week four: shadow boxing

Ever since this semester began, I have become more sensitive to the things I read. We probably never realised it until WRIT3050 made us aware of it, but creative non-fiction articles are all around us. We read it all the time, we just didn't know it fell under the creative non-fiction genre--or at least, I didn't. I always thought of them as just articles. I'm not sure why, but knowing its genre changes how I read CNF pieces now. In a good way. I enjoy picking out the little details taught to us in class, I am actively aware of its theme and angle, I enjoy analysing its structure... Perhaps it's a little nerdy of me, but it's fun!

Anyway, I stumbled upon an article called Shadow Boxing last night, and even though I don't know squat about Mohammad Ali except for the fact that he bit off a chunk of Evander Holyfield's ear--um... wait, wasn't it Mike Tyson who did that? I stand corrected. (Many thanks to a friend whom I clarified these facts with.) Back to my point. I really don't know much about Mohammad Ali, but what I do know is that he was amazing at his sport, and that this article by Wright Thompson was really interesting. Because it wasn't about Mohammad Ali, really--it was about Sweet Jimmy, a boxer who once fought Mohammad Ali and who promptly went missing after.

I liked how Thompson successfully piques reader interest in the first few paragraphs, and thoroughly enjoyed his creative depictions of the old man shadow boxing. Thompson does a great job in hooking and reeling his readers in as he attempts to solve the mystery of the missing Sweet Jimmy. Even though it gets slightly draggy in the middle, Thompson manages to hold my curiosity right until the end, which I am thankful for because the epilogue is beautiful:

Even Ali is a prisoner in his own body, a ghost like Sweet Jimmy, lost in a different way. He paid a price for his fame, just as the men who fought him paid a price for their brush with it. Nothing is free. Confronting the wreckage reminds me of an old magazine story, written by Davis Miller. There's a haunting moment, in 1989 when things were turning bad. Ali stands at the window of his suite on the 24th floor of the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. His once booming voice comes out a whisper.

"Look at this place," he says. "This big hotel, this town. It's dust, all dust. Don't none of it mean nothin'. It's all only dust."

A fighter jet lands at an Air Force base out on the desert. Ali watches it through the glass, the lights on the strip so bright it seems like they'll burn forever.

"Go up in an airplane," he says. "Go high enough, and it's like we don't even exist."

Not only is the article well written, but there's a life lesson to be learned from it as well.

Julia