Character Studies

Susan Orlean writes for a magazine, but she doesn’t care about breaking news or digging up dirt. Among the profiles in her new collection, The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup, are: “The American Man, Age Ten” about Colin Duffy, who lives in New Jersey and loves video games; “Accommodating,” about a dry-cleaning establishment that takes great pride in one of its new tailors; and “I Want This Apartment,” which takes readers on a New York City odyssey through the eyes of a real-estate broker.

“Even now,” Orlean muses, “I think that if I didn’t work for The New Yorker, I’d be waiting tables.” That’s an understandable second choice for her, given that workers in the service industry have the privilege of overhearing strangers’ mundane conversations, observing their bizarre tendencies and — for better or worse — talking to them. Which is also what Orlean does as a writer.

She gets ideas for stories by following up unusual headlines in the news (Christ the King Aims for Revenge stands out as the inspiration for a story about high-school athletes), by peeling fliers off the sidewalk or by sitting at the hair salon and considering the uniqueness of that environment. Of the Amsterdam Avenue salon she frequents, Orlean writes, “Every time I’ve been in the salon, I have stepped knee-deep into a conversational current that moves swiftly from, say, spiritualism to cream rinse to Oedipal struggle.”

The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup accomplishes the same, moving with apparent ease from the story of a cab driver who also happens to be king of his African tribe to a profile of a show dog that begins with the line “If I were a bitch, I’d be in love with Biff Truesdale.”