Oh, Hemingway!

I have a big fat crush on Ernest Hemingway. Last summer I read The Sun Also Rises, and I think it has the best ending out of any book I'v ever read:

"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

And that just about wraps up that entire book. There's nothing more to say. 

This weekend I read A Farewell to Arms. It's beautiful. 

I was reading about him (wikipedia not going to lie), and interesting fact: his friend's wife called him a phony. His friend was F. Scott Fitzgerald. (She also called her husband a "fairy" and accused him of having a somewhat romantic relationship with Hemingway...I find this very fascinating.)

Also: his style was supposedly heavily influenced by a style guide from a newspaper he worked for. I have read a few style guides by magazines and newspapers and things (because I was forced to), and they aren't designed for the novelist. But it explains a lot because in journalism they're always telling you: short sentences, keep everything short. That's exactly what Hemingway is about. Self-consciously so, I think.

The thing I don't like about Hemingway is surprisingly not so much his extraordinary misogyny (for some strange reason I find it slightly endearing), but his transparency. It's all sort of right there for you, and as you read, you're thinking: "Got it. Got it. Okay. Oh this is sort of symbolic for that." I want to read it as simplicity - as intentional simplicity like in journalism - but sometimes I can't help but think: Maybe is this all the guy was capable of? Is transparency not simplicity, but lack of skill? Was Mrs. Fitzgerlad right? Was he a big, literary phony? 

Either way, he could tell a wonderful story. And I'd be lucky if I could write one half as well as he can.

It's more than telling a wonderful story, though. It's making the story's hero into the reader and the reader into the story's hero, and making you forget that there is a distinction. You get it and you sympathize completely and there is no world or mind outside the one you are reading.  I don't think this is simply because of the first-person narrative. It's something more subtle. Something that isn't simple or transparent or even self-conscious. It's something that cannot be learned from a style guide or in a classroom. I think you're either born with it or you aren't. You can either make a character and make him well and make him real, or you can't. He couldn't have faked that. 

And besides, I'm pretty happy Hemingway was apparently so influenced by a newspaper's style guide. Short sentences, after all, became pretty trendy and wit is in brevity. 

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."

I'm reading Murphy by Samuel Beckett right now. He's often regarded as the last of the modernists (which is most likely going to be my focus - major wise). It's the first Beckett book I've read, and I have to tell you: I hated it at first. I read half the book, and was just forcing myself to finish it when I decided, "I'm going to start over." I realized that I wasn't liking it because I wasn't getting it. I think, for me at least,  books of this era need to be read a couple of times before they can really be appreciated. They are dense; they are confusing; and they are worth every minute you spend looking up allusions and re-tracing sentences (modernists jump around a lot, use indirect speech and stream of consciousness, and their sentences are generally quite choppy or quite lengthy). I think that's what I love so much about Woolf, Joyce, and Conrad. They're brilliant and if you don't work, you aren't able to really read them. They aren't quick reads no matter how short they are (Ulysses for example. Nudge, Nudge.). I love that they are these little puzzles with complicated prose, lessons in philosophy, and beautiful insights into people. I've read Mrs. Dalloway five times, and each time I read it, it's a completely different book. 

But back to Murphy: I haven't even finished it yet, but I love it now because I gave it a chance. It's a cold and cynical book, and in that coldness and cynicism, it's a bit terrifying. It's essentially (from where I'm at) about Murphy's attempt to alienate himself (perhaps one could say in that alienation, he is really trying to find himself - I can't tell right now though), and the attempts of those around him to prevent him from doing so (for a host of reasons). 

The first sentence of the book reads, "The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new." Dark, right? But like, could you imagine constructing that sentence? It's dark, but it's beautiful. It makes you look at it a few times. "The nothing new" is a noun that the sun is shining on. I say: holy crap! 

Anyways, perhaps I'll write more later after I finish the book. I'm just procrastinating studying right now. 

Oh, and I have to admit: Murphy is so complicated that I just might be getting it totally wrong.

The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz-he dead

            A penny for the Old Guy

 

 

                       I

 

    We are the hollow men

    We are the stuffed men

    Leaning together

    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

    Our dried voices, when

    We whisper together

    Are quiet and meaningless

    As wind in dry grass

    Or rats' feet over broken glass

    In our dry cellar

    

    Shape without form, shade without colour,

    Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

    

    Those who have crossed

    With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom

    Remember us-if at all-not as lost

    Violent souls, but only

    As the hollow men

    The stuffed men.

 

    

                              II

 

    Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

    In death's dream kingdom

    These do not appear:

    There, the eyes are

    Sunlight on a broken column

    There, is a tree swinging

    And voices are

    In the wind's singing

    More distant and more solemn

    Than a fading star.

    

    Let me be no nearer

    In death's dream kingdom

    Let me also wear

    Such deliberate disguises

    Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves

    In a field

    Behaving as the wind behaves

    No nearer-

    

    Not that final meeting

    In the twilight kingdom

 

    

                   III

 

    This is the dead land

    This is cactus land

    Here the stone images

    Are raised, here they receive

    The supplication of a dead man's hand

    Under the twinkle of a fading star.

    

    Is it like this

    In death's other kingdom

    Waking alone

    At the hour when we are

    Trembling with tenderness

    Lips that would kiss

    Form prayers to broken stone.

 

    

                     IV

 

    The eyes are not here

    There are no eyes here

    In this valley of dying stars

    In this hollow valley

    This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

    

    In this last of meeting places

    We grope together

    And avoid speech

    Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

    

    Sightless, unless

    The eyes reappear

    As the perpetual star

    Multifoliate rose

    Of death's twilight kingdom

    The hope only

    Of empty men.

 

    

                           V

 

    Here we go round the prickly pear

    Prickly pear prickly pear

    Here we go round the prickly pear

    At five o'clock in the morning.

    

    Between the idea

    And the reality

    Between the motion

    And the act

    Falls the Shadow

                                   For Thine is the Kingdom

    

    Between the conception

    And the creation

    Between the emotion

    And the response

    Falls the Shadow

                                   Life is very long

    

    Between the desire

    And the spasm

    Between the potency

    And the existence

    Between the essence

    And the descent

    Falls the Shadow

                                   For Thine is the Kingdom

    

    For Thine is

    Life is

    For Thine is the

    

    This is the way the world ends

    This is the way the world ends

    This is the way the world ends

    Not with a bang but a whimper.

-TS Eliot

A terrible beauty is born

Easter, 1916

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

              -W.B. Yeats

Reading List

Here are some books I think everyone should read at least once. I think about these books all the time. 

So, in no particular order:

1. Life of Pi (especially for all adolescent atheists)

2. The Sun Also Rises

3. Their Eyes Were Watching God

4. Mrs. Dalloway (quite possibly the most beautiful book I have ever read or will read)

5. I Know This Much is True

6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower

7. Atonement (perhaps the ONLY book that's movie adaptation rivals its own greatness)

8. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

9. To Kill a Mockingbird

10. Everything is Illuminated

11. The Catcher in the Rye (it's just simple cool)

12. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (if you don't read this book twice, you haven't read it once)

13. Love in the Time of Cholera

Obviously this list is incomplete because I'm not even twenty-years-old yet, and haven't read plenty and plenty of wonderful books. It will never be complete, but hey, this is where it's at right now.

Why Should You Read Troilus and Cressida?

Because Cressida Will Show You How to Get Some, Duh!

I have been working on a paper for my Shakespeare class all day, and thus far I have 0 pages and 0 words. No surprises there! I've decided to write on Troilus and Cressida, which is probably one of my favorite plays by Mister Shake'speare. Most people don't really dig it's supposed lack of continuity (If you haven't read it, it's essentially two unrelated plots tied together in one play. On the one hand, there's the plot concerning the Trojan war and the politics of the Trojan state. On the other hand, there's the plot that delves into the title characters' love affair.) I love it, though. It has some amazing, philosophical speeches and some pretty modern takes on sexual politics. On top of that, the play has Cressida: my new role model. Maybe that's going too far, but she's basically just this witty flirt (albeit rather objectified). And in her short stage time, she's able to coyly and cunningly mess with the romantically mislead Troilus; fend off some gross, vulgar Greek soldiers who are her physical superiors with purely her sarcasm; and align Diomedes' interests with her own well-being with the aid of nothing but her Super Hero Sexuality. She's smart and sexy and thereby as powerful as a woman could ever hope to be in an Elizabethan play. (Note: This is, of course, just how I perceive The Ever Cold, The Ever Calculating, The Ever Witty, The Ever Beautiful Cressida ) Is she not awesome? Some people might call her a whore (and they do both in the play and critically), but I think she just rules. While she does "cheat" on Troilus, she had to. She was playing a game. No, she was controlling the game. And so what if she made a few boys cry along the way? Not her problem; they just need to grow some. Basically I think she's the shit, and you should read Troilus and Cressida to witness the shit. The woman has no illusions, or at least no particularly lethal ones. She's no Juliet, but who would want to be? Juliet killed herself over a guy. I mean come on: she decided love or whatever was more valuable than her life.  That's just lame. Cressida would've been like, "Oh, Romeo! That sucks you're dead, but good things don't last forever. Let's be real, here. I'm a kid! I probably won't even like you in two weeks. Is it nine already? I have a date with your best friend." Why do they give fourteen-year-olds that play anyways? Dumb. 

Now I just need to write this paper...What would Cressida do?