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Word: alie (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
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Usage:

...MUHAMMAD ALI...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: The Harder They Fall | 9/8/1975 | See Source »

That was before Muhammad Ali, another one of those brightly illustrated, all-star productions by Publisher Laurence Schiller, who previously arranged the controversial match between Norman Mailer and Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: The Harder They Fall | 9/8/1975 | See Source »

Sheed has tried to function both as a desk-bound essayist, considering Ali as a charged particle visible through the tubes and teleprinters of the press, and as a reporter, observing the man in his splendid flesh, talking with him, touching him, telling us what Ali is really like. The worthwhile results might fill a short magazine article. The rest is throat-clearing, padding and prattle. "Why write about Ali? Why paint the Mono Lisa?" Sheed asks aimlessly. And elsewhere: "It was almost as hard to tell how much Ali was really suffering as it is with his fellow Capricorn...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: The Harder They Fall | 9/8/1975 | See Source »

Although Sheed conveys very well the discomfort of being a white onlooker among Ali's retinue of sullen Black Muslims, he digs up almost nothing new or useful about his subject's past. In fact, he finds that the slick surface Ali now presents to the world is totally impermeable. Far too often he is reduced to saying "by all accounts," "apparently," "I'm told," "seems," and "I would surmise." At his worst, Sheed writes things like "I am told by those who know that being beaten up by a gifted father has a peculiar horror...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: The Harder They Fall | 9/8/1975 | See Source »

Sheed appears to be unnerved by his own failure, to the extent that even his grammar comes apart. He writes that Ali "learned ... to move side to side from Louis Rodriguez and to lay on the ropes from Sugar Ray ..." "Lay" for "lie" may be a weak paraphrase of fighters' talk, though the context makes this seem unlikely. But a few pages later there is something that would earn an automatic C minus in freshman English: "No one ever looked good wearing out their hands on Chuvalo...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: The Harder They Fall | 9/8/1975 | See Source »

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