In answer to a persistent question, a famous mountain climber once said, "I climb a mountain climber once said, "I climb a mountain because it's there." An equally presistent question has been, "Why does a man fight bulls?" One looks for the answer in the autobiography of Sidney Franklin, the only American over to become a successful bullfighter. But while the book in an intriguing account of an exciting life, it never satisfies this demand.

This is only one of the unusual points of Bullfighter from Brooklyn. For bull fighting is a highly emotional adventure it in hard to believer that a man. American of that, who has spent his adult life in the trade, can have no feelings or opinions on the matter. If he has Franklin doesn't reveal them anywhere in the story of his life.

Actually, it is a series of stories, often fantastic incidents that strain the bounds of credulity.

Muscled Lightning

The reader in first dumped into the middle of a into the jungle to live with a native tribe as a god, and later seated in a quiet hotel room with Ernest Hemingway while the Spanish Civil War rages on the streets below. What transitions exist are swift, what moments Franklin chooses to recall are bizarre, unique, and to an arm chair adventurer, meat and wine.

Franklin is a master story-teller. Treating himself almost as a third person, he always emerges as the hero of every tale. This is as it should be. By any standards, Franklin is a great man. He made lots of money, he won lots of women, and for years, he matched daring with death every Sunday afternoon to win over even the most devout afficionados.

His story is not written as one expects autobiographies to be written. Nowhere is there mention of even his date of birth. But then, Franklin did not live the way bullfighter a are expected to live. He broke the rules, and made the sport finer by introducing new techniques and perfecting classic ones. He has done much the same in writing.  --Laurence D. Savadov