Jeffrey Meyers
In the Bullring
Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.
The Sun Also Rises
I went to Spain last summer to research a biography of Hemingway and to interview Antonio Ordónez and Luis Miguel Dominguin, the two greatest bullfighters since the death of Manolete in 1947. The nature of Hemingway’s relationship with these two men, whose personal and professional rivalry inspired the ‘Dangerous Summer’ articles that appeared in Life in September 1960, has never been explained. I wanted to know what these two matadors thought of Hemingway, of his knowledge of Spain, of Spanish, of bullfighting. I found their contradictory answers to my questions revealed as much about Ordónez aid Dominguin as Hemingway. In Keith Botsford’s book, Dominguin, the subject admits:
We toreros are more jealous than actors, more jealous even than prima donnas in opera. It is not just part of our nature, it is also something which others push us to, deliberately.
Dominguin speaks frankly in the book and is extremely antagonistic to Hemingway. He calls him a drunkard, liar and bore; a plagiarist, imbecile and beast. He states that Hemingway was vulgar, foulmouthed, impotent; childish, stupid and slightly mad. And he quotes Hemingway’s threat: ‘I’m going to ruin you for life, Miguel ... I’ll have you kept out of the ring.’ Dominguin maintains that Hemingway, by provoking Ordónez and promoting the ‘Dangerous Summer’ for his own profit, deliberately transformed their harmless rivalry into a fanatical fight to the death. Dominguin’s attack is too extreme to be convincing; but he does expose some of the weaknesses of the aging Hemingway and reveals how bitterly hurt he himself was by their quarrel and Hemingway’s sharp criticism of his performance in the bullring.
Dominguin is even more savage about Ordónez’s career, character and cowardice. Dominguin claims, with considerable exaggeration: ‘My father found him and made him into a torero, but I gave him his career. I took him from nowhere to as
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'The trouble seems to be that we are not asked to read this author, reading being a thing of the past. We are asked to decode him.'
From the archive, Derek Mahon peruses the early short fiction of Thomas Pynchon.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/rock-n-roll-is-here-to-stay
'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mother-of-unions
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553