Volume 8, Number 3 · February 23, 1967
A Hero of Our Time
By Mordecai Richler
Paper Lion
by George Plimpton
Harper & Row, 362 pp., $5.95
Watching Luis Miguel Dominguin fight in Valencia in 1951, I suddenly saw a scrawny boy, two rows down, leap from his seat, vault the barrera, broomstick and sack in hand, and make it clear on to the sands of the bull ring, stamping his foot for the bull to charge. Around me people were cheering or laughing warmly, but I remember watching the boy, my heart hammering, until attendants hustled him off. I did not yet know that these boys, called espontáneous, were commonplace. A week later, in Paris, a friend showed me a new French Communist Party publication, a Life-size picture magazine lampoon about America. On the first page there was a photograph of Harry Truman, then president, looking bumpkinish as he waved a shoe aloft at an American shoe convention. Opposite, Al Capone smiled darkly behind a cigar, and there was a quote from him endorsing capitalism. The best system, Capone said. On the following page, clinching the case for bestiality, there was a full-page spread of a behemoth of a football player; crouching, the eyes mean, the mouth snarling, arms hanging ape-like. This, the caption said, was a typical American university student.
Review, 2490 words
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