Peter Haining [ed] - A Thousand Afternoons

[dem bones]

Who would go to see this posturing bully, the matador, if he were dressed in workman's clothes and cap? It is slaughter-house work and in any decent country the public is denied the sadistic satisfaction of abattoirs. — George Bernard Shaw

The bullfighter is a champion, a paragon. — Ernest Hemingway

Peter Haining [ed] - A Thousand Afternoons: An Anthology of Bullfighting (Peter Owen, 1970).

Design: Zette Braithwaite

John Masters - Foreword
Peter Haining - Preface
Leslie Charteris - Bullfighting: An Explanation

Part One—Fact
Richard Ford - The Spanish Bullfight
James Russell Lowell - A Shocking Spectacle
V. S. Pritchett - The Spanish Temper
Barnaby Conrad - The Greatest Bullfight Ever
John Steinbeck - I Even Saw Manolete ...
Vincent Hitchcock - El Ingles
Sidney Franklin - A Man Called Hemingway
Norman Mailer - The Crazy One
Kenneth Tynan - El Cordobes — and Tremendismo
James A. Michener - The Aficionados
Robert Graves - The Decline of Bullfighting

Part Two — Fiction
Lord Byron - The Dangerous Game
Leigh Hunt - The Bullfight
R. B. Townshend - A Motor in the Bullring
Frank Harris - Montes the Matador
D. H. Lawrence - None of That
Ernest Hemingway - The Undefeated
Marguerite Steen - The Test
John Masters - The Visitors
Robert Ruark - Olé La Senorita Americana!

Bibliography
List of Photographs

Blurb:
Bullfighting, as a spectacle primarily of drama and death, inspires passionate feelings of admiration or abhorrence. The subject of controversy for over two hundred years, it has captured the imagination of some of the greatest writers. This anthology presents some of the best literature on bullfighting by American and British writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Divided into two parts—Fact and Fiction—it reveals the obsessive fascination of the pageant and complex ritual of the corrida de toros, and its protagonists. Peter Haining has drawn on a wide range of writings: from D. H. Lawrence's story of the harsh aspects of bullfighting, to the description by Sidney Franklin of his meeting with another aficionado, Ernest Hemingway—and John Steinbeck's portrayal of the famous matador, Manolete.
A Thousand Afternoons covers the modern art of bullfighting, as developed by Francesco Romero in the early 18th century, and presents extracts from books that are no longer generally available. The many celebrated contributors include: Byron, Leigh Hunt, James Russell Lowell, Frank Harris, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Graves, John Steinbeck, Barnaby Conrad, Norman Mailer, John Masters, V. S. Pritchett, James A. Michener, Robert Ruark, Kenneth Tynan, and the British matador, Vincent Hitchcock. Not all of them are supporters of the bullfight: Robert Graves, for instance, exposes some of the malpractices prevalent today in the plaza du Tauros; and Robert Ruark spotlights the hysteria induced by the corrida among sycophantic tourists.
In his Foreword, John Masters writes: 'The value of the stories and reports which Peter Haining has collected in A Thousand Afternoons lies not in what they hold of explanation, though they hold plenty, but in their attempts to communicate what — to each writer — the bullfight has been, and is."

We've provided the TOC for most of them, so thought I'd add the above. Many thanks to staff at Watney Street idea store for turning up a copy. Not my thing, though may give the Hunt and Norris stories a go. Robert Bloch being a Haining regular, I'm surprised at the lack of Under the Horns.

[helrunar]

There is a book by Michael Rice, The Power of the Bull, published by Routledge in 1998; blurb:

Everyone has heard of the Minotaur in the labyrinth on Crete and many know that the Greek gods would adopt the guise of a bull to seduce mortal women. But what lies behind these legends?
The Power of the Bull discusses mankind's enduring obsession with bulls. The bull is an almost universal symbol throughout Indo-European cultures. Bull cults proliferated in the Middle East and in many parts of North Africa, and one cult, Mithraism, was the greatest rival to Christianity in the Roman Empire. The Cults are divergent yet have certain core elements in common.
Michael Rice argues that the ancient bulls were the supreme sacrificial animal. An examination of evidence from earliest prehistory onwards reveals the bull to be a symbol of political authority, sexual potency, economic wealth and vast subterranean powers. In some areas representations of the bull have varied little from earliest times, in others it has changed vastly over centuries. This volume provides a well-illustrated and accessible analysis of the exceptionally rich artistic inheritance associated with the bull.

Look for it in your library because it is rather pricey.

Hel.

[dem bones]

Leigh Hunt - The BullFight; or The Story of Don Alphonso De Melos and the Jeweller's Daughter: (Leigh Hunt's Journal, 1850). Don Alphonso argues it is customary to measure a man's love for his fiancée by his courage as a matador. Lucinda beseeches him to reconsider, turn his back on stupid tradition, or he will surely be gored! There's no talking sense into him

Attachments:

Leigh Hunt The Bullfight.pdf (79.55 KB)