Death in the Afternoon, by Ernest Hemingway

May, 2000

Very interesting; I would never have imagined bull fighting was so complex. His interpolations about war and death were not much to the point, and his views on writing seemed totally purposeless. Occasionally he unbent and wrote a few sentences that seemed to come directly from the heart: "If you ever bolt with someone, go to Ronda," was the first.

However, the one salient characteristic emerging from his book is, I think, fear. In his nervous vituperation of everything except himself and the bulls, in his honest, youthful pomposity, he strikes me as the most terrified soul ever to set pen to paper and try to pretend he wasn't -- or try to find experiences which drowned his fright at himself.