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The DANGEROUS SUMMER
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Manufacturer: Scribner
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Publisher: Scribner
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $10.20
You Save: $ 4.80 ( 32% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Scribner
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Publisher: Scribner
Average Customer Rating:
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The DANGEROUS SUMMER Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.5203
EAN: 9780684837895
ISBN: 0684837897
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 240
Publication Date: 1997-12-09
Publisher: Scribner
Studio: Scribner
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.5203
EAN: 9780684837895
ISBN: 0684837897
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 240
Publication Date: 1997-12-09
Publisher: Scribner
Studio: Scribner
Editorial Review of The DANGEROUS SUMMER
The Dangerous Summer is Hemingway's firsthand chronicle of a brutal season of bullfights. In this vivid account, Hemingway captures the exhausting pace and pressure of the season, the camaraderie and pride of the matadors, and the mortal drama as in fight after fight the rival matadors try to outdo each other with ever more daring performances. At the same time Hemingway offers an often complex and deeply personal self-portrait that reveals much about one of the twentieth century's preeminent writers.
Customer Reviews of The DANGEROUS SUMMER
Customer Rating: 
Review Summary: Papa's Final Fiesta
Review: For fans of Ernest Hemingway's 1932 classic account of the art of the bullfight, "Death In The Afternoon", the posthumously published (in 1985) "A Dangerous Summer" would seem a must-read. And they will enjoy it, as will fans of Hemingway and Spain. But passion this time is something readers must bring for themselves.
Based on a two-part Life magazine feature published in 1960, "A Dangerous Summer" marks Hemingway's return to the land of the bullfight after his painful exile following his side's defeat in the Spanish Civil War. At its heart is the real-life tale of two rival matadors, brothers-in-law, who square off mano-a-mano in bullrings across the country to discover for themselves and everyone else which is the great torero of the day.
"Luis Miguel [Dominguin] would consider himself a bigger draw at the gate than Antonio due to his longer fame and service and Antonio [Ordonez] would consider very strongly that he was a better matador than Miguel and would be out to show it every time," Hemingway observes. "It looked very hard on family life and very good for bullfighting. It also looked very dangerous."
That it was, for both men, and for Hemingway too, as he got caught up in the drama of the occasion and a rooting interest in Ordonez that takes over the narrative after a few chapters and never lets go. Advocates of Hemingway as a repressed homosexual get a lot of grist for their viewpoint in Hemingway's heavy man-crush for the dashing young Antonio, but those like me who remember and enjoy the broad sweep of "Death In The Afternoon" will feel a bit claustrophobic at the narrowness of Papa's lens here.
In his windy and self-important introduction to this otherwise thin book, James A. Michener claims Hemingway misrepresented the true situation on the ground that summer of 1959. Ordonez was great, but not so great as Hemingway made him out to be. While Hemingway depicted the bullfight with fresh variety in "Death In The Afternoon", here the words tend to repeat: "beautiful" "classic" and "dangerous" with Ordonez; "disappointing" and "difficult" with Dominguin.
There are still great moments of narrative, though despite what Michener says, they aren't found in accounts of the bullfights themselves. Rather it is Hemingway lighting upon a pitcher of sangria, its glass beaded with moisture from the winds of the Levant, or describing his mad, scenic drives through the country. When he is not involving himself in the matador match, Hemingway offers us amiable companionship, filling in various details with a heartiness that belies his physical and mental illness (he would kill himself less than two years after "the dangerous summer" was over).
But then Hemingway returns to the bullfights, and the sad true state of affairs becomes all too apparent. He simply isn't able to engage the reader or himself, even while presenting himself as a central character, cheering Ordonez on. "We got him!" Hemingway tells his young charge after one successful afternoon. Though he claims friendship with Dominquin, he offers little evidence of this, except once when Ordonez's rival is caught by a horn and Hemingway cradles his head en route to the infirmary.
"What a man Ernesto would be if he could only write," Dominquin says later in his bed. Perhaps he was just making a quip, but it feels like the old matador was onto something. For all its strengths, "The Dangerous Summer" better depicts Ernesto's weaknesses.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Dangerous to the Bitter End.
Review: Have you ever pulled a big, bitter pickle fron a barrel and enjoyed it? Munched fresh garlic gloves and savored them despite the pain? Downed Bloody Marys with 3 times the ordinary dose of pepper, and with tabasco sauce thrown in? If you said yes to all 3, chances are you will greatly enjoy this book.
By the end of his life, it is now clear, Hemingway had developed a loose, jocund, even cheery reportorial writing style as a sort of second mode. He first really loosened up his sentences and paragraphs in this manner in the major novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, then went back to tautness (modified) in Across the River, Old Man and the Sea (straight old stuff), and The Moveable Feast (new high marks in the original style). But this, like the recently published Under Kilamanjaro, is a development of the second mode. Way too many scholarly bios and criticism, early after EH's death and to date, have just called the later writing a slackening and a self-charicature, as if the most careful writer of modern English took a 15 year vacation. A lot of this kind of talk was and remains resentment, of course, against the stature of the writing and the man's public clowning. But to come to this close to final product with such misconceptions is a big mistake.
EH once personified Nostalgia as a beautiful woman, and if the opener here doesn't move you -- EH returning to his beloved Spain after years away -- you ought to check your birth record and be sure you were born on this good earth. After the drive in, EH seemingly opens up the second relaxed mode big time, fun and adventures on the road chasing down a mano a mano between the 2 biggest bullfight rivals of the day. There are gags and funny business and personal trivia, even, that the earlier writer avoided, for sure, but boy, don't get suckered into those traps. The old man with the pen is menacing as ever, and in a whole new way. Just when you're set up like a bowling pin he takes you with a sucker punch -- an absolutely deadpan observation about Dominquin's statue of himself in his own house, the way a spooky wind rises at dusk in a vagrant bullring, spelling menace. The jolts are as real, however different, from what hits you in In Our Time. And they have a heavy gravity and patina of sadness that only an old fellow can deliver. Indeed, the effects can be quite emotionally draining in their potent truth.
The estate kept putting out these edited versions, buying the scholars' line, poor Miss Mary not wanting to impair "the reputation." Well, ladies and gentlemen, its intact. Dear Scribners or whoever you are now, please publish the whole ball of wax or let Kent State do it, the long manuscript that EH told his friends was after "Proustian effects." This book, a calculated risk to "the reputation," pays off quite well and stands up easily to repeated reading. EH's inborn talents were in the acuity of his eye and his ear (he had to learn writing the hard way) and if the finale found him struggling with sentences once more, the eye and the ear had only magnificently and spookily ripened.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: One for the summer reading list..
Review: What was Dangerous about this summer? Two matadors, related by marriage, entered the ring to establish himself as the greatest of Spain's matadors and, in so doing, each performed an increasingly risky set of moves. Hemingway fretted over both, but he could not choose to ignore the display. It was, he said, tragic to watch the two of them, and tragic not to watch. There is precious little introspection in these pages. Still, I read with envy, wishing I could have been along for the ride. This book is now as much history as literature. The New York Times reported recently that the Madrid hotel favored by Matadors will soon be demolished to make way for a new, Hard Rock Cafe Hotel. And, the bullfight itself, for any number of reasons, is a ghost of what it once was, generating revenue of around $1 billion dollars per year from approximately 17,000 contests. I doubt the Matador will disappear anytime soon, but the era covered in The Dangerous Summer is long past. What Hemingway left us is the active participant's guide to another time and place.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Bullfighting Primer
Review: The Dangerous Summer is an easy read (I understand a lot of EH's writing was removed before publication). In addition to introducing the reader to bullfighting and the life of a bullfighter, it offers a minor travelogue. It includes brief references to cities they visited and bull rings where the fights were held; as well as hotels where they stayed and restaurants where they ate.
Written at age 60 during the summer of 1959 (EH describes his birthday celebration herein - complete with photos), this book is EH's return visit to bullfighting. Death in the Afternoon was his first, which I have not read. In this book, EH portrays himself as a close companion and confidant to a couple of famous bullfighters. Fairly good descriptions of bulls, what to look for during the fight, crowd reactions, gorings and wounds...and good portraits of what it is like to be a bullfighter.
The book includes Glossary of bullfighting terms - both in James A. Michener's lengthy intro and at the end.
One revealing paragraph is the first one in Chapter 11 where EH describes his feelings toward people.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Enjoyed it..
Review: I am not one for bull fighthing but Hemingway, as always puts things in such wonderful words. I felt, I was a fan of the sport. Very wonderful book about his friendship with a bull fighter, Papa does a wonderful job explaining to someone whom knows nothing about bullfighting and allowing us to see it through his eyes.
Review Summary: Papa's Final Fiesta
Review: For fans of Ernest Hemingway's 1932 classic account of the art of the bullfight, "Death In The Afternoon", the posthumously published (in 1985) "A Dangerous Summer" would seem a must-read. And they will enjoy it, as will fans of Hemingway and Spain. But passion this time is something readers must bring for themselves.
Based on a two-part Life magazine feature published in 1960, "A Dangerous Summer" marks Hemingway's return to the land of the bullfight after his painful exile following his side's defeat in the Spanish Civil War. At its heart is the real-life tale of two rival matadors, brothers-in-law, who square off mano-a-mano in bullrings across the country to discover for themselves and everyone else which is the great torero of the day.
"Luis Miguel [Dominguin] would consider himself a bigger draw at the gate than Antonio due to his longer fame and service and Antonio [Ordonez] would consider very strongly that he was a better matador than Miguel and would be out to show it every time," Hemingway observes. "It looked very hard on family life and very good for bullfighting. It also looked very dangerous."
That it was, for both men, and for Hemingway too, as he got caught up in the drama of the occasion and a rooting interest in Ordonez that takes over the narrative after a few chapters and never lets go. Advocates of Hemingway as a repressed homosexual get a lot of grist for their viewpoint in Hemingway's heavy man-crush for the dashing young Antonio, but those like me who remember and enjoy the broad sweep of "Death In The Afternoon" will feel a bit claustrophobic at the narrowness of Papa's lens here.
In his windy and self-important introduction to this otherwise thin book, James A. Michener claims Hemingway misrepresented the true situation on the ground that summer of 1959. Ordonez was great, but not so great as Hemingway made him out to be. While Hemingway depicted the bullfight with fresh variety in "Death In The Afternoon", here the words tend to repeat: "beautiful" "classic" and "dangerous" with Ordonez; "disappointing" and "difficult" with Dominguin.
There are still great moments of narrative, though despite what Michener says, they aren't found in accounts of the bullfights themselves. Rather it is Hemingway lighting upon a pitcher of sangria, its glass beaded with moisture from the winds of the Levant, or describing his mad, scenic drives through the country. When he is not involving himself in the matador match, Hemingway offers us amiable companionship, filling in various details with a heartiness that belies his physical and mental illness (he would kill himself less than two years after "the dangerous summer" was over).
But then Hemingway returns to the bullfights, and the sad true state of affairs becomes all too apparent. He simply isn't able to engage the reader or himself, even while presenting himself as a central character, cheering Ordonez on. "We got him!" Hemingway tells his young charge after one successful afternoon. Though he claims friendship with Dominquin, he offers little evidence of this, except once when Ordonez's rival is caught by a horn and Hemingway cradles his head en route to the infirmary.
"What a man Ernesto would be if he could only write," Dominquin says later in his bed. Perhaps he was just making a quip, but it feels like the old matador was onto something. For all its strengths, "The Dangerous Summer" better depicts Ernesto's weaknesses.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Dangerous to the Bitter End.
Review: Have you ever pulled a big, bitter pickle fron a barrel and enjoyed it? Munched fresh garlic gloves and savored them despite the pain? Downed Bloody Marys with 3 times the ordinary dose of pepper, and with tabasco sauce thrown in? If you said yes to all 3, chances are you will greatly enjoy this book.
By the end of his life, it is now clear, Hemingway had developed a loose, jocund, even cheery reportorial writing style as a sort of second mode. He first really loosened up his sentences and paragraphs in this manner in the major novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, then went back to tautness (modified) in Across the River, Old Man and the Sea (straight old stuff), and The Moveable Feast (new high marks in the original style). But this, like the recently published Under Kilamanjaro, is a development of the second mode. Way too many scholarly bios and criticism, early after EH's death and to date, have just called the later writing a slackening and a self-charicature, as if the most careful writer of modern English took a 15 year vacation. A lot of this kind of talk was and remains resentment, of course, against the stature of the writing and the man's public clowning. But to come to this close to final product with such misconceptions is a big mistake.
EH once personified Nostalgia as a beautiful woman, and if the opener here doesn't move you -- EH returning to his beloved Spain after years away -- you ought to check your birth record and be sure you were born on this good earth. After the drive in, EH seemingly opens up the second relaxed mode big time, fun and adventures on the road chasing down a mano a mano between the 2 biggest bullfight rivals of the day. There are gags and funny business and personal trivia, even, that the earlier writer avoided, for sure, but boy, don't get suckered into those traps. The old man with the pen is menacing as ever, and in a whole new way. Just when you're set up like a bowling pin he takes you with a sucker punch -- an absolutely deadpan observation about Dominquin's statue of himself in his own house, the way a spooky wind rises at dusk in a vagrant bullring, spelling menace. The jolts are as real, however different, from what hits you in In Our Time. And they have a heavy gravity and patina of sadness that only an old fellow can deliver. Indeed, the effects can be quite emotionally draining in their potent truth.
The estate kept putting out these edited versions, buying the scholars' line, poor Miss Mary not wanting to impair "the reputation." Well, ladies and gentlemen, its intact. Dear Scribners or whoever you are now, please publish the whole ball of wax or let Kent State do it, the long manuscript that EH told his friends was after "Proustian effects." This book, a calculated risk to "the reputation," pays off quite well and stands up easily to repeated reading. EH's inborn talents were in the acuity of his eye and his ear (he had to learn writing the hard way) and if the finale found him struggling with sentences once more, the eye and the ear had only magnificently and spookily ripened.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: One for the summer reading list..
Review: What was Dangerous about this summer? Two matadors, related by marriage, entered the ring to establish himself as the greatest of Spain's matadors and, in so doing, each performed an increasingly risky set of moves. Hemingway fretted over both, but he could not choose to ignore the display. It was, he said, tragic to watch the two of them, and tragic not to watch. There is precious little introspection in these pages. Still, I read with envy, wishing I could have been along for the ride. This book is now as much history as literature. The New York Times reported recently that the Madrid hotel favored by Matadors will soon be demolished to make way for a new, Hard Rock Cafe Hotel. And, the bullfight itself, for any number of reasons, is a ghost of what it once was, generating revenue of around $1 billion dollars per year from approximately 17,000 contests. I doubt the Matador will disappear anytime soon, but the era covered in The Dangerous Summer is long past. What Hemingway left us is the active participant's guide to another time and place.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Bullfighting Primer
Review: The Dangerous Summer is an easy read (I understand a lot of EH's writing was removed before publication). In addition to introducing the reader to bullfighting and the life of a bullfighter, it offers a minor travelogue. It includes brief references to cities they visited and bull rings where the fights were held; as well as hotels where they stayed and restaurants where they ate.
Written at age 60 during the summer of 1959 (EH describes his birthday celebration herein - complete with photos), this book is EH's return visit to bullfighting. Death in the Afternoon was his first, which I have not read. In this book, EH portrays himself as a close companion and confidant to a couple of famous bullfighters. Fairly good descriptions of bulls, what to look for during the fight, crowd reactions, gorings and wounds...and good portraits of what it is like to be a bullfighter.
The book includes Glossary of bullfighting terms - both in James A. Michener's lengthy intro and at the end.
One revealing paragraph is the first one in Chapter 11 where EH describes his feelings toward people.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Enjoyed it..
Review: I am not one for bull fighthing but Hemingway, as always puts things in such wonderful words. I felt, I was a fan of the sport. Very wonderful book about his friendship with a bull fighter, Papa does a wonderful job explaining to someone whom knows nothing about bullfighting and allowing us to see it through his eyes.