Dalrymple steps into the ring to take on Norman Mailer and Mailer’s fascination with boxing, authenticity and himself.

For Mailer, the authentic Black man (he always capitalizes the word “black,” investing it with significance) is childishly selfish, sexually incontinent, thoughtlessly violent, and utterly spontaneous. That is what he admires and claims he would like to be himself…Not eternal youth, but eternal adolescence was his dream.

Read the essay in The New Criterion