penguin Modern Classics)

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The Fight is a 1975 non-fiction book by Norman Mailer about the boxing title fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman at Kinshasa in Zaire in 1974, known as the " Rumble in the Jungle". But this isn't merely a sports book, I was quite surprised by Mailer's political commentary and astute observations about the state of Zaire. One might say that this book feels like a companion piece to Conrad's original novel about the heart of darkness, and there is a sense that nothing has changed since the days of King Leopold II and the trauma that came with that. It almost seems as if the Zairians traded one dictator for another, except one that doesn't maim them for his own enrichment. The prose is clean and laconic, at once it makes you think of Hemingway and then Conrad's Heart of Darkness, considering its setting. Mailer isn't very subtle about his influences since he mentions both Conrad's masterpiece and Hemingway in the book, and he shares Hemingway's love for machismo. The book moves along nicely because of Mailer's storytelling gift, and his ability to immerse you into the atmosphere of Zaire.

An equally omnipresent aspect of the narrative is the sense of place that lurks behind everything that takes place. The Rumble in the Jungle takes place in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), which, in the early seventies, is still a relatively new sovereign state. Mobutu Sese Seko is the self-proclaimed ‘Father of the Nation’, and Mobutism is his doctrine. The influence of the totalitarian regime is replete and often absurd – it is a source of great fascination for Mailer, reflected through witty commentary (and occasional prejudice). Mailer neemt de tijd voor zijn verhaal, volgens sommigen misschien te veel, het boek bestaat voor zeker honderdvijftig pagina’s uit voorbereiding. Maar juist daardoor krijgt de climax extra gewicht. Ook fijn: Mailer duidt niet, hij laat zien. Zijn proza is ritmisch en doordacht, of hij nu ingaat op de politieke context van Zaïre, of Ali terloops karakteriseert terwijl die staat te trainen. Mailer's description of the bout between Ali and Foreman is pulsating. Some of the philosophical stuff went over my head. Mailer is pretty honest about his racism and his problem with Islam. I saw the ending coming because Mailer uses foreshadowing to tell us who would win the fight. On arriving in Kinshasa and meeting the two fighters, the author sees Foreman as a formidable threat to Muhammad Ali, believing Muhammad could be seriously injured. He sees Muhammad training and becomes convinced that Muhammad is not at his best and unlikely to win the fight. Michael Wood (July 27, 1975). "Muhammad Ali versus George Foreman via Norman Mailer". The New York Times . Retrieved March 4, 2015.The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.” — Chicago Tribune Mailer said Liston offered him his hand to shake; he asked, “Okay, bum?” and asked Mailer to get him a drink. “I’m not your flunkie,” Mailer told Liston. Liston looked around the room and said in a voice everyone could hear, “I like this guy.” It's not until the night of the three month-delayed fight and the twelfth chapter of the book that 'the Fight' really starts living up to its billing. Mailer's account of Ali's sombre dressing room - Bundini like a sulky child because Ali has rejected his choice of robe, Angelo Dundee scoring the soles of Ali's new boots with scissors to roughen them up and give him more of a grip on the canvas - is fascinating. And (courtesy of Plimpton) there's a glimpse into Foreman's preparations, his usual prayer ritual unchanged only because at least some members of team confess to praying not so much for Foreman winning as Ali leaving the ring still alive.

Norman Mailer was born in 1923 and went to Harvard when he was sixteen. He majored in engineering, but it was while he was at university that he became interested in writing; he published his first story when he was eighteen. After graduating he served during the war in the Philippines with the Twelfth Armoured Cavalry regiment from Texas; those were the years that formed The Naked and the Dead (1948). His other books include Barbary Shore (1951), The Deer Park (1955), Advertisements for Myself (1959), Deaths for the Ladies, a volume of poetry (1962), The Presidential Papers (1963), An American Dream (1964), Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967), The Armies of the Night (1968), Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), A Fire on the Moon (1970), The Prisoner of Sex (1971), Marilyn (1973), Some Honourable Men (1976), Genius and Lust - A Journey Through the Writings of Henry Miller (1976), A Transit to Narcissus (1978), The Executioner's Song (1979) and Tough Guys Don't Dance (1983). The Deer Park has been adapted into a play and was successfully profuced off Broadway. He also directed four films. The book has an amazing cast of larger than life characters - Mohammed Ali, George Foreman, Hunter S Thompson, George Plimpton, Mobutu and Don King. NOW, OUR MAN of wisdom had a vice. He wrote about himself. Not only would he describe the events he saw, but his own small effect on events. This irritated critics. They spoke of ego trips and the unattractive dimensions of his narcissism. Such criticism did not hurt too much. He had already had a love affair with himself, and it used up a good deal of love. He was no longer so pleased with his presence. His daily reactions bored him. They were becoming like everyone else’s. His mind, he noticed, was beginning to spin its wheels, sometimes seeming to repeat itself for the sheer slavishness of supporting mediocre habits. If he was now wondering what name he ought to use for his piece about the fight, it was out of no excess of literary ego. More, indeed, from concern for the reader’s attention. It would hardly be congenial to follow a long piece of prose if the narrator appeared only as an abstraction: The Writer, The Traveler, The Interviewer. That is unhappy in much the way one would not wish to live with a woman for years and think of her as The Wife. Oddly enough, Plimpton's own book 'Paper Lion', his 1966 book about his attempt as an average, non-athlete to make it through an NFL training camp with the Detroit Lions is a fine example of how to insert yourself repeatedly into a non-fiction book on sports without coming across as self-indulgently as Mailer so often does here. At least George got on the field. And he writes more charmingly about his adventures in a book where his centrality to the story is the entire point, than Norman does as he keeps inserting himself into 'the Fight'. Dat zijn twee figuren die tot leven komen, en die me – dat weet ik nu al – door Mailers schrijven zullen bijblijven. Het gevecht is een boek waarin een historische gebeurtenis inclusief context krachtig wordt opgeroepen, en ook het soort boek dat nu niet meer snel geschreven zou worden: niet alleen omdat er geen tijdschrift meer plaats biedt aan zo’n enorme reportage, ook omdat Mailer schrijft met een zelfvoldaanheid die tegenwoordig snel zou worden afgeserveerd.Even now, 39 years later, one can feel Mailer’s exhilaration when, after seven brutal rounds, Foreman was moving as “slow as a man walking up a hill of pillows.” When Ali finally came off the ropes in the eighth round and fired a rapid-fire three-punch combination Foreman “went over like a six-foot sixty-year-old butler who has just heard tragic news. Yes, fell over all of a long collapsing two seconds. Down came the champion in sections.”