Life Magazine Publishes 'The Dangerous Summer'

The book charts the rise of Antonio Ordóñez (the son of Cayetano Ordóñez, whose exploits in the bull ring and fighting technique Hemingway had written about in The Sun Also Rises) across a season of bullfights during 1959.

During a fight on May 13 in Aranjuez, Ordóñez is badly gored, but demonstrates his potential by remaining in the ring and killing the bull, a performance rewarded by trophies of both the bulls ears, its tail and a hoof.

In 1959 Life magazine contracted with Hemingway to write a short article about the series of mano y mano bullfights between Antonio Ordonez and Louis Miguel Dominguin, two of Spain’s finest matadors. Hemingway spent the summer of 1959 travelling with the bullfighters to gather material for the article. When he began writing the story however, it quickly grew to some 120,000 words, words that Hemingway couldn’t edit into short form. He asked his friend A. E. Hotchner to help (something he would have never considered in his prime) and together they succeeded in cutting it down to 65,000 words. Despite reservations about the article’s length the magazine published the article as "The Dangerous Summer" in three installments in 1960. This was the last work that Hemingway would see published in his lifetime.