Firstly, I should mention that I am blogging much less than I would normally. This is because, as I mentioned before, I have just started another job and night classes, so I don't have lots of free time during the day. To top that off, I have no internet access where I am living so the most I can do is prepare posts (like this) and then post them when I get to an office. I anticipate doing some blog reading on this weekend and supposedly Comcast is coming on Tuesday to install a cable line.#

So, with what little time I have, I went to the library and took out the book that I was reading prior to it being burned to a crisp. That book was The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway, and I have just finished it as of last night.#

The book is fiction and purely so, not like Voltaire or Dante, thus I won't give away the story or discuss too much detail on that. I very much enjoyed the book, it was nothing like what I remember Hemingway's writing as, so that was a pleasant surprise. And the premise is entertaining--silly Americans and Brits wasting their time in France and Spain.#

I essentially had two observations that I think are at all worthy of vocalization while reading. #

One, that it is very difficult to see Hemingway in this book. Normally that's a good thing and not surprising when reading a successful and talented writer, but in this case I find it strange because I could imagine Hemingway actually doing all this--seeing as he worked at a newspaper in France, is American, was in the Great War, and covered Spain. The thing is, I can't see him actually being any of the characters. It is almost like he is everyone and no-one, so when the characters disagree or fight it is really fragments of his personality interacting with each other. Of course, this is just based on what I know about Hemingway (little) and my preconceived notions of how he would act or think (probably wrong,) but even with these caveats I think there is something to this idea--simply because of the diversity of character personality and actions with such a tightly restricted cast and a story close to his life.#

Secondly, this book is hilarious. It's not slapstick comedy in a book and it's not wasteful, but it is filled with very funny things being said by all the characters. In addition to this, there are very humorous juxtapositions of events and circumstances that lead the mind down strange corners. I was very surprised that I would laughing out loud while I read it.#

I will now quote one segment that I think is rather exemplary writing, morbid, and strangely curious.#

The setting: We are in Pamplona, Spain during a week long fiesta in which there are bull fights that are very popular. During the running of the bulls, a man is killed and Jake explains about that. Pedro Romero is a popular bull-fighter and Brett is the woman who came with the group to Pamplona.

Later in the day we learned that the man who was killed was named Vicente Girones, and came from near Tafalla. The next day in the paper we read that he was twenty-eight years old, had a farm, a wife, and two children. He had continued to come to the fiesta each year after he was married. The next day his wife came in from Tafalla to be with the body, and the day after there was a service in the chapel of San Fermin, and the coffin was carried to the railway-station by members of the dancing and drinking society of Tafalla. The drums marched ahead, and there was music on the fifes, and behind the men who carried the coffin walked the wife and two children.... Behined them marched all the members of the dancing and drinking societies of Pamplona, Estella, Tafalla, and Sanguesa who could stay over for the funeral. The coffin was loaded into the baggage-car of the train, and the widow and the two children rode, sitting, all three together, in an open third-class railway-carriage. The train started with a jerk, and then ran smoothly, going down grade around the edge of the plateau and out into the fields of grain that blew in the wind on the plain on the way to Tafalla.

The bull who killed Vicente Girones was named Bocanegra, was Number 118 of the bull-breeding establishment of Sanchez Taberno, and was killed by Pedro Romero as the third bull of that same afternoon. His ear was cut by popular acclamation and given to Pedro Romero, who, in turn gave it to Brett, who wrapped it in a handkerchief belonging to myself, and left both ear and handkerchief, along with a number of Muratti cigarette-stubs, shoved far back in the drawer of the bed-table that stood beside her bed in the Hotel Montoya, in Pamplona.

If either of these paragraphs were alone, I don't think I would give it another thought. But because they are together, I am left to wonder why and think more closely about them. This seems to me to suggest two things.

One, compare the death of the man to the death of the bull. The man's death gathers people from four surrounding towns for a few days to get together and mourn and it is a great tragedy. It is such a tragedy that every detail must be preserved and described. Then, when the bull dies, through murder not accident no less, there is a popular motion to desecrate the body by cutting, then his body parts are left shoved in some corner, forgotten.

Second, I am reminded of something that Tony Pierce recently wrote about journalists:

the habit that the NYT and other papers and magazines have of including ages in the descriptions of their subjects is lazy journalism that distorts the story in more cases than adding to them.

who cares that "joe schmoe, 57, owner of Local Icecream Shop" who got robbed tuesday is 57 years old? it's only useful information if joe was 157 or 15, because then it would possibly be the cause of the robbery. and thats why i call the blanket use of ages lazy journalism.

i have great respect for the new york times. far more respect than i have for the la times, my local rag. but not everything they do is perfect.

Basically, the details about the bull's death and ear are obviously and generally seen as pretty inane and pointless. So, by putting this comparison here we are to ask how it is much different than the details related to the man's death.

This is, perhaps, very similar to thought one, except that rather giving primacy to man and thinking that the way the bull was treated was wrong, we are to think that maybe the man was not deserving of such attention. To me, this doesn't mean that death is meaningless and no one should care about death, but all death is pretty bad and mourn or not won't change a thing. The detail that they were the "dancing and drinking societies" seems to be an allusion to the idea that "funerals are for the living" and these people were just getting together for themselves, perhaps to even have a good time.

Also, the ending of the book is just perfect. The last two pages I mean. Oh man.#