The Making of Toro: Bullfights, Broken Hearts, and One Author's Quest for the Acclaim He Deserves
Already the author of one gonzo collection of travel misadventures (2000'sCar Camping), Utah-based writer Mark Sundeen is garnering comparisons to archly ironic humorists David Sedaris and Dave Eggers with his second tome,The Making of Toro, but his comical boasting and defiant flights of hyperbolic fancy have more in common with another peer, Neal Pollack, as well as his most obvious influence, the great Hunter S. Thompson. The premise ofThe Making of Torois lifted straight out of Hemingway: A publisher approaches Sundeen with the idea of writing a colorful, testosterone-fueled book about bullfighting in Mexico. In true postmodern fashion, the writer rises to the occasion by inventing an accomplished and swaggering Raoul Duke-like alter ego, Travis LaFrance (author of the earlier swashbuckling classic,Fun With Falconry), to mask the fact that he has little actual reporting experience, doesn't speak Spanish, and is woefully short on testosterone himself. (You won't find his brand of hapless travelogue in (Men's Journal.)Not surprisingly, there's nothing romantic about Sundeen's vision of bullfighting and its macho practitioners. Addicted to wandering off the beaten path, he'd much rather chat with the folks who dispose of the carcasses afterwards. "In the bullring the crowd roars in ecstasy," he writes toward the end of his search for the soul of this bloody sport. "I've heard it before: the sound of great bullfighting happening while I'm in the men's room or snack shack or out in the tunnel for fresh air. I'm writing a book, and the guy whose job it is to lug the beef onto the truck demands to be interviewed. So while the matador is killing with a single graceful thrust, I'm outside the meat truck learning about Oscar Rodriguez." In the end, though, Oscar's story and many others like it are far more interesting than the cliché-ridden tales we usually get in books about glamorous, manly pursuits like climbing Everest or diving down to theTitanic, and Sundeen's wonderfully dry and evocative prose is a joy to read as he takes us behind the scenes to the dark alleys where many adventurers would never think to look.--Jim DeRogatis--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.