Volume 46, Number 2 · February 4, 1999
The Great Black Hope
By Garry Wills
King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero
by David Remnick
Random House, 326 pp., $25.00
More Than a Champion: The Style of Muhammad Ali
by Jan Philipp Reemtsma, translated by John E. Woods
Knopf, 172 pp., $21.00
Not perhaps since the time of Pindar has any athlete been such catnip to the intellectuals. Muhammad Ali is the fisticuffer of choice for all manner of deep thinkers. Norman Mailer perceived that Ali did nothing so mundane as trade punch for punch with muscled fellows more shallow than he. His distinction was to 'trade metaphysic for metaphysic with anyone.' (What was Sonny Liston's metaphysic?) Mailer's Ali is 'the swiftest embodiment of human intelligence we have had yet,' and 'the first psychologist of the body.'[1]
Review, 3108 words
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