#284： This Will Make a Man of You
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Summary
On this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, I talk with journalist and author Frank Miniter about his new novel, The Sun Also Rises, and why the running of the bulls is a defining feature of modern manliness.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well last summer
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i had leslie bloom on the show to talk about her book everybody behaves badly which gives
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the story behind the story of hemingway's first big novel the sun also rises on today's show i
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talked to an author of another book about this landmark novel who instead of providing the
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historical context of the sun also rises explores the ideal of manliness hemingway is trying to get
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at in the book his name is frank miniter he's a journalist and the author of previous books like
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the ultimate man's survival guide his latest is called this will make a man out of you one man's
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search to find what makes men and in this podcast frank and i discuss hemingway's project of creating
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a new myth of manliness that combined traditional notions of masculinity with modern sensibilities
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how frank sinatra killed the rugged gentleman and made cool a defining feature of modern manliness
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and what the running of the bulls can teach us about rites of passages into manhood
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we end our conversation talking about hemingway's attraction to and repulsion from bullfighting
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and why the matador was hemingway's ideal symbol of manliness great show if you've read the sun
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also rises uh you'll get a lot of great insights if you haven't read the book there's some spoilers
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in here so you might want to read the book first before you listen after the show's over check out
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frank miniter welcome to the show thanks brett good to be here with you uh so long been a fan
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of your work uh you wrote a book the ultimate guide man's guide to survival or something that
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came out the same time as my book my first book the art of man is classic schools and manners
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so it's fun to see that it's a really handsome looking book you've written some other stuff but
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your latest is one that i just absolutely loved because it's about a book one of my all-time
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favorite books the sun also rises by ernest hemingway um and a few months ago we had a gal
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on the podcast um who did sort of like the the history of that book how it came to fruition
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of hemingway's time um in in paris and what was there but what i loved about your book
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is you really focused on hemingway's exploration of manliness and his sort of code of manhood that
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he was trying to get at with the sun also rises and uh you talked a lot of scholars on hemingway
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you actually went to paris you went to spain did the running of the bulls that the sun also rises
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made um famous um so you just give these great insights that i never really thought of
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so uh start off like what inspired you to do this exploration of the sun also rises and to go to
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spain to do the running of the bulls and to watch bullfights yeah right i'm a journalist and as you
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noted i wrote the ultimate man survival guide and that got into the question of what makes men through
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what are the skills a man should know and all that kind of stuff uh but that really okay that's the
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beginning of that conversation a lot of people coming to me saying okay that's interesting and
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great we enjoyed the book but what really makes men you know what is it that creates character what
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builds these people what are we losing today that it's supposed to build people into into all
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they want to be to men well they're supposed to be so i started asking that question of myself and
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it's just a very philosophical and hard question to answer and as i looked around it and i thought
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okay ernest hemingway was kind of the icon for man unless especially in the early 20th century
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but he was attacked especially in the late 20th century by the feminist movement and so on
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as being a parody of what a man was supposed to be he was supposed to be a chauvinist pig and all
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this he did have four marriages and loved alcohol and these kinds of things and they started to
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lampoon him and destroy him and i thought okay if he's been attacked this much first loved so
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much his writing is still loved so much but attacked so much then there's a lot there's a lot in his
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writing and who he was and who he was trying to become about manliness about answering that
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question so let me start to investigate just for my own before i even started writing let me figure
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this out so i started actually following that path and ended up with this crazy bunch of people
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this wonderful bunch of people uh men and women who follow that hemingway trail uh every year from
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paris to demplona which is that route from the sun also rises that that those expats took
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on that pilgrimage um so i ended up with this incredible group of people in the history of
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paris in the cafes of paris seeing that intelligent side that hemingway was supposed to also personify
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and he believed in that whole dichotomy of man where you were the sophisticate yet you were the
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adventurer as well one was not uh without the other you were that well-rounded ideal and then we
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went to spain and and ran with the bulls in uh in pamplona and went through that whole intense
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route of passage and i ended up finding out that there's just so much more there than i ever imagined not
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just with the sun also rising those characters and going where they were but why hemingway took
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us there and why he found so much depth in that place in those times uh and it ended up turning
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into a book into a real answer to that question what makes men yeah we'll get into some of those
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insights that those uh rituals or those rites of passage can teach us but throughout the book you
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said you were on the search for what you call the hemingway man and you mentioned just now that you
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know part of being a hemingway man is uh is being well-rounded being a sophisticate
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also this rugged adventurer but what other attributes does a hemingway man possess
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yeah it's that grounded in something real and something actual it's why he was a hunter in my
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opinion and a fisherman that that's reality when you go hunting and you become actually a part of
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nature um it might not be for everybody i'm not making that argument but it certainly is real uh and
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those spanish bulls that he also loved are real um and he loved that an ideal of the authentic life and
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the only way to get to the authentic life is to deal with reality you know we're dealing with
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generations now who interact more through social media and enjoy video games and other kind of
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pursuits which are all fine and good but if that becomes your reality that's an alternate reality
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that's not real reality that doesn't shape someone into who uh we really want them to be and who
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they really want to be it takes reality to do that's what the hemingway man was all about that's
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why he was real in those paris cafes and why he was friends with pablo picasso and f scoff as gerald
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and a lot of those painters and writers of that age but he also made fun of the cafe trash he didn't
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like the posers the fakers the wealthy who came to that that part of paris to live a certain bohemian
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kind of life because he saw them as fakes they weren't really artists they weren't really suffering
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to become what they wanted to become they were faking it they were wearing the clothes of it but
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they weren't really becoming that thing and so he ended up mocking those people and really being
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attacked in the end by those people a lot of the critics uh who you know those people became um so
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what the hemingway man really was and was supposed to be is somebody who bases himself on reality
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right and that's why he sought out adventures his whole lot his whole entire life was an ambulance
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driver during world war one did the hunting boxed fished um all sorts of adventures because it was it
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was real yeah he went to war he actually went into the spanish war as you noted he went to war one
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was an ambulance driver he sought out those real adventures um you know the deep sea fishing he went with
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his you know where he was actually looking for u-boats at one point in time uh in world war ii he
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went back in in a slightly controversial way um into when paris fell back into the hands of freedom
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i know he'd like to be at the cusp of all those things the real things that developed character
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it's why he said that a bullfighter was the only one who lived life all the way up because they were
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standing toe to toe with a bull who could kill them and does kill a lot of meditators i've been in
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bullfights have seen uh bullfighters uh get get put down it happens a lot if it's a very real
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experience even say what you want about it uh he was after that real experience the authentic life
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right and uh early on the book you had this great dichotomy about um you know the ideal of that ideal
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of manliness that hemingway uh captures and our idea of manliness that we have today and a lot of
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people have they in modern cultures this difference between being cool and the old school gentleman and
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you said uh this idea of cool uh kills the old school gentleman how did that happen and can you
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explain that a little bit more yeah i was i was quoting the late uh michael kelly was killed in the
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the war in iraq a journalist a great writer um he noted that okay frank sinatra was the king of cool
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he was really our first big time pop idol right and he came in after the smart set in fact he redid the
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smart set smart set believed beforehand the humphrey bogart kind of ideal was that you lived the right
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life you were that stand-up person and by being good you were good and you became all you were
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supposed to be well he looked at that and he said well wait a second no i'm the king of cool and i'm
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personifying this idea where you know there's a fight that has to happen you know i have guys who
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will take care of that and you've kind of stood back from what that was supposed to be at least his
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image did i don't think he really did as a person but that became the image and michael kelly noted
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that and said wait a second this killed the smart set it no longer was cool to do the right thing
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now it was cool to do the wrong thing it was a big shift in culture that led us to where we are today
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with pop culture moving this direction you know i would look back to james dean and his iconic role
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rebel without a cause is really as a part of that whole movement the beginning of that i mean through
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that movie he's james dean is weak i mean he's this iconic wonderful character in a great movie
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but he's so weak and he keeps asking his father what does it take to really be a man and his father
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through the whole movie never has an answer for him uh which is what that movie is about i mean that's
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the theme but you know that's what back in 1950s and since then we really haven't answered that
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question at least our society our mainstream society hasn't so where frank sinatra took us
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where michael kelly was noting uh that king of cool cool killing what is supposed to be right and good
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um is where it's left us and we need to you know guys like us you're trying to answer that question
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for ourselves and find the answers for people need to get out there as we are um to show people that
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wait a second being right and good and being that courageous upstanding guy uh isn't necessarily a bad
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thing that's actually who you want to be being this the sarcastic person who's kind of off to one side
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and who doesn't really get what that is what that basis of them really is they're lost and they're
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going to stay lost until they re-find uh what hemingway was showing us right yeah i feel like
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the the culture of cool is just sort of an indifference you don't want to appear like you're
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trying too hard um because that's not cool like cool is just like hey you're like the fonds like you
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could just hit the jukebox with your elbow and everything happens magically
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right people back in in the in the greatest generation right world war ii they went to war
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all all segments of society joined the military and went to war and fought for that cause now we're
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in a period in post-vietnam you know right rightly so where we no longer believe we can really fight
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for good we can't really know what's good and wrong right and wrong you know good and evil are
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not simple concepts the way they were to previous generations so we're kind of lost in this moral
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relative universe um people are searching for it though it's it's here um i think we can find
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our purchase again um but it's going to be up to this generation to read and think as we are uh
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to find these answers again because it's it's there and i think the people who who are that stand-up
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person who create that business and become that person they really wanted to be are the are the type
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of people who have found that foundation under themselves but how did hemingway capture that
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idea of uh you know old the old school gentleman the smart set because you know one criticism or
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one you know people say that what hemingway did he was very cynical about things like honor in war
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because because of his experience in world war one and a lot of his characters they seem a little
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detached from ideals because they've just been burned uh but you argue in the book that it might
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appear like that on the surface surface but hemingway was actually i don't know trying to capture
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those old ideals and somehow uh make it a bit more modern yeah he was trying to reform them
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into something that's palatable today i mean joseph campbell put this very well he said
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every generation has to create a new myth and it's what the myth becomes is a way to finding that
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answer that might be the same answer but it's a way to understanding that answer because it's going
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to evolve over time as we evolve as society evolves i mean hemingway what wrote the sun also rises and
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published in 1926 i mean women got the right to vote in 1920 you know he was at a very different age
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than we were at uh but he was trying to look at those old ideals have been dashed in world war one
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um and say how do we bring them forward i mean how do we take them and and give them to this
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new generation now we're several generations past that but how do we find them again what are they
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and what are they what are they supposed to be i know hemingway has often been a lot of writers
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have said a lot of uh scholars and we look at hemingway have said that he was always in search
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of the code he was kind of obsessed with the code uh even you know what is his code he never really
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articulates it in a list of rules um but if you read his body of work you find out that he
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absolutely was obsessed to a code uh based on things that he thought were authentic and what
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what were some of those things that were part of his code you know being that stand-up guy it's it's
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back to his favorite metaphor of the bullfighter right or or the hunter in the in the short happy
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life of francis malcomer in that story francis wounds a lion and then when they need to go in and
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finish off that line which is a dangerous thing to do he chickens out and runs away when the lion
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charges and the professional hunter has to kill the lion well then you have francis without his
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manhood and he has to re-find his manhood the only way he can do that is to stand up and prove himself
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physically again which he does right at the end of story with a charging cape buffalo okay but he's a
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tragic figure he gets killed uh by his wife shot in the back of the head in that story uh whether on
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purpose or not hemingway leaves open but he gets killed and a lot of hemingway's heroes are like that
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santiago and the old man in the sea catches the great fish but it gets taken by sharks you know
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always losing these kinds of whom the bell tolls the hero gets killed in the end the hero is always
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dying uh or losing as we're all going to we're all mortal we're all going to die but he's making the
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point that you can't always decide what's going to happen in your life you can't always you can't
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control very many things in your life but what you can try to control is how you take it so if you
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can stand up the way that bullfighter does to that charging bull and stand up with full of courage and full
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of you know not not to be not to put down the bull or something but to stand up to that ideal
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um and keep your feet straight and your back straight and so on um then you're doing what's
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right you're doing what we need because a man and a craft a person in the crisis men or women in a
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crisis who keeps their head they're the ones who save a life they're the ones who help us other
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ones who stop the lynch mob and so on uh that's the stand-up kind of guy he was pointing us towards
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all these different metaphors right he has that famous line um about you know you're going to face
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defeat that famous quote the world breaks everyone and afterwards some are strong at the broken
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places like so he really believed that sort of this this idea of the furnace of affliction that
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would make us stronger in the end right he also said the thing that makes a writer is an unhappy
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childhood you know these kind of ideas that you do have to suffer in order to learn absolutely yeah
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and one of the characters you talk about in the sun also rises it's sort of a contrast to uh jake
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the main character who is sort of based off of hemingway in his life sort of by autobiographical
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uh is robert cohen um and uh he sort of exemplified the the complete opposite of hemingway's code so can
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you talk a little bit more about that yeah throughout the book robert is is weak um you know he's he can't
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marry the woman he wants to marry or the second woman the woman he's dating in the beginning of the
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novel in paris because he's too weak to do that um he can't stand up to that ideal um he ends up
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running away and having a little fling with the the novel's heroine brett um but then she she throws
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him off and just you know decides she's done with him and moves on to the next guy and he keeps
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following her and haunting her and getting in the way and and being making all the situations very
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uncomfortable because he's too weak to deal with that to get over that as a man and it's throughout the
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book even fights the bullfighter in the end because that bullfighter is then having an affair with
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with brett ashley and he can't stand that he keeps knocking down the bullfighter in the end of that
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book because robert was a boxer knew how to fight when the bullfighter did not um but the bullfighter
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continually gets up again and again i forget how many times he gets up but it's so many times
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that finally robert just can't hit him again he just doesn't have the the gumption to do it he just
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thinks this is wrong somehow you know robert is kind of stuck in this boyhood code where the toughest
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guy uh on the street is is the man uh he hasn't grown into that mature ideal uh there's a time to
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fight the time not to fight and pretty much you shouldn't fight unless you're in self-defense
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uh so he keeps knocking down the bullfighter just won't stop so he runs into a guy living on a code
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a guy who stands up to his own life um and it's a pretty deep metaphor for how a man should be and
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when you contrast robert with jake and how they how they behave and how they treat people and how they
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forgive people then you really see uh what heming was showing us about being a man right and also
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robert exemplifies as a great symbol of you said he's he's like stuck he's like um arrested development
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right he's still in adolescence because he right right i mean he like he's still he still talks
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about his glory days in college like i was this at princeton i was a championship boxer blah blah blah
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but like throughout the novel he's always talking about well i want to go do this maybe i'm going to
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go to south america oh maybe i'm going to like he's so he just talks about these abstractions right
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but never gets down to living real life unlike jake he wants to go off to the purple land the
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dreamland right that he read in a novel about about south america and uh yeah the main character there
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jake uh basically hemingway is telling him that there's no such place that if you want want to
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live your life all the way up start living it right here in paris you know start looking under your feet
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because the foundation is there which becomes the vehicle for the whole novel because they go on a
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pilgrimage which uh i i would argue and harry stoneback does it very well um is really a
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religious pilgrimage it's it's following a a pilgrimage um to saint james uh which has been a
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a through the middle ages it was a religious thing to go and find yourself on that long path
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uh to the shrine at saint james yeah well let's talk about that in a bit but yeah i mean that robert
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cohen if you are a young man who's feeling uh restless like you just feel like you're you're you
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can't move on your life you need to read the sun also rises pay attention to robert you don't want
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to be like robert i mean that's that's thing never gotten that fight in high school and i'm not saying
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we all should fight but never physically prove themselves and are kind of stuck in this place
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and if someone could just help them that right man was in their life to help them live up to who
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they want to become they could just do anything you just feel sorry for them and you want to help
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them and most of them find their way eventually but it would sure help them if they had the right
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mentor earlier right let's talk about this religious religious pilgrimage because like i had no idea
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about this um the the religious undertones behind the sun also rises which doesn't make any sense
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because it begins with the bible verse from ecclesiastes um but throughout the book it's just
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infused with all this religious symbolism so you talk about this pilgrimage they went on from paris to
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spain it was who who originally started that pilgrimage uh was a saint of some sort well they're
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going to see uh one of the 12 apostles saint james uh whose legend has it uh his his body was moved
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uh and buried uh there at that that church at saint james um so that's what the path is going to to
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see that shrine um but the religion it's really about the pilgrimage not so much about actually
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you know kneeling down at that shrine um it's that pilgrimage it takes two to three months depending
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what path you take uh walking uh that path that through nature through that whole experience um
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it's supposed to shape you and you're supposed to then find yourself and your purpose in life
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um so that's what that has always been about and that's what he was taking those people on
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um through that novel right so jake was the one leading these um these lost generation guys
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to this pilgrim so hopefully they would find themselves along the way and he never preaches he
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never tells them that and it's that's a lot a lot of the reason why it's lost i mean it was
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hemingway's theory of omission uh you know that iceberg you know 90 of it's underwater um and it's
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beautiful because if the depth is there and you can feel it but you're not being hit over the head
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with it and he practiced that in the sun also rises so that's why a lot of people do miss it
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yeah i mean i i missed it completely um but i think another thing you talk about is hemingway's
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catholicism and how it influenced so he was born a protestant correct and you later converted converted
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catholicism right it converted uh during the second marriage and and how did that influence his
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writing after uh his conversion you know i don't think it did i i think it's the protestant
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upbringing that influenced him throughout his life uh concerning to catholicism he was divorced from
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hadley and he joked you know i don't know how serious he was when he said this that he became
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impotent um really from from guilt um from cheating on uh and then divorcing his first wife and marrying
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pauline pfeiffer and sometime during that period his second wife said well okay why don't you go to
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this chapel the catholic she was catholic go to this chapel convert um ask for forgiveness for
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your sins uh maybe that'll bring your mojo back which he does he goes and he converts and he gets
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he gets forgiven for his sins um and he says from then on he could you know he could keep you know he
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could he was a king of bed and i forget how he put it exactly in a very coarse kind of way you know
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everything with hemingway was always that kind of if he wasn't conquering something outside of
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himself he was conquering himself um and fine but i don't think that catholicism in that way shaped him
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or changed him i don't think he was very devout kind of guy but he grew up as a protestant as a
00:21:24.680
christian um with with very religious mother especially um and so he learned the tenets to
00:21:30.640
that early on and he sought those answers when he even when he was in paris he he he found scholars
00:21:36.200
and i quote some of this in the book he found scholars who taught him about that pilgrimage
00:21:39.980
that he ended up taking the fictional characters on um in the sun also rises um so he found a
00:21:46.560
purchase for it so the depths of it were there but i don't think it was as much catholicism it was just
00:21:50.740
his childhood upbringing we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors
00:21:53.800
and now back to the show and yeah speaking to hemingway's uh you know he's had was married four
00:22:00.320
times i think it's interesting he always got a new wife before he started a new book like he always
00:22:05.420
divorced the wife when he finished the book and then he got a new one when he started a new one um all
00:22:09.380
right so let's talk about the um the running the bulls this festival in pamplona spain this
00:22:14.660
hemingway is the the guy that made this famous because i think before the sun also rises very
00:22:19.900
few people knew about it it was primarily um a festival that the people in spain took part in
00:22:24.800
the bosque um so what's the history behind the running the bulls and what when did it start and
00:22:30.020
why did they why did they do this thing where they have bulls chase them in the street
00:22:33.480
yeah it grew through the 17th and 18th centuries um they combined two festivals uh oh late 16th or
00:22:41.300
17th century um a religious festival with a fair um into one time frame that became the san
00:22:46.700
firmins the festival we know and they were taking to the bull the bulls to the arena uh through that
00:22:51.880
17th and 18th century and people just started going with the bulls it was kind of a here come the bulls
00:22:56.280
let's follow them and it just kind of developed into this run into this test of yourself by going with
00:23:01.860
these fighting bulls down the street and this isn't the only one in spain there's a lot of them in
00:23:05.620
spain actually this is just the most famous uh this is actually a very normal rite of passage for
00:23:09.800
spanish youth and as is getting in the into the ring uh with the vaquilla so those horn those cows
00:23:15.280
with lever on their horns which hemingway did do because hemingway actually didn't run with the
00:23:19.200
bulls so it grew out of all that through through those centuries um the time hemingway found that it
00:23:23.860
was a very mature uh fiesta um and he was there and witnessed it and he couldn't believe it i mean he
00:23:29.780
wrote some early uh uh stories for for the newspaper he was then writing for um the the toronto star
00:23:36.480
um where he talks about it he was more you read that again and it's kind of he's shocked about it all
00:23:41.180
he's surprised he's kind of following the crowd here and there and he can't believe it and that's when
00:23:44.280
he became addicted to it and then he came back again and again and learned about it and ended up
00:23:48.860
writing about it more and of course wrote the great novel right i mean what's your experience
00:23:52.620
with the running the bulls how many times have you done it i've been in the street 13 times with the
00:23:57.240
bulls um and i've had a couple very close calls but i haven't been injured um i've run every section
00:24:02.920
of it i've been very lucky as a journalist i've always been been taught i mean find a mentor right
00:24:08.380
find someone who can teach you because you're trying to write about it you need experts right
00:24:11.520
so find that expert and i found a guy named juan macho that's actually his real name he's a cuban
00:24:16.560
uh moved to miami when he was 12 years old he still lives in miami um but he was just drawn to this
00:24:23.300
fiesta uh being a lover of hemingway himself and hemingway scholar himself um in the early 1980s
00:24:29.360
and he's been running every year since then he's run well over 100 times uh with the bulls um and in
00:24:34.700
the last decade or so he started to take people um under his wing he wants to teach them he's found
00:24:39.260
that a lot of americans especially but a lot of foreigners come in there they don't know how to run
00:24:43.140
with the bulls it's a real test and the spanish know about this but they don't know how to do it so
00:24:47.400
they end up doing stupid things in front of the bulls and really getting hurt when it wasn't necessary
00:24:51.020
to get hurt so he became my mentor and showed me how to run with the bulls um but of course he put
00:24:56.840
me in the street my first time all by myself because he says you face your mortality alone
00:25:00.880
and you when you go through something especially that first time running with the bulls because
00:25:04.840
what you have to do is you have to enter the street at 7 30 in the morning because they're
00:25:08.400
going to close the barriers at 7 30 but the bulls don't come until eight o'clock in the morning
00:25:11.900
um this happens eight days in a row so you're waiting there for 30 minutes for those bulls to come and
00:25:16.900
around you in the beginning of that everyone's kind of boastful and excited and we're going to do this
00:25:20.800
and that with the bulls because the street's always more than half full of first-time runners
00:25:24.080
um but as it gets closer to eight o'clock and that rocket's going to go up and the bulls are going to
00:25:28.220
come out and run down that street uh you see people start to fall apart and i i and i read about this
00:25:33.240
in the book my first time running a guy next to me from chicago was boasting about what he was going
00:25:38.140
to do by the time it got close to eight o'clock he was losing and he kept picturing himself being
00:25:42.000
disemboweled by a bull and he decided i have to get out of here i have to get out of the street and he
00:25:45.420
tried to go under the fence to get out of the street and a spanish cop kicked him back into the street
00:25:50.080
looked at him and said you wanted to be a man and run with the bulls now you must be a man and run
00:25:55.360
with the bulls they don't let you out of that street once once they close those barriers and
00:25:59.060
they do that for a reason because if people try to pile out they panic and try to get out of that
00:26:03.340
street you'll end up with a log jam in the street and these bulls will come hit it'll hit that log jam
00:26:07.260
they have forward-facing horns i mean there's 12 1500 pound bulls of forward-facing horns if there's a
00:26:12.180
if there's a big knot in the street they're going to kill people so they're doing that for everyone's good
00:26:16.300
actually but this person didn't understand that and he went under the barrier for a second time
00:26:21.340
and this time the cop didn't get around he just hit him boom boom boom put him down and i'll bet you
00:26:25.400
he spent that night in a spanish jail that cop was showing us he was kind of kind of the drill sergeant
00:26:30.680
to our to our real rite of passage there showing us you had to stand up now you're in the street now
00:26:34.640
you got to stand up and you got to be a man so yeah you said earlier that this this running the bulls is
00:26:39.280
is a rite of passage uh for spanish youth it used to be primarily uh for men but now uh women like
00:26:45.760
there was a time when women couldn't do it but now women can but but but a major theme throughout the
00:26:50.380
book and um as you followed hemingway's footsteps uh is this idea of a rite of passage you know from
00:26:58.060
your experience of following hemingway from paris to spain and doing the running the bulls
00:27:02.620
what did you learn about what makes for an effective rite of passage into manhood
00:27:08.120
yeah this is what i did with the table of contents and the whole structure of the book because
00:27:12.760
this is so key and i went through this in military school and i and i've talked to people um who've
00:27:18.140
gone through special forces and for uh it became new york firefighters and all sorts of type of
00:27:24.780
occupations that have real rites of passage and they always kind of the same way there's always the
00:27:29.120
same structure and it's really interesting they're first designed to the scare that
00:27:32.600
heck out of you somehow to reset you um to take you down a notch um so they can they can build you
00:27:38.860
up into what you really need to become through this rite of passage and running with the bulls
00:27:42.960
that first one of course is that first time you run it just tears you up you can't believe how much
00:27:46.420
it changes you it's it's wonderful stuff um but but so it's good you know if you go to at the boot
00:27:52.480
camp which is a really classic kind of rite of passage that follows this kind of structure
00:27:55.520
you know that first day when you have a drill sergeant yelling at you and you had your hair shaved off and
00:27:59.340
you go through that whole metamorphosis of yourself uh you also go through that that that first
00:28:03.720
trial by fire where you you okay now you've been burned down you got to be built back up
00:28:08.500
then it starts to build you up you need a guide it always has to be a guide any real rite of passage
00:28:12.200
and then you need a gauntlet that will take you through that you prove yourself through step by step
00:28:16.520
because you know one time running with the bulls is great i think it's wonderful a lot of people just
00:28:20.200
do it once and they walk away from it they're they've got a great cocktail story to tell
00:28:23.760
and they're probably a little bit changed by it but it's not what really grew them up into something
00:28:27.880
you know dealing with the the people that i know through through this now who've run again and again
00:28:32.740
hundreds of times with the bulls um it's it slowly changes them and builds them and they find their
00:28:38.160
courage through it um and they learn to respect the bulls very deeply because of this um you know
00:28:43.140
they don't molest the bulls in the street for example if you do that that's breaking the code that's
00:28:47.220
beneath it it's also part of the big rite of passage every rite of passage has a code if you molest
00:28:51.120
a bull he's going to turn around in that street he's really going to hurt people you grab his tail
00:28:55.240
you do something to him so there's a there's a code to it and every rite of passage there's always a
00:28:59.220
code uh beneath it you got to find that code and then you have to live up to that code and that's
00:29:03.480
what every rite of passage does and this certainly does as you go through this process at the end of
00:29:08.480
it you respect the bulls you understand why you're doing it you learned your courage through it
00:29:12.100
and you walk away a very different person which is always what a rite of passage was supposed to do
00:29:17.280
to build a boy into a man or or now a girl into a woman i mean it's wonderful now that women run
00:29:22.960
with the bulls as well yeah this idea of the code and respecting it i think when people outsiders
00:29:28.300
look at the running the bulls and bullfighting in spain they think this is sort of um just it's
00:29:32.800
barbaric right but like there is this like very serious code that you must follow and if you do not
00:29:38.040
follow it there are serious repercussions like you talk about the vaquias is that what they're
00:29:41.360
called like the the cows that go into the arena uh they have leather horns and um you can kind of
00:29:47.360
run away from them but you're not supposed to like touch them and what happens if you do mess with
00:29:51.560
them yeah if you molest a vaquia which i i saw firsthand right in front of me people who just
00:29:56.800
didn't know the rules tried to jump on them and grab their tails and so on uh the spanish mozos
00:30:00.760
the spanish guys that went to this kind of thing they will literally beat the hell out of you um in a way
00:30:05.800
that would get them arrested in america and have lawsuits and shut down the whole thing but no one will
00:30:10.620
stop you in the crowd there'll be 20 000 people watching when this happens because what happens
00:30:14.260
is okay you run the bulls and if you want to you can run all the way into the arena then they close
00:30:17.920
the the barrier behind you and the bulls go out and then they let these vaquias in one by one
00:30:22.260
which these things travel town to town it's like rodeos right the bulls they travel town to town
00:30:27.420
these vaquias travel town to town uh and they know how to throw people you can't fool them with a
00:30:32.780
cape or something because they know they know how to get the person so if you watch it from above
00:30:36.480
you'll see people just popping up over and over again as these vaquias run circles around
00:30:40.060
nailing everybody which is a classic spanish rite of passage but you're right if you break that code
00:30:45.780
you molest that vaquia boy i've seen a couple of people get put in the hospital i mean just
00:30:50.200
totally taken down and beaten down uh for breaking that code yes there's a strong sense of honor that
00:30:56.260
you have to follow and if you do not follow it you will be shamed and possibly physically beat
00:31:00.600
right and a lot of the americans i talk to don't understand that and they how dare they how can they
00:31:06.040
possibly do this when you go through all this process of explaining to them well there's a
00:31:09.700
reason why they're doing all this then they go oh okay and they just didn't know they didn't
00:31:13.500
understand that i think an interesting point too you make about rites of passage is that
00:31:17.820
it's not a one and done thing i think a lot of guys i get a lot of men who who've written me it's
00:31:23.180
like i never had a rite of passage uh into manhood um and they try to go seek it out through some sort
00:31:29.140
of vision quest or they do some sort of adventure and i think a lot of them they think that's going to be
00:31:33.860
the thing that's going to make them feel like a man but then they come back sort of disappointed
00:31:38.280
and let down because it didn't um but i think it might be because like you can't just do one it's
00:31:43.540
not a one and done thing you're always developing your character there are certain native american
00:31:49.540
tribes that used to used to earn a new name uh as you went through life and you proved yourself
00:31:54.700
according to this new rite of passage you went through i that was a real direct way of saying what
00:31:59.200
you were trying to do but yeah as you go through life you're going to find there's different ones
00:32:03.000
understanding the rules this is why i went to such pains to explain them in the table contents
00:32:07.140
and the structure of my book uh it helps you find them it helps you understand them it helps you
00:32:11.620
grow through them but yeah you're going to run into different ones as you go hopefully through life
00:32:15.700
different challenges as you each time try to grow up into a new ideal uh if you're going to stop in
00:32:20.580
time somewhere well that's your choice but then you become just a case of arrested development like
00:32:24.320
we were talking about earlier you know that person who still talks about their their glories as the
00:32:28.060
quarterback in high school uh you know you have to move on to the next thing and the next
00:32:32.080
challenge and grow up into that new one that's that's what being a man is all about right so
00:32:36.300
constantly seek out rites of passage it's not a one and done thing um let's talk about bullfighting
00:32:41.460
because this was interesting it's it's a an extremely controversial sport um for obvious reasons
00:32:46.880
but can you give us a little bit of the background of bullfighting like why do
00:32:51.100
the spanish why do spanish cultures have bullfighting where did that originate from
00:32:55.120
well you can go back to the romans when they fight bulls in the amphitheater but
00:32:59.720
they were doing it which is still done in spain they were doing it on horseback with spears
00:33:03.300
um but in the 15th century um somebody came along who i think they were actually knocked off their
00:33:10.500
horse um and someone ran out to save them with with a piece of cloth and end up keep keeping that
00:33:16.720
bull off of them until they saved him and that they kind of got that idea wait a second this is what we
00:33:20.640
can do and then you ended up with some people trying it and it became a famous way of fighting the
00:33:26.140
bulls um actually on your feet with that cape and then killing them with a sword uh which is a lot
00:33:30.900
more heroic than doing it on a horseback uh so it develops slowly um over a long period of time
00:33:35.880
but it's you know you look at it now and it's it's what four or five centuries old at least
00:33:39.780
um with with a lot of pomp and a lot of uh you know if you go to if you go to one in spain
00:33:45.140
you know it's full of music it's it's it's set up in a very regimented way um a very choreographed
00:33:50.980
way um where that bull comes in and he goes through three steps i mean hemiway looked at this
00:33:55.960
and he said i'm not going to defend bullfighting bullfighting isn't a sport it's a tragedy and he's
00:34:01.340
right it's a great tragedy played out right before your eyes it's a hunter killing his game i mean it's
00:34:06.020
any of us who who any of us who live on this planet i don't care if you're a vegetarian because
00:34:09.640
you're a vegetarian uh you're still eating vegetables and some farmer has to protect those
00:34:13.520
crops in order to grow them in order to protect those crops it still has to kill deer or mice or geese
00:34:17.420
or something that might be eating on eating his crops if not he's just going to be growing crops
00:34:21.160
for those for that for that wildlife so we're all a part of this system this bullfighting is just a
00:34:26.360
very loud and visual way of seeing that putting it right in front of your eyes and showing you and
00:34:30.680
celebrating that that circle of light that we all are a part of you know my first bullfight i sat there
00:34:36.740
and as a long time hunter and stuff you think i wouldn't i'd be immune to this but i sat there and i
00:34:40.160
was in tears my first bullfight uh it was so emotional for me um where i literally had an old
00:34:45.100
spanish woman in front of me who was giving me some cakes and some wine and stuff before the
00:34:48.460
bullfight started and then by the time it started i was in tears and the guy next to me is also upset
00:34:53.040
with two americans in her first bullfight and she turns to us and looks at us and goes oh you're just
00:34:57.120
like all the rest of the americans you're just so weak you can't handle this reality and and you know
00:35:02.600
she had a point at the time i thought what does she mean and it took a long investigation for me
00:35:06.700
as an american who grew up in the american culture to understand what they were trying to show us so
00:35:11.120
as i look at it now i think it's a it's a celebration of life actually uh with that bull
00:35:16.620
dying a bull that really wouldn't even exist it's bred for this purpose if it wasn't for bullfighting
00:35:20.580
um but i think if somebody watches it and tries to understand it and has a problem with putting this
00:35:26.700
kind of death of that bull on display for for applause from a spanish audience um okay i can
00:35:33.280
understand that viewpoint and i could be against i could see them being against it as long as they're
00:35:37.160
trying to understand it but unless they're trying to understand it and they're just opposed to
00:35:40.920
bullfighting then okay they're knocking down a culture they don't understand and they really
00:35:44.960
need to open their eyes and educate themselves i mean so what are some of the things that people
00:35:48.500
misunderstand about bullfighting or maybe the ethics of bullfighting yeah it's it's that death
00:35:54.180
of the bull that gets them and it is bloody um you know they the picadors come out first and and so on
00:35:59.420
and it starts to bleed they're weakening the neck by literally bleeding the bull's neck um until it's not
00:36:04.760
picking its head up high enough so the guy in the end after all all the runs with the cape and all that
00:36:08.980
he can kill it with the sword um which to kill it with a sword that takes a perfect thrust over the
00:36:13.840
top down through the chest into the heart or heart area um so that bull just goes down and dies
00:36:18.960
immediately but what happens is if that that matador doesn't do it perfectly if he's not pulled off if
00:36:24.780
he's especially messing up the end with the sword but whatever he's doing or he's showing cowardice in
00:36:28.720
the arena whatever he's doing he's failing as the ideal is supposed to be he's not killing as cleanly
00:36:33.240
as he's supposed to that spanish crowd i mean they will go nuts they will start hissing they'll start
00:36:38.340
throwing their seat cushions uh in the extreme uh the governor of it will actually pull that bull
00:36:43.080
fighter out and really embarrass him uh someone else have to go in and kill that bull um you're
00:36:47.420
supposed to go in and do it ethically and cleanly and quickly when it comes down to actually doing
00:36:51.180
the kill so there's a whole code beneath how that's supposed to happen showing deep respect for that
00:36:56.420
animal and but i understand that it's hard for somebody not of that culture to understand that
00:37:00.220
this is actually respect for the bull by killing the bull this way i mean all these bulls are eaten i've
00:37:04.340
eaten the bulls that i've seen killed in the arena um you know but it's just hard for someone to
00:37:08.300
understand that just as it's hard for someone who doesn't hunt understand hunting and how could
00:37:12.060
somebody kill a deer or a bear whatever and then be seen in the picture smiling with that dead animal
00:37:16.400
even though they can eat the animal later that to them as a non-hunter that that's kind of an appalling
00:37:20.760
idea um but i challenge people to understand the nature of the world we live in and who they are
00:37:25.980
and the whole process to the thing before they condemn something they really just don't understand
00:37:30.740
right so bullfighting brings it's all about bringing reality back and putting it right in
00:37:35.440
front of us front of us there's cows getting slaughtered like all the time that you eat in
00:37:39.760
your pre-packaged you know container saran wrap container um and here's this is how it's done you
00:37:45.960
need to see this basically i actually jumped down with juan ones right when they after they killed the
00:37:50.060
last bull and got into the place in peplona there uh at the plaza de toros to where they cut up the
00:37:55.300
bulls and got to meet the guys and they do it fast and they put them up and it's it's like seeing beef
00:37:59.600
boom boom boom boom it gets caught up and it's being sent to the restaurants there in pamplona
00:38:03.940
so you see that whole process and each each part of it and you realize that they're just showing us
00:38:09.240
in a very visual display that we're all connected to the world we live in right and then going back
00:38:14.160
to this idea of man manhood and you know uh hemingway said that the the matador is like probably the
00:38:18.940
ideal of manliness because it just as you were describing it they're on display in front of everyone
00:38:25.320
and if they don't do it right they don't follow the code they're going to be shamed uh and booed
00:38:31.700
and hissed out of there and possibly taken out which is just even more shameful um so yeah i mean
00:38:37.600
there's that that connection of bullfighting and just trying to show this ideal of spanish manliness
00:38:44.300
in a very visceral upfront way yeah it's public it's on display um and if they show the least bit
00:38:50.800
of cowardice in that arena or don't kill cleanly um if they don't follow that code to the ideal um
00:38:57.440
yeah that that they'll they'll go right down uh and a huge embarrassment and maybe they'll be
00:39:02.820
hurt badly in the process right so going back to this idea of codes uh we talked about jake's code
00:39:07.840
we talked about robert's lack of code um but i feel like we live in a culture today where we sort of
00:39:13.420
look down on codes of honor with uh skepticism and cynicism why do you think that is
00:39:18.860
well one reason is we see them as being too simplistic we don't really believe anymore
00:39:24.980
that a person could be heroic in the sense they're fighting for something good because we don't believe
00:39:29.960
a person can know what's good what's right and what's wrong we used to believe that that we knew
00:39:34.100
that was a religious idea but we believed we could fight for good uh we've lost that idea and there's
00:39:39.860
some good from that because it led to a lot of depth but then you put a code of honor in front of
00:39:44.460
somebody and i put a lot in the back of this book for this reason um and they look at it as just
00:39:48.020
being too simplistic but when i look at it i say yeah but you're trying to articulate a foundation
00:39:52.920
for yourself so you look at these codes and try to develop your own code which i think every man
00:39:57.160
should do because no one of these codes can be relevant to themselves they have to write their
00:40:00.940
own and think about this process then when you find yourself in those situations in life um your
00:40:05.980
first reaction if you follow this code will be to do the right thing because you've already
00:40:10.760
established who you are and what you're living up to um so that's what a code always did but
00:40:15.520
their society thinks they're too simplistic they're tearing them down but they also look at
00:40:19.200
them look those knights codes and the code of bushido and the gentleman's code and they think
00:40:23.740
they look back at them especially in this feminist idea and look look at them and they see them
00:40:28.000
perpetuating a certain um chauvinistic kind of ideal um you know that gentleman of the 19th century
00:40:34.000
um who repressed women and you know as i said women didn't get the right to vote until 1920
00:40:38.260
i mean they're still fighting for some of their rights so you know they look at that and they say oh
00:40:43.100
you're trying to push us back to some kind of ideal from before and bring these chauvinist
00:40:47.660
uh values back up and we don't want to live back in that society and we've reached a new one when i
00:40:52.680
say wait a second really look at codes and look at how they developed you notice that codes really
00:40:56.640
became purified in the early 20th century uh during the feminist movement um and in the 1930s
00:41:02.720
1940s you could see that clearly in film uh where they became much less the chauvinism dropped the
00:41:08.700
racism was was dropping away it was becoming clean they were becoming good and right at that same
00:41:12.720
time we decided codes codes were useless because they were pointing backwards well i say wait a
00:41:16.860
second write your own code look forward make a better code make a code that isn't racist and
00:41:21.120
sexist and all these kinds of things and fine of course but i think also if you look back at those
00:41:25.020
codes you won't find the racism and sexism written in those codes even the code of bushido the old
00:41:28.780
japanese samurai's code said everyone is inherently equal you know that was you know samurai's actually
00:41:34.360
saying that um so they always saw that ideal as well um but i think today we have to understand
00:41:39.680
that again refashion that to ourselves and understand you can have that basis again without
00:41:43.780
that basis i don't say you could possibly be the stand-up guy you want to be so we said earlier that
00:41:48.480
hemingway was uh trying to fashion a new myth a new ideal of manliness this sort of uh a look to
00:41:55.140
the old codes while uh transforming it and making it new what do you think that ideal looks like what
00:42:02.040
do you think hemingway what did hemingway end up creating through that sort of metamorphosis
00:42:05.800
that he was trying to do yeah you feel it through all of his literature um and it's it's this guy
00:42:10.840
and it's jake and it's hard to put your finger on jake and the sun also rises that main character
00:42:15.200
because he'll never come right out and say he's showing instead of saying what he's living up to
00:42:19.700
i mean there's several times in that book where he takes brett to different chapels to pray and she
00:42:24.180
feels uncomfortable doing that but to him that fits the old values um you know the whole that the
00:42:28.800
roland that i talk about the ancient myth the song of roland uh is behind a lot of the
00:42:33.740
hemingway's writing um and there's a reason for that that was one of the chief mythological knights
00:42:40.000
became mythologized in the song of roland uh from the middle ages it was their ideal
00:42:44.440
through the middle ages of that stand-up person living this upstanding uh bigger way so jake is
00:42:50.380
trying to show that to the characters and so on uh but he never comes right out and says it and i
00:42:54.640
don't think hemingway ever decided to come out and preach that kind of thing you know even reading
00:42:59.340
all through his letters you see him telling you how to behave but never really telling you never
00:43:03.600
really spelling it out here's the rules you have to follow let me just show you stand up to yourself
00:43:08.380
be courageous um how you take life which is his chief metaphor on everything how you take what
00:43:14.400
comes to you if you can take up take it as that stand-up guy um then you're going to grow into the
00:43:19.060
ideal you want to be and it's understanding then what's surrounding us underneath you in that process
00:43:23.760
that will grow you into the man you want to be well frank this has been a great conversation there's a
00:43:27.860
lot more we could talk about but uh where can people learn more about the book and your work
00:43:31.440
oh this will make a man of you is on amazon it's on burns and noble uh really whatever books are
00:43:36.240
sold uh you can find me at frankminiter.com i also write a column uh weekly home for forbes um you
00:43:42.000
can go to forbes.com and find me there um so i'm all over the place fantastic well frank miniter thank
00:43:46.480
you for your time it's been a pleasure thanks brett my guest today was frank miniter his book is this
00:43:50.720
will make a man out of you it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can also find more
00:43:55.100
information about frank's work at frankminiter.com also make sure to check out our show notes at
00:43:59.480
aom.is slash man of you where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this
00:44:03.580
topic well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and
00:44:12.840
advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com if you enjoy this
00:44:17.160
show i'd appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher that helps out a lot as always
00:44:20.840
thank you for your continued support until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly