DEATH AND MONEY IN THE AFTERNOON by Adrian Shubert Oxford University Press 1999 ISBN 019-509524-3 Reviewed by Stanley Conrad Webmeister, Mundo Taurino What, in the final analysis, is bullfighting? Is it really some atavism whose roots are forever burried deep in the hard-packed soil of pre-history, the present day remnant of a ritualized interaction between man and beast that can be traced to 40,000 BC? Is it the symbolic re-enactment of some eternal struggle between nature and culture? Is it the mythic illumination of Spanish sex/gender relations? Or, could it be in some fashion a symbolic rape and "violation of the menstrual taboo"?

Shubert -- a Canadian professor of history -- decides (after introducing the academic debate) to steer clear of this analytic quicksand, telling an entirely different, straightforward story. He dives into the existing documentary record (the book extensively endnoted) and in separate chapters, examines the history of bullfighting as a business (recognized quite early on by governmental and religious bodies as a prime revenue source); the social status and origins of the mundo taurino's principal celebrities, the matadors (their celebritization being a much less contemporary phenomenon than many might suspect); the place of women in the mundo taurino (both as participants on the sand, and as spectators); the nature, role and comportment of the bullfight's attendees, fans and aficionados; the secular and ecclesiastic attempts to regulate the spectacle; and the ways in which bullfights have been put to political use.

In the process, Shubert unearths fascinating details about the evolution of bullfighting over time, showing, for example, how the cuadrilla evolved from the guild-like training ground for the next generation's matadors to what it is today, a dead-end catchment area for those who don't quite have the talent or connections to make it into the known-name performing ranks.

Throughout, Shubert examines bullfighting as an ever-evolving phenomenon, showing how it was shaped by changes in Spanish politics, culture and economics, and how it in turn influenced the society around it. This isn't the picture of bullfighting we've grown up with. Shubert concludes that bullfighting, far from the atavistic holdover from earlier times, is actually the precursor of our contemporary mass entertainments, the most modern, forward-looking thing about Spain in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Now that's a spin that hasn't ('till now) been spun. But the detail Shubert amasses in support of his argument is whelming, indeed. Whatever you might think of Shubert's overarching conclusion about bullfighting as the prototypic leisure/sport activity, you'll be fascinated by the detail he musters along the way.

Now out of print, Death and Money in the Afternoon is readily available in the used-book market (more than 40 copies available from Abebooks.com, for example, on the day this review was posted -- priced from $5.00US to $25.00).