Amazon.com Review
Already the author of one gonzo collection of travel misadventures (2000's
Car Camping), Utah-based writer Mark Sundeen is garnering comparisons to archly ironic humorists David Sedaris and Dave Eggers with his second tome,
The Making of Toro, but his comical boasting and defiant flights of hyperbolic fancy have more in common with another peer, Neal Pollack, as well as his most obvious influence, the great Hunter S. Thompson. The premise of
The Making of Toro is lifted straight out of Hemingway: A publisher approaches Sundeen with the idea of writing a colorful, testosterone-fueled book about bullfighting in Mexico. In true postmodern fashion, the writer rises to the occasion by inventing an accomplished and swaggering Raoul Duke-like alter ego, Travis LaFrance (author of the earlier swashbuckling classic,
Fun With Falconry), to mask the fact that he has little actual reporting experience, doesn't speak Spanish, and is woefully short on testosterone himself. (You won't find his brand of hapless travelogue in (
Men's Journal.)
Not surprisingly, there's nothing romantic about Sundeen's vision of bullfighting and its macho practitioners. Addicted to wandering off the beaten path, he'd much rather chat with the folks who dispose of the carcasses afterwards. "In the bullring the crowd roars in ecstasy," he writes toward the end of his search for the soul of this bloody sport. "I've heard it before: the sound of great bullfighting happening while I'm in the men's room or snack shack or out in the tunnel for fresh air. I'm writing a book, and the guy whose job it is to lug the beef onto the truck demands to be interviewed. So while the matador is killing with a single graceful thrust, I'm outside the meat truck learning about Oscar Rodriguez." In the end, though, Oscar's story and many others like it are far more interesting than the cliché-ridden tales we usually get in books about glamorous, manly pursuits like climbing Everest or diving down to the Titanic, and Sundeen's wonderfully dry and evocative prose is a joy to read as he takes us behind the scenes to the dark alleys where many adventurers would never think to look. --Jim DeRogatis
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
"My art is my life, and versa vice," proclaims Travis LaFrance, Sundeen's ever-confident, fictional alter-ego, in this amusing, chivalric tongue-in-cheek story of a writer set on acquainting everyday readers with Mexican bullfighting. After receiving little recognition for his previous book on falconry (which, as Sundeen explains, "is about birds only insomuch as the falcons serve as a metaphor for my flight toward freedom"), the author attempts to redeem himself by unveiling bullfighting's rugged, fiery ritual. The motivated yanqui (Spanglish for "Yankee") buys a one-way ticket to Mexico City, expecting to fall in love with the tradition of bullfighting, the captivating beauty of Mexican women and the splendor of one of the most acclaimed capitals of the bullfighting world. Instead, he finds grimy buildings, cybercafes and Domino's Pizza-sponsored bullrings, which look more like circuses than a noble institution's holy ground. But Sundeen refuses to come to terms with a deflated dream. With each misguided attempt to find bullfighting's heart and soul, LaFrance uses a quixotic idealism to convert reality (e.g., an undercooked drumstick served in a dingy corner diner) to what could be (an exotic delicacy, served only to the most esteemed of guests). It's a skewed travelogue, in which the line between a gritty reality and a chimerical fantasy is warmly blurred. Photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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