Pootoogook - The Monday Morning Memo

“Old lady: You are always wishing people good luck and telling them about their mistakes and it seems to me you criticize them very meanly. How is it, young man, that you talk so much and write so long about these bullfights and yet are not a bullfighter yourself? Why did you not take up this profession if you liked it so much and think you know so much about it?

Madame, I tried it in its simplest phases but without success. I was too old, too heavy and too awkward. Also, my figure was the wrong shape, being thick in all the places where it should be lithe and in the ring I served as little else than target or punching dummy for the bulls.

Old lady: Did they not wound you in horrible fashion? Why are you alive today?

Madame, the tips of their horns were covered or blunted or I should have been opened up like a sewing basket.

Old lady: So you fought bulls with covered horns. I had thought better of you.

Fought is an exaggeration, Madame. I did not fight them but was merely tossed about.

Old lady: Did you ever have experience with bulls with naked horns? Did they not wound you grievously?

I have been in the ring with such bulls and was unwounded though much bruised since when I had compromised myself through awkwardness I would fall onto the bull’s muzzle clinging to his horns as the figure clings in the old picture of the Rock of Ages and with equal passion. This caused great hilarity among the spectators.”

- Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, p. 171-172

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