Ever since I moved into my current home about a year and a half ago, I've been meaning to go to the Ernest Hemingway museum that's on my block. My excuse for not going was that I hadn't read any Hemingway since high school. Despite all my best intentions to read some more of his stuff, it just never happened. Then, on the vacation mentioned in my last post, we went to the Florida Keys. Although we did not stay in Key West, we spent a fair amount of time there wandering around Old Town and looking at all the pretty. Of course we stopped at the Hemingway museum down there which is the house Hemingway spent his winters in in the 1930s. The guy who sold us our tickets was doing his usual friendly, asking where we were from and when we told him he asked if we had been to our Hemingway museum. It made me feel guilty so now I'm resolved to go ... someday.
Anyway, I did actually read another one of his books, which is a good start. I don't really have any interest in reading any of his books about hunting in Africa or fishing or bull fighting but I did enjoy A Farewell to Arms when I read it in high school, so I chose something which sounded similar. I bought this in the bookshop because 1) I love buying books and I was on vacation so why not? and 2) if I bought the book, I would have to read it. Yes, I could always get it at the library for free, but I've had that option for the past year and a half and it's clearly not getting me anywhere.
So, after all that, I did really like this book. It definitely took some getting used to because his writing style is so different from what I've come to expect of modern writers. One thing that stayed the same though, is Hemingway's strict adherence to the he said/she said rule. I don't think he ever used any other verbs when he could have used "said." I definitely think that there's something to be said for stripping prose down to his barest bones, but personally, it left me feeling kind of disconnected from all of the characters. Yes, there was emotion and the dialogue by itself was enough to tell me that the particular emotion or the tone was there, but it wasn't enough to make me feel it.
That probably had something to do with why I couldn't buy into the love story. The entire novel takes place in the span of about three days and in that time these two meet, fall in love, have a lot of sex, barely even talk to each other, and then they part ways. I also found it very hard to have any respect at all for Maria. Her whole world was comprised of taking care of her man and making her man happy. She literally had no other interests. It was revolting.
That being said, I really liked the rest of the story. It was a very interesting commentary on war and the things that people tell themselves to get through it. There was a great contrast between the guerrilla fighters behind enemy lines and the officers (some of whom are literally insane) and the careless manner in which they send their soldiers out to fight. The main character, Robert Jordan, has a bad feeling about the whole mission from the very beginning. But orders are orders so he tells himself that this mission is necessary to win the war in order to get himself through it.
Hemingway also does stream-of-conciousness very well. Many pages are taken up by the main character's internal debate and it is written in such a way as to be very believable. It reminded me of what goes on in my own head when I catch my mind wandering. Then again, maybe I'm just crazy in the same way that Hemingway was crazy. In which case I'm screwed.
No comments:
Post a Comment