Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Ernest Hemingway Reprise

I hesitated briefly as I saw the reassuringly thick spine in the library and finally grabbed it from the shelf. Hemingway to me feels like an old friend who can piece together the disparate pieces of my life, who I had half forgotten about long ago.


The first book I read by Ernest Hemingway was Islands in the Stream when I was in my teens. The thick tome seemed to be about drinking and boating and more drinking and boating and generally sucked and made me think of Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers.




I was staying with an uncle who thought he was clever with his quips, like the time we stood in the men's room on the ferry and he whipped it out and proclaimed: "This is where the big boys hang out" to the disgust of the elderly man in the next urinal. Well the uncle is now the old man and if he was on the ferry the old man and the sea. His kids are adults with their own lives and Hemingway is still the big boy of a certain kind of literary genre, his hunting, fishing, shooting presence looming large over swathes of Florida and Cuba.


Hemingway was a man's man perhaps but he eludes pigeon holing. My next read was For Whom the Bell Toll and nobody who reads about the smell of pine needles and the night the earth moved with passion, can ever write him off as literary red neck.


For Whom the Bell Tolls is in many ways Hemingway's finest piece of work, harking back to the days of the Spanish Civil War and a half-imagined idealism we thought we had left behind. The book is devoted to Martha Gellhorn, the reporter Hemingway left his wife for to embark on another torrid and ultimately failed marriage.


Still there is something alluring about the idea of passion amidst the ruins of an under siege Madrid hotel frequented by the press corps. In the days when the news mattered and no longer rose and fell on the latest Tweet, the Spanish Civil War represented a clash of ideologies and as well as a testing ground for the terrible weapons of war that Adolf Hitler was about to unleash on Europe.


Hemingway's idealism may have been misguided but there is no giant of his stature around today to raise Cain as ISIS unleashes a Medieval barbarity on the land Abel's brother was vanquished to.


Next came A Farewell to Arms, a Secondary School text about Hemingway's exploits in Italy in World War One. The novel is laced with a deep pessimism but is an iconic as the image of a soldier and his girl alone in the rain against the massive ornate eaves of Milan Cathedral.


Years later I introduced A Farewell to Arms to a class of 10th Graders and felt the pessimism of the novel wash over me at the failure to see it induce any spark of interest in the computer game infected eyes of the young.


So perhaps that was it. Hemingway is an anachronism with no value to the modern world. He's a passing fancy and a reason why men wear false beards in Key West.


I also read The Sun Also Rises as it moves from Paris to Spain, laced with booze and the existentialism of the Lost Generation, but curiously alluring and fascinating. I cannot read the novel without yearning for Paris or Pamplona and the warm breeze and smell of the Mediterranean.


The other brushes with Hemingway were non literary such as the brief visit to La Floridita bar in Havana where he sobered up on daiquiris after a morning of writing and chain drinking whiskies.


Hemingway blew his brains out in the end in Idaho of all places - far from the Tropics and far from Spain. He is long gone but not forgotten like my memories of his prose. I'm looking forward to revisiting For Whom the Bell Tolls.

5 comments:

  1. I don't recall it sparking much interest in my age group when I was in school in the 80s either. I read the old man and the sea...it was OK. I did not know he killed himself in Idaho though.

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    Replies
    1. yep JoJo - he was not such a happy bunny in the end..

      Delete
  2. A very well written piece, David. I think he may be a passing fancy to some degree but a unique, niche classic.
    What I have n common with Mr. H is Mojito's!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Balance your spiritual energy and get in harmony with your soul by practicing these Radha-Krishna meditations.


    Sri Gita Govinda
    -A book written in the 12th century, this is a description of the intimate loving affairs of Radha and Krishna
    http://www.mediafire.com/view/keqr4lqp7wr1rru/Sri_Gita_Govinda.pdf

    Govinda Lilamrta
    -An 400 year old book which poetically describes the eternal daily pastimes of Radha and Krishna
    http://www.mediafire.com/view/uhcuigauc6uqiei/Govinda_Lilamrita.pdf

    Ananda Vrindavan Campu
    -This is probably the most poetic and intimate portrayal of Sri Krsna’s life in Vrndavana that has ever been written.
    http://www.mediafire.com/view/k9j3ldwbt17be3b/Ananda_Vmdavana_Campu.pdf

    Asta Kaliya Lila Version 1
    -8 verses describing Radha and Krishna's eternal daily pastimes
    http://www.mediafire.com/view/qit80piujg6bp6f/Asta_Kaliya_Lila_Version_1.pdf

    Asta Kaliya Lila Version 2
    -A slightly different version of 8 verses that describes Radha and Krishna's eternal daily pastimes
    http://www.mediafire.com/view/7jy7s47o8zl0ata/Asta_Kaliya_Lila_Version_2.pdf

    Prayers of Service to Radha and Krishna (Sankalpa Kalpadruma)
    http://www.mediafire.com/view/lvkqsro3sbzm249/Visvanath_Cakravarti_Thakur_Sankalpa_Kalpadruma.pdf

    Prema Samputa The Treasure Chest of Love
    http://www.mediafire.com/view/mpbncdyt97nw0x7/Prema_Samputa_The_Treasure_Chest_of_Love.pdf


    And the following four are taken from Visvanath Cakravarti's Camatkara Candrika, a 300 year old scripture that talks about the love meeting of Radha and Krishna:

    The Meeting in the Box
    http://www.mediafire.com/view/c81a7cp43n5v6aj/The_Meeting_in_the_Box.pdf

    The Meeting of Sri Krishna Disguised as a Female Doctor
    http://www.mediafire.com/view/hgomrnem7829pda/The_Meeting_of_Sri_Krsna_Disguised_as_a_Female_Doctor.pdf

    The Meeting of Sri Krishna Disguised as a Female Singer
    http://www.mediafire.com/view/gyuboduhn8dvdml/The_Meeting_of_Sri_Krsna_Disguised_as_a_Female_Singer.pdf

    The Meeting of Sri Krishna Disguised as Abhimanyu
    http://www.mediafire.com/view/911h9qoxn4ca027/The_Meeting_of_Sri_Krsna_Disguised_As_Abhimanyu.pdf


    And lastly, we have a very amazing scripture which describes the 24 hour daily loving affairs of Radha and Krishna in Vrindavan, called Bhavanasara Sangraha. This book is now available on Amazon for Kindle, for only $3.49

    http://www.amazon.com/Bhavanasara-Sangraha-Mahanidhi-Swami-ebook/dp/B00CW9H4DI/ref=la_B00J2M5LAQ_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1402209195&sr=1-15

    Here is a 41 page sample of Bhavanasara Sangraha:
    http://www.mediafire.com/view/t4gsse2d4sw0f8p/Sample_of_Bhavanasara_Sangraha.pdf

    The above book can also be read on your PC using Amazon Kindle for PC, download here for free:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311

    Disclaimer: We are not affiliated with ISKCON in any way whatsoever. ISKCON, or "The Hare Krishna Movement" as it's popularily known, is a radical and extremist distortion of the original Radha and Krishna dharma from ancient India. The author of the above book Bhavanasara Sangraha is no longer affiliated with ISKCON either, having cut all ties to ISKCON a few years ago.

    ReplyDelete

On Blog PTSD

Now then. What the heck. It seems I had forgotten about my blog completely rather than just neglecting it this time. To return after so long...