As you would expect with Ken Burns, it was extremely well done and very engaging to watch. I have read quite a bit of Hemingway mainly in my university days. It was interesting to be reinroduced to Edna O'Brien as I have read quite a bit of her fiction in the past and now reading her memoir borrowed from the library on my Kobo. John McCain was so enthusiastic. It was really quite an experience to hear him.
"This is partly a function of the commentators assembled. Biographers and literary historians abound, but the most enthusiastic advocate for Hemingway’s 1940 novel of the Spanish Civil War, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” is the late Sen. John McCain, who modeled himself on the novel’s hero, Robert Jordan. The fiction writers who appear — among them Tobias Wolff, Mario Vargas Llosa, Edna O’Brien and Abraham Verghese — are somber and sometimes ambivalent about Hemingway’s work."
I'm quite sure I didn't read "Death in the Afternoon" which is about the art and beauty of bullfighting. That would not have appealed to me because of the subject and also that it was non-fiction. In 1972, we went to a bullfight when we were in Spain. I would never go to one again. but it was a fascinating experience. This very cruel spectacle taking place with families and little girls in fancy dresses in the audience and the obvious enthusiasm and exciitement for the spectacle. The European Union allows it to continue because it is an important aspect of Spanish culture although its popularity is declining in Spain. The EU is very big on fair treatment of animals and only free range eggs and chickens are allowed and pigs have to be given special toys that engage their intelligence.
