A Moveable Feast – Ernest Hemingway

Me at Shakespeare and Company, Paris

A Moveable Feast is Hemingway’s memoir of his early days in Paris and his friendships with literary figures such as Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald.  It presents a romantic image of a starving artist, unable to afford wood for heating, gambling on horse racing to escape the bread line, but working everyday with great dedication to perfect his craft.

Hemingway’s portrayal of his first wife, Hadley, is full of affection and regret.  “[W]e were very poor and very happy”.  This contrasts with how he depicts his more famous relationships.  His Stein is a semi-tyrannical gossip lacking discipline towards her work.  Scott Fitzegerald was a neurotic alcoholic.  Zelda Fitzgerald was a manipulative and promiscuous harpy.  Only Ezra Pound completely escapes his vitriol.  The book is both a cautionary tale on the trappings of riches and success, and a surprisingly bitchy tell-all.

Indian Camp – Ernest Hemingway

Describe it

The first Nick Adams short story from In Our Time, in which Nick’s father, a doctor, takes him to an Indian camp to see a complicated birth.  Described by one critic as the “master key” to Hemingway’s writing.

What I loved

It all rings true.  One of my favourite Hemingway quotes from The Green Hills of Africa goes:

“First, there must be talent, much talent. Talent such as Kipling had. Then there must be discipline. The discipline of Flaubert. Then there must be the conception of what it can be and absolute conscience as unchanging as the standard meter in Paris, to prevent faking. Then the writer must be intelligent and disinterested and above all he must survive.”

Perhaps the most striking word in this quote is “disinterested”, which seems a strange trait to encourage in writers.  By this, I believe that Hemingway meant that a good writer must have the ability to take a step back and observe life, dispassionately, unblinkered by dogma or fear, never turning away from notions that society deems unacceptable.

In Indian Camp, Hemingway’s commitment to truthfulness can be seen in his exploration of masculinity, one of his chief preoccupations. 

Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway [Round 2!]

Describe it

In its story of the idle, hedonistic elite, it expresses the anxieties of the modern age – the passing of the old world, the new roles of the sexes, and man’s loss of faith in God, in ideals, in himself. Read it.

What I loved

The spare beauty and vigour of Hemingway’s prose. The strength of an active sentence, the power of that perfect verb.

It made me want to dance and drink whisky in Paris, and fish and drink wine chilled in a mountain stream in the mountains of Spain, and see a bullfight and drink from a wine skin in Pamploma. To say damn this and damn that, and “What a lot of rot” and “To hell with you, Lady Ashley.”

Farewell, My Lovely – Raymond Chandler

Near the end of Farewell, My Lovely, a beautiful woman gazes up at Chandler’s legendary shamus, Phillip Marlowe, and says:

“’You’re so marvellous… So brave, so determined, and you work for so little money.  Everybody bats you over the head and chokes you and smacks your jaw and fills you with morphine, but you just keep right on hitting between tackle and end until they’re all worn out.  What makes you so wonderful?’”

It’s a question that you could ask not only about the prototypical hard-boiled detective, but about the author himself.  What is it that elevates both the character and the writer into a league of their own?

Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut

There are a hell of alot of interesting things going on in Breakfast of Champions: a distinctive authorial style that challenges fictional conventions, insightful social commentary, and an exploration of the relationship between fiction and determinism.  But because all these ideas are held together by a weak plot, the whole ends up being less than the parts.

The plot revolves around a science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout, who has “doodley-squat”, and a Pontiac dealer, Dwayne Hoover, who is “fabulously well-to-do”.  We are told that, in the future, the American Academy of Arts and Science will recognise Kilgore Trout as a great man for both his writing and his often hilarious insights, such as this:

“…we can build an unselfish society by devoting to unselfishness the frenzy we once devoted to gold and underpants.”

In the time period covered by the book, however, no one has heard of Kilgore trout, and his stories have only been published in porno magazines.  He’s surprised, then, when he is invited to speak at the Midlands Arts festival by someone who thinks that he’s written the greatest novel in the English language.

Meanwhile, bad chemicals in Dwayne Hoover’s head are sending him insane.   When he hears Kilgore Trout read one of his stories at the Arts Festival, it gives shape to his madness and he goes on a homicidal rampage.

Green Hills of Africa – Ernest Hemingway

Green Hills of Africa has aged as gracefully as its diabetic, alcoholic, suicidal author did.  Firstly, it’s all about big game hunting: Hemingway and his wife and his mates tramp around Africa blowing away lions, rhinos, cheetahs and anything else that moves, presumably so the animal’s dismembered body parts can make a nice conversation piece in their living rooms.

Secondly, it’s all about manly men doing manly men things, with the only significant female character being Hemingway’s wife, Pauline Marie Pfeiffer, referred to as P.O.M. (don’t ask me to explain the acronym).  And while she is tenacious – tenacious enough, in fact, to make old Papa liken her to a “terrier”, which she understandably objects to – she is usually relegated to the role of cheer squad in Hemingway’s war against African Bambi’s mother.

And thirdly, Hemingway’s use of native trackers and porters to carry his trophies and eskies of beer has more than a whiff of colonialism and is the kind of unequal economic relationship that makes people very, very uncomfortable nowadays.

But to hell with all of that.  Green Hills of Africa proves that a good author can make any subject interesting, even one that you previously had an aversion to.  It’s also a memoir, meaning that it’s full of insights into man himself that Hemingway tragics like me can slaver over.

Freedom – Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom was one of the most critically acclaimed novels of 2010, lauded as a potential Great American Novel.  Through a white, middle-class, liberal lens, it focuses on people’s struggles to define themselves, through marriage, or rebellion, or altruism.  It has been described as Dickensian in the scale of its plot and social commentary, although the author forgoes inequality and injustice for corporate corruption and environmentalism.

The novel opens with a section that focuses on the residents of the newly-gentrified suburb of St. Paul, and the narrow-minded suburban gossip that circulates about one family in particular, the Berglunds.  Walter and Patty Berglund were “the young pioneers of Ramsay Hill”, he a good-natured small town boy who was “greener than Greenpeace”; she a former jock who became a stay-at-home mum and “a sunny carrier of sociocultural pollen, an affable bee.”  They have a precocious son, Joey, and a daughter, Jessica, who is practically forgettable in terms of the narrative.

The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler

Review by Gabriel

There’s a famous story that, during filming for the 1946 film adaptation of The Big Sleep, the director and screen writers couldn’t figure out if one of the characters in the novel had committed suicide or been murdered, so they contacted the novel’s author, Raymond Chandler, to seek clarification.  It was only at this point – seven years after the novel had been published – that Chandler realised that he didn’t know the answer.  The plot was so convoluted that even its author had trouble keeping up with it.

But The Big Sleep railroads over any faults with sheer style, thanks to its ultra-cool protagonist, colourful characters, sense of place and humour.  A warning though – because everyone has things that they can’t forgive – it’s also one of the more misogynistic books you’ll read.

The Quiet American – Graham Greene

Review by Gabriel

In The Quiet American, Graham Greene has some meaty themes to work with – colonialism; the clash of east and west; the dangers of idealism – which he explores by creating an interesting dichotomy that is embodied in the two main characters.  He writes in a simple, direct way that is typical of 20^th century North American authors.  It has a lot of the ingredients of books that I like.  Instead, it left me cold thanks to its bland characters and some mediocre writing.

Across the River and Into the Trees – Ernest Hemingway

Review by Gabriel

It’s hard to say one of your favourite authors has written an average novel.  After finishing For Whom the Bell Tolls, I thought I’d go on a Hemingway binge, hoping to encounter the same level of genius, and because there is something comforting about his simple, dynamic prose and hard-boiled characters.  Across the River and Into the Trees was disappointing enough to halt my binge just as it was getting started.  Here’s why