Grappling with the greatest

Interview, Nov, 1998 by Brendan Lemon

When Muhammad Ali proclaimed "I am the greatest!" in the '60s it was a bold and revolutionary assertion of the notion that black is both powerful and beautiful. But writers or filmmakers who take on a subject as titanic as Ali assume a terrible challenge. With such a familiar subject, the turf may be so trodden that there is no moisture left to squeeze from it. If, in his new book on Ali, King of the World, David Remnick has found fresh ground, It is in part because he is not so foolish as to tell the boxer's whole story. He concentrates on Ali's dangerous early years, before he morphed into the mute, near mascotlike figure who elicits standing ovations at the Olympics or the Oscars.

Though Remnick writes with the even-handedness of an ace reporter, he also inserts some strong opinions into his text right from the beginning. Like his subject, Remnick - who is applying his agility as a journalist to his role as the director of a venerable, though still unprofitable, weekly magazine - understands how important it is to come out swinging.

BRENDAN LEMON: Your new book suggests that you have been fascinated by Ali for a long time.

DAVID REMNICK: If I had to name my three pop-culture heroes while I was growing up in New Jersey in the early '70s, they would be Muhammad Ali, Bob Dylan, and Woody Allen. But Muhammad Ali is a phenomenon so complicated and infused with racial meaning and various social dimensions that it was beyond my understanding at age twelve to take them all in.

BL: Why did you focus on the start-up of his professional career, In the early '60s?

DR: I briefly considered doing a full-length standard biography of Ali, but as a piece of writing and thinking it interested me more to take this much narrower period in Ali's life and in American life, because we think of it, in all senses, in black and white. When Ali comes out of exile in the '70s and returns to fighting, it's very much the color-TV age. The period when Ali was most shocking to American society is the earlier one.

BL: You say in the book that boxing itself has become marginal. How so?

DR: It's marginal in the sense that one or two fighters get a ton of money, and nobody cares about any of the others. When fighting was at its zenith, in the '40s and '50s, there were lots of fighters, but only pretty desperate people get into boxing these days. Also, we live in a culture where more and more women are interested in sports, and women simply don't watch boxing at all. Finally, it's become hard to defend a sport in which two very strong men and occasionally women are hitting each other in the head as hard as they can. There is a lot of beauty in the sport, and I'm not suggesting we outlaw it, but my guess is it's not going to get any less marginal.

BL: Among the many Journalists who make an appearance in the book Is Murray Kempton, whom you describe as a "mandarin among the street columnists." You've also written the Introduction to a new collection of Kempton's work. What is his appeal for you?

DR: I know of no American journalist, ever, who had the moral clarity and decency of Murray Kempton. He wrote the most exquisite prose and had a pair of the best "legs" in journalism. In other words, he went to things. He was never a pundit; he didn't gas off about opinions he received by poring over the papers in the morning.

BL: I think Kempton's curiosity would be piqued by your book's subtitle: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero. He would understand Ali's trajectory, which at least in some ways is that of all modern celebrities. There is the rise; the peak; the fail; and the comeback.

DR: That pattern is a kind of low-rent shadowing of Greek drama. But what makes Ali not just a celebrity but a protean figure is that you can cut his story a number of ways. He had a long and complicated career, filled with incidents that may have looked like defeats but eventually became triumphs. For example, he refused to serve in the Vietnam War. At the time it looked like a terrible defeat even while it was a great political stand. But in a way it's the moment that sets him apart. It's the moment when the athlete or artist gives up that which is seemingly most precious to him because he must defend what is really most precious to him. Ali didn't travel the Elvis Presley route - you go through induction but you serve your country in a relatively safe place.

BL: Ali and Elvis present a tantalizing comparison, not only because they are the two most famous Americans of our dwindling century but because the stakes for their entering the service were so different.

DR: Right. If Elvis Presley had treated his body and his life with even a modicum of care, he would still be among us. Look at Bob Dylan: He is still performing, he recently had his best album in years. But an athlete, for obvious physical masons, cannot do that, certainly not a boxer who depended on speed and reflex the way that Ali did. By taking a stand and going to jail for it, he gave up this huge chunk of time. He was a slower fighter when he came back, and one who had to learn how to take a punch to win instead of sliding past it, ducking under it, running away.