In The Bullring

Abstract

horse took the shock of the horns on its padded flank. bull had nose-dived at the stirrup, but seemed to be nuzzling under it, feeling for pur chase, and then the prongs took hold, and the bull tossed its head, and the horse was lifted and dropped so quickly that it never even moved a muscle, so quickly I couldn't go unnh! horse was here and then it was there. I'd been thrown, too. I was in a bullring in Madrid with a man who'd read Hemingway forty years ago. For him, being there was a dream come true. Why was I there, you are wondering. Why wasn't I the person who says, Excuse me, but I prefer not to watch dressed-up men with pointed sticks gang up on a beast whose balls outweigh theirs? That's who I'd been, and that's who I am, but more than once in my life, I've been knocked off my feet and dropped somewhere else. About ninety years ago, another woman sat in a bullring, shoulder-to shoulder with a happy man, in the spirit of adventure. When she was many decades older—just about the same age I am now—she wrote about it. She was a famous author by then, and a friend of hers—who at the time was edit ing the women's magazine Mademoiselle—said give me anything and I'll publish it. essay appeared in 1955, in a special issue on the theme of Adventure. Her point was that adventure is what happens to you, or what you invite when you throw yourself at danger, whereas experience is what you make of the happening or the tossing, what it tells you about yourself in the long run. essay is called St. Augustine and the Bullfight, and it was written by Katherine Anne Porter, the great Modernist short story writer born nine years before Hemingway. In her stories, she's a razorblade, but the first time I read this essay, I felt goaded by a hatpin. first few pages—well, listen to this: The book business... is full of heroes who spend their time, money, and energy worrying other animals, manifestly their betters such as lions and tigers And always always, somebody is out climbing mountains, and writing books about it, which are read by quite millions of persons...wl Ever so-chatty, ever-so-catty, a lady author debunking her male contemporaries—