Ritual and Sacrifice in the Corrida: The Saga of Cesar Rincon

Rating:
Summary: Gets no better than this
Review: As made clear by the subtitle, this is the story of the César Rincón, arguably the best Colombian torero in history, one of the best ever to emerge from the Americas, one of the best -- without respect to origins -- performing anywhere in the second half of the twentieth century.

This is the story of César Rincón the torero (not a biography; we learn little here about César Rincón the man -- quite possibly the only aspect of the book that leaves the reader wishing for more, though we learn plenty about César's view of toreo, his personal take on its hows and whys, the nature and price of the vocation and its demands) who, in 1991, burst onto the taurine scene from nowhere (or, seemingly so -- he was so little known on the day of his first triumph in Madrid that the program listed him as Venezuelan), managing performances that saw him carried out through the Puerta Grande in Las Ventas on four consecutive appearances, a feat unequaled by anyone, before or since.

Just how good was César Rincón? The inescapable impression given by this book is that he was a taurine epiphany:

Josephs is without doubt a full-blooded Rincóncista, but Ritual and Sacrifice in the Corrida is no tendentiously edited hagiography. The judgments it contains are not just his -- they're from the pens of some of the most important taurine critics of Rincón's day (Andrés de Miguel, Vicente Zabala, Norberto Carrasco, Joaquín Vidal, Michael Wigram and José Carlos Arévalo), writing with Rincon's performances still vivid from the previous days' events. Josephs gives us his eye-witness accounts whenever possible, but generously supplements them with the opinions of other commentators.

This is a stunningly successful book, unlike any taurine work published in English in decades. Without question, Josephs has given us a work that will, for years, sit comfortably alongside the best of Hemingway, the best of Conrad, the best of Fulton and Tynan -- destined to be one of the more re-read works in any taurine bibliophile's library.

Rincón was essentially unknown to Josephs in 1991, and the germ of this book took root slowly as Rincón began to stun the Spanish afición (and Josephs) with his performances during that year's Iberian temporada. The idea for the book chrystalized in the spring of 1992, in Plaza Santa Ana -- a Madrid neighborhood dripping with taurine history and activity -- during a chat with Michael Wigram. Josephs set out to follow Rincón, documenting his career trajectory, from Spain back to the Americas, back to Spain, to the Americas, over and over until the end of the 1995 season when Rincón, suffering from a resurgence of hepatitis "C," announced his retirement, intending to swap the role of torero for that of ganadero.

Written with the aid of unusual access to a torero's inner circle, this is not simply an insider's view of the taurine circuit (as might be, for example, a detailed diary kept by a torero). Josephs didn't travel as part of Rincon's entourage. But it is likely as intimate a view as anyone will soon provide. Josephs shadowed Ricón, his manager and cuadrilla for four years -- benefitting greatly from their assistance, attending every corrida he could manage, describing in great detail what he saw (how the public reacted, and how the authority and critics judged). He had access that only a personal relationship with a torero can provide -- to hotel suites before and after successful and disastrous corridas, to sorteos, to the callejon, to tientas, to family gatherings on ganaderias and in Rincon's home, to hospital/infirmary rooms, to post-corrida de-briefings with critics and ganaderos, and more.

Faenas are described in near photographic detail, both the good, the bad, and the all-too-commonly mundane. Although the degree of taurine detail may prove more-than-a-little daunting for anyone outside or new to the mundo taurino, Josephs has seized on a clever way of avoiding bad translation of taurine terms while simultaneously keeping the narrative clear of repeated explanatory asides. All terms that would not be done justice by clumsy translation into English are left in their Spanish forms, accompanied by explanatory asides only the first time they appear in the text. Supsequent appearances remain in Spanish and an index of defined appearances is provided for readers who didn't absorb the meaning of a term the first time around.

Althouh this is Rincón's saga, Josephs' eyes aren't focused on Rincón alone. Had they been, no proper assessment of Rincón would have been possible. Though bullfighting isn't a contest between matador and bull, one can't really judge a matador's mettle without seeing him alongside his peers, each trying to tease the best out of the unpredictable complexity of the animals drawn each afternoon. Fortunately, Josephs doesn't slight Rincón's rivals (most noteworthy among them, Enrique Ponce and Joselito), giving everyone their due. We're provided a very balanced view of years of performances, the good and the bad, solidly retained in the natural context. To back every judgment we're given dates and locations (no need to take Josephs' word alone for the quality of performances observered; we're everywhere pointed to sources that can confirm the observations made) and detail that could only be noticed by one steeped -- as Josephs is -- in Spanish history and geography, taurine lore and fact.

All this is done without any of the dry, ponderous, academic heaviness that made Josephs' last major work (White Wall of Spain (c) 1983) so nearly impenetrable. Here the writing often seems to dance along with the improvisational pas de deux between Rincón and his partners of the afternoon.

I can't recommend this book too highly.

Rating:
Summary: Gets no better than this
Review: As made clear by the subtitle, this is the story of the César Rincón, arguably the best Colombian torero in history, one of the best ever to emerge from the Americas, one of the best -- without respect to origins -- performing anywhere in the second half of the twentieth century.

This is the story of César Rincón the torero (not a biography; we learn little here about César Rincón the man -- quite possibly the only aspect of the book that leaves the reader wishing for more, though we learn plenty about César's view of toreo, his personal take on its hows and whys, the nature and price of the vocation and its demands) who, in 1991, burst onto the taurine scene from nowhere (or, seemingly so -- he was so little known on the day of his first triumph in Madrid that the program listed him as Venezuelan), managing performances that saw him carried out through the Puerta Grande in Las Ventas on four consecutive appearances, a feat unequaled by anyone, before or since.

Just how good was César Rincón? The inescapable impression given by this book is that he was a taurine epiphany:

Josephs is without doubt a full-blooded Rincóncista, but Ritual and Sacrifice in the Corrida is no tendentiously edited hagiography. The judgments it contains are not just his -- they're from the pens of some of the most important taurine critics of Rincón's day (Andrés de Miguel, Vicente Zabala, Norberto Carrasco, Joaquín Vidal, Michael Wigram and José Carlos Arévalo), writing with Rincon's performances still vivid from the previous days' events. Josephs gives us his eye-witness accounts whenever possible, but generously supplements them with the opinions of other commentators.

This is a stunningly successful book, unlike any taurine work published in English in decades. Without question, Josephs has given us a work that will, for years, sit comfortably alongside the best of Hemingway, the best of Conrad, the best of Fulton and Tynan -- destined to be one of the more re-read works in any taurine bibliophile's library.

Rincón was essentially unknown to Josephs in 1991, and the germ of this book took root slowly as Rincón began to stun the Spanish afición (and Josephs) with his performances during that year's Iberian temporada. The idea for the book chrystalized in the spring of 1992, in Plaza Santa Ana -- a Madrid neighborhood dripping with taurine history and activity -- during a chat with Michael Wigram. Josephs set out to follow Rincón, documenting his career trajectory, from Spain back to the Americas, back to Spain, to the Americas, over and over until the end of the 1995 season when Rincón, suffering from a resurgence of hepatitis "C," announced his retirement, intending to swap the role of torero for that of ganadero.

Written with the aid of unusual access to a torero's inner circle, this is not simply an insider's view of the taurine circuit (as might be, for example, a detailed diary kept by a torero). Josephs didn't travel as part of Rincon's entourage. But it is likely as intimate a view as anyone will soon provide. Josephs shadowed Ricón, his manager and cuadrilla for four years -- benefitting greatly from their assistance, attending every corrida he could manage, describing in great detail what he saw (how the public reacted, and how the authority and critics judged). He had access that only a personal relationship with a torero can provide -- to hotel suites before and after successful and disastrous corridas, to sorteos, to the callejon, to tientas, to family gatherings on ganaderias and in Rincon's home, to hospital/infirmary rooms, to post-corrida de-briefings with critics and ganaderos, and more.

Faenas are described in near photographic detail, both the good, the bad, and the all-too-commonly mundane. Although the degree of taurine detail may prove more-than-a-little daunting for anyone outside or new to the mundo taurino, Josephs has seized on a clever way of avoiding bad translation of taurine terms while simultaneously keeping the narrative clear of repeated explanatory asides. All terms that would not be done justice by clumsy translation into English are left in their Spanish forms, accompanied by explanatory asides only the first time they appear in the text. Supsequent appearances remain in Spanish and an index of defined appearances is provided for readers who didn't absorb the meaning of a term the first time around.

Althouh this is Rincón's saga, Josephs' eyes aren't focused on Rincón alone. Had they been, no proper assessment of Rincón would have been possible. Though bullfighting isn't a contest between matador and bull, one can't really judge a matador's mettle without seeing him alongside his peers, each trying to tease the best out of the unpredictable complexity of the animals drawn each afternoon. Fortunately, Josephs doesn't slight Rincón's rivals (most noteworthy among them, Enrique Ponce and Joselito), giving everyone their due. We're provided a very balanced view of years of performances, the good and the bad, solidly retained in the natural context. To back every judgment we're given dates and locations (no need to take Josephs' word alone for the quality of performances observered; we're everywhere pointed to sources that can confirm the observations made) and detail that could only be noticed by one steeped -- as Josephs is -- in Spanish history and geography, taurine lore and fact.

All this is done without any of the dry, ponderous, academic heaviness that made Josephs' last major work (White Wall of Spain (c) 1983) so nearly impenetrable. Here the writing often seems to dance along with the improvisational pas de deux between Rincón and his partners of the afternoon.

I can't recommend this book too highly.

Rating:
Summary: Bravo!
Review: I knew the subject matter of Ritual and Sacrifice would hold some general interest, but I had no idea that the book would be so lively, so entertaining, and so damned dramatic, from Rincon's opening of the Madrid gates to the story's heartbreaking "surprise" coda. Josephs makes what was obviously a Herculean literary undertaking seem easy and natural, and the writing's terrific--fluid, confident, passionate. Equally thrilling are the hundreds of superb photos, also by the author. Aside from Hemingway's masterpiece--an inevitable but impossible comparison--this is the best book on toreo I've ever read, as well as being a provocative and engrossing cultural study.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: Most scholars don't write well; Allen Josephs writes superbly.
Most fans of a sport---afficionados---offer only one side; Allen Josephs lays out, with great clarity, the good and the bad.
Whatever you think about "bull-fighting"----and I confess, I used to root for the bull----this book will make you think and very probably change your mind.
In essence, a superb work of scholarship which reads as well as a novel.

Rating:
Summary: Viva Sacrifice & Ritual in the Corrida! Viva Allen Josephs!
Review: Ritual & Sacrifice in the Corrida
For many Americans bull fighting is the one of the most misunderstood phenomena. The title of this fine book by Allen Josephs best explains bullfighting to the uninitiated Bull fighting, or toreo as Josephs correctly prefers to call it, is a ceremony of ritual and sacrifice.

The relation between man and the bull is lost deep in the fog of prehistory. Some say it was the bull not agriculture that domesticated man. The corrida is one aspect of that relationship, a sign of respect and honor to a noble enemy and friend.

The book is much more than a story of bullfighting. It is a classic saga of courage and perseverance as Cesar Rincon, a Colombian, against all odds succeeds in a foreign sometimes hostile land. From the plains of southern France, across the mountains of central Spain to the difficult rings of Andalusia, Allen takes us on a whirlwind adventure that criss-cross the breath and depth of Spain as he follows Rincon in his quest for the perfect corrida.

Josephs writes in a lyrical style more in the mode of Garcia Lorca than Hemingway.

Josephs, author of the White Wall of Spain, has an innate understanding of Spain and the Spanish which he imparts to the reader.

Read Hemingway, yes, but Ritual and Sacrifice in the Corrida is a must read for anyone even vaguely interested in that most Spanish of Spanish phenomena.

Rating:
Summary: Viva Sacrifice & Ritual in the Corrida! Viva Allen Josephs!
Review: Ritual & Sacrifice in the Corrida
For many Americans bull fighting is the one of the most misunderstood phenomena. The title of this fine book by Allen Josephs best explains bullfighting to the uninitiated Bull fighting, or toreo as Josephs correctly prefers to call it, is a ceremony of ritual and sacrifice.

The relation between man and the bull is lost deep in the fog of prehistory. Some say it was the bull not agriculture that domesticated man. The corrida is one aspect of that relationship, a sign of respect and honor to a noble enemy and friend.

The book is much more than a story of bullfighting. It is a classic saga of courage and perseverance as Cesar Rincon, a Colombian, against all odds succeeds in a foreign sometimes hostile land. From the plains of southern France, across the mountains of central Spain to the difficult rings of Andalusia, Allen takes us on a whirlwind adventure that criss-cross the breath and depth of Spain as he follows Rincon in his quest for the perfect corrida.

Josephs writes in a lyrical style more in the mode of Garcia Lorca than Hemingway.

Josephs, author of the White Wall of Spain, has an innate understanding of Spain and the Spanish which he imparts to the reader.

Read Hemingway, yes, but Ritual and Sacrifice in the Corrida is a must read for anyone even vaguely interested in that most Spanish of Spanish phenomena.

Rating:
Summary: Into the heart of the corrida
Review: There are many ways to explore and come to begin to understand the fascination that many find in the corrida. It absorbs those that have come to know the bravery exhibited through ritual that lies at the heart of the corrida. The best way to reach some understanding is the way found by Alan Josephs. Josephs tightly focuses on the life of an individual, great torero. Josephs provides an intimate and satisfying examination of Rincón. Along the way, he brings all into the spirit and essence of the corrida.

Rating:
Summary: THIS BOOK STANDS ALONE
Review: Toreo has a history as rich as any art form. There have been many great seasons, great bulls, great bullfighters, memorable corridas, but to date there are less than a handful of truly great books written in our langauge on the subject of la fiesta brava.

In the future there will be more temporadas with memorable corridas and the greatness of season past will even be revisited on occasion. We will all see more great toros and toreros in historic temporadas. Eras and epochs referred to with phrases attached to them like "a golden age" have come and will come again.

But never in any season will we again see a book like this one. Never will there be a time when a writer in our language with the experience, expertise and talent of Allen Josephs dedicates himself so completely to the examination of a single torero's career and gives us a volume with the texture and depth of "Ritual and Sacrafice."

This book purports to chronicle the career of one matador but it gives us far more. Matador Rincon's career as a torero over two continents is presented to us in pages that are like a series of great oil paintings with the torero standing in the foreground in the center of the canvas against a richly painted background depicting the history of a rich and proud culture. The history, customs and traditions of the taurine world can only be drawn this well by one who is both an artist and a scholar of all things Spanish.

If there have been other seasons, other bulls, other bullfighters, and other books by other writers that all afficionados and afficionadas treasure, there has never been a book of greater importance by an American writer, an author who will be remembered long after many others are forgotten.

This is not a book that people ought to buy. This is a book that people must own. This is the single most important book ever written on the subject of bullfighting in the English language.

Josephs' debt to American writers Ernest Hemingway and Barnaby Conrad, and his particular debt to the incomparable John Fulton, as well as some fine British writers, are debts he respectfully acknowledges. He has honored those men in writing a book that will be remembered as long as their works.

There is no question that from the time Hemingway gave the world "Death In The Afternoon" until the present, there has never been a better book written in our language on this subject.

Buy this book. Read it as a chroncile of one career. Then read it again as a treatise on toreo. And keep it near to use it as a reference book, for it is the most complete volume in existence in our language.

If there is an American alive who understands all things Spanish, including la fiesta brava, as well as Allen Josephs, then that American is not writing about these things. Allen Josephs stands alone. His book stands alone. We will never see another book like this one.

To borrow and paraphrase a time worn cliche from the taurine world, the woman who can give birth to an American writer who can produce a volume like Josephs book has not yet been born.

The book we have all waited for is here.

For his forty years of scholarship and the long years he walked side by side with this great matador in triumph and tragedy, through success and failure, we owe a huge debt to the author.

The gift he made for us will last longer than any taurine book ever written in our language because it is better than those that came before it, including Hemingway's. Hemingway himself would have loved to have written this way about toreo and Hemingway could have written this way about bullfighting if Hemingway had made the same investment in terms of time, scholarship, research that Allen Josephs has made.

No writer before Josephs, including Hemingway, has possessed Josephs knowledge and understanding of la fiesta brava and brought that to bear on a project that spanned over half a decade over two continents, work done over long days and long nights in foreign locales.

Allen Josephs has had an international reputation for many years as an author of a number of acclaimed books, and as a Hemingway authority (twice president of the International Society) and a Spanish scholar with wide ranging expertise extending from the works of Federico Garcia Lorca to the history of Andalucia, but until now one of his greatest talents had remained all but hidden from us, his artistry as a photographer.

The images in this book are as beautiful as they are instructive. If anyone wishes to know the proper execution of a complete arsenal of artistic passes with both the capote and muleta, these pictures provide that information.

For collectors, a first edition of this book will become a prized possession. It is the most valuable book of its kind and its value will increase over time.

Rating:
Summary: Corrida 597 for Aficionados!
Review: Wow! Allen Josephs turns his considerable writing talents to the art of toreo and produces an outstanding book--the equivalent of Corrida 597 for Aficionados.

Specifically, Dr. Josephs describes and chronicles the ascent of Columbian matador, Cesar Rincon, into the world of the Spanish bullfight. He takes us through his breakthrough 1991 season with his successes in Madrid, and then follows him as he performs in cities across Spain and South America over the next several years.

The writing is superb, the research is impeccable, and the photos are wonderful. This is a rare book about the bullfight and toreros, written in the English language by an aficionado, that takes even those readers who are well-versed in the corrida to a deeper level.

Rating:
Summary: A Modern Classic
Review: You will never get a more in depth understanding of the Corrida and its participants than you will from reading Allen Josephs' book,Ritual and Sacrifice in the Corrida.To understand the last rite on earth that pits wild animal against man, armed only with a sword,in a modern age where little thought is given to the ceremony of ancient rituals, could only be done by a man like Joseph who has devoted his life to exploring the nuances of the bullfight. Joseph is an outsider and so is Cesar Rincon the Columbian matador who he follows, mostly around Spain, for four seasons.It is the devotion of the author and protagonist to the Corrida that gives them a perspective and a story that could never be told by a Spaniard. From poverty, to tragedy, to triumph, the story of Cesar Rincon, has all the ingredients that make a blockbuster movie. The reflections of life embodied in the ritual, persued with the knowledge of the ultimate end, are found in the myth of Sysaphus in his attempt to achieve life's greatest achievement that never comes. Cesar takes you to a place where his mother's spirit is watching over him and his success, and the ever presence of death, is kept at bay because of her as much as it is because of his talent. For those unfamiliar with bull fights Allen takes you step by step through the ritual. The description , unlike so many books that try to sell the uninitiated on the glory of bullfighting, is true to the typical fight. In fact it is not a fight, it is a sacrifice.Hemingway would have wished that he had penned this book.