Serious in the Afternoon

...But Rivera OrdOfiez, Spain's best-known matador though hardly its most successful, is the book's centerpiece...

...So it surprised me one afternoon to hear him vigorously defending that most sanguinary of artistic rituals against a passionate advocate for animal rights...

...In many ways, having to do with blood and death and geography and a lack of interaction with the outside world and the complicated Spanish national psyche, the bullfight is strongly associated with more than three decades of repressive rule under Francisco Franco...

...In the new, homogenized Europe, bullfighting stands as perhaps the greatest anomaly...

...It was written, in Hemingway's words, "to explain [bullfighting] both emotionally and practically...

...Many of the spectators were tourists, drawn to Spain by a concerted marketing effort made by the government in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but Spaniards rediscovered the bullfight, too...

...But then Paquirri died, and all that ritualistic blood became real...

...Yet during almost every day from March through October, six carefully bred wild bulls are ritually slaughtered somewhere in Spain, with thousands of paid spectators as witnesses...

...He follows a single matador, Francesco Rivera Ordaez, through a season's worth of bullfights (purposefully or not, he never mentions exactly which season, though details reveal it to be 2002), using the device to access the history and sociology of one of the more unusual mass entertainments left in the world...

...Instead, the vast majority of those who crowd into bullrings such as La Maestranza in Seville or Las Ventas in Madrid day after day during the season are dedicated bull-watchers...

...On a visit to Harlem in the 1920s, the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca gave a speech during which he called bullfighting the only serious thing that remained in the world...

...Like it or not, it was in their blood, part of their national heritage, part of what set them apart from the rest of the world...

...non...

...Coupled with the goring and death of another accomplished matador, El Yiyo, the following year, it served to validate bullfighting at an important moment in its history...

...He inserts profiles of a genial foreign aficionado, a bull breeder, a ticket tout, an agent, and various other characters who inhabit the bullfighter's world...

...JULY/AUGUST 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 73 BOOKS IN REVIEW to join...

...Best of all for Lewine's purposes, he speaks English, having spent his adolescent summers at a camp in Maine and much of his junior high school years at a military academy in Indiana...

...Paquirri wasn't the first prominent matador killed by a bull," Lewine writes...

...v., \ o Strings Attached As far as the dimensions are concerned, the violin as passed on to us by Stradivari is completely standardized...

...In the decade following Franco's death in 1975, Spaniards looked to the openness of internationalism—as represented by the port city of Barcelona, which was in the process of bidding for (and actually winning) the right to stage the Olympic Games, the major international gathering on the planet—and away from the insularity of taurine-mad Madrid, located on Spain's high, lonely mesa: one of the least international of all the major European capitals...

...That is the most important thing for me...

...because there was no book that did this in Spanish or English...

...Surprisingly, it hasn't changed much...

...Much of the change has been positive, evidence of the betterment of common life as occasioned by economic success...

...For that reason alone, never mind the feeling you get when you see a matador, with his feet set, pull a bull around his body by working close to the horns—this singular spectacle is worthy of attention...

...But he was the first one killed during the television age, and what was seared into the Spanish consciousness was not so much his death as the composure and humble bravery he showed in the infirmary video...

...The younger generation is besotted with soccer, to the exclusion of most everything else, while their parents and grandparents remember—or misremember—their favorite matadors, the slower-paced, more traditional lifestyle they represent, and a certain elegiac elegance with which they carried themselves...

...that is a performance that can inspire a depth of emotion...

...At as much as $150 a ticket these days, a bullfight in a major city is far too expensive for the backpack-laden Eurailpass types out to "do" Europe in a summer...

...Kennedy...

...I want to feel happy in front of the bull again," Rivera OrdOriez reveals to Lewine at one point...

...Instead, the vast majority of those who crowd into bullrings such as La Maestranza in Seville or Las Ventas in Madrid day after day during the season are dedicated bull-watchers, locals mostAt as much as $150 a ticket these days, a bullfight in a major city is far too expensive for the backpack-laden Eurailpass types out to "do" Europe in a summer...

...There is nothing like it in the world...

...For a time in the early 1990s, it was nearly impossible to procure a ticket at face value to any of the most important corridas...

...The bullfighter is a different kind of man...

...Bullfighting has always been considered by contemporary chronicles to be in a state of decadence," Hemingway wrote...

...His bloodlines are as impressive as those of any fighting bull...

...Pritchett, and the critically acclaimed Scottish novelist A.L...

...Young Spaniards, the first generation exposed to popular culture in all its cynicism, might snicker at the tight pants and cartoonish movements of the matador, but his valor was undeniable...

...OrdOtlez's 1959 campaign against brother-in-law Luis Miguel Dominguin was chronicled in Hemingway's posthumous bullfighting book, The Dangerous Summer...

...Along the way, he includes the requisite set pieces on how a bullfight actually works, who attends bullfights, the economics of the industry, and so on...

...At the beginning of the 18th century, bullfights from horseback were popular among the Spanish aristocracy, but in a harbinger of the united Europe, Felipe V—a Frenchman who happened to rule Spain—prohibited the practice...

...I prefer my art cooked and served on a plate...

...No wonder Edward Lewine is fascinated...

...You'll see some Americans and other foreigners at the bullfights, to be sure, but many of those are veteran aficionados who understand as much—and often more—about the bulls as the Spaniards do...

...Gone is the extreme poverty I used to encounter in nearly every small Spanish town, the provincialism brought on by a life circumscribed by the borders of a village, the covert (and overt) repression of women, homosexuals, and gypsies...

...That she didn't succeed—that she ultimately had no chance at succeeding—is really all you need to know about bullfighting's place in Spain...

...And bullfighting...

...And, later: "You see, bullfighting is very special...

...The aficionados complain about it now as they did before, as they've always done...

...By then, it is usually time for the next bullfight, and the cycle repeats...

...But it's about the only thing left that keeps Spain from being Sweden...

...BOOKS IN REVIEW Serious in the Afternoon Bruce Schoenfeld is a frequent contributor to numerous national magazines, including Sports Illustrated, Wine Spectator, Men's Health, and Travel & Leisure...

...SEVERAL YEARS AGO I decided to make a violin...

...But there is a sadness, too, to seeing a country's strong flavor diluted by internationalism...

...In 1932, Ernest Hemingway introduced Spain's fiesta nacional and its most renowned practitioners to the English-speaking world with Death in the Afternoon...

...Fewer and fewer Spaniards are drinking the country's singular brandies, preferring stateless rum-and-cokes and whiskey sours...

...Antonio Stradivari lived from 1644 to 1737 in the small northern Italian town of Cremona and, in the course of his life, made over 1,000 violins, violas and cellos, a harp, and a couAlfred S. Regnery is publisher of The American Spectator and the author of an upcoming book on the conservative movement...

...Though its roots are prehistoric, bullfighting in its modern form is a comparatively recent phenome72 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2005 BOOKS IN REVIEW bibliography—also includes my own The Last Serious Thing published by Simon & Schuster in 1992...

...Beginning in the late 1980s, bullfighting experienced a renaissance, buoyed by attendance figures that broke all existing records...

...Before long, bullfighting's first mass-market heroes were created...

...It must be noted that the existing literature on the subject—and Lewine's SPANISH CHEF I KNOW, a gentle man, has never shared my enthusiasm for the bullfights...

...And the more homogenous Europe became, the most important it was for Spaniards that such differences should continue to exist...

...What changes is fashion, and bullfighting drifts in and out...

...Without a bull," Lewine writes in perhaps the book's most lyrical passage, "the cape passes of bullfighting are like the steps of a lovely folk dance, but when the charged atmosphere of the ring and the menacing beauty of the bull are added to the dance of the cape, and when the dancer is made to perform under threat of bodily harm...

...I don't care for it personally," he said...

...Yet, somehow, when each Spanish city or town holds its bullfighting festival, lasting a day or two for the villages and nearly a month in the case of Madrid, the seats are filled—and not with tourists, either...

...Full of hopes but rarely expectations, they watch the two-hour drama unfold in front of them...

...Rules were codified, traditions established...

...For another, Lewine's access to him produces little more than a string of platitudes the rest of us managed to glean through chance encounters with matadors in restaurants and outside bullrings...

...Many shops don't close for the three-hour siesta anymore, which means that shopkeepers don't go home to lunch with their families, which are increasingly unlikely to be eating lunch together at all, just like everywhere else...

...1 EWINE COVERS MUCH FAMILIAR GROUND...

...That interest was heightened when he debuted with great success at the annual Seville fair and, later, proceeded to marry a fetching Spanish duchess, then separated from her as the picture magazines looked on...

...It is a waste of time and effort to try to improve on the design finalized by Stradivari...

...In the parlance of today's entertainment marketing, Rivera Ordaez is a crossover star, famous for being famous apart from anything he might accomplish in the bullring...

...Having played one for most of my life, and having some fairly well-honed woodworking skills I thought I might combine the two and get satisfaction out of the process if not the result...

...AS IT HAPPENED, Paquirri's death in 1984 had almost as much impact on Spain as it did on his ten-year-old son...

...His great-grandfather Cayetano Ordeifiez served as the model for Hemingway's bullfighting protagonist in The Sun Also Rises, while his grandfather Antonio Ordcifiez is ranked by most aficionados as the best matador of the second half of the 20th century...

...The Craftsman is therefore cautioned to strictly adhere to the plans and dimensions detailed throughout this book...

...Most important to Lewine's construct, perhaps, Rivera Ordthiez's father, called Paquirri, was a talented and highly popular matador who was killed in a bullring and became a cultural icon...

...Suddenly, it was clear to Spaniards that, whatever was happening out there on the sand, this was something real, beyond posturing...

...The strategy was to introduce him into a distant culture in which flailing a cape at a charging bull held little currency, thereby exposing what a shallow and pointless pursuit it actually was...

...74 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2005 BOOKS IN REVIEW ly, some professionals and executives but others common laborers who have saved their money all year, who well know the difference between good bullfighting and bad (and would be happy to explain it to you if you show the slightest interest...

...By 2002, Spaniards were celebrating more than 800 taurine events each year, as opposed to 513 in 1990 and just 323 in 1960, the heyday of OrdOriez, a supposed golden age...

...If you alter [anything] the quantity and quality of the tone are almost sure to be adversely affected...

...A single currency functions from Greece to Scandinavia, VolksDeath and the Sun: wagens and Peugeots are A Matador's Season in the constructed in Portuguese Heart of Spain factories, the same soccer by Edward Lewine players adorn magazine (HOUGHTON MIFFLIN, 258 PAGES, $24) covers across the contiReviewed by Bruce Schoenfeld - vent, and it soon may be come a crime to stay late at the office...

...I found a good little book entitled You Can Make Reviewed by Alfred S. Regnery a Stradivarius Violin, containing all the instructions, a set of plans, and, on the first page, an admonition to the amateur violin maker: Stradivari's Genius by Toby Faber (RANDOM HOUSE, 233 PAGES, $23.95) JULY/AUGUST 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 75...

...Ever since, it seems, someone has come along every few years and attempted to do the same...

...That's too bad, because the English-speaking world could use a jolt of afi chin toward the bullfight right about now...

...IDIDN'T START COMING TO SPAIN until a decade or so after Franco's death, yet I've seen the country change almost beyond recognition in the last 20 years...

...These werefevered attempts by his mother, Carmen OrdOfiez, herself the daughter, niece, and ex-wife of famous bullfighters, to dissuade her son from his stated desire to become a matador...

...Then they repair to bars and even formal seminars in hotel ballrooms to discuss what they have seen, and they argue about the various interpretations over late dinners, and then they wake up and read what the critics have to say in the various newspapers (where those who cover bullfights are given vast dramatic license, far more like movie reviewers than sportswriters), and they ruminate over it all over again...

...Lewine begins his book with an account of Paquirri's 1984 goring in Pozoblanco, and the frenzied car ride to a Cordoba hospital that cost him his life...

...Bullfighting was positioned by Spanish opinion-makers of the time (including the Socialist government) as a decaying and decadent art form, static and staged, brutal and barbaric: no longer valid and certainly not valued in the sleek, smart, swift-moving pan-European world that Spain was trying so desperately Bullfighting was positioned by Spanish opinion-makers of the time (including the Socialist government) as a decaying and decadent art form, static and staged, brutal and barbaric...

...Maybe there isn't much more a matador can say than that...

...He's right about that...

...These days, as Lewine points out, most bullfights are held in half-empty arenas...

...It is difficult to know if life is more or less serious than during Lorca's time—the answer is: probably both—and yet bullfighting holds the same anomalous place in world culture as it did nearly a century ago...

...It is the book's most exciting scene...

...Instead, peasants began killing bulls on foot, using a cape and a sword, as a means to earn a living, thereby both democratizing and popularizing the spectacle...

...Rivera Ordeifiez's gradual ascension to the ranks of a matador in the early 1990s was greeted with enormous interest throughout Spain...

...For one thing, he has been a huge disappointment as a matador, capable of bursts of artistic passion, but more often than not plodding through a string of turgid failures...

...Lewine, an occasional contributor to the New York Times Magazine, is the latest in a line that runs through luminaries such as Kenneth Tynan, Norman Mailer, John Steinbeck, V.S...

...It says more than any polemic ever could...

...THE PROBLEM WITH Death and the Sun is that Rivera OrdOliez isn't really a capable vehicle for revealing any of this...