Ernest Hemingway

I never thought it took extraordinary intelligence to understand and be moved by Hemingway. I'm a lunk who has to read and re-read and re-read Pynchon and David Foster Wallace and William Faulkner passages to get the full force of their writing in my tiny little brain.

Hemingway never took that kind of effort for me, at least.

As far as pretension and reading: I think about something James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem says as he's shaving in the opening of the documentary "Shut Up and Play the Hits" when he's talking about how everyone considers him pretentious for many reasons, including discussing Thomas Pynchon's books.

His theory kind of went: If the pretension leads you to reading the book, then it's justified because you end up reading a great novel. No matter the original reason for reading it. But I think the opposite is true: if the pretension involves not even reading the book, then it's pretty noxious.

The final dozen pages of For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Sun Also Rises for me were surreal moments where I felt transported and understood by the writer. Almost weightless in a way only a couple dozen books can make me feel. I might be in the minority, but I even love The Garden of Eden and its look into gender roles. As much as Hemingway fumbled with writing women, I thought that one got the dynamic right. But I know a lot of people wish it had never been published.

 

I did my master's thesis on Hemingway. I spent a year elbow deep in everything he'd written. I have an entire bookcase about four feet from me filled with books by him and about him. And this ... "The final dozen pages of For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Sun Also Rises for me were surreal moments where I felt transported and understood by the writer. Almost weightless in a way only a couple dozen books can make me feel." ... is one of the best things I've read about him.

 

Pretension is a good word to describe what I was trying to say.

I agree on the endings to those 2 books, too, but especially FWTBT.

It was quite fascinating to watch toward the end of "Blood Diamond" -- one of the great movies of the last 10 years -- when DiCaprio dies near the top of the hill. It verily reminded me of Robert Jordan dying the way he did. DiCaprio may have been a selfish diamond thief but he died a hero by letting father and son meet the copter.

Anyway.

 

One thing I've always had a problem with when it comes to reading: How do you justify reading a second or third book by one author? There are so many authors. I can probably count on one hand the authors from whom I've read more than one book.

I loved The Sun Also Rises, but then I moved on to the next author, the next style, the next set of personal mores and societal views.

I could read a book every two weeks, each by a different author, for the rest of my life and still not have read something by every literary icon.

 

Tangent, but Chapter 14 from Steinbeck's Cannery Row does that for me. It's only a few pages but it's the best chapter of any book I've ever read.

 

I inherited two oil paintings his mother created.

[/all I got]

 

I do like the Fuente Hemingway cigar

 

Interesting thought. I often read everything written by novelists if I choose to read them, usually chronologically so I can see how they develop.

 

You could make the same argument against re-reading books, too.

But here's an argument for that (which our own waterytart has helped me learn to appreciate recently), and which I think also applies to reading multiple titles from the same author:

I have found that my experience as a reader picking up the same book at age 30 that I first read at 15 has been significantly different. I am a different person than I was then, and my interpretation of certain stories, its characters, its messages and — especially — its details and nuances is often very different, too. My worldview has changed; my experiences over time have changed me.

I firmly believe the timing of when you read a book matters, just like everything else in life. Here's an extreme example to illustrate the point: When you pick up an angsty book like "Catcher in the Rye" or "On The Road" or, for me, "This Side of Paradise" at age 15 ... that book hits you in a deep place, or at least as deep as any 15-year-old can be. Pick up those same books for the first time at age 30 and you want to throw the protagonist out of a window by Chapter 5. (Some of you may have wanted to throw them out of the window at age 15, too, but y'all have no souls.)

Here's a more personal example: I read "Eight Men Out" for the first time at age 16 (and I've told that story here before.) It changed my life and directly set me on the professional/career path I'm on now. Would it do the same today? Absolutely not. I pick it up now, having learned so much about the story that I didn't know then, and my experience reading the book is very different.

That said, most books don't need or deserve a second read, and many authors don't, either. But each book you read is a different experience — and each time you read a book is a different experience, too.

You still have to be judicious in which books you read, because your time is valuable and you can't read everything. As I get older, I find myself not finishing books that suck, whereas I might have slogged through them at 15. Fuck that, life's too short to spend a minute more reading bad books.

Read good books, no matter who writes them. And if a couple of those books happen to be by the same author, hey, nothing wrong with that.

 

I had a first edition of Death in the Afternoon that was as impressive for the illustrations as it was for Hemingway's writing. Sold it, though.

I think I've read everything he wrote, mostly as a teen. A couple were assigned, the old man and the marlin and poor Jake Barnes getting his nads blown off. I think we were steered to him because of his economy with words and his ultra-macho attitude (I suppose up to the point he offed himself). Brutal story, but I suppose I like his short story Up in Michigan best:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Three_Stories_and_Ten_Poems/Up_in_Michigan

To be honest, though, I am more of a fan of Mariel Hemingway in Personal Best.

Once I took a woman to Key West. She was ultra-smart and very well-read. We were in a bar and I told her, "Hemingway drank here." She said, "So?" You're either a fan or you aren't.

 

I'm still pissed off at Margot Macomber. Rotten vindictive -- murderous -- whore.

 

I understand the argument, but we're already missing out on so much.

It frays at my nerves to think about how much good shit I'm missing out on already.