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Hemingway's Classic Portrait Of The Pageantry Of Bullfighting. Still considered one of the best books ever written about bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon reflects Hemingway's belief that bullfighting was more than mere sport. Here he describes and explains the technical aspects of this dangerous ritual, and "the emotional and spiritual intensity and pure classic beauty that can be produced by a man, an animal, and a piece of scarlet serge draped on a stick." Seen through his eyes, bullfighting becomes an art, a richly choreographed ballet, with performers who range from awkward amateurs to masters of great grace and cunning. A fascinating look at the history and grandeur of bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon is also a deeper contemplation on the nature of cowardice and bravery, sport and tragedy, and is enlivened throughout by Hemingway's pungent commentary on life and literature.… (more)
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This book will tell you pretty much everything you would ever want to know about the traditions and mechanics of
Hemingwa was obviously greatly taken with the spectacle of the bullfight and had strong, and well informed, opinions about the event. Death In The Afternoon provides a guide to the uninitiated from the basics, where to see fights, how to buy tickets, through to the event itself with an exhaustive glossary and descriptions of terms, movements, styles and individuals.
Hemingway must have caused a storm when this book was published, his opinions on some fighters are shocking, if he considered a matador 'cowardly', if you can call any man a coward who would take on an angry bull in single combat, he would write that such a man would be better off killed rather than continue to disgrace the ring. Although there may have been a few matadors happy with Hemingway's description of them, there must have been many more who would have happily run him through with a banderilla after reading his scathing thoughts.
Bullfighting was a much more dangerous profession in this era than it is in the modern day, but even so Hemingway mourned the breeding of small, less dangerous bulls which he thought had taken much of the true honour and bravery out of the fight. The men who had instigated this bredding of smaller animals, the matadors themselves, were obviously of differing opinion.
This book did no shy away from the controversy of bullfighting, included is a chapter with gives the opinions of a number of people on seeing their first (and often their one and only) bullfight. Hemingway does ask though that people give the bullfight a chance, the only people he is totally dismissive of are those who attend a fight fully intending to walk out after the first death.
The deaths of men and horses in the ring is given plenty of space as well, also horse lovers would not be happy with Hemingway's couldn't care less attitude about the horses (and sometimes about the men). Bullfighting in this age was obviously an intensively dangerous occupation, even the very best matadors seemed to suffer regular and dreadful gorings, deaths in the ring were common, and the careers of many of the finest fighters were ended by bulls.
Also included are some articles concerned with death in many forms, and some rather strange 'discussions' Hemingway has about bullfighting wit an imaginary old lady, the last chapter lists at some length all the things that Hemingway thought should have been included in an exhaustive work about bullfighting but couldn't be bothered including.
I enjoyed Hemingway's forthright writing style, and the bravery he showed both in voicing his opinions and in the research he did, he did some training in the ring with bulls with blunted horns but quickly realised he had not the speed, style or grace required to fight bulls, and he admits this.
An interesting writer, I'll be on the look out for a copy of the The Old Man And The Sea, anyone have a spare one ?
Quotes:
On change (and writing):
"I know things change now and I do not care. It’s all been changed for me. Let it all change. We’ll all be gone before it’s changed too much and if no deluge comes when we are gone it still will rain in summer in the north and hawks will still nest in the Cathedral at Santiago and in La Granja…We never will ride back from Toledo in the dark, washing the dust out with Fundador, nor will there be that week of what happened in the night in that July in Madrid. We’ve seen it all go and we’ll watch it go again. The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after."
On courage:
"If qualities have odors the odor of courage to me is the smell of smoked leather or the smell of a frozen road or the smell of the sea when the wind rips the top from a wave, but the valor of Luis Freg did not have that odor. It was clotted and heavy…"
On death:
"There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it."
On living in the now:
"Within our time the scientists may well abolish these old diseases and we’ll live to see the end of all morality. But meantime I would rather dine on suckling pig at Botin’s than sit and think of casualties my friends have suffered."
On suicide, certainly poignant given Hemingway's end:
"It seemed a crime to keep him alive and he would have been much luckier to have died soon after the fight while he still had control of himself and still possessed his courage rather than to have gone through the progressive horror of physical and spiritual humiliation that the long enough continued bearing of unbearable pain produces. … But as long as man is regarded as having an immortal soul and doctors will keep him alive through times when death would seem the greatest gift one man could give another, then the horses and the bulls will seem well taken care of and man to run the greatest risk."
On the younger generation:
"In the old days you went to a doctor and he fixed up, or tried to fix up, whatever was wrong with you. So in the old days you went to a bullfight and the matadors were matadors…"
"…if you sit with the older men at the café you know there are no good bullfighters now either; they are all children without honor, skill or virtue, much the same as those children who now play football, a feeble game it has become, on the high-school team and nothing like the great, mature, sophisticated athletes in canvas-elbowed jerseys, smelling vinegary from sweated shoulder pads, carrying leather headguards, their moleskins clotted with mud, that walked on leather-cleated shoes that printed in the earth along beside the sidewalk in the dusk, a long time ago.
There were always giants in those days…"
I feel like I came away from it understanding the structure of a bullfight, the environment, the emotion.
Also, you get a glimpse of Spain and its people through his writing, which I also enjoyed immensely. And finally, some of it was quite funny, as my boyfriend can attest because I kept reading passages out loud to him.