User:KForeman/sandbox: Difference between revisions

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Hemingway was much wiser in his treatment of this area in Death in the Afternoon: “I will not describe the different ways of using the cape, the gaonera, the mariposa, the farol, or the older ways, the cambios de rodillas, the galleos, the serpentinas in the detail I have described the veronica because a description in words cannot enable you to identify them before you have seen them as a photograph can” (176). One can only wish that Mailer had followed this advice and assembled a volume, like Death in the Afternoon, which combined complementary narrative and photography, instead of the disjunctive collection to which he put his name.

Also, practiced aficionados will realize the impossibility of such a maneuver a Mailer describes, which, if it were possible, would not just be loco, but downright insane, like driving blindfolded. Non-aficionados puzzling it over need only attempt to picture how one is to drape the cape over one’s back while the cape is wrapped around one’s body. SO’S and Mailer may be able to“write about worlds [they] knew better than better than anyone alive,” but this is not one of those worlds, and Hemingway’s term ‘horseshit’ is much closer to the truth. I am also reminded of his dictum from Death in the Afternoon: “There are some things which cannot be learned quickly and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring” (192).

Am I making too much of Mailer’s ineptitude and faking? It is true that Mexican toreros are highly inventive with the cape and with the muleta (the small red cape). I never saw El Loco, but I did see El Imposible when he came to Spain in the 1960s, and his impossible pass with the muleta was intricate and it depended on precise timing. Is it possible that El Loco invented some strange pass and that Mailer, for better or for worse, tried to describe it? It is. El Loco did not call himself El Loco without reason. But there is no such thing as a gallicina and there never was—I went so far as to double-check with a source in Mexico City who knows Ramírez and who has trained with him over the years. So not even in the inventive and hermetic world of Mexican toreo does a pass with that name exist. Nor is the pass Mailer describes, whatever it was, possible to execute. I leave it to the reader to decide the degree of loss of credibility this matter entails, but I can say with assurance that it makes the aficionado snicker.

===Works Cited===

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 Hemingway was much wiser in his treatment of this area in Death in the Afternoon: “I will not describe the different ways of using the cape, the gaonera, the mariposa, the farol, or the older ways, the cambios de rodillas, the galleos, the serpentinas in the detail I have described the veronica because a description in words cannot enable you to identify them before you have seen them as a photograph can” (176). One can only wish that Mailer had followed this advice and assembled a volume, like Death in the Afternoon, which combined complementary narrative and photography, instead of the disjunctive collection to which he put his name.
+Also, practiced aficionados will realize the impossibility of such a maneuver a Mailer describes, which, if it were possible, would not just be loco, but downright insane, like driving blindfolded. Non-aficionados puzzling it over need only attempt to picture how one is to drape the cape over one’s back while the cape is wrapped around one’s body. SO’S and Mailer may be able to“write about worlds [they] knew better than better than anyone alive,” but this is not one of those worlds, and Hemingway’s term ‘horseshit’ is much closer to the truth. I am also reminded of his dictum from Death in the Afternoon: “There are some things which cannot be learned quickly and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring” (192).
+Am I making too much of Mailer’s ineptitude and faking? It is true that Mexican toreros are highly inventive with the cape and with the muleta (the small red cape). I never saw El Loco, but I did see El Imposible when he came to Spain in the 1960s, and his impossible pass with the muleta was intricate and it depended on precise timing. Is it possible that El Loco invented some strange pass and that Mailer, for better or for worse, tried to describe it? It is. El Loco did not call himself El Loco without reason. But there is no such thing as a gallicina and there never was—I went so far as to double-check with a source in Mexico City who knows Ramírez and who has trained with him over the years. So not even in the inventive and hermetic world of Mexican toreo does a pass with that name exist. Nor is the pass Mailer describes, whatever it was, possible to execute. I leave it to the reader to decide the degree of loss of credibility this matter entails, but I can say with assurance that it makes the aficionado snicker.
 ===Works Cited===