On Bullfighting - Hardcover

A.L. Kennedy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224052195 ISBN 13: 9780224052191

Publisher: Yellow Jersey Press, 1999

Synopsis

Sex and death - our two greatest preoccupations and bullfighting brings them together. We have always been fascinated by the bull, its violent beauty and innate appeal as a symbol to confront power. And the elaborate choreography of the bullfight also provides us with an opportunity to confront our great obsession - death. To watch a bullfight is an extraordinary act of voyeurism. Beyond the theatre, the costumes and the well-worn plot is the fact that a man faces death while the crowd looks on. And so people are drawn to the arena to witness the ultimate spectator sport. They go to admire gracefulness and agility, to be horrified by the proximity of death; to witness a spectacle - all part of the business of watching an animal die. And that's why we argue abut bullfighting - whether it is a sport, an art form, or simply a type of stylised torture. Definitions abound, but none of them are definitive. A.L. Kennedy explores them all, guiding us through the maelstrom of ideas with all the skill and elegance of matador.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

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.

From the Back Cover:

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Yellow Jersey Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0224052195
• ISBN 13: 9780224052191
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 180