On Bullfighting

by A. L. Kennedy

Overview

An Anchor Books Original

One day, on the brink of despair and contemplating her own mortality, novelist A. L. Kennedy is offered an assignment she can’t refuse–an opportunity to travel to Spain and cover a sport that represents the ultimate confrontation with death: bullfighting.

The result is this remarkable book, which takes Kennedy and her readers from the living room of her Glasgow flat to the plazas del toros of Spain and inside the mesmerizing, mystifying, brutal, and beautiful world of the bullfight. Here the sport is death: matadors (literally "killers") are men and, increasingly, women who, not unlike the Roman gladiators before them, provide a spectacle to the crowd, a dance in which their own death is as present as that of the bull. Wonderfully relaying the elements of the sport, from the breeding of the bulls and the training of the matadors to the intricate choreography of the bullfight and its strange connection to the Inquisition, Kennedy meditates on a culture that we may not countenance or fully understand but which is made riveting by the precision of her prose and the passion and humor of her narrative.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385720816
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/20/2001
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.18(w) x 7.96(h) x 0.49(d)

About the Author

A. L. Kennedy has published six novels, two books of nonfiction, and three previous collections of short stories. She has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists and has won a number of prizes, including the Costa Book of the Year Award (2007), the Somerset Maugham Award, the Encore Award, and the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. She lives in Glasgow and is a part-time lecturer in creative writing at the University of St. Andrews.

Table of Contents

1	An Introduction to Death	3
2	To Send a Bull from Heaven	18
3	Three Bad Days	34
4	Drop by Drop--The Making of a Torero	58
5	Acts of Faith	76
6	Self-Portrait	103
7	The Gate of Fear	131
	Glossary	157
	Bibliography	166

Editorial Reviews

"Odd, beautiful, and moving, On Bullfighting is one of the best books of the year."

From the Publisher

Perched on the brink of suicide, English novelist Kennedy (Original Bliss) clings to life by busying herself with an assignment to write about bullfighting. She treks to Spain, throbbing from the pain of a displaced disk, and tries "to discover if the elements which seemed so much a part of the corrida death, transcendence, immortality, joy, pain, isolation and fear would come back to [her]." Once there, she dives into the facts of the bullfight, describing its terms, tracing its history and plumbing its feeling. She examines the poetic and morbid ritual while studying Federico Garc a Lorca's legacy and dwelling in her own recurring despair. She strives to create what Lorca referred to as duende, "any piece of art with `dark notes.' " Thus, she parallels her personal crisis with the fear of the bulls, the precision of the matadors and the tragedy of Lorca's sacrifice in order to contemplate the connection between creativity and self-destruction. Unfortunately, Kennedy's own depression overwhelms the potential of her subject. At times she is so self-deprecating that it is difficult to continue reading, as when she writes: "Too many hotel rooms can cause depression if you count a room as empty with me inside it, which of course, I do." Still, although the reader never experiences the rush of invigoration inherent in the bullfight, Kennedy does find some solace in her project, illustrating that while life might be tenuous, it is also, thankfully, tenacious. (Mar. 27) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In many respects, it makes sense to assign a book on the ultimate blood sport to a creative writer who, critics say, isn't afraid to deal with pain in her work. Given Scottish novelist Kennedy's (Original Bliss, So I Am Glad) personal struggle with physical pain, her craft, and life itself, the book works successfully as a meditation on a sport that metaphysically deals with "urges to understand the termination of life and to celebrate survival." As an introduction to a sport, however, it fares less well. The author, who accepts the assignment of writing about bullfighting in the wake of the abortive suicide attempt that begins the book, spends much time reflecting on how the corrida ("bullfight") is less a sport than a religion. Readers may grow impatient with Kennedy's carping about present-day breeders producing more docile bulls, the animals' poor straight-ahead vision, tricks designed to slow or otherwise impair the beasts, and the excessive softening up of the bulls by the picadors' lances, complaints that leave scant room for any examination of other aspects of the sport. Recommended only for large sports collections. Jim Burns, Ottumwa P.L., IA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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