Long ago and far away I'd idle around the second-hand book sales that were held in our Student Union. The booksellers were a distinctive collection of late middle-aged men to whom normative styles of housekeeping and hygiene were alien. I could imagine them travelling from one university to another all week, setting out lines of not always mouldy paperbacks on trestle tables, making a thin living selling and reselling course books as well as books not on any reading list imaginable. Occasionally I pick up something for a pound or two and one of those books was this one.

It is to date the only Hemingway I've ever read. It's a book about Bullfighting - a bit of a cruel misnomer seeing as the purpose of the exercise is to kill the bull in a ritualistic manner but I suppose Bull Sacrificing doesn't have quite the same ring to it - but some personal recollections were mingled into stories about bullfighter, the fights and the training. This is mainly with reference to Spain in the 1920s and 30s with a few mentions of the Bullfighting scene in Mexico.

Ferdinand was one of my favourite books as a child, so I can't imagine ever watching a bull-fight but I was pleasantly surprised how interesting it was to read the details of how matadors train and learn their technique from mock fighting with cows (training with bulls would not be the wisest pastime, cattle are dangerous enough out in the fields as it is), to the set up of the ring and how the event is structured to ensure the death of the bull.

There is no interest though in the whys of bull fighting, why this sacrificial event developed in Iberia and why not elsewhere, particularly considering that over the border in Southern France they have their own different bull sport tradition that doesn't involve the death of the beast as a matter of course. What was really weird were the couple of completely irreverent anecdotes about homosexuals, one Hemingway describing hearing two Americans in the neighbouring hotel room in Paris one realising that the other's intentions were not platonic and with the connivance of the hotel management inescapable, another in which Hemingway as Art Critic telling an allegedly impressed woman that all the male figures in El Greco paintings were clearly gay. When somebody seems to be seeing gays under every bed you can't help remembering the Lady doth protest too much, methinks and suspect there is more than a splash of projection going on.

Probably of historic interest only, unless you are a completionist, but deals with an oddly interesting topic.

Everything you ever wanted to know (and not know) about bullfighting. If you've read Moby Dick, you'll have a idea about how an author can obsess about a particular human activity, in detail, and one goes along for the ride because in that obsessive examination is a clue to what the author feels is important in some aspect of humanity. Again, Hemingway is a sucker for the Spanish way of seeing life and death and courage. Hemingway, through bullfighting, somehow finds a florid display of people facing the fear of death and conquering it. I do NOT recommend this book for the squeemish or politically correct or committed vegans with vitamin B deficiencies. We be talk'n bout meat and horns and guts and death and jerks pretending they're brave and on and on. But, like Moby dick, it's a way of finding out a lot about a subject and how that activity relates to the human condition.

one of my favorite books about God.

Quite a fun and different read. It started to feel a bit long towards the end but otherwise enjoyable. Now I know how to fight a bull if need be. 4 stars.

You really need to have watched a bullfight if you are going to read this. If you haven't, this book will help you decide whether you want to watch one or not. A book that was definitely not meant to be a classic, I believe Hemingway wrote this simply because the sport consumed so much of him and he had so much to say about all of it that he finally decided to put it all in a book and get done with the conversation altogether.

This book, had it come out in today's era, would be denounced not so much for the bloody nature of the sport it expounds upon, but for the enormously arrogant amount of 'mansplaining' contained within its pages. The book explores many facets of the sport of bullfighting and any person who has been obsessed with competitive sport of any kind will find passages that ring true to the emotion that is roused in him/her when engaged by his favorite sport.

Hemingway's descriptions of the footwork of the matador and his emphasis (if you know Hemingway then you know that he is emphatic about everything he writes) on the importance of holding the torso still and upright, reminded me of myself talking about the finer points of my cricketing superheroes.

In this book it is revealed that there is more to bullfighting than the matador. There are the picadors and the banderillos and the doctors and the critics and the ring-servants all of whom contribute to the experience of the bullfight. Audience too. Of course, the Matador is the main draw but the rest of it is just as important. You will never be allowed to distinguish and make one more important than the other. Every one is important (although the matador more so). You see how it is? You will always say that cricket is a batsman's game, but hey, the next second you will find yourself saying that it is also the bowlers and the fielders and the coaches and the trainers and commentators who contribute to the experience and man, how could you forget the crowds at Lord's, or elsewhere in Australia or India. You see how it is? Replace bullfighting with any other sport that you love and relate to and this book will ring true.

Hemingway writes in the beginning that bullfighting is different from the other sports which are popular in the West in that they are merely 'games' since they don't deal with the possibility of death. But isn't that how every person feels about his favourite sport. This book is not so much about the bulls vs balls as it is a rant about why people love the sport they love the way they do. And perhaps it will also teach people why it is important to not deprive kids (even the bald old ones) of their love for sport.

Get your copy today! Because even as you navigate through Old Hem's lengthy discourse about this, that, why, what, how and every other thing about bullfighting, the man also drops a few deadly lines about life and his greatest obsession above all- the written word.

(I changed my rating from 3 to 5 stars in course of writing this review because never has writing a review excited me so much in a long long time

Es tracta d'un assaig sobre la tauromàquia pensat originalment per explicar tot aquest món als americans. De fet el llibre no va ser traduït al castellà fins fa pocs anys tot i que és original del 1932. Hemingway es mostra irònic davant algunes situacions però sovint adopta un punt de vista objectiu, reflexionant tal com ho faria una persona sense prejudicis de cap mena que mostrés curiositat. La manera com descriu "la tragèdia" en si, desprèn una gran passió per les corridas que no pot ni vol amagar. El seu coneixement profund sobre tot allò que envolta el món dels toros, desde les diferents castes fins als diferents tipus de toreros -amb tocs biogràfics i estils de lídia- passant per la criança, la selecció o la venta, són increïbles. L'estil, ple d' humor, ironia, rigor i dramatisme, fa que la lectura sigui del tot amena. Sovint inclou diàlegs amb un personatge inventat -una senyora- que li fa preguntes mes aviat banals que li serveixen per introduir anecdotes o fins hi tot una narració que sembla no venir al cas. Per mi ha estat una sorpresa que un llibre sobre el món dels toros m'hagi agradat tant.

კორიდა ჩემთვის საინტერესო თემა არ არის, მაგრამ ერნესტმა იმდენი შეძლო, რომ ერთი ამოსუნთქვით წამაკითხა წიგნი ხარებსა და მათთან მებრძოლ ესპანელებზე. ესეც მხატვრული ლიტერატურის მსგავსად დიდებულად გამოუვიდა და იმიტომ...

Hemingwayův styl si nelze dost dobře představit bez určité dávky cynismu, který místy přerůstá v pozérství a mačismus. Je to přirozená součást jeho sebeprezentace ve vlastním díle, která slouží coby kontrapunkt k jinak úsporné a neutrální melodii vyprávění, což podle mě zvyšuje míru literární autenticity. V reportážní poloze samozřejmě tento cynický autorský hlas vystupuje silněji, takže jeho Prolegomena k Tauromachii se logicky zdají poněkud zbytnělé v uměleckém chvástání a předvádění. V imaginárním dialogu se starou dámou doplňujícím tři čtvrtiny kapitol se tento svérázný komentář zcela odpoutává, aby nás seznámil s autorovými postřehy, náhledy a teoriemi o umění. Hemingwayův mistrovský roh se tu přitom snaží rozpárat právě břicha vycpána pilinami, útočí na zbytečné producírování, které tímto osobním vyřizováním účtů sám předvádí. Bylo by příliš jednoduché držet se stereotypu o jeho maskulinních a šovinistických stereotypech a konstatovat prostě, že si nevidí do huby. Ne, za tím je kus poctivé sebeironie, cynismem míří vždy nejdřív na sebe, problematizuje pozici chlapáckého ega bez bázně a hany.

Krom toho, že je tento literární lalok nonfiction trupu syžetovým kontrapunktem a zdrojem Hemingwayovy "filozofie", měl by nás zvlášť upozornit na zásadní předpoklad celého textu. Jde o nezastupitelnost subjektivního vnímání, především jeho vlastního, které je doplněno o pár záznamů diváckých reakcí. Není to reportáž, natož příručka pro první návštěvníky corridy, i když se tak kniha může tvářit. Je to svědectví vášně, posedlosti hledáním okamžiku pravdy, fascinace smrtí. Dokonalá znalost prostředí a lidí, čas, který Hemingway věnoval objíždění býčích arén a vysedáváním s torery tu nejsou prostředkem literárního námětu, respektive nejsou tu cílem literárního záměru (tj. napsat dobře o něčem co znám). Naopak, ono ohromující porozumění je vlastně sekundární, přidané, získané z pouhého trvání (a prohlubování) původního uměleckého vidění skutečnosti.

Popis emocionálního zaujetí je tak vlastně hedonisticky vedenou apologií corridy coby umění. Hemingway nijak nezpochybňuje jeho krutost, ačkoliv jeho etická argumentace ji značně relativizuje. Tento aspekt nelze pominout. Morální ohledy vůči zvířatům se evidentně historicky mění (zlepšují), dnes by jistě tato kniha utrpěla zdrcující kritiku od celé kulturní fronty. Ačkoli většina lidí jí vepřové nebo kuřecí, lov velryb se považuje za nechutný přežitek. Porážet dobytek na jatkách je víc přijatelné, než prvozovat hon na lišku nebo kohoutí zápasy, což je samosebou pokrytecký speciesismus. Ale tyto zdánlivě nesmyslné barrery jsou právě eticky zajímavé. Co nás vede k upřednostňování určitých druhů? A v tomto ohledu je Smrt odpoledne velmi cenným zdrojem poznatků, ačkoli je opřena de facto o jedinou individální zkušenost. Hemingwayovo vyznání se sice popisu morálních soudů dotýká jen letmo, zato pečlivě ohledává vnímání smyslu nějakého jednání, ze kterého potom morální hodnocení vychází. Jeho svědectví je důkazem klíčové role symbolického kontextu a ritualizace v psychologické a sociální rovině a jakési folk etology a teorie mysli pokud jde o subjektivní interpretaci zvířecího chování. Máme tu dost podnětů k tomu se ptát, proč určité chování býků posuzuje aficionado jako statečné a jiné jako zbabělé, proč je cornada de caballo lidské zranění, jaký je rozdíl mezi čestným zabitím a "vraždou" býka atp. Umění je vlastně nebezpečná věc, jelikož zaujetí může značně pokroutit naši morálku. Na druhou stranu je to umění, které nám může poskytnout vysvětlení těchto posunů a vyhnat vlastní zarputilost či předsudky z pohodlné querencie. I kdyby nás čekala libová veganská budoucnost, Smrt odpoledne by neměla zmizet z našeho jídelníčku.

3.5 Before I took this book off of my bookshelf, I will admittedly confess that I knew nothing of bullfights, bullfighting rings, bullfighters (and their "teams") or fighting bulls. I imagine that this book is probably as a complete an education on those topics as anything else available in print.

The first third of the book feels a bit chaotic as he is trying to explain so many details (of which there are many) about the subjects mentioned above that it he seems to be writing in circles. But has it continues, it becomes more organized and in each of the future chapters, these topics are distinctly separated and described and made much, much clearer.

It does have some photos and a handy glossary in the back of the Spanish words used in bullfighting that helped to get me through this first portion of the text.

He does divert a few times, wandering from the main topic, recollecting his days as a stretcher bearer in Italy during WWI (although he uses his experience from the war as it relates to death which is the main theme throughout the book). He also has a couple tangents, writing about modern literature and Spanish painters. And because this is a work of nonfiction and he cannot insert dialogue of his own, he invents a character, an old woman, with whom he has a few conversations with about various topics, some which do not have anything to do with bullfighting. I found this to be somewhat amusing. At one point he gets into an argument with this old lady. She doesn't last long and eventually disappears from the book altogether.

There is a portion of this book that I found quite boring because it is completely irrelevant to the present day in which he discusses current bullfighters and newcomers and he speculates on their futures in the "sport."

Finally in the last third of the text, he seems to settle down and it is much easier to follow but that might due to the thorough education the reader receives during the first two thirds of the book.

The last chapter is more the typical Hemingway and what one would expect of his writing. He summarizes for the reader all of the things he left out: the various countryside and cities and what it is like traveling to and from those places and spending time there, the people one might meet and the conversations they might have, all the sights, sounds and smells that Mr. Hemingway is so versed at. I think if he had more time to write this book and able to include those things, this work of nonfiction would have been much better and he all but admits that in the very beginning and at the very end.

He finishes off with a great line. “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 you know; and not before; and not too damned much after.”
I think he truly lived that philosophy his entire life career.

Word of warning: This is a book about DEATH and if a reader does not want to read about death of any type (human or animal) I would recommend to leave this one off your list.

In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway shares the sights, the sounds, the excitement, and above all, the knowledge which is fuelled his passion for Spain and the bullfight.
This book is sophisticated and well-written, inspired by the intense life, as well as the inevitable death, of those hot, violent afternoons.

I went into Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon with perhaps the greatest scepticism I have ever felt towards a book. Whilst I am an earnest fan of Hemingway (see what I did there?), I have not read any of his work in some seven months or so, nor felt any desire to do so. I am also, like I imagine the vast majority of people today, opposed to the activity of bullfighting, finding it cruel and pointless. Even without this in mind, Death in the Afternoon seemed like a peculiar way to break my Hemingway fast: a highly-detailed treatise on a subject not really relevant to the modern world. Consequently, it was to my great surprise that I found much in this book to recommend.

Certainly, there are a number of negatives to this work. Hemingway, an aficionado of bullfighting in the 1930s, wrote this book to be an introduction to Spanish bullfighting and an attempt "to explain that spectacle both emotionally and practically" (pg. 329). Whilst he does not claim to present a comprehensive or encyclopaedic book on the subject, it does provide more than just about anyone would ever want to know on the subject. Not content with providing a mere overview of the subject, Hemingway gets carried away at times in his detailing. On page 98, for example, he describes how bulls are branded, helpfully telling us that the branding irons, "bearing the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9" (who'd have thought it?) "have a wooden handle and the points that are in the fire are heated red hot." It seems at times like an exercise in stating the obvious. His pedantry is never reigned in; on page 27, for example, he describes the seating arrangements (right down to the numbering of chairs) in a bullfighting arena. For a writer so renowned for his clean, sparse prose (indeed, Death in the Afternoon contains, on page 165, the 'iceberg' quote that would lend its name to his writing style), the book is remarkably long-winded.

On the face of it, it may seem like an unappealing book. Hemingway must have intended it for a niche audience: bullfighting was never a phenomenon outside of Spain even at its peak, and quite early on in the book he says readers should go no further until they have actually witnessed a bullfight firsthand (probably not going to happen for most). Noting this and the fact that he mentions specific dates that are best to visit bullfights, and naming some of the best bull-breeders around (in 1932), one can be certain that Hemingway didn't mean for the book to stand the test of time, or to be admitted as part of his literary canon to be assessed by future generations in the way that he might reasonably have expected for The Old Man and the Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls or A Farewell to Arms. Rather, he probably expected it to be handled more in line with his journalistic output. It is therefore a real sign of the author's talent that Death in the Afternoon stands up on literary merit and, of all of his books that I have read (it is my eighth), it is only behind those three just mentioned in my eyes.

This is not to say that I am now a convert to the merits of bullfighting; I am not. Nothing will ever convince me that harming and killing animals (not just bulls, but horses too) for reasons other than necessity (sustenance, etc.) will ever be morally right. Animal cruelty for the purposes of mere entertainment seems particularly distasteful. However, such is the quality and steadfastness of Hemingway's prose at times that I sincerely challenged my views on the subject. Hemingway is not an apologist of bullfighting; he is never defensive and writes about it in a neutral way - indeed, the first lines of the book are an admission that he expected to be horrified by the ordeal of his first bullfight. He is a considerate companion to the reader in this daunting journey into the world of Spanish bullfighting and, whilst my views on it are fundamentally unchanged, he certainly convinced me that there is more to bullfighting than is commonly represented. I won't really go into specifics on which aspects of the practice he challenged, for it would be cruel for a prospective reader to read 300 pages on bullfighting in Hemingway's book and yet more in my admittedly lengthy review.

Key to Hemingway's perspective on bullfighting is that, as he ably demonstrates, it is an 'art' rather than a sport. As he notes quite early on (pg. 14), the bull is certain to die, whereas no one would rightly enter a sporting encounter in which one competitor was guaranteed victory. Rather, bullfighting is a sort of performance art - closest perhaps to a tragedy in a theatre. Compellingly, bullfighting is "the only art in which the artist is in danger of death" (pg. 78) and Hemingway does induce within his reader a quite unexpected empathy with the much-maligned matador, with some graphic descriptions of gorings (or cornadas) from which some matadors take weeks to die in horrific and unrelenting agony. He also allows one to get a sense of the dignity and majesty of the fighting bull (did you know that the matador's sword has to be put between the shoulder blades of the bull as this is an area that the bull can defend against?), and any bullfighter who doesn't respect these creatures is likely to end up with a horn in the gut. Even though I still cannot abide by much of the practice, I have been convinced by Hemingway that the matadors and the spectators are not wholly motivated by bloodlust, though I do not believe it can ever be truly discounted as a factor. If art is truly the aim, there are ways for true artists to convey the tragedy and honour of death without actually causing it in a poor animal.

I should perhaps also mention that Death in the Afternoon is not solely about bullfighting, and Hemingway at points contemplates war, literature and the art of writing, among other subjects. Some of these passages are crudely shoehorned into codas at the end of dense chapters on bullfighting, almost as if the writer was consciously aware that a dense treatise on the subject was unlikely to sustain a reader for 300 pages. But however awkward their placement, these passages are still profoundly enjoyable. Perhaps also recognising the inherent lack of humour in the main subject matter, Hemingway makes a greater effort to lighten the burden on the reader. There are some delightful moments of humour buried deep in this book, particularly when Hemingway is bickering with his 'old lady' character (who is unfortunately and inexplicably dropped two-thirds of the way through). Indeed, in writing on a subject so close to his heart, Hemingway lowers his defences to a level he did not usually allow in his more polished and popular novels. Recognising that the book is perhaps a bit dry, he makes a greater effort to engage with the reader and we get a better sense of Hemingway the man than in any other of his works in which he presents to us Hemingway the writer. It's just a shame that some of his clearest and most consistently thought-provoking writing came in perhaps his most dated and uninfluential niche work.

It reminded me of HELLS ANGELS by HUNTER S THOMPSON. Hunter was a fan of hemingway. and interestingly i understood where his incisive insightful writing about subjects comes from when i read this book about bullfighting. Interestingly just like HELLS ANGELS this book is also about someting society condisers uncool. But you cant help but fall in love in a way with bullfighting and its deeper good aspects of honor, bravery etc. of course it isn't good for animals and hence has been banned. But this is a super book. super!