Customer Reviews

On Bullfighting

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

On Bullfighting is the product of a commission Ms. Kennedy received while deeply mired in depression and plagued by writer's block. One can be grateful for the stroke of editorial genius that suggested to someone that Kennedy, with no taurine background whatsoever, might be profitably set to this particular task. In lesser hands that would be a recipe for disaster (or at least near-mediocrity - witness the shallow, 1998, celebrity-struck, efforts of Eamonn O'Neill in Matadors: A journey into the heart of modern bullfighting, barely more satisfying than a People magazine feature story).

What emerged from Kennedy's brief research (brief, one might surmise from the short, seven-title bibliography - Belmonte, Conrad, Fulton, Hemingway (2), McCormick, and Sánchez /Durán), her viewing of historic corridas on film, and her attendance at a half dozen bullfights during the 1998 and 1999 Iberian temporadas, is a minor miracle - a work of value for the initiated and uninitiated alike.

Kennedy gives us enough history to reveal some of the threads that tie the present day phenomenon to its historic antecedents, and tentatively explores some links that more timid, inside observers have overlooked - like the similarities between the bullfight's rituals and the auto-da-fé of the Spanish Inquisition. She bravely wades into an examination of the nature and sources of duende (the taurine world's counterpart to Justice Stewart's "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it"), and she touches on the critical issues plaguing the present day corrida - weakened taurine bloodlines, horn shaving and other pre-corrida attacks on the central creatures' integrity, the celebritization of the festival, the organized vogue of anti-taurine animus. She gives us a meditation on death and the courage to face it, as honestly drawn when describing the events on the sand, as when describing her own personal demons - and a meditation on the generic nature of "vocation," its manifestations in the mundo taurino and in the literary world.

On Bullfighting was not meant to be an aficionado's handbook, detailing the differences in the myriad of cape passes, the differences in traje embroidery styles, the historic roots of every modern taurine manifestation inherited from the bullfight's speculative historical antecedents. It is a brief, impressionistic look at a complex cultural phenomenon seen through the eyes of a brutally honest observer, and described with the well-wielded tools of a major literary craftsman. In this, it shares a literary place similar to that held in the mundo cuadrilátero by Joyce Carol Oates' similarly titled, similarly insightful work, On Boxing.

All this is woven into a concise, sensitive narrative that chronicles one woman's self-guided, absolutely non-tendentious exploration of the mundo taurino - a valuable grounding for anyone new to the bullfights, and a valuable articulation for the aficionado of some of that hard-to- put-your-finger-on-it stuff that makes bullfighting more than the sum of its beautiful and horrific parts.

There is very little taurine literature worth reading, specially in English. There is the dysfunctional American hotdog of the Hemingway type, busting with alcoholised mysticism, or else the false aficionado of the Barnaby Conrad sort, trading in stale myth-making and half-digested pseudosociology. Books of this kind proliferated in the 50s.

A L Kennedy writes instead an extended essay, full of real insights, in which she relates bullfighting to mankind's [sometimes unconscious, often not] preocupation with death. She does this without grandiosity or bombastic sententiousness, or even that tiresome female one-upmanship. The fact that she is very obviously an Anglo-saxon woman may grate on some readers; then again, the freshness of her point of view would not be the same if she were a classically-educated, conservative Spaniard speaking of a long-cherished, unquestioned value. It is this freshness that makes her contribution interesting.

The volume is perhaps poorly edited, but make no mistake: it is one of the few books on bullfighting worth reading. A minor classic.

This book offers a refreshingly new slant on a subject that has been discussed at length by those who love and those who abhore the corrida de toros. At a time when animal rights enthusiasts would have us blush with shame over the systematic torture of an innocent animal, it takes courage and honest objectivity to bypass the emotional rhetoric in an effort to understand the history and the implications inherent in this unique dance of death. What can a contemporary Scottish woman in considerable physical and psychic pain tell us about this peculiarly Spanish drama? Surprisingly much. Kennedy covers a lot of ground very concisely and touches on artistic, moral, and philosophical implications that reverberate far beyond the immediate subject matter. Whether you have strong feelings for or against the ritual killing of bulls, you will find much that is thoughtprovoking in this cleardiscussion of the beauty and horror of bullfighting.

I found Ms. Kennedy's work emotional and passionate and a very good addition to taurine-related literature. It's refreshing to have a woman's take on the bloody and beautiful spectacle of bullfighting. I'm a huge fan of the corrida, toros bravos and toreros. But other than Sarah Pink's study into women and the corrida, I have read no other booklength works from a female perspective. Ms. Kennedy paints a fresh and feminine view on an ancient and often misunderstood ritual and brings the corrida to a set of readers who may otherwise be confused or bored with more technical pieces or a complex insider's book like Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon.

It was also good to see that her assignment swept her away from a potential nasty self-inflicted ending that would have left us without a very good piece of writing. This work is worthy of two thumbs up.

BUT if you are looking for an exploration of the role of bullfighting in Spanish culture, a concise historical overview, and a fairly nonjudgmental approach to the corrida, this is a great book! I thought the framing of the discussion in the author's own life circumstances DID NOT detract from the discussion...I think she needed to be at that place emotionally to be able to see the corrida's beauty and horror at the same time. I didn't find it distracting at all; she clearly did her homework, talked with lots and lots of people, and watched several different types of corridas. I think this book would be particularly good for those who want to see a corrida but feel somewhat horrified at the thought of possibly enjoying such a thing...and for those who (like me) HAVE seen one, and simultaneously loved and hated it.

No, this isn't the definitive book on bullfighting -- it wasn't intended to be, and very few english-language books even pretend to address the subject well. This is a fine companion piece to the voluminous Hemingway "Death in the Afternoon," now almost 70 years old, and in its way better, since it is thoroughly researched and analyzes bullfighting as a window onto the spanish soul without as much romanticism -- or at least, the romanticism is salted with Kennedy's mordant reflections. It also brings current the state of the corrida, discussing contemporary matadors along with the legendary ones.

This is not a book for a summer read on the beach, or a light flip-through; it insists on strict attention. But the careful reader will come away learning something of Federico Garcia Lorca, the poet; and duende; and many tricks of the corrida that only the true aficionado knows. and anyone who has ever attended a bullfight will nod appreciatively at this line: "The spectacle appears to be photogenic, but not filmic -- to show best in frozen moments of poise, set aside from the vagaries of the bull, the slips and fumbles of the man, the interludes and distractions which continually break the sustained artistry described in tales of the matador greats."

The reviewer below who claims the author viewed perhaps four bullfights is well off the mark; while Kennedy never says exactly how many, my count has the number of corridas well into double digits, with six bullfights each.

When I started researching bullfights in Spain everyone pointed to "Death in the Afternoon" by Papa Hemingway (as Kennedy calls him). I didn't even know Kennedy wrote this book, but my small town library had the prescience to stock this little volume in the bullfighting section, next to the Oxford University Press's official history and the Hemingway work. I thanked God for the librarian - whoever he or she may be - for ordering this book. Reading this was a godsend - marvelously written, the kind of book you borrow, and then rush off to buy a copy of just to keep. It is very powerful and haunted me for days. It was one of those moments when I really really truly thank our public libraries (our taxpayer dollars at work) - would not have discovered this book otherwise, on the web, on Kindle, etc.

I was in the process of researching bullfighting when I came across this book. I read it from cover to cover. This is an amazing and intimate account of a woman from outside of the Spanish bullfighting world coming to terms with its mystique, barbarism, and ceremony in highly readable and compelling terms.

Her journey through Spain, and especially her trip by rail to Granada and the home of Lorca, was insightful and haunting in its detail of a society's need to cling to its traditions. The history of the bullfight and the author's personal story of physical and mental anguish were well matched, and the experience of this book has stayed with me long after finishing its pages.

A.L.Kennedy's extraordinary book leads us from her own near-suicide in Scotland to the gaiety of the Fiesta Brava in Spain. Her work is here somewhat shaped by her own ill-health, and much of the book is a meditation on death. Do not be put off by this idea, for the whole thing is exquisitely written and makes use of unusually moving images: the result is positivley inspirational. Kennedy has studied toreo in great detail, and has a good grasp of her subject; she neither condones nor condemns. My only criticism is that the book runs out of steam towards the end when the author relies less on her stunning abstract and philosophical ideas, and gives a semi-journalistic account of the corrida. There has been a lot of very bad literature about bullfighting (including some by Hemingway!) but Ms. Kennedy's book is of the highest quality, well researched and written, and deserves a very wide audience.

The author does not pretend to be an expert on bullfighting. She undertook this book because it was offered to her. The result is not so much an explication of the sport but a meditation on it. She considers, among other things, why do matadors risk death when most professional sportsmen risk only defeat? The author roughly compares her own encounter with suicide with the risk that professional bullfighters take in the ring.
This is an informed meditation on bullfighting. The author has done her homework. For a good introduction to the art, I would recommend Death in the Afternoon by Hemingway. It as an informed, literary intoduction to bullfighting with diversions into war, death and art. But this book is a good supplement. Unlike Hemingway, A.L. Kennedy describes the course of actual bullfights she has seen. Her meditations are engaging. On Bullfighting doesn't take long to read, but the curious would-be afficionado will value it.