Customer Reviews

The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters with Extraordinary People

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Susan Orlean writes with more grace, style and wit than anyone in the magazine world today. These well-reported, beautifully crafted profiles of both known and unknown characters show her at the top of her form. Orlean has a knack for being at the right place at the right time to capture a telling detail or quote and, contrary to the wrongheaded and ignorant comments in a few of the customer reviews here, she is, if anything, self-effacing and unobtrusive as she brings the reader deeply into the lives of her subjects. Literary journalism as an art form necessarily includes the author's voice and point of view -- these are what make it less artificial and far more interesting than standard "objective" reporting. The rave reviews for this book in the New York Times and other publications are well justified.

Susan Orlean is indeed one of the best magazine writers out there right now--one of the best catches of Tina Brown's from the Dark Ages of the New Yorker! And this book is definitely a must for anyone interested in the contemporary nonfiction world. However, by limiting the collection to merely profiles, Orlean has limited the reader's appreciation of her great talents. The books ends up repeating itself too much.

After reading Susan Orlean's excellent The Orchid Thief last year and having followed some of her recent writing in The New Yorker (particularly a fantastic piece on the hapless New Hampshire girl-rock group from the 1970's, The Shaggs), I was eagerly awaiting this collection of profiles. It not only surpassed my very high expectations for literary quality, it is one of the funniest and most entertaining, lively and moving books I have read in quite awhile. She gets these people down perfectly and is a master of the revealing touch. The opening chapter on a typical 10-year-old American boy is my favorite -- it allows the reader to enter a kid's world very much from his point of view while overlaying a beautifully reported and crafted commentary that manages all at once to be empathetic, witty,ironic and highly informative. The ending of this piece, like the ending to both the introduction and the title piece on the first female matador in Spain which concludes the book, is hauntingly poignant and gets to what Orlean is really about here: showing the extraordinarily captivating nature of what seemingly ordinary people are really like when closely examined in their own subcultures. The intelligence and insight she brings to bear in joyfully sharing with the reader what she has discovered is what makes this book so wonderful.

Subtitled, "my encounters with extraordinary people", this book is a treasure trove of tales about some of the most interesting (and to a great extent ordinary) people you'll ever read about and most of them are people you'd never know. Susan Orlean is a regular writer for The New Yorker and is one of their very finest. Her last book, "The Orchid Thief" was at once captivating and bizarre. "The Bullfighter Checks her Makeup," is a compilation of a number of her pieces from the New Yorker in which she details the comings and goings of very ordinary every day people... and manages to make them all seem extraordinary. The best part of Orlean's writing is that she keeps the space intact between herself as the observer and chronicler of these lives and the individuality expressed in each of the life stories these people have. Although the expression goes, "Life is stranger than fiction," I would argue that Susan Orlean demonstrates that "Life is funnier than fiction", too! From the couple who breed show dogs to an "average" ten year old boy, to the female bullfighter (not usually a woman's sport) to the African king driving taxis in New York, everyone who is profiled in this book is in their own way funny, interesting, entertaining, and some, to a tiny extent sad. We meet pre-teen surfer girls and the middle-aged women who were once "The Shaggs". We read about the guy who invented "the Big Chair" (you know that chair in which people are photographed at county fairs?) and a sweet group of southern gospel singers. No one is too bizarre, too ordinary, or too unlikely. Orlean makes it clear that we are surrounded every day by extraordinariness - everyone has a story and many of them have great stories.  I loved this book for exposing the wonders of the human condition.

Before Susan Orlean became self-obsessed, she was a journalist who was posed to inherit the literary tradition of Didion, McPhee, Capote, Wolfe, etc. But something's happened. With the fluke popularity of the Orhard Thief--a very uneven book, one of those extended New Yorker articles that shuld have been left as is because it now reads as merely a struggle to fill up space--she's turned herself into a New York, high powered, high profile "celebrity" writer who seems to have lost touch with the small, quiet reporter who was fascinated first and foremost with her subjects...not herself. This book is a disappointment. How telling of her new attitude toward her subjects that on the cover of a book about OTHER people ("Encounters with Extraordinary People") she's posed seductively and made-up to the hilt. This is a shame of a book. I once adored this writer's older work.

I began this book, a collection of essays about people Orlean had interviewed, with enthusiasm, but finished it with relief. The essays were well-written, but soon began to seem too much alike to be of great interest. I ended up skipping some that were not about subjects I found intrinsically interesting.

Several of the essays date from the 1980s, and read as though they did. For example, the author's observations regarding 1980s pop singer Tiffany seemed dated, in light of the current slick marketing of teen stars (or acts aimed at the teen market). It would have been worth making some effort to update the stories, and place them in some kind of context. Instead, this is just a collection of previously published pieces, not all of which should have been brought back to light.

When I had finished "The Bullfighter checks her Make-up", it had occured to me that many of the rich and famous are quite dull when you take away the riches and fame. You don't believe me? Read an issue of Vanity Fair. In every issue, there will always be some hot star featured that month. This person may sizzle on celluloid, sound great on CD, etc. but is boring as heck or so self absorbed that you go running to a preening, navel gazing 14 year old for some company. None of Ms. Orlean's subjects are in this category. Whether it's a buff Boxer(the dog) named Biff or the Ghanian King who drives a cab; these people are unique.
In fact Ms. Orleans seems to find the unique in the ordinary. Her first subject is the "American Man" aged 10. Somehow, when reading about this fellow you are paying attention. His interests seem to be no different than other boys at that time. Yet you read and want to finish this. And to think her bosses wanted her do a profile of the then 10 year old Macauley Culkin! Good thing she got her way.
Many of these vignettes, in fact, would not be what a typical editor would request from a writer. In the sport of Women's Tennis, for instance, she doesn't profile the prominent Williams sisters but the lesser known Maleev sisters. In the dog show world, there isn't a profile of the prize poodle, but a contender in the Working Dog Category. The choices are unexpected and always a treat.
I would recommend this book to most everyone. Even a subject in which I had no initial curiosity such as Best Working Dog caught my eye. As for the Bullfighter...she's there as well. Happy reading!

For anyone who enjoys reading profile pieces in major national magazines, you will love Orlean's superb writing! Her choices of interview subjects are far and varied, from the American Man, Aged 10 to the Female Bullfighter, hence the title of the book.
You will be delighted and most of all, impressed by her deft writing and wonderfully descriptive passages. You will not be disappointed!

Though the hip New Yorker style may not be for everyone, I loved just about every one of these stories. For all the criticisms leveled against Orlean, she has an uncanny ability to capture her subjects and get inside their lifestyle. The range of these stories is what makes them so interesting -- one of my favorites was the simple portrait of a typical 10 year old boy. In fact, I enjoyed the obscure people's portraits more than those of famous people like Bill Blass and Tonya Harding. Orleans is great at picking out the nuances of everyday life that make humans so fascinating. It's the type of book that's best split up into smaller sections. I read it straight through which can get a bit repetitive, but I still found myself reading late into the night to finish.

Like her predecessor Joan Didion, Susan Orlean writes of the wide range of human experience--from a traveling gospel group in the South to a budding basketball star--and in doing so presents a portrait of America that is both comprehensive and engaging. What's even better is that she does it without ever being sentimental.

While I liked all of the essays in this volume, my favorites were ones that showed lives of the "average" American, like Heather Heaton, a young journalist covering the events of a small town, and, of course, "The American Male, age 10." Ms. Orlean has a way of following her subjects around & illuminating their lives, without ever getting in the way. Truly professional work, and I only have to say: give us more!