Gerald Early

The writing in this book is absolutely exquisite. As an anthology, it's far-ranging in terms of genre and style, and while I didn't enjoy (or understand) some of the stories, even the ones I disliked were incredibly well-written. Some of the stories are uncomfortably supernatural or uncomfortably frank, they're all some of the finest prose I've read in a very long time, and I'll be keeping an eye out for other works by many of these authors. It's a serious, deep read, but well worth the time show more it takes. show less

No boxer has ever captured the public spotlight like Ali! He was funny, and all he had to do to make money was get in the Ring and try to eke out a win over people who, given a chance, could beat you to death! Some of them, Liston or Foreman, for example, could do it with one hand tied behind their back! He was the classic example of "grace under pressure."
He was an athlete in the boxing business who confronted the "fighters" and embarrassed them! This is a good anthology of writing about him.

Read this for a class. I definitely appreciated getting read so many different perspectives on Ali. I especially liked reading some of the interviews he did, particularly one he did with playboy magazine

Two short passages from Lure And Loathing:

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“On the populist left, the then favored model of the oppositional spokesman was what Gramsci called the “organic intellectual”: someone who participated in and was part of the community he would uplift. And yet James Baldwin’s basic conception of himself was formed by the familiar, and still well-entrenched, idea of the alienated artist or intellectual, whose advanced sensibility entailed his estrangement from the very people he would show more represent. Baldwin could dramatize the tension between these two models – he would do so in his fiction – be he was never to resolve it.”
– Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Welcome Table

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“The sister in Washington, D.C., who said, when asked her reaction to the Queen of England’s visit, ‘Well, she’s fascinating. But so am I.’”
– Kristin Hunter Lattany, Off-Timing: Stepping to the Different Drummer

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