Bulls 1, Runners 0.
This week a young man who went to the Pamplona Festival in Spain to run with the bulls rode into the Hereafter on the horns of a bull. He is probably having drinks and cigars with Papa Hemingway even as I write. Lucky bastard.
In the aftermath of this man’s death, many people have commented on the “safety” of the festival and whether the event is an example of animal cruelty. I am, frankly, amazed by this discussion. First of all, OF COURSE running with the bulls is unsafe — probably one of the most dangerous things that someone can willingly do! Remember Hemingway and his masterpiece The Sun Also Rises? People (and by “people” I mean men, though I imagine that there must be some women among the runners) participate in this activity to recapture what it is like to be alive. Nothing focuses one’s attention on living in the moment like the prospect of an immediate and horrible death, especially in the form of an angry, snarling, and deceptively fast bull.
The considerable threat of death aside, the Pamplona Festival is, in many ways, a relic of a faded and heroic past in which life was more volatile and, perhaps, more precious. We now live in a world where risk has been reduced to something on the financial pages of the New York Times. Lawyers must remind us that the cup of coffee we get at Starbucks is — gasp! — hot. Toys come wrapped in so many warnings that we are afraid to let our children play with them. Soon cancer warnings will be printed on the side of cigarettes themselves. And do not get me started on food. The pounding heart of our civilization has become but a murmur.
So let us take a moment to consider the second claim of the aforementioned ridiculous discussion: that the Pamplona Festival is cruel to the bulls. Even I would be hard-pressed to deny that it is. But at least the bulls are doing what they were meant to do.
Are we?
Philadelphia Negro 