For Whom the Bell Tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Ernest Hemingway
read: circa 2007
Guardian 1000 Novels

Like George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia,  For Whom the Bell Tolls  is interesting for the devotion that foreigners have to the Spaniard's cause and how much they are willing to sacrifice.  Hemingway paints that willingness to sacrifice as an ideal.  The characters in the novel, particularly the protagonist Robert Jordan, have an unwavering commitment to their cause to the point of sacrificing everything.  They also have many characteristics we look for in a war hero: courage, determination, honor, an understanding of what must be done and how to do it.  But For Whom the Bell Tolls is not a pro-war novel.  Hemingway doesn't shy away from the horrors of war; even the townsfolk throwing out their corrupt former rulers do so with a sickening bloodlust.  So it is not that war brings out the best in Jordan, it is that he is so pure in his intentions and laser-focused in his commitment that he is willing to wage war, willing to endure and participate in it, willing even to lead men into battle and plan missions, even when he is convinced it will lead to his own death.

A Farewell to Arms

A Farewell to Arms
by Ernest Hemingway
read: circa 2006
Modern Library #74, Guardian 1000 Novels

When I took an English class in college, I was supposed to read a lot of books.  I only read four, already reviewed here, but years later I went back and read a few more.  This is one.

I didn't like A Farewell to Arms as much as The Sun Also Rises, which is kind of praising by faint damnation.  Still, the central emotional core of the story - the relationship between Frederic Henry and nurse Catherine Barkley - doesn't quite ring true.  In the three Hemingway books I've read, I don't think any of the romantic relationships are entirely convincing, and story suffers to the extent to which it relies on identifying with that feeling of love.  (If I were to levy a specific criticism it would be that the characters seem to hop into sex without any development of a relationship and barely any conversation beforehand.  Certainly some relationships start that way.  I suspect that if Hemingway had not been confined by the taboos against more vivid descriptions of copulation he might have added detail that would have made the romances more convincing.  But I don't think it's a coincidence that the relationship between Jake and Brett in The Sun Also Rises, where consummation is physically impossible, is arguably his most fully-realized.)

Also, I don't think pregnant women should drink that much.

But the last paragraph of the book is outstanding.

The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
read: circa 2005
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #45

Hemingway loved boxing, and I think his writing mimics that sport.  He jabs at you with terse, almost pulp-dialogue, dances around with poetic descriptions of scenery, and then out of nowhere he lands a haymaker that staggers you.

She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes.  They would look on and on after everyone else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking.  She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things.

I don't know if there's been a better paragraph written in the English language.