Norman Mailer and the Rope-A-Dope
A bellicose Norman Mailer had come to the Writers House to argue the premise of his most recent book, his case against the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, Why Are We at War?. He was also there to talk about his collection of essays on the craft of writing, The Spooky Art. At 81, Mailer’s bright blue eyes were at times challenging, at times amused, and while he loved boxing metaphors and was ready to throw verbal punches at any and all in the audience, he relied on aluminum canes to steady his short, arthritic body as he shuffled from spot to spot.
Mailer’s gravelly-voiced condemnation of President Bush (“an oaf and fraud and mountebank”) received a lukewarm reception, but those assembled for the discussion of The Spooky Art warmed to him and his engaging answers to their questions. At the end of the session, I asked if he would sign my copy of The Spooky Art and told him that I was writing my first novel. His inscription read, “Good luck, good fortune with the Bitch.” (FYI: “wrestling with the Bitch” was how Mailer referred to an author’s struggles with writing a novel.) When I said I’d see him at the dinner with Judith Rodin (the university president) and hoped we’d get a chance to talk about “The Rumble in the Jungle,” the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire in 1974, he smiled and said he’d like that; he’d like it very much.
After dinner, the guests, mostly Penn board members, faculty, and Writers House supporters like me, left their seats to mingle, leaving Mailer alone at the head table. It struck me as odd that his hosts had abandoned this important literary figure. I wondered if he was being snubbed because he’d sharply rebuked several undergraduates in his lecture or if university politics were more important than paying attention to the guest of honor. Whatever the reason, Mailer patted the seat of the chair next to him and said, “Sit, Harry (a name tag read). Let’s talk about the fight.”
I began by mentioning the astonished looks on George Plimpton’s and his face (as captured in the Oscar-winning documentary When We Were Kings) when Ali knocked Foreman to the canvas to win the fight and recapture his long-lost championship. My comment immediately energized him. “George and I were speechless. For seven rounds, all Ali did was his surprising rope-a-dope thing.” Mailer held his fists in front of his face and began to lean forward and then away. “He used the ropes like a shock absorber to absorb Foreman’s punches. By the sixth round, Foreman was arm-weary. He’d literally punched himself out. What nobody knew before the fight, not even Angie Dundee (Ali’s trainer), was that he’d planned to do this all along and secretly did 1,500 incline sit-ups every day to strengthen his stomach muscles. Then, according to the referee, at the beginning of the eighth round, Ali said to Foreman, ‘Okay, sissy, now it’s my turn.’”
Bobbing and weaving in his chair, Mailer began throwing punches at me inches short of my face, accentuating them with loud bip, bip, bips. “When the round was all but over, Ali danced from the corner and, after setting Foreman up with a wicked left hook, hit him with a straight right that floored him.”
I looked at the other guests, but none seemed to have noticed Mailer’s animated recount of the fight or, perhaps, chose not to. And, for a moment, it was just Norman and Harry having a friendly chat about a prizefight. When we briefly discussed the novel I was writing, he took my hand in his. “When you’re through, remind me I asked you to do this and send me a copy. I’ll give it to you right between the eyes.” And I wondered if, for a moment, I was seeing a side of Norman Mailer that conflicted with the notoriously pugnacious image of a guy who, among other things, stabbed one of his wives.
As the guests began to leave, Lyn joined us. Mailer said he thought she was my daughter because she was so young and beautiful. He smiled. “One more Ali story? For your wife?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “At my 60th birthday party, Ali came up to my wife and me and began one of his lyrical rants: ‘Norman, you so good lookin’; you can’t be a day over thirty. You must be lying about your age.’ When Ali was finished, I excused myself to go the bathroom. After I left, Ali looked at my beautiful, young wife and asked in mock surprise, ‘What you doin’ with an old man like that?’”
Norman Mailer died on November 10th, 2007. He was 84. Wing Walking, the novel I was writing when we met, was published two days before his death. I never got a chance to send him a copy, and he never got the opportunity to give it to me right between the eyes, something I suspect he would have enjoyed.
