Sound and Fury

Sound and Fury by Dave Kindred

Category: Sports biography Grade: A

I usually like to wait a day or so before writing one of these reviews, but I wanted to get this one done right away. I just finished this book 2 minutes ago and I have a confession to make. I hope this doesn't destroy the last bit of macho image I might have, but at a couple of points in the book, there were huge tears rolling down my face. That's especially surprising since this is a sports book, but one that defines an era -- the dual biography of Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell.

Those of you who are about my age will remember that Ali was kind of a touchpoint for the boomer generation. Some saw him as a loud-mouthed, draft dodger. Others saw him as both the greatest fighter who ever lived and as a man to whom principles were worth everything. I am definitely in the latter category. During my high school and college years, Ali stood up, at the risk of everything he had, and said he would not accept being drafted. It was obvious then, as now, that this wasn't about fear of fighting -- clearly, an Ali in uniform would have spent his time, selling government bonds and fighting exhibitions to entertain the troops. He never would have seen a shot fired in anger. In spite of this, he said to the world that the war was wrong and the he would never go to the far east to fight for the rights of people when his own country didn't extend those rights to him and his people. In his own simple words -- "I ain't got nothing against the Viet Cong".

The reality of Ali as this book tells well is, of course, far more complicated. At bottom, Ali was and remains a simple and often gullible man. He was run for decades by the Nation of Islam - publicly spouting racial separatism, second class status for women and some really harebrained ideas about God and religion invented by Elijah Muhammad. In later years, he was constantly taken advantage of by businessmen trying to shortcut making a buck by using Ali's name. In the ring, though he was a thing of beauty - both his physical appearance and his skills. Who knows what his legend would look like without the government persecution that illegally kept him out of the ring for years.

Today, his physical infirmities have made a quiet and somehow dignified man. He is no longer the "living flame" that Kindred calls him and yet the disabilities have made him almost a saint in today's world. In the most powerful chapter in Kindred's book, he writes movingly of Ali's appearance at the Atlanta Olympics to light the Olympic flame - a black Muslim in a resurrected Southern city the symbol that, at a minimum, some progress has been made. I reacted to this section of the book in the same way I reacted, sitting in my living room, when Ali, bloated and ill, became the surprise of the Olympics -- in tears.

And then there's Cosell - there were times he wanted to make you turn the radio off and throw something at the TV. However, he brought a rampant intelligence to sports broadcasting that had never been their before. Before Howard, sports journalism was about simple play-by-plays. Sportscasters told you what was happening, but never why or what it meant. Cosell changed all that. Its no accident that he was the first sportscaster ever inducted in to the TV hall of fame. Kindred does show us the life, not just the image -- Cosell's struggles to leave his law practice behind to break in to sports; his enormous ego that both drove and retarded his career and his devotion to his wife, Emmy.

I've tried to be honest with you guys in these reviews and tell you when I thought a book's audience would and should be limited to those with particular interests. This, however, is a sports book that will be just as enjoyable to non-sports fans as to fanatics. Through the story of the friendship (sort of) between these two men, Kindred manages to tell us about the changes in the last 40 years. I highly recommend it to everybody.