Death in the Afternoon

I'd been meaning to read Death in the Afternoon for some time, but hadn't gotten around to it until recently. Mostly, this was due to the fact I could never find it in the bookstore -- most of Hemingway's stuff was in the "fiction" or "literature" sections, but since this is a work of non-fiction, it wasn't with them. Since most bookstores lack a section on "bullfighting", I was out of luck. I tried a few different libraries, as well, but they never seemed to have it, either. Not that it was an all-consuming search, just something I did when I remembered. Now that I've gotten to it, I'm not quite sure whether I should be satisfied or disappointed.

Death in the Afternoon is a travel guide to a place and time that can no longer be visited. Long sections are devoted to recommending accommodations, procuring tickets, where and when to travel. Surprisingly, given that Hemingway was a drinker, the recommendations on alcohol are short -- a note that table wines in Spain are both cheap and excellent, compared to table wines in France, and a few paragraphs on where to find good draft beer. In this way, it's fascinating.

Hemingway is a bit of a snob when it comes to bullfighting . . ."I've been to over three hundred bullfights, but I've only seen [one particular technique] executed properly three or four times. . .", but he's charitable, listing each fighter's faults and skills. One thing I do like is that he rather than accepting as received wisdom the criticisms of current fighters (that they can't hold a candle to past legends, that the bulls they're fighting are smaller and weaker), he goes through contemporary accounts of those legends, both from the newspapers, and the bull-breeding records. It turns out that many of the legends were mocked in their time (not as good as someone previous), and the bulls have stayed roughly the same size and level of aggression. If anything, the bulls Hemingway was seeing fought were as large or larger than ever before.

There's a lot here (in addition to the narrative, there's an extensive glossary, including many terms which are not used in the main text, and a selection of pictures), and overall this is worth reading, for a portrait of a bygone age. Hemingway is a little more self-indulgent here than in his novels, but he's able to keep this flowing.