Customer Reviews

The Making of Toro: Bullfights, Broken Hearts, and One Author's Quest for the Acclaim He Deserves

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"The Making of Toro" is one of those books (like, say, "A Confederacy of Dunces") that may not make much of a splash when it first appears, but that is destined to be passed from hand to hand and reader to reader until a small cult builds around it and its author.

For starters, this book is flat-out hilarious. But it also marks the arrival of a writer who is bound to make a huge impact. Comparisons with Eggers and Sedaris aren't out of line: Sundeen blurs the line between memoir and fiction with the requisite postmodern relish. "Toro" is a tale told by a narrator so charmingly unreliable and self-deluded that we actually can't help rooting for him.

But the writer Sundeen most resembles is probably Mark Twain (seriously!). In "Toro" (and in his earlier book "Car Camping"), Sundeen shows the same dry wit, the same trust that the reader will actually get the joke, and the same faith that sometimes the naive, deluded bumbler might see truths that more worldly types do not. And, like Twain, Sundeen conceals genuine depth beneath light humor. "Toro" begins as a comedy, but by the end it deepens into a surpringly poignant coming of age story.

So buy this book--it's funny and original and thoroughly enjoyable--then pass it on.

Sundeen has done it again. This is another deep, multi-layered composition much like "Car Camping". It's very humorous book, but the best parts are when the narrator breaks through his veneer of self-delusion and discusses his true feelings. Whenever I read a book like this, I hope for one or two passages that will resonate within me and justify (in my head) my own experiences. This book is filled with them.

A great story told in a simple and colorful tone. Mark Sundeen is a great American writer who melds the classics with the modern. A tale of travel that envelopes the reader in characters and color.

I really like Mark Sundeen. I feel like he's a kindred spirit, even some of his reminisced memories are similar to mine. He is a writer who wants to have preconceived notions and delusions of grandeur, yet he also realizes where he truly fits in his oft-referenced "canon." Basically--I like his style. He's pretty rad.

The Making of Toro is about his ill-fated quest to cover bullfighting, in both Spain and Mexico, and to turn it into a book for a book deal he has already received an advance for. Car Camping-style, his quest is filled with mishaps and missteps. But Sundeen takes it all in stride, all the strange characters, all the failed attempts at relationships or even just hopes of relationships. Sundeen calls himself, his literary heroic alterego, Travis LaFrance. All things are possible through Travis LaFrance.

Sundeen often mentions that his life is not interesting enough for literature. That's where Travis LaFrance comes in. He *is* literature. He *is* that interesting spark in life. "My life is my art and versa vice." But what I really like is that Sundeen (intentionally, for obvious reasons), undersells himself. His life actually is interesting as literature. He has enough cynicism and self-doubt to turn his bizarre vignettes into a narrative that ends with a small, understated emotional punch that leaves you a little empty, a little wanting more, and a little inspired.

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"that which we do is never as pretty as that which we think about" (83)

"There's still freedom left in the country, ... but you gotta walk two days from the end of the road to find it." (141)

"You must write for yourself. It must be personal, not commercial. The writer must have no ego. His work is a service to mankind." (95)

Cleverly plotted and well-executed, packed with dancing, ironic prose and endearing characters, Mark Sundeen's The Making of Toro was an excellent read. Fun, light and true, this short excursion across the border into Mexico's bullfighting culture had me bent over and sniveling with laughter. I smile to think of it.

This book is an easy-going, comedic exploration into the sad impotence of modern American masculinity. Set against the backdrop of the bloody bullring and the grit of Mexico City, the reader sees what the protagonist himself is not able to recognize - that he is not his alter-ego Travis La France, the great bullfighter and irresistable romantic - that he is in fact simply an author and a man, accident-prone and lovable, trying to set the record straight about his misunderstood first novel, and doing his best to amend himself for being the man that he is, and not the man he would like to be.