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This is the explanation--enough about bull-fighting as Hemingway understood it and as it was practiced between the wars to let us who have not grown up in the culture understand it.For that reason, it's earned a place on my shelves.In other ways, it's outdated--reviews of the style of bullfighters dead 50 years or more--or self-indulgent. A friend pressed me a while back to read Hemingway. Be prepared to skim.But when you read Hemingway with a bull-fighting setting, have this book handy. ("The Natural History of the Dead" is thrown in for reasons comprehensible only to Hemingway). I hadn't touched him since Freshman English--getting to be a VERY long time ago. I was most impressed by "The Undefeated." It's a world class short story, but I knew I was missing parts of it.
Hemingway builds on this basic draw to the spectacle, evolving the sensibility of the aficionado to both the science and art of the bullfight and the dependence of greatness on the two primary protagonists. Death in the Afternoon provides a dramatic and thorough description of this tradition penned by a master hand. This book is a treatise on the appreciation of a bullfight; Hemingway's guide on how to become an aficionado. One wonders how many bullfights over how many years were attended by Hemingway in compiling both a snapshot of the history of bullfighting at the time (1930s) and a full discussion of the intricacies of a bullfight that determine the quality of the performance. A methodical ballet of spears and capes wears down the bull through three stages of the fight until he can be impaled through the shoulders with the sword of the matador ending his life in the ring that he was bred for. While reading the passages I found myself both not believing what was actually being done to the bull and wondering why the toreros put themselves in the ring at all given the risk. It makes this book a page-turner, despite the odd, and in my mind, useless intra-chapter dialogues between author and non-descript "old woman".
In nearly every case however, as so perfectly described by Hemingway, the 3-4 year old colossal fighting bull dies. The punishment preset on the bull before the introduction of the matador is not always effective and matadors suffer repeated horrific injuries from the bull and sometimes death.
The book starts at the beginning laying out the places where bullfighting can be seen, the organization and tradition of bullfighting in Spain, the physical layout of the ring, the breeding of bulls, the training and evolution of matadors and ultimately the phases of the fight itself. Through the final stage of the fight, bull and matador connect on the nexus of death.
In addition to the excellent text, the book includes pictures, a glossary and commentary from those who have attended. One cannot have a good bullfight with a mediocre bull, nor can one expect a great fight with an ill-trained and less courageous matador.
As someone who has never seen nor read about bullfights, the detail laid out within was both captivating and compelling.
This duality of both cruelty and bravery is the kernel of what makes bullfighting so compelling to not only the Spanish but the millions who attend each year.
If you don't think so, just try to face an enraged 1500 lb beast with a cape and a flimsy sword. Maybe, although I haven't seen this tendency during my lifetime.He also decries the fact that the emphasis is less and less on the killing as opposed to pageantry and hot-dogging [read Mitchener's "Mexico"]. A brave beast rages courageously only to be bloodied, broken and killed. He maintains that the bulls have been bred down in size to make it easier for the matador to work and ultimately kill the bull.
On the other hand, my experience in less touristy areas has been the opposite. "All true stories end in death." He said. If you read his tales most end with defeat and death. The Snows of Kilamanjaro, The Old Man and the Sea, The Short and Happy life of Francis MacComber, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and many, many others. I am an aficionado of the corrida and, almost necessarily, loved this book. It is the best thing every written on the subject and, although I don't agree with Hemingway's every point, I still enjoy it. The kill, although not the total point of the fight, is definitely the most important part. It is not meant to be "fair" in the Anglo-Saxon sense of the word.
It is a tragedy which appeals to the Spanish [and some non-Spanish]mind. To go to a bullfight hoping the matador will be knocked down and gored, would be like going to a ballet and hoping the prima ballerina fall on her face.It is a deliberate tragedy where sometimes the dead bull gets a bigger hand than does the matador. I wonder if he was thinking of the wounded bull when he loaded his shotgun that day.Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico Most of his stories, if you think about it, mirrored the corrida. Pity the poor matador who has a perfect fight only to have his sword, at the "moment of truth", glance off a rib. It appealed to Hemingway's fatalism.
The book was written in 1930 and, even then, he decries a certain corruption in the spectacle. The matador, on his part, needs to be just as brave. He'll be lucky if he gets one ear.I think Hemingway should have more emphasized that the corrida is NOT a sport. There is some truth in this but, even back in 1930, Madrid was becoming a tourist mecca and, to a certain extent, the matadors were and are playing to unsophisticated audiences. He won't get two ears and a tail.
That part, in essence, the literary part is what held my interest. I will admit to having spent many a fruitless hour watching the 'bullpen' of the beloved home town Red Sox at Fenway Park blow a lead that would make any bull see red. The bullfight experience (watching, that is) became a mandatory exercise for later, mainly American, male writers and formed a rite of passage for manly writing. If one suspends a certain disbelief about the obvious surface brutality of the event and rather delves into the `man against nature' and `dancing with death' aspects that is where you will find Hemingway. Having watched a bullfight in Mexico I find it hard to see the interest that Hemingway and the others had in the sport. At the time that Hemingway wrote this book the rather exotic art of bullfighting was fairly unknown to English audiences.
This book is an interesting combination of Hemingway's literary flair and a how to book on the art of bullfighting. On its own terms, Hemingway surely had more than an amateur interest in describing the ritual of the fight and grading the performances of man and beast. Hemingway almost single-handedly drove many expatriate Americans and Europeans of the `lost generation' to the corrida. I do not care for prizefighting either. Ole Some of his novels and short stories also have the bullring as a backdrop.
One thinks immediately of Norman Mailer but there were others.
and what became of the reality and the earnestness."Hemingway's theme, here and throughout the book, seems to be that death and suffering are the things of life, its essence and only ultimate truths. It finishes with a self-indulgent one where he outlines all the things he left out as if giving a long-winded Oscar speech. In the world of the bullring, he found the closest thing to perfection he could believe in. He extols Faulkner, has at Huxley, and fesses up to how he must come off: "The fellow is no philosopher, no savant, an incompetent zoologist, he drinks too much and cannot punctuate readily.He is bull crazy."The book comes with a generous number of photographs with Hemingway-written captions that are works of art in miniature. In between is much to admire, for bullfighting aficionados and vegetarians alike, including some of the most arresting passages in American letters. That was the world of the bullfight, a world Hemingway discovered by accident while on a break from mingling with the Lost Generation in Paris, and made his own with the help of this book.First published in 1932, "Death In The Afternoon" may be what separates Papa's truest fans from mere admirers like myself. But nothing was forever to Hemingway. But Hemingway works hard too at entertaining the reader, often quite successfully.
"And where did they bury him. For Ernest Hemingway, a fiesta wasn't a fiesta until someone got killed, preferably a 1,400-pound male bovine, horns dripping with horse blood, legs up in front of thousands of cheering Spaniards. The others are all intent on how they will look in the photograph."I didn't really buy Hemingway's take on some things, especially the issue of the horses. He opposes padding their undersides to protect them from bull horns as it violates the aesthetic of the performance. There is an ongoing discussion with an old lady frankly curious about the sex habits of both bull and bull-killer.
He tells of one matador's farewell performance where he dedicates the killing of his last bull before the fact to first one, than another, and then a third person, so caught up is he in the moment and his own eloquence. One moment he's talking about the handling of the muleta or the politics of the cuadrilla, the next he is talking about a pair of homosexuals or how langostinos are best enjoyed.It's really about a man discovering a country he loves, and in that sense, the Spanish backdrop is the best thing about "Death In The Afternoon." It's a love letter with more than a touch of sadness; the Spain Hemingway knew was about to be lost, to civil war and Franco, for the rest of his lifetime. Believe it or not, you have to admire the result. Doesn't padding then produce a better bullfight.Hemingway also loses his train of thought, in ways that impair rather than enrich the reading experience. Only art lends them meaning. Then he writes of how the picadors riding the horse will use the horse's horning as a way of artificially tiring the bull to give the matador an easier time. Most people who value writing understand that Hemingway wrote very well, but many like me would go on to say we wish he spent less time on attitude and posturing and developed a surer sense of focus, in line with "The Sun Also Rises" and "In Our Time." But for those who drink and fish and grow white beards in emulation of their hero, "Death In The Afternoon" is THE book precisely because it so messily captures Hemingway's self-image of the macho artist."Death In The Afternoon" starts out with a rambling chapter that deals with American attitudes about bullfighting rather than the thing itself.
Under a photo of a dead matador surrounded by people, he notes: "Only two in the crowd are thinking about Granero. All art, even the most lasting, ultimately fades, but only in bullfighting is that impermanence accepted and understood.Hard words, hard philosophy. "Someone with English blood has written: 'Life is real; life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal,'" Hemingway writes. Of all art, Hemingway finds bullfighting the truest and most inspiring because of how close it is to the bone of the matter, to death, and how transitorily it is experienced.
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