Surprisingly digestible for 500 pages on bullfighting. It's always enjoyable to see someone passionate about something. Hemingway has some clear disdain for other writers, which is odd when it crops up. Last few pages are genius writing.

Simply stated... if you want to know about bullfighting in Spain...this is the book!
Hemingway provides the reader with a 'text book' on bullfighting along with his own personal thoughts and observations on same.
Hemingway takes you into the ring, explains the process completely, discusses the bulls and the matadors of the time and the 'art' of the bullfight along with what may be considered the plusses and minus.
Included are many pictures, some quite graphic, of the action as well as a glossary of bullfighting terms that goes on for eighty pages.
Its all here!

An epic tome on the art and grandeur of Spanish bullfighting from one of America's greatest aficionados, Ernest Hemingway, who explicates the craft and spiritual intensity of this ancient European ritual through terse, journalistic, prose and rigorous scholarship. Not surprisingly, Hemingway is not terribly perturbed by the grotesque barbarity of the violence of bullfighting; Hemingway was an enthusiast of hunting and had little to no moral qualms about killing animals (and sometimes people). Yet he is not totally insensitive, warning the reader that most spectators of bullfighting are normally disgusted by the killing of the horses more than anything else.

For Hemingway, the bullfight is not meant to be understood as an equal battle between man and beast. Rather, it is a tragedy, and the tragedy is for the bull who ought to be killed. He writes, "The best of all fighting bulls have a quality, called nobility by the Spanish, which is the most extraordinary part of the whole business" (113), yet Hemingway does not provide any comment on the utter absurdity of the whole business. Hemingway was a writer obsessed with, and in search of true courage in the face of natural danger and fate, and he found it most explicitly in war and in bullfighting.

However, some readers will be surprised to find that `Death in the Afternoon,' is not simply about bullfighting. Hemingway also expounds quite at length about his views on art and the craft of writing. He says: "When writing a novel, a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature" (191). Unfortunately, Hem was never fully successful at creating a living woman, but every writer has a weakness. "A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl" (192).

Also included in this altogether excellent volume is a collection of stunning photographs depicting various stages of the bullfight and various matadors of fame; there are also fascinating portraits of the running of the bulls in Pamplona (echoing those fabulous sequences in `The Sun also Rises'). Additionally, Hemingway has provided the reader with a detailed glossary of important bullfighting terms for true aficionados. Originally published through Scribner in 1932

Quisiera ser Hemingway para hablar de temas polémicos. Jamás me ha llamado la atención la tauromaquia pero tampoco he querido entrar al debate con la gente que opina a favor o en contra. Por eso, juzgar este libro desde la perspectiva moderna que se tiene de los toros puede resultar una mala idea.

Después de leer "Muerte en la tarde", uno puede darse cuenta de que el asunto ha sido polémico desde hace muchisimo tiempo. En la época de Hemingway había intentos por parte del gobierno español de cancelar las corridas de toros y sin embargo, ¿qué hace Hemingway al respecto? se declara apasionado de la fiesta y escribe un libro que, más que una apología, es un intento de explicar su pasión por los toros y sus puntos de vista como observador extranjero.

Hemingway en ningún momento trata de convencerte que te gusten los toros. Es más, comprende perfectamente que a la gente no le gusten y respeta sus gustos. El problema quizá es que le gusta algo que moralmente es mal visto por mucha gente y sin embargo, no se acobarda en dar sus puntos de vista y tratar de explicar paso por paso el ritual de toros y toreros.

Es definitivamente una lectura que vale la pena para todos, pro taurinos o no.

one of my favorite books about God.

4.5 stars...

Amazing prose, beautifuly written book...

Before death in the afternoon I knew nothing about bullfighting and all the tradition and honor that lays behind such an ancient spanish tradition.

With Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway shows his point at defending this whole violent world of matadores, picadores, banderilleros and toros de lidia and I respect him for that.

In my opinion, the book is enjoyable not for the topic but for the arguments of this great author...

Hemingway ocupa un lugar especial en la lista de la gente que he leído. Puede decirse que tanto "El viejo y el mar" como "Por quién doblan las campanas" (una de las novelas más bellas y fuertes que he leído) supieron orientar mis primeros pasos en el mundo de la lectura. Desgraciadamente, no siempre todo lo que se muestra a los ojos brilla con la fuerza del oro. En este caso, "Muerte en la tarde" (que, dicho sea, es el primer libro que he leído de él en inglés) me pareció un libro pobre: un relato que no termina de definirse entre diario de corridas, crónica gonzo y folletín de turismo. De hecho, me entristeció bastante leer a este Hemingway: un tipo triste, sin gracia...sin mucho para decir al lector universal (porque, tal vez, al amante de los toros este libro puede llegar a fascinarle. A pesar de su precariedad narrativa).

Si bien soy de los que considera que la literatura debe disfrutarse independientemente de los principios morales que un libro o un autor defiendan (debiendo siempre evaluarse una obra en términos narrativos), si un escritor expone sus argumentos y pretende convencer a alguien de su postura, el texto se convierte en un diálogo en el que el lector debe asumir un rol muchísimo más activo. En este sentido, las premisas de Hemingway para la defensa de las corridas de toros (pobres en términos morales, interesantes en cuanto a datos e información sobre esa forma de asesinato) me enfrentaron a alguien casi tan prejuicioso y provinciano como Jack Kerouac. Con todo y que Kerouac fue a México de vacaciones y creyó conocer toda América bajo la bandera de franjas rojas y blancas y estrellas sobrepuestas al fondo azul.

Ojalá lo que vuelva a leer de Hemingway esté a la par de "El viejo y el mar" o de "Por quién doblan las campanas", libros que siento cada vez más distantes cuando menciono al escritor americano y espero a la primera idea sobre su literatura.

The most important book on bullfighting ever written in the English language and perhaps of all time. Hemingway is able to describe such a divisive topic with flare, while never losing sight of the technicality that is bullfighting. If Matador and Bull are both special, the fight will be pure art.

“Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor.”

Why is this pamphlet about bullfighting the longest work in his entire oeuvre? And why is it still kinda great, and essential in understanding his obsessions, his machismo, his madness, and his method?

“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader...will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.”



Death in the Afternoon can be seen as Ernest Hemingway’s attempt to equate the ritualized dance of the matador with that of the writer. Maybe not all writers, but one very specific writer. It’s significant, I think, that unlike his story in The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway is presenting the ritual of bullfighting strictly as nonfiction. In the work, the bullfighter, the bull and spectators all have parts to play in what is essentially an unfolding tragedy. Each contribute to the meaning produced by the spectacle. Hemingway pays a great deal of attention to the style of the matadors, whether they are brave and take risks and what price they are willing to pay for their art.

In Death in the Afternoon, readers can learn quite a lot about bullfighting (the phases of the bullfight as well as the history and pageantry of this violent sport) but, to me, what’s more interesting is what there is to be learned about Hemingway and his views on the writer. 4.25 Stars.

I despise bullfighting. It's disgusting. But if someone manages to write 350 pages about bullfighting so enthusiastically and lovingly–describing its nuances, different moves and greatest bullfighters, its pride, heroic feelings, rigid and honorable rules and passion, technicalities, Spanish taverns and the morbid life of the matadors, all while encompassing a vivid picture of the now long-gone Spain of the 30's–that it keeps such a rabid hater of the "sport" as I am glued into the book and, goddamn, to enjoy it, the book is good. It has to be great. And it is. Death in the Afternoon is an exceptional book, which makes the too early departure of the writer more saddening than ever.

Been so Hemingway pilled since I’ve started reading more that I’m travelling to Spain and doing the Pyrenees and Pamplona.

This book is interesting to read only if you go looking for it. The sun also rises is much better but the technical appreciation over the art of bullfighting in Hemingway prose is enjoyable as well.

Im appreciative that bullfighting culture still exists