[.ca] On Bullfighting (ISBN 0224052195)

From Amazon.co.uk:
Following the publication of her novel Everything You Need, writer AL Kennedy found herself suffering from an acute inability to produce prose fiction. This, coupled with a general unhappiness and the fact that she was "literally boring" herself "to death" led Kennedy to contemplate suicide. Saved by the banal strains of a "pseudo-Celtic pap" song she hears as she is about to jump from the open window of her flat, Kennedy, who refuses to die without a "rag of credibility", resumes life and sets about the book that she has been commissioned to write: a non-fiction study of bullfighting, a study of "people who risk death for a living". Immersing herself in the arid heat of Spain and the lore and lure of the corrida, Kennedy travels to the heartlands of bullfighting--Madrid, Seville and Granada, in order to dissect the spectacle of ritual death and go beyond her received assumptions of this most graphic of public sports. She discovers that the culture of the toreros permeates Spain, that the "golden age" of bullfighting of the 1930s has been resurrected by new young hopefuls in the 1990s, that the nauseating, fascinating machinations of the corrida are played out as entertainment on afternoon television, and fancies that the tears of Seville's famous statue of the Macarena flow for the doomed matadors. The perfect antidote to macho posturing, On Bullfighting is an intelligent, many-layered account of one of the most mysterious and controversial rituals still practised daily in Europe. An impartial observer and thorough researcher, Kennedy takes us through the tense moments of the corrida as she witnesses it: mediocre, undignified and cruel by turns and yet also almost "a religious experience, the sight of a man willing in, taking in, an animal's life. It is a strange thing to watch: an elaborately prepared transgression, a sacrifice and a sin, ugly and peculiarly moving". --Catherine Taylor

as good as English-language taurine writing gets:
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.

Life & Death in the plazas of Spain and a balcony in Scotland:
The Scotswoman Kennedy taps into a sense of the mystical in her contribution to the field of literature surrounding extra-cultural understandings of the Spanish bullfight. In this interesting and at times obscure account, the author contniues along the same lines of storytelling-on-the-side present in Hemingway's "Death in the Afternoon". "On Bullfighting" is based upon approximately 2 weeks spent watching bull fights in Spain (the author does not specifically state the amount of time she spends in Spain). Throughout the book, Kennedy draws parallels between her own life and the proceedings of the bullfight in a very personal and even intimate way. Her acceptance of the assignment to write the book, having given her a reason not to commit suicide, offers her a new window on death and a new (mortally viable) way to explore it. She explains the meaning of death in both her own prsonal life and as a theme in Spanish culture, with special reference to the poet Garcia Lorca. This gives the book more cultural variety than others available on the subject. Although the result of the book is a little aimless and self indulgent, it is based on sound and interesting details of the history of the cult of the bull in the mediterranean and includes some very provocative and true to life descriptions of what one can expect to see at an actual corrida of the present time. Her description of the preceedings of a typical 20th century bullfight are true to life and, in my opinion, the closest that you could get to watching a fight on the television or sitting in the barreras yourself! A short, easy read, and a book about the size of a hand, "On Bullfighting" is an enjoyable and factual read. I imagine that it would be especially suitable for travellers of Spain or anyone with a curiosity for Spanish culture.

Excuse me but...:
I feel compelled to respond to the review of "floria11" below who writes that Kennedy is not familiar with the bullfighters of today and relies on Hemmingway as her primary source of (1920's to 30'3)knowledge. She also adds that Hemmingway is much better. I must disagree. Kennedy, in particular, writes about the young El Juli - currently Spain's most famous bullfighter - in the year 2000. She clearly does not base her material on the 20's or the 30's as Hemmingway does. Hemmingway may or may not be better than Kennedy regarding a number of angles. I personally don't like his patronising advice to women, and to men about women, but he does explain well the principles of the bullfight and its world. After all, it is indeed, still a man's world. However, from a factual angle, Hemmingway is outdated. This is particularly evident in his discriptions of the Picador's horses dying gruesomely in the ring. Further, floria11 does not believe that it is enough to view a couple of corridas to write a book. This may be so if you are writing a guide to the bullfight - something far from that which Kennedy wishes to acheive. Her goal is to write about one person's experience of the corrida and how she can assimilate the bullfight into her own life, as a non-Spanish person. I have more respect for her for speaking the truth about her own experience of the few corridas that she saw during her time in Spain.

A worthy addition bullfighting lore:
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.

A Rare Woman's Perspective of the Bullfight:
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.