Warning: Spoiler.

Lately I've found myself engrossed in Hemmingway's The Sun Also Rises. When I say engrossed, I really mean that I've been grabbing it off the back-room shelf to entertain during slow days at work in the writing center. As my first serious encounter with Hemmingway, I found myself pleased with the accessibility and authenticity of his characters thus far.

However.

Last week, as I sat at the elitist "tutor table"--designed especially for us haut monde who know the difference between affect and effect--a co-worker (whose name will go unmentioned in order to protect him from possible slander and/or hate crimes) set out to be the cause of my undoing:

Noticing the book laying next to me on the table, "Oh, you're reading Hemmingway?" he coyly lured me into seemingly innocent conversation. "Have you read much by him?"

"No, this is actually my first." I was naive and unsuspecting.

"This is actually the only one I haven't read by him. Isn't it the one about Brett Ashley? She's the girl, right?"

"Yeah, she's the girl." I was impressed that he knew the character's full name. He must really like Hemmingway.

"And the guy she's in love with, his name is Jacob, isn't it?

Spot on. I could feel a little vortex of excitement welling within as I realized we really were on the same page; I always get this way when discussing books.

"And they can't be together because he lost his reproductive organ in war?"

The vortex seized and collapsed in upon itself, and me.

Crushed:

"I...haven't gotten to that part, yet." And all the intrigue of the book that kept me reading seemed to reveal itself in the undeniable truth of his words.

Blast.

However, not all is lost. Now I find myself reading in hopes of eventually getting to the scene in which that ever-critical bit of information is revealed. Hemmingway has managed to do it all well enough that merely knowing what happens is insufficient--I must see how.

***

Also: As a byproduct of reading, I have discovered that the word toro literally means "bull" in Spanish. How disappointing. As a friend of mine cleverly pointed out, the bullfighter's call "Toro! Toro!" is not unlike America's own disparaging "Hey batter batter!"