You're Invited to the Fiesta

It might be your favorite book you didn't know existed

Let’s start with a mystery. With the exception of my Spanish-speaking and older British readers, or hard-core bibliophiles, it should be a bit of a challenge. (If you know the answer, don’t worry, there’s plenty more surprises waiting below!)

Without scrolling down, can you guess the author of this novel?

Still not sure? What if we look at a little more of the dust jacket flap?

“Cruel, cynical, hopeless”

“Severe economy of comment and a bitter irony of style”

“It is American; it is literature; and it is a first novel by a genius with a future.”

(The last reviewer was right, the author certainly had a future!)

If you haven’t guessed already, you may be surprised to discover that not only have you heard of the author, you may have read the book! The story is heart-wrenching, the British book design is stunning, but even more stunning to me was the discovery that throughout most of the 20th century, British editions of this classic had an entirely different name than American ones:

That’s right. For decades, Americans read The Sun Also Rises, while Europeans read Fiesta. And although Fiesta no longer appears on any contemporary English printings of the novel, it is, as far as I can tell, commonly used for Spanish translations:

At first I didn’t like the title. Fiesta felt…almost silly. Fiesta! Party-time! But then I remembered that when the book came out nearly a century ago, far fewer native English speakers were familiar with Spanish. Many wouldn’t know what fiesta meant. It was foreign, exotic, romantic. As readers of the novel will remember, the fiesta in Pamplona is a key event, and throughout Hemingway choses to keep fiesta in Spanish, rather than translate.

I slowly began to appreciate the virtues of calling it Fiesta. There is, as one of the dust jacket reviewers put it, a “bitter irony” to the word, a festive joyful label for a grim human tragedy.

But then I learned that the reason for the title change wasn’t just aesthetic. There was another crucial difference between the British and American editions.

When British publisher Jonathan Cape released Fiesta in 1927, they left out two epigraphs that appeared in The Sun Also Rises. The first is a reminder that Hemingway was part of a remarkable group of writers and artists living in Paris, including his mentor, Gertrude Stein:

“You are all a lost generation.” -- GERTRUDE STEIN in conversation

The second is from Ecclesiastes, and gives the American edition its title (my emphasis added):

“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever... The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose... The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.... All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.”

I happen to love Ecclesiastes, and in my opinion it’s tragic to print the book without these epigrams. Are we the lost generation? Is every generation lost? (And then there’s the implications of the sun being able to rise, which, without giving the book away, is definitely related to the plot.)

Without caring about books as objects, though, I never would have known about any of this. I discovered Fiesta accidentally, because I like my books to be beautiful. Years ago, at a used book sale, I picked up a British edition of Hemingway’s short story collection Men Without Women. It has some of his best stories, and, I hope you will agree, the design is perfect. The silhouette, the bright pink, the hand-done lettering:

Oh, and there’s something else. The jacket design actually wraps all the way around:

I was hooked. I looked up the British jacket for The Old Man and the Sea. Was it a little over the top? Maybe. But I preferred it to the American one. And again, that wrap-around design!

Next up, The Sun Also Rises. And that’s when I learned about Fiesta!

Here the publisher chose a different approach to the wrap-around style:

And don’t forget that decisions have to be made about the book design under the jacket. In the case of these Hemingways, there are three different decisions. I like the Fiesta one best:

As a book collector, I care about many different things. I care about the content of the books I own — in the case of Hemingway, these are my three favorites of his, and the ones I am most likely to re-read. But I also care about the books as objects. Aesthetic objects. Objects that remind me books existed in time, and not all versions of the same novel end up being the same book.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the first edition American dust jacket on The Sun Also Rises too! If you want an original — not a facsimile — in excellent condition, this beauty at Whitmore Rare Books will set you back $187,500:

But you don’t need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to build a very special collection. For my money? I prefer attending the Fiesta, and the story behind my invitation.

If you happen to like any of the books you saw here, consider a paid subscription! The rest of this post explains how I would go about finding and purchasing these 20th century British editions of Hemingway. As of this writing, I found a nice copy of The Old Man and the Sea featured here for $4 (plus $26 shipping from Australia). But it will probably disappear when a paid subscriber snaps it up! And while I wrote that section, I also made another discovery that genuinely shocked me, a unique copy of Fiesta priced at $40 that’s worth at least $250, probably more.

You’ll also get access to the holiday gift guide, which is filled with extraordinary books for anyone in your life.

Otherwise, please do sign up for a free subscription if you haven’t, and I look forward to sharing more magical books with you at Book Glory…