 "Blood
and Sand"
by V. Blasco Ibanez
Dell Books, 1951
Originally published 1919
The back cover reads: "A daring matador, a
fearless bandit, and a beautiful but fickle lady...'Blood and Sand' is
the classic novel of bullfighting in romantic Spain."
That really doesn't give you much to go on, so here's the text from
inside the cover: "The roar of a wildly cheering audience as he enters
the bull-ring, and the playing with death as he faces the charging, maddened
bull are the moments for which a bullfighter lives. For a bullfighter lives
differently from other men--he loves in his own tempo, and the women who
love him know that he constantly plays with death. Here in this great novel
of Spain are the thrills and terrors of the arena--the blood and the courage
which make bullfighting popular."
There are only a handful of genres that scream
manliness. You have war stories, safari stories, Roman gladiator, and,
of course, bullfighting stories. There is nothing like a man in a tight
silk suit teasing a huge animal with horns. It's strange how a man whose
tools of the trade are a funny hat and a red cape could be so macho. Bullfighting
stories, with a nod to Hemingway, still have the power to capture the imagination
of men around the world. Look at men's adventure magazines from the 1950's
and 1960's and you will no doubt find any number of bullfighting tales.
If you put a torero on the cover, the magazine sold. As great as bullfighting
stories are, they do have one major flaw. No matter how godly the bullfighter
is, he will always meet the business end of the bull's horns by the end
of the book. Not to give away the plot, but in Blood and Sand
the goring finale is telegraphed within the first five pages. The story
has to end this way, just like all westerns end with a high noon shoot-out
and all submarine stories end with a sunken sub. There are certain expectations
that we, as manly readers, have come to expect. It's that element that
is as unchanging as your lucky socks. It's the superglue that holds the
manly world together. No matter how much the world changes, we can retreat
into books like Blood and Sand and enjoy those myths that
have made us the men we are.
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