Posted on 01/08/2007 5:47:50 PM PST by Sam Cree
"Some of the Hemingway myth busters were guilty of myth making, if I recall."
That's news to me.
But Hemingway's career got launched on a lot of (to be charitable) exaggeration.
That and marrying older women for money.
Funny though, like so many, once he got his own wealth he started marrying younger and poorer women.
Being an avid X-country skier, I loved Cross Country Snow.
Also, I remember very well the Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.
I'll have to go back and read some more shorties soon.
I read one biography years ago. He was a busy man, wrestled with some demons and still lived a large life, as they say.
He had a dark and stormy past.
He was a tedious writer, a pedantic bore hacking away at both novelty and description, but an icon of celebrity itself, a beautiful vacuum.
Lordy, that is a sad critique. If you want tedious, try Joyce or Fitzgerald or Steinbeck.
I'm convinced that's why he took the Ketchum Exit. That, and the well had gone dry.
Joyce is inchoate; Fitzgerald is constipated and Steinbeck is numbly enraptured.
Liked the Cannery Row pictures, though - especially after living there.
Well, I didn't want to rain on this thread, but I tend to agree with you. I think one of the unintentionally funniest lines in all of literature is that bit in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" about the earth moving.
I actually "discovered" his work while wandering through my local public library looking for something interesting. I picked up 'The Green Hills of Africa' and 'To Have and Have Not' mostly because I love hunting and Bogart movies. I have gone on to read many of his other works. He is now one of my favorite authors.
He certainly lived an interesting life. I would love to read more about him.
I like the early Joyce. Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist. Stephen Daedalus is not a likeable character, but it's got some great scenes in it. And I think "The Dead" is brilliant.
Once or twice through Ulysses was enough.
I don't follow this one. The mercury poisoning of fish is associated with poor industrial practice of disposing of specific industrial waste which happened to have high levels of mercurial compounds,..which are later ingested by fish, and if those fish are in an area of heavy fishing, then the consumption of the mercury laden fish results in a cumulative absorption of mercury in the human or mercury poisoning.
This was highlighted about the same time some villagers in Japan consumed the equivalent of about a kilogram of dioxin/PCPs with similar effects back in the 70s when they cooked only with the equivalent of motor oil.
Just because a fish comes from the ocean doesn't mean it's poisoned with mercury or mercurial compounds. Nor does it mean if somebody eats a steady diet of fish they will have any ill effects from mercury poisoning. Some fish might have more propensity of storing mercury compounds in their bodies, but a steady diet of fish isn't unnatural.
If it were, all Cajuns would end up either like David Duke or That Blanco character,........well, then again,...nevermind.
I enjoyed immensely the movie with Spencer Tracy where he voiced over the stark, stiff, cold slashes of light and shadow that filled the screen as he wrestled the massive fish alongside, lashed himself and the fish, boat and all and, with dogged determination and against all odds, fought off the shark that had only destruction on its mind, the Old Man pushed ever harder and more sternly against the Sea until finally, stumbling ashore with the tide, he crawled to his shack where he slept the night and day away while the villagers stood in awe at the bony hulk of what must have been the biggest fish ever caught by the oldest man in that sea.
I craved a Pepsi.
Novelty only works once; each generation.
FWIW, I think it's a bore, but you're right, it was written late, a lot of people like it, and it's certainly better than Across the River.
I wonder if he is in Hell for what he did to himself. I hope not.
I'm not exactly a Hemingway expert, but I do see him as a tragic figure. At some point I read the Carlos Baker autobiography, which was fascinating, but also showed details of his life that probably explain a lot. Like his mother having made him wear a dress a a child, his father's suicide, and his mental and physical decline later in his life. And lots of other stuff that I've forgotten the specifics of.
'Course, you have to probably enjoy Hemignway's writing at some level, as I do, to want to go to the trouble of reading an autobiography. I may agree that his writing was flawed, and probably even flawed in the ways you guys describe, but I still see it as great. It reaches me. OTOH, I'm not sure I'd like the guy if I met him.
fishing ping
Well, at least we agree on some things....I think.
I re-read it several times in HS. Hemingway is appealing to those who think similarly to his main characters. If his characters seem distant to you, then its not going to be your cup of tea, even if you like his style of prose.
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