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.

A Farewell to Arms

Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms is one of those books I probably should have read in high school, but somehow didn't. I finally rectified this recently, and I'm relatively glad I did.

Like all of Hemingway's work, the prose is unadorned and straightforward, lacking florid description, and occasionally leaving off where another writer would feel the need to elaborate. This can lead to a feeling of lack of depth.

The story is concerned with a young American Lieutenant (Tenente) driving an ambulance on the Italian front during the First World War, his relationship with his military contemporaries, and his experiences being wounded and falling in love with a British nurse.

The depiction of Tenente's paramour, Catherine Barkley, is either Hemingway's image of an ideal woman (wise, but unable to contain her passion), or a male dream (continually asserting what a 'good girl' she is, existing only to please her man). Or perhaps both. Her conversations with Henry are insipid, although that's the fault of both characters. Whether this is Hemingway's style, his lack of feel for women, or my poor ear for early twentieth century conversation remains to be seen.

The novel features judicious use of profanity, that has been excised (by the publisher) from my edition. I'm unsure how to feel about this -- the language is not quite archaic, but it would be jarring to see "shit", "fuck", and "cocksucker" (the three excised words) interspersed with clearly out-of-date dialogue.

Overall, an extended meditation on death in war, how deaths in battle become statistics, but that doesn't make the deaths of those we love any easier. A worthwhile novel, and one I'm glad I finally got around to reading.