Page Four THE MICHIGAN DAILY Sunday, September 21, 1975 Page Four THE MICHIGAN DAILY Sunday, September 21, 1975 BOO KS Fighting a battle against the fears that strangle feeling Muhammed Redux: Norman Mailer s epic view of the Ali-Foreman fight THE HOUSE ON MARSH- LAND by Louise Gluck. Echo Press, 42 pp., $6.95. By LAWRENCE RUSS T OUISE GLUCK'S The House on Marshland is even more intense than her first book, and the strident petulance and self- pity that filled a number of the poems in Firstborn (1968) have dissolved. In their place stands a more honest sorrow and a more sensual lyricism. The voice comes from deeper in the throat. The subject of many of these poems is love - love between man and woman, between child and parent. But it is the love of the possessed, whose wills are not their own, but who must act out, much to their sorrow, the tired and destructive desires of the dead. In Firstborn, Ms. Gluck seemed intent on blaming her lovers and relatives, but here she sees the loneliness and frustration that make the par- ental ghosts so restless: My father is standing on a railroad platform. Tears pool in hid eyes, as though the face i glimmering in the window F-" FREE SUNDAY DINNER for those interested in Fraternity Rush 6:00 P.M. Sigma Nu Fraternity nom- -" ! , ' - r - - 'A BLOCK FROM THE ROCK' 700 OXFORD 761-3127 STOP IN OR CALL FOR A RIDE were the face of someone he was once. But the other has forgotten; as my father watches, he turns away, drawing the shade over his face, goes back to his reading. And she sees that the barren satisfactions are also her own: ... and to select death, O yes I can believe that of my body. jN THESE poems women are not merely the victims of so- cialization and male selfishness but, like men, prisoners of im- printedpatternssofdesire. Na- ture is viewed as a "green, poi- soned landscape," a landscape of "the barrenness/of harvest or pestilence." Even the moon is "toothed". Emotional and sexual longings are felt as nat- ural forces which cannot be re- sisted, - yet surrender leads to the shipwreck of hope and to a slow and anguished deteriora- tion. Although the poet occasional- ly expresses a wish to be free of her prophecies, or imagines a state of freedom, she is not particularly hopeful, and even "The Magi," the legendary wise men, are merely those who have learned to recognize the old landmarks, the same signposts on the doomed journey toward other selves. In "Gretel in Dark- ness," Gretel does not escape to live happily ever after, but finds that the old murder haunts her, that her father's protection has become a new kind of imprison- ment, that she is alone without even Hansel to be her compan- ion in sadness, and that the old house of tragedy and fear now lives within her own soul: . Hansel, we are there still and it is real, real, that black forest and the fire in earnest. until your whole life reduces to nothing but waking up morning after 'morning cramped, and the bright sun shining on its tusks. LOVE HAS a number of guises Lin The House on Marshland, but all of its dresses are black. Love is the lure that draws one into stunting and stunted rela- tionships, or itis the spell that binds the defeated together, or it may even be the means of transmitting the "contagion," the deadening compulsions, from generation to generation. But for now it must be enough for the poet that at the end of this book she appears to be leav- ing the man with whom she has lived in unrelieved sadness, hopefully to begin a different kind of life. It is night for the last time. For the last time your hands gather on my body. Tomorrow it will be autumn. We will sit together on the balcony watching the dry leaves drift over the village like the letters we will burn, one by one, in our separate houses. THE HOUSE On Marshland is a mesmerizing work; it has the strange beauty of those bleak landscapes in which the heart recognizes itself. And per- haps, despite appearances, it is even a comforting book to the extent that all genuine art, in its sensuality and intimacy, is comforting. It is comforting, too, THE FIGHT by Norman Mail- er. New York: Little, Brown; 239 pp., $7.95. By JIM HILL WHILE Muhammed Ali was in training last November for his encounter with George Foreman, he responded to a re- porter's question by saying: "If I win, I'm going to be the Black Henry Kissinger . . .", and the statement, instead of register- ing as hollow pre-fight bravado, carried the substantial weight of real possibility. Fascinated by that, Norman Maileratoyed with the idea of Ali as a twentieth century prophet, a world lead- er, "president not only of Amer- ica, or even a United Africa, but leader of half the Western world, leader doubtless of fu- tur Black and Arab republics." Fresh from his extended liter- ary tribute to "graffiti", Mailer was on the track of another cultural phenomenon. A good novelist but a better journalist, Mailer is at the top of his form in his new book, The Fight, an account of last year's' Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire (formerly the Congo). As a top-flight reporter, Mailer gets close to the event and its par- ticipants; he is with the fighters during their interviews and while they work-out, he is in their dressing room before the fight, at ringside to . call the punches, and with Ali in the minutes after his victory to hear his strangely subdued voice. But 'of course the book amounts to much more than a straight de- scription of an important athlet-, ic event; Mailer's intellectual and emotional reactions supply an endless chain of surprises. The fight itself is safe history; most of us remember how Foreman strove mightily to bat- ter his opponent into submission and how Ali used the ropes to weaken the larger man, how in the eighth round he slipped through Foreman's sagging de- fenses to tag him with the fatal shots. Mailer records the fight and attempts to understand it in a context as wide, untamed and mysterious as the African con- tinent. PEFORE embarking for Zaire, Mailer pored over Bantu the clear germ of wisdom that stylistic danger can he reach descriptive verve seems to crest was there - that humans are the intensity of feeling he needs and suggest that just as the forces, not beings - coincided to write well. Normally the one punch is the center of the fight, so closely with his own instincts taking the risks is a persona, his rendering of it is the center and provided so seductive a con- variously called in past work of the book: "Foreman's arms cept that he chose to read the the "reporter", the "writer", flew out to the side like a man confrontation in terms of this vi- "Aquarius"; in this work sim- with a parachute jumping out of tal force - in Congolese, "N'go- ply "Norman". Unhappily this a plane, and in this doubled- lo". Mailer's sensibility is high- celebrated ego dwells to need- over position, he tried to wander ly receptive to supernatural less excess upon itself - taking out to the center of the ring. forces; years ago while report- stock, ruminating-and it seems All the while -his eyes were on ing on the Apollo mission to the as though the writer, continual- Ali and he looked up with no moon he discussed "magic" en- ly losing the threat of his nar- anger as if Ali, indeed, was the tering into the nuts and bolts of rative, drops gratefully into self- man he knew best in the world technology when a machine act- analysis. and would see him on his dying ed up as though it had a mind Mailer can definitely deliver of its own. So when, for exam- the goods however, and the book day . . . He went over like a ple, Mailer calls Ali's sorcery is filled with insights the reader six-foot sixty-year-old butler who "a powerful voice in the fearful can delight in. In those moments has just heard tragic news, yes, and magical zone between the when he is characterizing peo- fell over all of a long collapsing living and the dead," he is only ple and situations around him, indulging a mystical apprehen- Mailer is at his luminous best; sion of the world; and it be- he proposes a basic difference: Champion in sections, and Ali comes a kind of sustained ele- while sizing-up the two fighters revolved with him in a close .*.:::.*.::::: *:::: .::::::*. ::2e:: a . . . . . . . ..mm a~m mm us m m. . .o m The paths laid out in the in that, as Camus said, people haunted forest of the mind pro- come closest together when they vide, a way to go, but without a share their loneliness, meaningful or satisfying goal. To achieve the goal is to end all Lawrence Russ, a student in, possibility of fulfillment, the L school i a three-time The set paths lead to lives in which possessiveness passes for Hopwood Award winner inI kindness, and in which the self poetry. He has also recently re- is dried out and ground down by ceived the Academy of Ameri- those who claim to protect it. can Poets prize and the Mi- . ssubstantial kindness, thatIchael R. Gutterman Award for is always eyeing you, capoR. like a large animal on a rug, poetry, el t ' t .) - r "One reason Ali in- Philosophy and he found that ------ - . ----s------------ this Jindy Warhols Irankensici COMPLETE SHOWS SAT, SUN-WEDS I :00-2:30-4:00-5:30-7:00 MON, TUES, THURS 7:00 ONLY A The ultimate. stomach. turner." -oward Kissel, Women's Wear Daily t oro~ e r tZIE I - I I I .. A Flm by PAUL MORRISSEY V -PLUS - ANDY WARHOL'S ARFiM BY PAUL MORRISSEY COLOR.ABRYANSTON PICTURES REL.EASE 'U ,. ,. __. . _ y ' West Side Book Shop Used and Rare Books Bought and Sold Opening Monday, Sept. 22 113 West Liberty St. Ann Arbor, Mi. 48108 (313) 995-1891 personality invariably} suggests he would not hurt an average man. .: Whereas Foreman of - fers full menace. In any nightmare of car- nage, he would go on and on." vation of the ordinary, in which"Indeed, one reason Ali inspired ® the unremarkable - jogging love was that his personality in- with Ali, watching Foreman at variably suggested he would not ping-pong - assumes a new di- hurt an average man, merely mension of meaning. dispose of each attack by a Occasionally his mystical minimal move and go on to the speculationgrows to ludicrous next. Whereas Foreman offered proportions: one evening before full menace. In any ghtmare the fight Mailer steps out onto of carnage, he would go on and the balcony of his seventh floor on' Ali was I the man he knew best in the world and would see him on apartment; the protected by a sudden intuitive that by stepping his life on the shift the tide of balcony is un- parapet. In a leap he knows out and risking ledge he will battle in favor Icircle, hand primed to hit him one more time, a wholly inti- mate escort to the floor." A T THIS RATE - the figura- tive level subsides only, slightly -- the sum of The Fight's parts finally adds up to more than eight rounds of box- ing in Zaire. Far more. Mailer's epic frame-of-reference effort- lessly enlarges people and events to a more impressive scale; when Ali regains his title the axis of the world as- sumes a new tilt. It has been said that if ever a reporter is needed to cover the Second Coming, Mailer is the man for the job. One finishes The Fight wondering if that Event hasn't already occurred. "All the while, Fore- man's eyes were on Ali and he looked up with no anger, as if, indeed, his dying day. of Muhammad Ali: "He knew Muhammad's chances would be greater if he did it than if he didn't. And was furious at the vanity. Ali did not need his pal- try magic . . . Of course, con- sidering Foreman, Ali might, need all the help he could get." The risks Mailer takes in both his private and professional life, of course, constitute a great part of his charm; it's as if only by courting physical and . I MAILER'S BOXING savvy and metaphorical gifts are fully and marvelously displayed in his blow-by-blow account of the battle. It is almost as if hej tries to do on a diminutive scale what Melville did for whaling and Hemingway did for bull- fighting: define the profession by supplying the reader with a dazzling excess of information and with the complex mechan- ics and subtleties of literary style. t__________ The reader begins to totally sense the "machismo" of con- tending forces. When the fatal Jm Hill is 4 graduate stu- blow is finally landed, Mailer's dent in English. m FRI DAY-MONDAY-TUESDAY- THURSDAY AT 7 & 9 ONLY OPEN 6:45 SATURDAY-SUNDAY- WEDNESDAY AT 1-3-5-7-9 P.M. OPEN 12:45 Sylvia Studio of Dance SYLVIA HAMER, F.I.S.T.P. Academic Ballet, Pointe, Adagio, Modern, I Men's class. 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