Product Description

Acclaimed novelist A. L. Kennedy unpeels the layers and explains the mechanics before dissecting them with surgical precision. Beyond the theatre, the costume and the well-worn plot she focuses on the fact that a man faces his death while a crowd looks on. The result is a startling confrontation with her own, and mankind's, mortality.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1980114 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-21
• Released on: 1999-12-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 180 pages

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

From Publishers Weekly
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 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
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 Reed Business Information, Inc.