The Complete Muhammad Ali
-
- $22.99
-
- $22.99
Publisher Description
More than a biography and ‘bigger than boxing’, The Complete Muhammad Ali is a fascinating portrait of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. Ishmael Reed calls it The Complete Muhammad Ali because most of the hundred odd books about the Champion are “either too adoring or make excessively negative assertions.” They also omit many voices that deserve to be heard.
Ishmael Reed charts Muhammad Ali’s evolution from Black Nationalism to universalism, but gives due credit to the Nation’s of Islam’s and Black Nationalism’s important influence on Ali’s intellectual development. People who led these organizations are given a chance to speak up. Sam X, who introduced Ali to the Nation of Islam, said that without his mentor Elijah Muhammad, nobody would ever have heard of Ali. That remark cannot be ignored.
Reed, an accomplished poet, novelist, essayist and playwright, casts his inquisitive eye on a man who came to represent the aspirations of so many people worldwide and so many causes. He also brings to bear his own experience as an African American public figure, born in the South in the same period, as well as an encyclopaedic grasp of American history.
People interviewed include Marvin X, Harry Belafonte, Hugh Masakela, Jack Newfield, Ed Hughes, Emmanuel Steward, Amiri Baraka, Agieb Bilal, Emil Guillermo, Khalilah Ali, Quincy Troupe, Rahaman Ali, Melvin Van Peebles, Ray Robinson, Jr., Ed Hughes, Jesse Jackson, Martin Wyatt, Bennett Johnson, Stanley Crouch, Bobby Seale, and many more.
Reed also places the Muhammad Ali phenomenon in the history of boxing and boxers from before the times of Jack Johnson, through Joe Louis and Archie Moore to Floyd Mayweather. He also includes Canadian fights and fighters like Tommy Burns, George Chuvalo and Yvon Durelle.
“The Heavyweight Championship of the World,” wrote Reed in a 1976 Village Voice headline article shortly after third Ali-Norton fight, “is a sex show, a fashion show, scene of intrigue between different religions, politics, classes; a gathering of stars, ex-stars, their hangers-on, and hangers-on assistants.”
The author of the much cited Writin’ is Fightin’ has now produced what will likely be known not only as The Complete Muhammad Ali but also “the definitive Muhammad Ali.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Despite its title, this book is neither a biography nor complete. Instead, it's Ali as seen through the eyes of diverse people, many of whom have not been included in other books on Ali. Reed, a novelist, playwright, poet and academic, writes that he treats Ali "not only as a boxer but as a phenomenon, a human mirror for the sixties, as a cautionary tale for the seventies." But as Reed, who too often turns the spotlight on himself, showcases his knowledge of African-American culture, the book goes on unorganized, maddening tangents about the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, only sometimes relating back to Ali, and even then it might be about Ali's shady business associations or politics, not his boxing. There's little pattern to the subjects interviewed over more than a decade Ali's second wife, jazz musicians, a mysterious "Informant X;" by the end, the reader feels buried in scattered detail. If readers are looking for boxing, the book is a big swing and a miss, but if they are seeking enlightenment about Ali in the fabric of history, then it's at least a body blow but one better suited for academia than for fans.
