Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon: The Complete Annotations (review)

¦ BOOK REVIEWS ¦ Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon: The Complete Annotations. By Miriam Mandel. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2002. 647 pp. $95.00 Early in Death in the Afternoon Hemingway states that he found toreo to be "much too complicated for my then equipment for writing to deal with, and aside from four very short sketches, I was not able to write anythingabout it for five years—and I wish I would have waited ten." Miriam Mandel's massive reference book on Hemingway's taurine classic required a research ef/ort "half again as long"as Hemingway's, resulting in a majorworkofscholarship that no Hemingway scholar or student can afford to ignore. Perhaps onlya book reviewer or a dedicated laurinowould read Hemingway's Death in theAfternoon: The CompleteAnnotationsstraight through,but from now on readers of Hemingway will need to consult Mandel's book to expand their understandingofthecomplexitiesoftheirauthor's favoritespectacleand country," whetherornottheysharehisafición.Todoso,theymustbeginwithaclosereading ofthe"User's Guide"section (pp. xv-xxiii), which provides necessaryorientation, especiallyforreaders unfamiliarwith Spanish usagewith respectto names. In addition to a perceptive discussion of the attraction of toreo to the young man from Oak Park, the lengthy "Introduction" includes a very helpful disquisition on bulls and bull breeding (5-13), the least understood aspect of toreo among American readers. Here as elsewhere Mandel's perspective is historical, alert to changes over time, especially as related to Hemingway's predisposition to nostalgia. The main body of Hemingway's Death in theAfternoon: The CompleteAnnotations is of course the annotations themselves, alphabetically arranged from ABC, Madrid's oldest daily newspaper, to Zurito, the patriarch of the Haba family of toreros. The description of raising brave bulls in the "Introduction " is richly amplified by entries for the Marqués de Albayda, antigüedad, the Arribas brothers, Don José Bueno, José Rafael Cabrera, Doña Concepción, Concha y Sierra, Conde de Ia Corte, Enriqueta de la Cova, Doña Carmen de Federico, Don Julián Fernández Martínez, La Viuda de Don Félix Gómez, Esteban Hernández, Eduardo Ibarra, Pedro Jose Picavea de Lcsaca, Don Antonio López Plata, Don Vicente Martínez, Don EdIHi . HLMiWjWAH UFViiw. voi. 22, mi. i. imi. 2002. Copyright M 2002 Carol Hemingway. All Rights Reserved. Published by the University of Idaho Press, Moscow, Idaho. HOOK REVIEWS · 119 uardo Miura, Murube, La Viuda de Ortega, Pablo Romero, Pereira Palha, Perez Tabernero, Don Victorino Ripamilán, José Arias de Saavedra, Don Francisco Sánchez, Conde de Santa Colonia, Don Fiorentino Sotomayor, Duke ofTovar,Vazquez, Duke ofVeragua, Marqués de Villamarta, Francisco and Victorio Villar, Francisco Villar, and Vistahermosa. However, English-speaking aficionados will probably turn most often to the more that one hundred biographical sketches of toreros, all ofwhom have some relevance to Hemingwayas aficionado. The easywaywould have been to paraphrase the relevant entries in volume three ofJosé María y Cossio's monumental encyclopedia. Los toros: tratado técnico e histórico. Instead, Mandel the indefatigable researcher consults all available sources, often supplying corrections and reconciling differences among taurine authorities. For example, the entry on Juan Belmonte, perhaps the most important figura in the entire history of torco, draws not only on Cossio but also on José Silva Aramburu, José Martínez Salvatierra, Daniel Tapia, Ventura Bagéés, Francisco Gómez Hidalgo , Abraham Valdelomar, Enrique Vila, Manuel García Santos, Francisco Narbona, and Juan Belmonte: KillerofBulls, an autobiographyghostwritten by Manuel Chavez Nogales and translated into English by Leslie Charteris. Taking into consideration not only the book under review but also her two forthcoming books, The Dangerous Summer: The Complete Annotations and a collection of essays on Death in theAfternoon by various hands, there can be little doubt that Mandel is in the first rank not only ofauthorities on Death in theAfternoon but also oftaurine scholars in general. But since Death in the Afternoon is a work that deals with much besides the foros, TheCompleteAnnotations'^also ofinterest to readers who are indifferent or even hostile toward the corrida. Spanish and Italian history, Sholem Asch, Baedeker guidebooks, baseball, Bill and Sally Bird, Primo Camera, Casanova, Christian Endeavor Societies, Jean Cocteau, The Dain Curse, Chink DormanSmith , race horses,TS. Eliot,Waldo Frank, painters, homosexuals...