PARTISAN REVIEW
51
"I don't mean that he outsung Ali during the fight. I mean, in–
stead, that he sang his particular song better than Ali sang his. Old
slow-blues, pork-eating Frazier is moody and relentless. He got plenty
killer in him. But bebop-body, your man, is the urbanized philosopher
of the would-be righteous, the future shaper in many respects. However,
he
is
a blase singer, having a tendency to sound down mammy-loving
country boys who lack causes, and who are grateful for any desperate
break they can get. Boys like Frazier envision purple suits, full length
Russian sable, biege
EI
Dorados, the perfumed cluster of female flesh
and triumphant kisses from the Sepia Queen.
"Ali envisions a Nation full of intricate order, like an interlocking
network of squares and rectangles. He dreams of kissing the black
stone of Mecca. No loose perfumed ladies there. Perhaps there, mosques
fly
as zones of ultimate righteousness. The Muslim women wear long
dresses; they pursue long periods of silence as they side-step sin, mur–
muring polite Koranic knowledge.
"Your problem, my boy, primarily concerns making both of them
understand the implicit unity between the circle and the square. Using
a variant of the calculus that we set up earlier, I would say, there–
fore, that Frazier needs Ali's squares, and Ali needs Frazier's circles.
I can't see it no other way.
"The essential dynamics of the squared circle demand that each
contestant really understand how he sings best. That he choreograph
and orchestrate his game in terms of what he does best. Theoretically,
everyone in the sporting game knows this. But the pragmatics or trans–
lation of this abstract knowledge often eludes us. In the case of the
particular spectacle under discussion, the fighters were very much
evenly matched. They just simply manifested different choreographic
styles. But given the pressure of the evening, its particular psychological
atmosphere, its
forced
political overtone, the winner would be the one
who most acutely understood the principles of spatial and psyche
rhythm. Ali's science was winning until the first stunning blow caught
him somewhere around the eighth round. (Note the quaternity of the
number eight [8].) But Ali also had not paced himself properly from
the beginning of the match. He allowed himself to enter Frazier's sys–
tem of deceptive choreography; a system full of treacherous memories
that lay in the cut ready to pummel that bebopping body of his. The
way to fight slow grinding powerhouses like Frazier is to not let them
touch you at all - if it's humanly possible. Because, beneath that dull
rap, there is a mad churning engine. And you have got to respect that
kind of power."
He looked at his watch. "How about one for the road?" I said.
