The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters With Extraordinary People

by Susan Orlean

The bestselling author of The Orchid Thief  and The Library Book is back with this delightfully entertaining collection of her best and brightest profiles.

Acclaimed New Yorker writer Susan Orlean brings her wry sensibility, exuberant voice, and peculiar curiosities to a fascinating range of subjects—from the well known (Bill Blass) to the unknown (a typical ten-year-old boy) to the formerly known (the 1960s girl group the Shaggs).

Passionate people. Famous people. Short people. And one championship show dog named Biff, who from a certain angle looks a lot like Bill Clinton. Orlean transports us into the lives of eccentric and extraordinary characters—like Cristina Sánchez, the eponymous bullfighter, the first female matador of Spain—and writes with such insight and candor that readers will feel as if they’ve met each and every one of them.

The result is a luminous and joyful tour of the human condition as seen through the eyes of the writer heralded by the Chicago Tribune as a “journalist dynamo.”

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Journalism, Memoir, Travel, Short Stories, Biography

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

I'm the product of a happy and uneventful childhood in the suburbs of Cleveland, followed by a happy and pretty eventful four years as a student at University of Michigan. From there, I wandered to the West Coast, landing in Portland, Oregon, where I managed (somehow) to get a job as a writer. This had been my dream, of course, but I had no experience and no credentials. What I did have, in spades, was an abiding passion for storytelling and sentence-making. I fell in love with the experience of writing, and I've never stopped. From Portland, I moved to Boston, where I wrote for the Phoenix and the Globe, and then to New York, where I began writing for magazines, and, in 1987, published my first piece in The New Yorker. I've been a staff writer there since 1992.

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this because I loved the author's On Animals, the writing as much as the content. So far I am not quite so impressed with this book. The first story is entitled, "The American Man, Age 10" and although I see the author's point in presenting a very normal child as being typical of a 10 year old, it isn't very interesting. It's certainly not about an extraordinary person. The commissioning magazine wanted her to write about Macaulay Culkin, who was an extraordinary ten year old. That said, I don't find pieces about most famous media people to be at all interesting either.

The second story, The Shaggs, was about a 60s girl band who Frank Zappa said were better than the Beatles, Rolling Stone wrote that the Shaggs sang like "lobotomized Trapp Family Singer," and Lester Bangs, critic for the Village Voice - "They can't play a lick! But mainly they got the right attitude, which is all rock'n'roll's ever been about from day one."

You've never heard of The Shaggs, right? Neither me. As young girls, home-schooled, not allowed friends, brought up in the church, they were forced by their father to be a band that played at the Fremont Town Hall every Saturday night. When he died at 47 in 1975 they disbanded the same day. Years, decades later, the band's single album was rediscovered and they achieved cult status. (And recorded another album no-one mentions, 'mostly because they embraced rhythm and tuning).

I do wonder how much the critics I quoted were pretentious following along and whipping up the trend, and how much was genuine and how much irony? I was a record critic for a bit, for Tower Records, but that was World music, mostly African, and am too blunt, don't have enough finess to pull of pretentiousness. And the band, what happened to these lately-discovered alternative stars of the music scene? Dot, is a cleaner, Betty is a stockroom worker and Helen suffers from depression and doesn't work.

So the piece was interesting on one level, but not very, and the people were not extraordinary, just what happened to their Philosophy of the World album and its out of tune music and puerile lyrics..

Overall, a disappointing book. All of the people, and the dog Biff, are ordinary in one way, they are not celebrities, and all are eccentric in themselves or what they do (or both). I can see how this could be interesting to read in a magazine, as they were originally published, but all together is like eating too many snacks. Stodgy.

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here is the long and the short of it:
- This is a book of profiles.
- The profiles are written by Susan Orlean, probably one of the most interesting and interested people I can think of.
- In its introduction, it contains the words "It's just that people are so interesting."

Here is how I feel about those things:
People are just so goddamn interesting. People and their stories are the best part of being alive, and it's not close. It's why I read so much. It's why in my breaks from books, I read the internet. I just love people and I never stop being curious about them.

Susan Orlean is an amazing fantastic writer, and yes, a few hundred pages of her writing goes down a little tougher than 10 pages in a magazine, and the quality and your interest will surely wax and wane, but overall:

If you like people, read this. And if you don't like people, why are you reading in the first place!!!

Bottom line: A book good enough to out me as optimistic and earnest.

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currently-reading updates

have you ever realized a book is going to be exactly what you want it to be?

that's how i feel after reading the sentence "It's just that people are so interesting" in the first section of this book.

clear ur sh*t book 62
no quest, just seeing how many more i can finish

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tbr review

i had to buy this for school only to be assigned TWO CHAPTERS. out of the whole thing!

so for years, i've pretended i'll read the rest. to make up for it.

seems unlikely.

[Kelsey Landhuis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book because I love the movie Adaptation, which is based on Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, but that one was not at Halfprice Books and this one was, so. Basically it's a collection of profiles that Orlean wrote for The New Yorker and a couple of other magazines during the 80s and 90s, and a lot of them are pretty interesting. The main issue is that some of them did not age well at all, so the only real reason I would recommend it is if you are super-nostalgic for 90s pop culture ephemera, including but not limited to:

-the television show Yo! MTV Raps
-Mark Wahlberg's former life as Marky Mark
-Tonya Harding's figure skating scandal

Also if you are ever having a conversation with someone who is under the age of 20-ish, and they are like, "Hey, what were the 90s like?" you could give them this book to read and it would give them a much better understanding of that wonderful, magical time period in American pop culture.

But Susan Orlean is definitely a pretty good writer, and you know she is baller because freaking Meryl Streep played her in a movie. I guess what I am really trying to say is, everyone go watch Adaptation.

[Laura Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was reading a review of The Library Book and decided to check out other works by Susan Orlean. Seeing the cover of The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup gave me a little twinkly sensation as I recall reading it shortly after it came out. I enjoyed it enough to warrant said twinkly sensation some twenty years later. 4* it is.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Susan Orlean’s collection of essays explores a whole host of topics ranging from surfer girls in Maui to high school basketball stars to a female bullfighter from Spain. Each essay is a personality profile highlighting the unique and fascinating aspects of each person and their deeds. Orlean focuses many of her essays on people that wouldn’t ordinarily end up in a personality profile such as real estate agents and grade school children. However, each essay shines and points out the humorous along with the extraordinary details of each central character. Her use of the essay form also adds to the accessibility of her writing. Each profile is a clean and intense look at an entire person, and Orlean is able to reveal such a large quantity of information to her readers in relatively few pages.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Susan Orlean really likes to write about herself. That's ok. Lots of writers do that, and she is obviously an interesting person. Sometimes it works for her, like in "My Kind of Place," her inspired collection of travel writing. Travelogues lend themselves so well to introspection -- after all, travel impressions are so subjective, so dependent on personal experience.

Profiles of other people, however, do not lend themselves to introspection nearly as well. In writing about others, Orlean turns the pen back on herself all too often, barely letting her subjects speak for themselves. I walked away from this collection not knowing very much about the subjects of the stories, but too much about Orlean herself -- and not liking her very much, for all that.

[Beth · Rating 1 out of 5]

I echo some of the other reviews. Didn’t age well, seemed like a magazine series, and just could not get into most of the subjects. I did find a handful of them interesting and novel and Susan is obviously a very gifted and observant writer. But while a few of the chapters held my interest most of them didn’t. I had high hopes for the book based on the title and description and reviews of this and other books she’s written. I also felt she focused on a lot of mundane and not terribly interesting details in her writing. I am reading three other books by her soon and suspect I will enjoy them more.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank goodness I'm finally finished. I had to force myself to read 10 pages a day of this in order to finish it, and found that it was far better in 10-page chunks. This compilation of essays by Susan Orlean is better read slowly, one story at a time, and put down in between. The subjects of her essays are all fairly interesting, but when read one on top of another, the style of each of Orlean's essays becomes repetitive, as does her structure and commentary on each of her subjects. The sameness of the style across essays took away some of the uniqueness and charmingness of the subjects.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great book! People are weird, funny, lovable, interesting, and strange and Susan Orlean is the perfect person to write about them. She captures everything that is uncanny and wonderful about a truly amazing assortment of people. A gentle but pervasive sense of humor and astonishment. I’ve read several of her books and loved them all, now I have to figure out what I haven’t read and consume it.

[Tara Chevrestt · Rating 1 out of 5]

I fail to see what is so extraordinary about these people.. Except for the lady bullfighter and the surfer girls, nobody is doing anything particularily interesting.. A ten year old boy that plays nintendo? A NYC real estate agent? Um.. I don't get it.

[Bea Elwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know 2001 when this book was published was only eleven years ago but the stories felt really aged while I was reading them. And it wasn't just the references to beepers and Mark Wahlberg as Marky Mark but it was also wondering whatever became of the star Dominican high school basketball player destined for the NBA and the female matador after her first season in Spain. Like the magazines these stories were originally published in this book left a feeling of dustiness and staleness not unlike reading what’s been left lying around your dentist's office.

[Tammy T · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a didn't finish for me. I found the style of her writing repetitive and a bit on the dull side. The subjects were semi-interesting, but maybe it was the age of the book that made it a yawn.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some essays I highly enjoyed, others were meh...ok and still others were so, so dull. I guess that's the problem with a book of essays - how uneven your enjoyment of them can be.

I adore her writing style so the collection has that going for it. I think I might next try and read her book The Orchid Thief, which is a topic I find interesting. Some of the people profiled in this book I just had zero interest in, no matter how well written the material was.

Definitely not a book to buy, but one to check out from the library.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wavered between 3 and 4 stars and would give it a 3.5. I enjoy reading about extraordinary ordinary people, but maybe I should have read it more in chunks instead of straight through, because I started to get bored.

[Rich · Rating 3 out of 5]

I skipped around a bunch. The story on the people in the Tanya Harding fan club and the anonymous young man were my favorites.

[Abigail Franklin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Orlean’s just so good at what she does. It’s astonishing how prolific she is.

[Lisa Mcbroom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Susan Orlean former writer of the New Yorker and Esquire profiles the unusual people she has met over the years. From celebrities to a female bullfighter, a well written book!

[Ken · Rating 2 out of 5]

……………..meh……………beach reading at best.

The book collects previously published individual essays meant as fillers for slick magazines like THE NEW YORKER. It was too tempting to put the book aside for long periods because there was no continuity.
Some good essays, most contrived.

I'm fairly certain that this book was a marketing idea - recycle small stuff and repurpose it into a book; an edit-job, not a book from scratch.
I know Susan Orlean is capable of so much better.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

"As far as magazine journalists go, I’m a big fan of the witty and hyper-aware Susan Orlean. Her 1999 piece on famously awful girl group The Shaggs is one of my all time faves, a beautifully observed look at misplaced hopes and dreams. That and several other quirky profiles (most of which were originally published in The New Yorker throughout the ’90s) are assembled in Bullfighter. For the most part, the articles are fun and interesting and not too terribly dated. I could see all of them working perfectly as magazine pieces (well, maybe not so much the surprisingly boring one about the African king who moonlights as a taxi driver), but reading them all together makes Orlean’s self-awareness annoyingly apparent. Still, there are a few precious gems here. I remember reading the book’s sharp and offbeat profile of ’80s teen queen Tiffany in Rolling Stone way back when, and her description of Tiffany’s face alone has stayed with me for some odd reason — 20 years later! I also enjoyed her profiles of a young woman who works as the sole reporter at a small town newspaper, another woman who runs a store that only sells buttons, and Hollywood superagent Sue Mengers. And don’t forget that Shaggs piece — all of which make this book worth tracking down a cheap used copy for." - Scrubbles.net review, January 4, 2009.

[Jade Wheeler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy Orlean's writing but not quite as much as her very underrated genre. This is a book of character studies! Yeah, character studies. Some of them are about semi-famous or famous people, some of them are about people who would become famous in later years, and some of them are about an average 10 year old boy (or other average types). As one can expect, some chapters are more interesting than others and, I suspect, which ones the reader finds more interesting greatly varies based on who the reader is more so than who the subject is. But it's well worth a read. What I like particularly about Orlean's style is that she does not try to find analyze her studies or read anything into them. She is an observer simply marking down what she sees and her personal opinions on them. It is like a social scientist notes and journal rolled into one.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Basically, the rule here is, if the first word of the essay is "if," it will be really good. ("If Colin Duffy and I were to get married, we would have matching superhero notebooks." "If I were a bitch, I'd be in love with Biff Truesdale.") Otherwise, it will be something of a disappointment.

Two and a half stars, really. I read "The American Man, Age Ten" in the New Kings of Non-Fiction compilation, and my reasonless bias against Susan Orlean was quite shattered. It's terrific, but nothing in this book matches it. And the cover, yikes.

[Nora · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to read something by Susan Orlean and I kind of wish I had picked The Orchid Thief instead. I mean, if you put a picture of yourself dressed as a bullfighter on the cover of your book, you pretty much have to bring it. Most of these profiles were ok but a lot of the time when I finished one, I would feel like ...that's it? I mean I guess I would recommend this one for early 90s nostalgia purposes if nothing else. Also it's kind of weird and like, wistful reading at times because a lot of these people who were apparently the "next big thing" in like 1987 I have never heard of.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

These are fascinating, beautifully observed portraits, but they feel like they came out of a time capsule, read so long after the fact. The choices of subjects are all of their time. Their priorities, their clothing, the excitement around some of them, long past. A look at teenage Tiffany just as she broke out of mall concerts and into the Top 40, for example. Loved the bullfighter and the surfer girls of Maui and the Shaggs. I've read this a little at a time over the last year.

[allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

The "date I read this book" category does not allow for me to specify the (at least) 17 times I've read this book.

Susan Orlean immerses herself in the lives of her subjects like few writers, whether it's a 10-year-old boy in New Jersey or Bill Blass. In college, an academic advisor asked me what my dream job was and I just said, "Susan Orlean."

[Mary Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Orlean gives every profile she writes a strikingly stylized sense of detail. Some of the subject matter of Bullfighter might be a bit dated (most of the pieces were first published in the 1990s, and it shows), but her irresistible hooks, sharp eye and refined ear, and warmly humane perspective create such vivid portraits that many pieces transcend their publication date with grace.

[Mary Havens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like all short stories, some were great and some were just o.k. More great than o.k. I like Orlean’s style of profiling the every day person because every one has a story. It’s nice to hear these stories and see the value in all stories.
I’m definitely interested in reading more of Orlean’s work and a bit sad that there’s only two compilations of it.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a compendium of the author's up-close journalistic endeavors to fully and thoroughly capture her subjects in an essay. Orlean imbeds herself in the lives of people, one at a time, some famous, some not and writes her observations and conversations. It's uneven. I enjoyed some and became bored with some.

[Sarah Burns · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, let me say that I adore people, so this was a fantastic book. The writing style was wonderful, and I found the people that Orlean wrote about worthy of my people watching facination. Longer review after I get this gauze off of my fingers...

[Connie Ciampanelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

The brilliant Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief and the wonderful and memorable The Library Book, here reprises some of her profiles originally printed in The New Yorker, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Outside.

The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters With Extraordinary People is notable in that, although Orlean indeed profiles a handful of well-known, or at least known, subjects (designer Bill Blass, Hollywood agent Sue Mengers ["As she tells it, Hollywood is a club that she loves to belong to, yet you can tell she never felt she really belonged. For a while, people appreciated her usefulness, which is not the same as belonging, although for a stretch it can look the same.], teen pop star Tiffany), most of her essays focus on everyday folk.

It began when The New Yorker assigned her to profile wildly popular Macaulay Culkin, and she pitched the idea of instead finding a typical ten-year old who didn't have "an agent, a manager, or a chauffeur." The result, "The American Male, Age Ten, " is a delight. Here is her bull's eye assessment of her subject, Colin: "The collision in his mind of what he understands, what he hears, what he figures out, what popular culture pours into him, what he knows, what he pretends to know, and what he imagines makes an interesting mess. The mess often has the form of what he will probably think like when he is a grown man, but the content of what he is like as a little boy."

Orlean's essay on Tonya Harding barely includes the ice skater; she is tangential to the story. In "Figures In a Mall," Orlean focuses on the town, several miles outside of Portand, Oregon, where Harding lives, and how it shows us how she became who she is, and the members of her fan club who support their local hero. That the story all takes place just before Harding was implicated in the attack on Nancy Kerrigan adds a large dose of poignancy.

Other extraordinary ordinary people include a family of sisters from New Hampshire who make terrible rock music and the dysfunctional family in which they are raised; a New York City real estate agent who specializes in high end apartments; a group of long-time gospel singers who travel unluxuriously all over the country sharing their gift; a talented, highly rated high school basketball player who doesn't let fame go to his head; a small town newspaper reporter who captures a place in which nothing happens but where everything happens; a young clown who revels in entertaining countless children at several parties every week; Orlean's own hairdresser, whose shop is a bevy of fleeting conversation, both profound and inane; a trio of Bulgarian sisters who become top rated tennis players; and of course the eponymous bullfighter, the first woman to be certified in Spain. In the last, Orlean ably treads the fine line between appreciation of tradition with revulsion at the end result.

These stories were originally published between 1988 and 2001. Some of the technology that Orlean references is amusingly out of date, but the humanity she shares with us is not. The profiles are not biographies, they are snapshots of a certain moment in a person's life. Each portrait, in different ways, is engaging and brilliant, witty and funny, heartwarming and insightful. By implication, Orlean underscores the importance of each of us, even in small ways, to the world.

And isn't this the best cover ever?

[Kate McKinney · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of interviews w/people from many walks of life. Good concept & I had high hopes for this book, but found myself consistently disappointed. The author's writing-style comes across as very random, run-on & tangential. It's not particularly well-organized. Almost like an offhand stream-of-consciousness listing of things about each subject, in no particular order or theme (ie; "the living room also contained a large-screen television; a black leather couch; a low, wide, biomorphic coffee table; some amusing kitsch collectibles; a photograph of Freddy mugging w/Andy Warhol; a photograph of Freddy on the set of New Jack City; an issue of Paper w/a photograph of Freddy & his former girlfriend, the model Veronica Webb, on the cover; an issue of Details folded open to a full-page photograph of Freddy; and several telephones"). Why does she feel the need to describe someone via these continual lists, which are ubiquitous throughout the book?! She switches between regular text & interview-format at times (w/scripting for those participating in the dialogue). Her writing is almost like an idiosyncratic shorthand. She'll start to tell you something which seems to be leading somewhere, but then simply drops off into a dwindling, inconclusive anti-climax. There's very little tension, build-up, suspense, or rhythm in her book; no actual trajectory; just an ongoing description. There are times when her prose reads like a long freight-train w/an endless succession of cars & no immediate relief for the person parked at the crossing, waiting for the bars to lift & the caboose to arrive. Her 1st chapter, about a supposed ordinary "All American boy," exhibits significant & repeated accounts of misogynistic behavior & language, which the female author glosses over & treats as either inconsequential or cute. The 2nd chapter covers an unknown, fairly undistinguishable female band, once again recounting misogyny: this time in the form of molestation by a father, reportedly fondling one of his musician daughters. The author sails over this fact noncommittally, as if it was nothing but a small detail in the story, among many others. What's her point in writing, if she brings up something like this & then just ignores & dismisses it?! Ugh! I can understand a writer's desire to pursue unusual subjects, or to bring forward fascinating aspects of the lives of everyday, ordinary people & their situations (for example, as in Studs Terkel's classic "American Dreams: Lost & Found"); but this author has failed to hone in on anything of value; she presents her subjects in a drone, & seems negligent in curating & stewarding the material she obtains (much of which is quite dated). I've found nothing useful in the book, even w/all the extensive, undifferentiated content she compiles, which could certainly have been mined for more worthwhile discussion. The rating it gets is for concept & for a very few stories that manage to hit the mark (including one about an inspired fish-house window-dresser; & another about a vigorous female "musher" running the Iditarod Sled Dog Race). Overall, a very disappointing book, which I was almost relieved to finish.