Unretiring

Muhammad Ali understood that one of the requirements of an icon is to let the iconographers through the door. He happily greeted photographers in his gym, his dressing room, his mosque, even his hotel room, where he held court for reporters and posed in bed, naked. And in the days after his death we returned to the myriad images of Ali in his glory: scowling in triumph and looming over the fallen Sonny Liston; shadowboxing underwater; peeking under the toupee of his adenoidal Boswell, Howard Cosell.