Death and the Sun (37 page)

Thus armed, with drink and cushion in hand, and perhaps a sense of apprehension at what you are about to witness, step into the bullring and take your seat. Oh, and sorry about all the lighted cigars and cigarettes around you, but you'll just have to put up with them. Spaniards haven't heard of no-smoking laws.

This book would not have been possible without the unfailing generosity of Francisco Rivera Ordóñez. He had every reason to refuse my intrusive request to spend a year with him, but he said yes on the spot and gave and gave of himself all that year and never asked for anything in return.
Mucha suerte
, Matador.

Thanks also to Fran's cuadrilla: Pepe Luis; Poli, Joselito, and José Maria; Francisco and Diego; Juani, Pepe, and Jesús; Nacho and, above all, Antonio for all his help and for booking me into hotels as Edward Kennedy, the only American name he could pronounce and a real elevation in rank for me.

After Fran, no one made a bigger contribution to the book than Noël Chandler. Private and modest by inclination, Noël overwhelmed me with his learning and his generosity of spirit. He is a great connoisseur of the bulls, and like all great connoisseurs he is an irreplaceable treasure. A big
abrazo
, Mr. Chandler.

My deep gratitude goes to David Black. The
New York Post
calls him a “super agent,” and that's what he has been to me, an indefatigable champion with a writer's appreciation for the craft. David handed me off to Eamon Dolan, by reputation and in fact one of the best editors in the business. Eamon was perfect: sure-handed, demanding, and kind. Three years into this project, both Eamon and David have become more than colleagues. They are friends.

Deep thanks also to Jane Lawson and the team at Transworld in London.

My thanks to Leigh Ann Eliseo, Susan Raihofer, Jason Sacher, and Jessica Candlin of the David Black Agency, and Gracie Doyle, Larry Cooper, Lois Wasoff, Anne Seiwerath, Christina Smith, and everyone else at Houghton Mifflin.

During the creation of this book I amassed debts to more people than I can mention. Those not listed here should know I owe them and haven't forgotten all they did for me.

Thanks to my friends in Spain. Juan Varez brought me to his wonderful country for the first time, sent me to my first corrida, and urged me to learn Spanish. Rocío Barreiros de Arteaga and her many relatives opened doors that I wouldn't even have known about without their help. Manuel Cruz Vélez, Francisco Gallardo, Alicia Mosse, Yun Gallardo Mosse, Lourdes Cosío, and Tom Kallene cheered me, helped me, and made this process more fun than work should be.

The noted aficionados Coleman Cooney and Tristan Wood read the manuscript for accuracy and provided many, many corrections. Various doctors, including Ivan Moseley and James Giglio, helped me wade through some treacherous medical issues.

I'm indebted to the people who let me interview them—those quoted in the book and many who aren't. Thanks especially to the staff at Pozoblanco city hall and to Serafín Pedraza, to Don Francisco de Borja Domecq y Solís and Juan Reyes, to Juan Posada, José Antonio del Moral, José Carlos Arevalo, Muriel Feiner, Julio Fernandez, Dr. Elíseo Morán, Juan Alonso, Salvador Valverde, Fernando Fernandez Roman, Dr. Ramón Vila, Miguel Angel Eguiluz, and Antonio Peña of Onda Algeciras TV.

Many thanks to the bullfighting clubs of New York, to Stanley Conrad, and to the Taurine Bibliophiles of America. Thanks to Roy Shifflett and Wayne Pearce. Thanks also to the entire English-speaking cuadrilla that follows the bulls in Spain; special mention goes to Joe Distler, Jesse Graham, the late Chris Humphreys, Allen Josephs, R. Kelley O'Connor, Imre and Nympha Weitzner, and Lore Monnig.

Michael Shapiro, Ari Goldman, and Sandy Padwe of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism showed me what it is to be a reporter. The editors and writers of the
New York Times
made me into one. Above all, thanks to Nancy Sharkey, Joan Nassivera, and my lifetime guru, Dave Smith.

Many friends have been supportive, but Roland Lange, Gian Solomon, Douglas Eklund, and Julian Rubinstein each rendered services above and beyond the call. Thanks also to Ruth Oscharoff.

My wife and I could not survive week to week without the aid and comfort of a combined family that stretches from the Upper West Side to West L.A. I would like to thank especially my father, Milton Lewine, for giving me so much before leaving us too soon, and my mother, Carol Lewine, for having the courage to stay and take care of me. And thanks to Warren Wallace.

My wife, Megan, stayed home and endured a year as a single mother with a baby while I wandered around Spain. She has supported me in ways beyond counting, and so this is her book as much as it is mine. To my children, Noah Milton and Charlotte Sophia: your dad sends each of you a hug with feet and a thousand kisses.

This book is the product of more than a decade of following the bullfights as a fan, and of more than three years of professional reporting on the life and family history of Francisco Rivera Ordóñez. I spent close to a year in Spain traveling with Fran and his team of bullfighters, and I interviewed scores of people during that time in English and in Spanish. Scenes involving Fran and his team were witnessed by me or, on one or two occasions, recreated from interviews and videotapes. The historical scenes in the book were drawn from accounts in books, newspapers, and films. My comments on the nature of bullfighting and of Spain come from personal experience informed by reading. Whenever I have used a specific thought or idea of another writer, I have credited that writer in either the text or the notes. I translated the lines from García Lorca's “Song of the Rider.” Below is a list of written sources not explicitly cited in the text. I have included only the chapters in which further clarification of sources was necessary. Any inaccuracies or omissions are solely my responsibility.

 

[>]
Chapter 1:
Paquirri's last day was reconstructed from interviews and from accounts in two books: José Carlos Arévalo and José Antonio del Moral,
Nacido para Morir
, and Arturo Luna,
La Tragica Cogida y Muerte de Paquirri
, a book that contains reprints of newspaper articles and transcripts of interviews.

 

[>]
Chapter 2:
The account of Fran's early career was put together from reviews of his corridas in back issues of the magazines
Aplausos
and
6 Toros 6
and from interviews.

 

[>]
Chapter 3:
The technical and philosophical discussion of bullfighting was informed primarily by Spanish bullfighting law, the
Ley y Reglamento de Espectáculos Taurinos
, and by Ernest Hemingway's
Death in the Afternoon
, with much assistance from the writings of Angus Macnab, A. L. Kennedy, losé Antonio del Moral, Barnaby Conrad, Kenneth Tynan, and others, and hours of conversation with Noël Chandler.

 

[>]
Chapter 4:
John Hooper's
The New Spaniards
and the
Oxford Atlas of the World
gave shape to my own experience of Spain's varied geography and population.

 

[>]
Chapter 6:
Don Álvaro Domecq's
El Toro Bravo
was my primary written source for the practices of bull breeding. My history of bullfighting came from Hemingway and from the other books cited in Chapter Three, as well as José María de Cossío's famous encyclopedia,
Los Toros
.

 

[>]
Chapter 8:
My take on the role of bullfighting in the development of Spain and on how bullfighting was viewed by historians relied on two sources, Adrian Shubert's
Death and Money in the Afternoon
and Allen Joseph's
White Wall of Spain
.

 

[>]
Chapter 9:
See Hemingway, Tynan, and Gerald Brenan for astute commentary on the aristocratic nature of Spanish culture.

 

[>]
Chapter 10:
Adrian Shubert's
Death and Money in the Afternoon
contains an excellent section on bullring construction. Statistics on the number of corridas per year and the size and location of bullrings came from the 2001 edition of the
Agenda Taurina
and the Web site of the Spanish Ministry of the Interior.

 

[>]
Chapter 15:
Statistics on bullfighters' injuries are drawn from Cossío,
Los Toros;
Francisco Narbona,
Sangre en la Arena;
and Juan José de Bonifaz,
Víctimas de la Fiesta
.

 

[>]
Chapter 17:
For a history of pic'ing, see Hemingway,
Death in the Afternoon
, Shubert, and Macnab. Hemingway's discussion of banderillas also comes from
Death in the Afternoon
.

 

[>]
Chapter 18:
See Shubert for a history of bullfighting in France.

 

[>]
Chapter 20:
For information on Pamplona and San Fermín, I relied on years of personal experience with that
feria
and on numerous books, ineluding James Michener's
Iberia
, Ray Mouton's
Pamplona
, and Javier Solano's essay in Jim Hollander et al.,
Run for the Sun
, which also has an essay by Fran.

 

[>]
Chapter 21:
Biographies of Hemingway by Carlos Baker, Michael Reynolds, Jeffrey Meyers, and James R. Mellow, as well as A. E. Hotchner's controversial but mostly accurate memoir
Papa Hemingway
, formed the backbone of this chapter.

 

[>]
Chapter 23:
The two main sources for the life of Cayetano Ordóñez were Antonio Abad Ojual,
Estirpe y Tauromaquia de Antonio Ordóñez
, and Shay Oag,
In the Presence of Death
. Aside from the general sources already mentioned, the material on Joselito and Belmonte came from the English translation of Belmonte's memoir,
Killer of Bulls
.

 

[>]
Chapter 26:
For commentary and statistics on Spanish sexuality, see Hooper.

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Bulls and Bullfighting
. Translated by Charles David Ley. Barcelona: Editorial Noguer, 1961.

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Nacido para Morir
. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1985.

Arias, Salvador.
Tauromaquia Lírica: Homenaje a Niño de la Palma, Antonio Ordóñez, Francisco Rivera Paquirri, Francisco Rivera Ordóñez, Real Maestranza de Caballería de Ronda
. Milaño, Spain: Sociedad de Artes Gráficas, 1999.

Ascasubi, Luis de.
Of Bulls and Men: A Traditional Sport
. New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1962.

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Hemingway: The Writer As Artist
. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952.

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Killer of Bulls
. New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1937.

Blasco Ibañez, Vicente.
Blood and Sand
. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1919.

Bonet, Eduardo, et al.
Bulls and Bullfighting: History, Techniques, and Spectacle
. New York: Crown Publishers, 1970.

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Víctimas de la Fiesta
. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1991.

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. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1972.

Brenan, Gerald.
The Face of Spain
. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1956.

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Bullfight
. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958.

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. Barcelona: Plaza & Janes Editores, 2001.

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. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

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Hemingway in Spain
. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974.

Cintrón, Conchita.
Memoirs of a Bullfighter
. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.

Claramunt, Fernando.
Tauromaquias Vividas
. Madrid: Ediciones Tutor, 1999.

Collins, Larry, and Dominique Lapierre.
Or I'll Dress You in Mourning: The Story of El Cordobés and the New Spain He Stands For
. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968.

Conrad, Barnaby.
La Fiesta Brava
. Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1950.

——.
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. New York:

Bonanza Books, 1957.

——.
How to Fight a Bull
. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968.

Conrad, Jack Randolph.
The Horn and the Sword
. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1957.

Cossío, José María de.
Los Toros
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.

Domecq, Álvaro.
El Toro Bravo
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Dominguín, Pepe.
Mi Gente
. Madrid: Editorial Piessa, 1979.

——.
Rojo y Oro
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Feiner, Muriel.
Las Protagonistas de la Fiesta
. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2000.

——.
Women and the Bullring
. Gainesville: University of West Florida Press, 2003.

Fernández, Luis.
Trece Ganaderos Románticos
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Franklin, Sidney.
Bullfighter from Brooklyn
. New York: Prentice Hall, 1952.