Americans were also living in Europe because
the cost of living was cheap, and Spain was probably the cheapest of all. When the man calls the
waitress to order two Anis del Toros, she thinks they are finished and says, "Four
reales." That is four reales for two large glasses of beer. It is hard to figure the
exchange rate between American dollars and Spanish currency in 1927, but according to an article
in Wikipedia the U.S. dollar would apparently have been worth 122.6 pesetas. In other words, a
peseta was worth less than one cent. And a real was worth one-quarter of a peseta (!!!). So it
would seem that Jig and the American are getting two beers for less than the equivalent of one
American penny.
It seems likely that the American is a struggling writer,
like Hemingway himself, and is able to devote his full time to writing only because the cost of
living is so low in Europe. There is also the fact that prohibition is the law of the land in
the U.S. This drove many younger Americans to Europe. Hemingway frequently mentions alcoholic
drinks in his stories and novels (notably in ); it seems as if he is taking a delight in making
his American readers see how they have been deprived from an innocent pleasure by a
sanctimonious minority of provincial voters. The fact that drinking is illegal in the States
would naturally make the cost of bootleg liquor abnormally higher.
No comments:
Post a Comment