Product Description

Paris in the twenties: Pernod, parties and expatriate Americans, loose-living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with Brett Ashley, aristocratic and irresistibly beautiful, but with an abandoned, sensuous nature that she cannot change. When the couple drifts to Spain to the dazzle of the fiesta and the heady atmosphere of the bullfight, their affair is strained by new passions, new jealousies, and Jake must finally learn that he will never possess the woman he loves.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2804 in Books
• Published on: 1994-08-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From the Publisher
Powerful, intense, visually magnificent, Fiesta is the novel which established Ernest Hemingway as a writer of genius.

About the Author
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Chicago in 1899 as the son of a doctor and the second of six children. After a stint as an ambulance driver at the Italian front, Hemingway came home to America in 1919, only to return to the battlefield - this time as a reporter on the Greco-Turkish war - in 1922. Resigning from journalism to focus on his writing instead, he moved to Paris where he renewed his earlier friendship with fellow American expatriates such as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Through the years, Hemingway travelled widely and wrote avidly, becoming an internationally recognized literary master of his craft. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. He died in 1961.

Customer Reviews

Hemingway at his best
I have read this novel several times, and believe it to be Hemingway at his best. The prose is typically sparse, and the characters are brought to life as much by what is left unsaid as by the dialogue on the page. Hemingway had the remarkable gift not only of writing effortless prose and dialogue, but of writing in such a way that forces the reader to read in between the lines. There is a lot of subtlety underlying the apparent ingenuousness of this book, and I would urge anyone interested in twentieth century literature to read this essential novel.

Get tight and talk rot.
How can one 'review' Papa? All I can do is give my opinion. I thought this was a wonderful book, its cool and slow and spare prose pulls you into the insouciant and priveliged lives of these characters in the Parisian twenties, leading you, with little action and plenty of dialogue, into the workings of their lives and intricate, and cringe-making, riffs of their personal involvements. After reading this, and I had read Old Man, I am now hooked and reading Hem's entire oeuvre. If you like books which are thrilling, plot-driven, or arrive at a 'point', you may not enjoy this. But I believe Hem is one of the top five writers of the 20thC, so I would find it difficult to believe anyone who didn't enjoy this work of his. It is a wonderful, enjoyable, and easy to read meandering through a wonderful 'storyteller's' mind and those of the magical people he creates, and furthermore, into humanity and the smallness and greatness of the very essence of being human itself. You'll wanna get tight and talk rot. Rather.

The Space that Separates: The Two Sides of Conflict
Why would anyone want to read a novel about unending drunken revels by emotional cripples who treat each other badly, never-ending love conflicts, getting excited by mayhem at the running of the bulls and during bull fights in Pamplona, and wasted lives? That's the question posed by this book.

The book will not draw too many readers for the subject matter. Why then does the book attract? Part of the appeal has to be the same reason that many people like horror films -- the relief you feel when you realize that your own life does not encounter such dangers can be profound.

Another reason to read this book is to understand the disillusionment of the American expatriates in Europe after World War I. The book is a period piece in this sense. Clearly, Hemingway is Jake and the book is undoubtedly very autobiographical. All first novels have that quality to some degree. Imagining how the author of The Old Man and the Sea started out as Jake was very interesting to me.

To me, however, the primary reason for reading this book is to encounter the remarkable structure that Hemingway built in his plot. He has created several different lenses through which we can explore the role of conflict and separation in our lives. Each lens turns out to be looking at the same object, and it is only by slowly focusing each of the lenses that we are able to see that object more clearly.

The central figure in the book is Brett, Lady Ashley, who enchants almost every man she meets, and who disengages from intimate relations with each one after permanently entangling him emotionally. That leaves a string of wounded suitors in her wake, including Jake. Things get tough when several of them join her and her fiance in Pamplona for the running of the bulls. The symmetry in the book becomes more obvious during a fishing trip that Jake takes without Brett. The fish are lured by artificial flies more successfully than with real worms. Brett's exotic appeal draws men in like flies, much more than the attractions of women who want to make an emotional commitment.

The symmetry becomes masterful when we reach the bull fights. Brett and the matador are inevitably attracted, for they are the same. They both play with their opponents (men and bulls) by flirting and using their capes, weaken the opponents in the engagement, and bring the opponents down (through sexual entrancement and slaughter). Hemingway makes this abundantly clear by repeatedly describing the bull's death as when the matador and the bull become one. One pet name for Brett is Circe, to help complete the picture.

The closer the matador comes to the bull's horns (or Brett to making a commitment), the better the sport for the spectators and the greater the self-esteem for the matador (and Brett).

I do not recall a novel that does such an excellent job of using multiple story lines to reinforce the book's main point, in this case that alienation transcends even closeness. Much as you will dislike some of the characters, the unnecessary racial and ethnic slurs, the savageness, and the emotional scenes, you will probably find the characters to ring true. You will also admire the misguided optimism and honest commitment of Jake as he fulfills his love for Brett by procuring men for her and then rescuing her when the next engagement is all over. Jake's love is that noble sacrifice that we all admire in lovers.

And that's the beautiful part of the book -- you will find nobility amid the ugliness. The contrast makes the nobility more beautiful.

When you are done reading the book, examine your own life and see where you draw back from closeness. Then, ask yourself why you do, and what it costs you and others. Next, consider what closeness can bring from continuing relationships.

Find beauty wherever you look!