When a matador is in his costume, they say he's dressed in'lights' —on account of the spangle and glitter of his suit. As you might expect in the garishly symbolic world of bullfighting, though, itmeans more than that:fame, theatrics, a tendency toward Liberaceness. Perhaps no one in the realm of Spanish bullfighting is as well lighted as Francisco Rivera Ordóez, the central figure in Edward Lewine's bullring odyssey, 'Death and the Sun. 'Fran, as he's known, is the great -grandson of one famous matador, the model for the bullfighter in Hemingway's'Sun Also Rises'grandson of arguably the greatest modern Spanish matador, the subject of Hemingway's'Dangerous Summer'and son to a matador who suffered the most famous death in the history of bullfighting, after a goring in the small town of Pozoblanco when Fran was 10. Not to mention that Fran's mother was an attention-starved tabloid queen who was captured topless in a paparazzi photograph, and his wife a Spanish duchess. Fran, even before he stuffed, himself into his first bullfighting costume, was no stranger to the lights. Fran agreed to allow Lewine, who'd followed the bulls casually for the previous decade, to be a guest in his entou- rage for a season. 'Death and the Sun'unfolds over eight pretty important months for the torero:the theory was that Fran's career had reached a fork and this season would decide whether he'd become one of the great matadors or fade into obscurity and wind up one of the rickety Spanish drunks who hike up their pants and show off scars from old gorings. It's the'Season on the Brink'method of literary sports journalism:hitch your wagon to a dramatic character, . stick around, take notes, write clown the narrative, collect movie option paycheck. We ride with Fran from Seville to Madrid, Pozoblanco to Valencia, Tolosa to Alicante. It's as much travelogue as sports story. 'He carries it in his blood!' one woman cries to Fran from the stands of the bullring in the town of Ronda. In Lewine's Spain—a place of tradition and formality, melodrama and aphorisms—people are always saying things like this. After one particularly beautiful performance, one of Fran's cadre says that he defecates'on the dead of his bullfighting. 'This, apparenfly, is a good thing. Concerning the main character, Fran, which of the following statements is true?