The Culture Vulture

Ernest Hemingway is fourth on The Culture Vulture’s list of top 5 writers about Spain. Here he tells us more about the man and his books.

The journalist turned novelist wrote two first-class books about bullfighting, The Sun Also Rises (published as Fiesta in England), a novel, and Death in the Afternoon, a non-fiction work. He also wrote a novel about the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and his only play The Fifth Column.

Bullfighting was Hemingway’s passion. He would go to the bull-running and bullfights at the Fiesta de San Fermín in Pamplona (Navarra) every July, and he spent a lot of time in Ronda, the birthplace of bullfighting on foot, and has a street in the Andalusian town named after him, Paseo de Hemingway, which runs round the back of the Parador.

I was recovering in hospital in Germany from an appendix operation, aged 21, when I was introduced to Hemingway. His books about bullfighting kindled an interest in bullfighting which remains with me to this day.

After Germany I subsequently went to San Fermín in Pamplona two years running in the early 1970s. It was there that I saw the young Paquirri for the first time. He went on to become the top torero of his generation, but sadly died in the ring at the end of his career.

When I ended up living in Ronda some 35 years later I got the opportunity to follow in Hemingway's footsteps, so to speak.

Biography

Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and sportsman. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and his public image brought him admiration from later generations.

Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature. He published seven novels, six short-story collections, and two non-fiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections, and three nonfiction works were published posthumously.

Hemingway was raised in Illinois, USA. After high school, he was a reporter for a few months for The Kansas City Star before leaving for the Italian Front to enlist as an ambulance driver in World War I.

In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home.

In 1921, he married Hadley Richardson, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community.

Hemingway's debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.

In 1927 he divorced Richardson, and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), which he covered as a journalist and which was the basis for his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).

Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh in London during World War II.

He almost died in 1954 after plane crashes on successive days, with injuries leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life.

In 1959 he committed suicide.

Spanish Civil War

In 1937, Hemingway left for Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA).

Hemingway was joined in Spain by journalist and writer Martha Gellhorn, who he had met in Key West a year earlier.

Late in 1937, while in Madrid with Martha, Hemingway wrote his only play, The Fifth Column, as the city was being bombarded by Francoist forces. He returned to Key West for a few months, then back to Spain twice in 1938, where he was present at the Battle of the Ebro, the last republican stand, and he was among the British and American journalists who were some of the last to leave the battle as they crossed the river.

The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises, first published in 1926, and titled Fiesta in England, the novel captures the moods, feelings, and attitudes of a hard-drinking, fast-living group of disillusioned expatriates in post-war France and Spain.

The novel follows a group of young American and British expatriates as they wander through Europe in the mid-1920s. They are all members of the cynical and disillusioned Lost Generation, who came of age during World War I (1914–18).

Two of the novel’s main characters, Lady Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes, typify the Lost Generation. Jake, the novel’s narrator, is a journalist and World War I veteran. During the war Jake suffered an injury that rendered him impotent. (The title of the novel obliquely references Jake’s injury and what no longer rises because of it.)

After the war Jake moved to Paris, where he lives near his friend, the Jewish author Robert Cohn.

Jake’s former lover, Brett, also lives in Paris. Jake and Brett met and fell in love during the war, when Brett, a volunteer nurse, helped treat Jake’s injuries. Although it is not said explicitly, it is implied that they are not together because Jake is impotent and Brett unwilling to give up sex.

When Cohn confesses his romantic interest in Brett to Jake, Jake cautions him against pursuing a relationship with Brett, who is engaged to be married to Mike Campbell, a Scottish war veteran. Both Brett and Cohn eventually leave Paris: Brett sets off for San Sebastian, a beach resort in the Spanish Basque country, and Cohn for the countryside.

A few weeks after their departure, the writer Bill Gorton (another of Jake’s friends) arrives in Paris. Together, Jake and Bill decide to go to Spain to attend the Fiesta de San Fermín in Pamplona to see the running of the bulls and the bullfights.

Before they leave, Jake and Bill run into Brett, who has recently returned from Spain, and her fiancé, Mike. Brett and Mike ask to accompany Jake and Bill to Pamplona. In private Brett reveals to Jake that she spent the last few weeks in Spain with Cohn.

Bill and Jake take a train to the south of France, where they meet Cohn. Bill, Jake, and Cohn travel together to Pamplona, where they are eventually joined by Brett and Mike. They stay at a local hotel owned by a man named Montoya.

Montoya is a bullfighting enthusiast, and he is eager to introduce the foreigners to the sport. Brett and Jake are especially captivated by the bullfights, and Brett is captivated by a 19-year-old bullfighter named Pedro Romero. While Mike, Cohn, and, incidentally, Jake spar over Brett, Brett runs off to Madrid with Romero.

After the festival ends, Jake, Mike, and Bill leave Pamplona. After a night in the south of France, Jake decides to return to Spain. He soon receives a telegram from Brett asking for help in Madrid. Jake immediately goes to Madrid, where he learns that Brett sent Romero away for fear of corrupting him.

The novel ends unspectacularly, with Jake and Brett talking in a taxi in Madrid. In the final lines of the novel, Brett tells Jake she thinks they could have had a wonderful time together. Jake replies, “Yes, isn’t it pretty to think so?”