Entertainment For Lively Minds
My Sunday with Hemingway
Posted by Ola Claesson on 23 May 2010 - 3:54pm.
I´ve spent most of the day reading A Farewell To Arms outdoors. Even if it left me cold, it wasn´t out of boredom (or the weather). I did enjoy the experience.
His myth and legend tend to overshadow the fact that he could really write. Next stop will have to be Death In The Afternoon.
Haven´t got a question as such, just wanted to share. :)
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On a hot afternoon
you should be reading Islands in The Stream; the heat will make the marlin fishing chapter even more intense.
I should be reading that, yes. Thanks!
Fishing is one of my favourite past times, even if small Swedish lakes perhaps don´t compare with Cuba. You hardly ever run into marlin.
Hemingway
is a quite brilliant writer. Probably my favourite along with Fitzgerald, Melville, Mark Twain and PG Wodehouse.
You're right in saying the myth oversahdows the writing which is full of a tenderness and subtlety that belie the macho image of legend.
He has a spare simple style that seems easy to emulate until you try. Despite its minimal flourish it possesses substantial depth.
The short stories which include the brilliant The Snows of Kilimanjaro are a good way in for others tempted to sample something Ernest.
Forget the image, just read the texts.
'The Old Man and the Sea' is probably...
my favourite book. So short, yet is says so much.
I've used that book...
...so many times as a lesson in economy when teaching A Level English students how to string a sentence together.
Sadly, the GCSE seems to reward floridity, so it's hard to break them of the habit of going syllabically mental when they're trying to impress.
What a coincidence!
Ifinished reading For Whom The Bell Tolls at almost exactly the time you posted this blog.
The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories
As an huge Hemingway 'fan', and reader of his work all my life, may I suggest the anthology, The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories as the next best place to go? "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" and "The Killers" are superlative short fiction.
But what about the dialogue?
Enjoyed parts of Farewell to Arms but struggled to get past the dialogue when it came to Catherine - had Hemingway actually met any women (or chaps as we're now known)?
Read it on holiday in Lake Maggiore (I've got a thing about reading fiction set in the place I'm on hols) but can't say the setting improved the dialogue.
He was married, so maybe he had met women (but point taken)
Well, maybe creating characters wasn´t his strength. The women used to be very dramatic or distanced and the men used to be distanced.
The dialouge is a bit:
- Oh, but do you love me?
- Yes, I do! I do!
- Me too! Me too!
- Oh yes! Oh yes!
- Yeeeeeeees!
- Tell me you love!
- I love you! Do you love me?
- I do! Yes, I do!
Being that everything else is very subtle this gets a bit silly occasionally.
This portrait of Hemingway by Yousuf Karsh...
is one of my all time favourite photographs. Masterful.
That´s quite a brutal comb-over
I hadn´t noticed before. But I could really use that sweater today.