The Fight By Mailer, N - Paperback

I found this book fascinating. But have to admit I struggled tounderstand why Norman Mailer seemed not to be the man writing all aboutthe great Muhammad Ali and George Foreman,s classic fight in Zaire in the 1970s. There was a reference toMailer being amongst the chaos (at times) and build-up then leads to the Fight itself. Buthe seemed to only play a minor role in all this drama. Well written and insightful about the twofighters never the less.Craig : }

This is a great little book from a great little writer about a great big boxing event. It is a short book, even with some pointless waffle at the end, but it gives a different insight into the crowning moment of the most important sports man, or woman, in history. The Rumble in the Jungle in 1974 when an "ageing" Muhammed Ali foolishly, some said, challenged the most fearsome fighter in boxing history to a showdown in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the DR Congo). The book describes events and emotions from the build up in the training camps through to the fight aftermath, in Mailer's distinctive voice. You will already know the story but Mailer tells it well, with some brilliant boxing insight.

A championship bout with a hard as whiskey writer (Mailer) a great fighter (Foreman) and a genius of life (Ali) sometimes this strives for profundity, but often finds it with eternal truths applicable to all of us who struggle in all different ways.

The Fight is a vivid account of the 1974 world heavyweight boxing match in Zaire, billed as The Rumble in the Jungle, between George Foreman and Mohammad Ali. Mailer writes about Africa with more than a nod to Joseph Conrad, and writes about boxing with all the sweep and authority that Hemingway showed on bullfighting, but this book is about more than boxing. Mailer, a white Jew from New York, confronts his prejudices about blacks and about Africa, and while this seems less than remarkable now, it is easy to forget that mild racism was not only normal then among English-speaking whites, but was in fact the received wisdom of the time. This book was therefore a work of some courage and risk for a writer of Norman Mailer's stature.The use of the third person to describe the author is strange at first, and it seems possible that Mailer's ego might overshadow even the monstrous ego of Ali. But what emerges is more sensitive than that. Ali is portrayed as an aging prodigy tortured by doubt and surrounded by a retinue of oddballs, and Mailer succeeds in first isolating and then overcoming his buried prejudice and superstition.This is a powerful and at times moving book, and I would recommend it to all, including those who are uninterested or even repelled by the sport of boxing.

Norman has a great way of writing a story and this book was a wonderful insight it the life story of the greatest