His religion, too, had a certain selectivity. His second wife Belinda told Eig that Ali "failed as a man, he failed as a father", and the evidence stacks up. A hero in the struggle for racial equality, Ali was a villain of the sex wars. Ali was violent and hypocritical to women, both in his domestic life and in adopting the Nation of Islam's belief in a woman's servility. This word, "man", is similarly troubling. He was excoriated and later lionised for refusing to fight in Vietnam, having "no quarrel with them Viet Cong", but perhaps Ali's great achievement in that draft-dodging story was not sacrificing his world titles but spending $250,000 in legal fees to stay out of jail: a black man playing the privileged white man's game. He was academically backward and careless of his words, but from early in his boxing career Ali transcended words and became a symbol of (crucially) his own creation.Įig measures the transcendence of such symbols against Ali's human contradictions. The nickname conveys constant wonder and energy, the prankster nature and relentless sociability of a boy who was hyperactive before he threw a punch. As a young child, Ali was nicknamed "Gee", his exclamation at everything he saw. From 600 dense pages, impressions from Eig's narrative can stand in place of summary.
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