Sherry Chandler

When Ali shouted “I’m pretty!’ in 1964 during the ringside interview after beating Sonny Liston, it was a defiant statement, and had everything to do with race in America at the time. When this proud, young black man–one who predicted, almost supernaturally, when his opponents would fall, who rallied behind his own supremacy, who belonged to the separatist Nation of Islam, a sect that perceived whites as “the devil”–howled “I’m pretty!” it wasn’t just funny, or even comically arrogant. Its undercurrent was cutting, a precursor to what he would tell The Black Scholar about his refusal to be drafted: “I was determned to be one nigger that the white man didn’t get. One nigger, that you don’t get, white man. You understand? One nigger, you ain’t going to get. One nigger you ain’t going to get.”

The Oxford American is back in business. I hope this time they last long enough for my subscription to run out.

No, that’s cruel. What I really hope is that they last at least long enough for me to get one more of their Southern Music samplers, which in the past have brought me such gems as Jerry Lee Lewis singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” Bob Dylan and Ralph Stanley in duet on “The Lonesome River,” and Billy Bob Thornton chanting “Ring of Fire” to a hip-hop beat and Earl Scruggs’s banjo licks. These masterpieces, really they are, are available in other collections but I’m not likely to buy them.

Okay, start again. That great Southern Magazine of Good Writing, The Oxford American, is back in business, and in the Winter 2005 issue they devote 6 pages to “Saint Cassius,” Senior Editor Paul Reyes’s review of GOAT (Greatest of All Times) from Taschen Books. The GOAT is, of course, Mohammed Ali, who turned 63 in January. As Reyes tells us:

It’s been said that more has been written about Muhammad Ali than about Abraham Lincoln, Jesus Christ, and Napoleon, a claim that’s difficult to prove, but which suggests a truth… [but] the odds of you actually getting your hands on this book are not good…

It measures 20 x 20 inches, its 792 pages measure 8 inches thick, and it weighs 75 pounds. It has more than 3,000 photographs – eight color glossies on semi-matte paper – and half a million words of text by the likes of Norman Mailer and George Plimpton. It took four years and $12 million to produce 10,000 copies. Those copies sell for $3,000 or $10,000, depending on the feature set. I think either one would max out my VISA card.

Given that you and I will probably never see a copy of GOAT – at least not in a setting where we can pore over it – I suggest you spend a quarter hour with the OA review, which itself provides a pretty good overview of Ali’s career: golden-boy of the Golden Gloves; sometimes cruel Champeen of the World; ostracized anti-war protestor; and “celebrity-saint.” This latter, the “commodification” of Ali – a process he may be said to have colluded with from day one – Reyes sees as what makes it possible for him to be “perhaps the most sympathetic figure in world affairs” but it also glosses the facts. GOAT, Reyes says, is a balanced portrait of Ali. In this it contrasts with the Mohammed Ali Center set to open in Louisville in the fall. Because few people are apt to see GOAT, however, it won’t act as much of a balance. For that, we will have to make do with Reyes very readable review.

Addendum: I do not like boxing. It’s a brutal sport and I see enough brutality without watching it for entertainment. But, I suspect like a lot of women my age, I had never seen anything like the young Ali. To quote Richard Pryor, “You don’t see his punches till they comin’ back.” He was incredibly fast, graceful, and gorgeous. He was sexy and I think that was another of his cultural breakthroughs.

One Last Thing. The photography in The Oxford American makes me think of Lucinda Williams, whose songs are sometimes oddly poignant and compelling and other times so slutty they make me go running for the soundtrack to The Sound of Music. (Well, I don’t actually own a soundtrack for The Sound of Music. I think I may have Showboat somewhere.)