Mailer's “Footnote to Death in the Afternoon”

Authors

  • Allen Josephs University of West Florida Author

Keywords:

bullfighting in literature, literary influence , literary rivalry, writer and torero metaphor, masculinity and spectacle, The Bullfight

Abstract

If Norman Mailer, in The Bullfight, is at some level describing himself in Amado Ramírez, El Loco, and therein empathizing with him—then that empathy may explain at once why he wrote the piece and why he included Hemingway in the title. Mailer didn’t understand the corrida as well as Hemingway. Without Hemingway’s knowledge and concentration Mailer was more like El Loco, concentrating on the emotion rather than the physical sequence from which it arose. Even so, he was able to make the same important connection between torero and writer that Hemingway had made.

Author Biography

  • Allen Josephs, University of West Florida

    Allen Josephs is an international authority on Hispanic culture. Past president of the Hemingway Society and Foundation and of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, he is the author of eight books and numerous articles on Hemingway, Lorca, Picasso and Cormac McCarthy. His latest book, Ritual and Sacrifice in the Corrida: The Saga of Cesar Rincon, has won multiple awards. Currently he is researching a book on the human fascination with the bull, as well as a second book on For Whom the Bell Tolls. He is University Research Professor at the University of West Florida where he has taught since 1969.

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Published

2026-03-25

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2010): Literary Warriors

Section

Articles