The Old Man and The Sea

Amazon.com

Here, for a change, is a fish tale that actually does honor to the author. In fact The Old Man and the Sea revived Ernest Hemingway's career, which was foundering under the weight of such postwar stinkers as Across the River and into the Trees. It also led directly to his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1954 (an award Hemingway gladly accepted, despite his earlier observation that "no son of a bitch that ever won the Nobel Prize ever wrote anything worth reading afterwards"). A half century later, it's still easy to see why. This tale of an aged Cuban fisherman going head-to-head (or hand-to-fin) with a magnificent marlin encapsulates Hemingway's favorite motifs of physical and moral challenge. Yet Santiago is too old and infirm to partake of the gun-toting machismo that disfigured much of the author's later work: "The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords." Hemingway's style, too, reverts to those superb snapshots of perception that won him his initial fame:

Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by a dolphin. He saw it first when it jumped in the air, true gold in the last of the sun and bending and flapping wildly in the air.

If a younger Hemingway had written this novella, Santiago most likely would have towed the enormous fish back to port and posed for a triumphal photograph--just as the author delighted in doing, circa 1935. Instead his prize gets devoured by a school of sharks. Returning with little more than a skeleton, he takes to his bed and, in the very last line, cements his identification with his creator: "The old man was dreaming about the lions." Perhaps there's some allegory of art and experience floating around in there somewhere--but The Old Man and the Sea was, in any case, the last great catch of Hemingway's career. --James Marcus

Book Description

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal -- a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss. Written in 1952, this hugely successful novella confirmed his power and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Customer Reviews:

The perfect book for high school reading.......2007-10-11

This is my first Hemingway story, and was pretty pleased with it. I have always been told that his writing gets right to the point and that he's not a "flowery" writer, so I wasn't surprised to see how long this story was. On the surface, the story was very exciting, even more so at the end when he battles the sharks. As I was reading it, I would get so excited whenever he ran across another shark I didn't even want to read those parts. I was really rooting for Santiago, and felt totally gypped at the end! In terms of reading the story for just "more" than the story, I found that the themes are very easy to identify and talk about so that would make this a great "discussion" novella, and it's no surprise that this is a frequently read book in school. This is an excellent starter book for those who are interested in reading a story for more than face value. It's not too long and it's themes and symbolism aren't too vague to understand.

Good delivery.......2007-10-01

It was a good product and it was delivered on time. The only thing i would like to recommend is that the next time stick my name on the box.

A HEMINGWAY CLASSIC ! ( the story is fascinating, and the symbolism offers wisdom).......2007-09-27

Ernest Hemingway's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Old Man And The Sea is the story of an old Cuban fisherman named Santiago, and the several days and nights he spends alone in his skiff, catching, killing, and bringing to shore, a large (bigger than his skiff) Marlin. Santiago has gone eighty-four days without a catch, and on this day he goes out farther than he normally does, and catches his prize (or maybe it's not a prize at all). The man-against-nature aspect of the story is intriguing in itself, but I've always seen this book as a wise parable that teaches a lesson, or even several lessons, in life. The fish is a symbol of a sought after prize, and the sea is a symbol for life itself, the old man has gone out too far, and so on (there's much, much more, but I don't want to give the story away). It actually can be interpreted many different ways, and because of this, it's like piecing together a different puzzle each time you read it. I have read this interesting story many times in my life (I've just finished reading it again), and I always find new ways to interpret it, and new ways to enjoy it. It's only 120+ pages, so it's a book that can be read without a great deal of labor. Hemingway's vivid imagery of the ocean and early 1950s Cuba is fascinating, and the simple, honest, and humble lives of Santiago and his devoted young friend, Manolin are refreshing and heartwarming. The Old Man And The Sea is a book that I have read for years, and one that I will continue to read for many years to come.

Hemigway at His Best.......2007-09-13

Having read and enjoyed most of Hemingway's major works, I recently decided to re-read this one. It was a wonderful decision.

"The Old Man and the Sea" excels at several levels. On the surface, it is a fine story about an old, down on his luck fisherman catching a huge marlin. But it also has deeper meanings including man against the elements, man fighting failure, man's relationship with nature etc. etc. It is also a story well and efficiently told. One of the great books of all time in only 120+ pages. It deserved the Pulitzer and all the other accolades it has received.

Short but Good Enough.......2007-09-06

Are all of Ernest Hemingway's books following For Whom the Bell Tolls that bad? No, and The Old Man and the Sea justifies that answer. This is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, Santiago, who has not caught any fish for eighty-four days and is seen by the other fishermen as unlucky. Even the boy that often fishes with him, Manolin, is not allowed to do so anymore by his father's authority, but still helps him out when he is not fishing. The old man goes out onto the Gulf Stream to make some catches and eventually has an arduous struggle with a large marlin. I am not going to give off any big spoilers (for now at least) in this introduction, but I will say one thing: this is a story about how life can reek of misfortunes but in the end, make prosperity.
Hemingway's novels do not just happen as any ordinary fiction based on some random idea, but rather they are inspired by his real-life experiences. What is The Old Man and the Sea based off of? It is based off two things: his time living in Cuba in 1940 and his favorite past experiences: sailing and fishing. The old man, Santiago, is believed to be based off of Cuban fisherman, Gregorio Fuentes. As another fact, The Old Man and the Sea - Santiago's story - was previously intended for a bigger project of Hemingway's: "The Sea Book."
Hemingway has a very unique way of fleshing out the book's situations with words. For most of the book, the old man is out at sea, alone with nobody to talk to, but does that mean he does not talk at all? No, it does not. Often at times, he will talk to himself, usually talking to his own appendages almost as if they had their own degree of sentience. For example, he would say to his arm, "How do you feel, hand?" (Hemingway 58) when it felt pain and then say, "I'll eat some more for you" (59) when he eats some of his recently caught fish to replenish his arms strength for bigger, upcoming catches. He also talks to the fish he has caught or is going to catch, whether they are dead or alive. He communicates with the marlin in his vicious struggle as if it were a sapient creature.
*Warning! Spoilers Ahead!*
Even after the monstrous fish is caught, he still communicates with it, and forms a spiritual bond with his prize. This is evident during the shark attack, which may have been another great battle for the old man, but results in the loss of most of the marlin's edible parts. He feels that he has failed to protect the fish, which was like a brother to him.
*Spoilers end here*
The Old Man and the Sea is a book I would recommend for anyone that usually has poor reading comprehension skills, like me for instance. In fact, I would recommend it for just about anyone. This book is fairly short but interesting enough to keep you engaged, though if you are reading this for school, you may be compelled to take day-to-day breaks with it. Also, this book is not divided into chapters; it is just one chapter the length of the whole book, so it might be a little hard to know when the best time to take a break is. If you think books of this size are just for pre-high school kids, I would say you are bit too judgmental. As they say not to judge a book by its cover, I should also say not to judge a book by its size. If you just started reading this novel, I will say it should take less than a week if you are not too break-heavy. As this is Hemingway's last major novel, Hemingway's literary career sure did end successfully.

Average customer rating:

A classic - buy it.
Lazy and messy
Oh, Buttercup
excelsior!
My first venture into Hemingway

For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway
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ASIN: 0684803356

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For Whom the Bell Tolls begins and ends in a pine-scented forest, somewhere in Spain. The year is 1937 and the Spanish Civil War is in full swing. Robert Jordan, a demolitions expert attached to the International Brigades, lies "flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees." The sylvan setting, however, is at sharp odds with the reason Jordan is there: he has come to blow up a bridge on behalf of the antifascist guerrilla forces. He hopes he'll be able to rely on their local leader, Pablo, to help carry out the mission, but upon meeting him, Jordan has his doubts: "I don't like that sadness, he thought. That sadness is bad. That's the sadness they get before they quit or before they betray. That is the sadness that comes before the sell-out." For Pablo, it seems, has had enough of the war. He has amassed for himself a small herd of horses and wants only to stay quietly in the hills and attract as little attention as possible. Jordan's arrival--and his mission--have seriously alarmed him.

"I am tired of being hunted. Here we are all right. Now if you blow a bridge here, we will be hunted. If they know we are here and hunt for us with planes, they will find us. If they send Moors to hunt us out, they will find us and we must go. I am tired of all this. You hear?" He turned to Robert Jordan. "What right have you, a foreigner, to come to me and tell me what I must do?"

In one short chapter Hemingway lays out the blueprint for what is to come: Jordan's sense of duty versus Pablo's dangerous self-interest and weariness with the war. Complicating matters even more are two members of the guerrilla leader's small band: his "woman" Pilar, and Maria, a young woman whom Pablo rescued from a Republican prison train. Unlike her man, Pilar is still fiercely devoted to the cause and as Pablo's loyalty wanes, she becomes the moral center of the group. Soon Jordan finds himself caught between the two, even as his own resolve is tested by his growing feelings for Maria.

For Whom the Bell Tolls combines two of the author's recurring obsessions: war and personal honor. The pivotal battle scene involving El Sordo's last stand is a showcase for Hemingway's narrative powers, but the quieter, ongoing conflict within Robert Jordan as he struggles to fulfill his mission perhaps at the cost of his own life is a testament to his creator's psychological acuity. By turns brutal and compassionate, it is arguably Hemingway's most mature work and one of the best war novels of the 20th century. --Alix Wilber

Book Description

In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight," For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving, and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.

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In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight," For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.

Customer Reviews:

A classic - buy it........2007-09-25

I first read this about 40 years ago. I just re-purchased it. This is a classic novel.

Lazy and messy.......2007-09-06

The Spanish Civil War was surely the most brutal and tragic civil war of the twentieth century. It not only pitted Spaniard against Spaniard, but became a kind of bloody curtain-raiser for World War II, with Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy lining up on the side of Franco's insurgents and the USSR backing the embattled left-leaning Republic. (The Western democracies - who might have prevented Spain from going fascist - followed a pusillanimous "hands off" policy which only emboldened the insurgents and their supporters.) Into this vortex came many writers and intellectuals. They were to witness brutality, betrayals, great valour, the corruption of ideals, and the consequences of ruthless Realpolitik.

So with all that in mind, here's an interesting question. If you were an author trying to write the great Spanish Civil War novel, would you choose to (1) sequester your handful of characters up in the mountains away from the main action; (2) write 500 pages covering a mere three days during which time nobody has anything to do; and (3) make the central character non-Spanish?

500 pages about three days of waiting is the book's central problem. It turns the novel into the opposite of an epic. To have taken a canvas as sweeping as the three years of the Spanish Civil War and shrink it down to such a compass-point was an unfathomable decision on the author's part. From this self-inflicted literary ambush there is no escape for Hemingway: you either need excellent descriptive prose or superb psychological insight to carve a good story from such crooked timber, for, after all, what else is left to describe in such a situation save inner musings and the outer landscape?

The prose is the next problem. Much has been made of Hemingway's 'deceptively simple' writing style. However, I found it impossible to read "For Whom the Bells Tolls" without forming the impression that that his reputation for putatively well-masked complexity is itself the deception. Consider the following extracts [from the Vintage edition]:

A hole in a hillside is described as:

"both deep and profound"
[p. 444]

Characters exchange such dialogue as:

'Well, then. Oh, then. Oh, then. Oh.'
[p. 166]

'Maria.'
'Yes.'
'Maria.'
'Yes.'
'Maria.'
'Oh, yes. Please.'
[p. 272]

'But use thy head. Thou hast much head. Use it.'
[p. 444]

Which brings us to the Hemingway penchant for meaningless repetition:

"In an impossible situation you hang on until night to get away. You try to last out until night to get back in. You are all right, maybe, if you can stick it out until dark and then get back in."
[p. 174]

"So a woman like that Pilar practically pushed this girl into your sleeping bag and what happens? Yes, what happens? What happens? You tell me what happens, please. That is just what happens. That is exactly what happens."
[p. 175]

Followed by some impressive run-on rants as the author becomes completely carried away describing love scenes (How many women - even in the thirties - were seduced by being repeatedly called 'rabbit'?)

My favourite passage is when one of the characters reveals to Joaquín that la Pasionara has a son in Russia. Instead of naming the character, Hemingway chooses to write the following clanking line:
"'If we insult them a little?' the man who had spoken to Joaquín about la Pasionara's son in Russia asked."
[p. 324]

On and on it goes like this. For three days. In a cave. This book has now gone into the umpteenth printing and neither the spelling nor grammar have been corrected ("... the flakes was dropping diagonally ..." [p. 185]; "... and then brining it down ..." [p. 213]; "... the felling when the Inglés gave the order ..." [p. 380]; at one point André Marty is referred to as "Mary" [p. 437]).

So it needs to be said openly. Hemingway pundits who make excuses for this sort of thing have a lot of explaining to do: otherwise they are obliged to defend similarly poor writing when they find it outside the world of Nobel laureates.

Oh, Buttercup.......2007-08-30

I read this book a couple years ago and loved it. War, adventure, love, it's like The Princess Bride minus lighthearted fairytale-ness. I highly recommend it.

excelsior!.......2007-08-05

must be where Metallica got the song name from. Anyways this is one of but many authors that, like Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain decided to take the easy way out. In the meantime he penned this great literature that is a great book. I don't care what anybody says, the old man and the sea is boring and short and so with that I bid you good day and happy reading!

My first venture into Hemingway.......2007-08-03

This was my first time reading a book by Hemingway, and it was not all I had hoped for. The Spanish Civil War is one of my major interests (it was the subject of my undergraduate research thesis) and so I ordered this book with great anticipation. Unfortunately, I was not completely satisfied.

"For Whom the Bell Tolls" gives a great understanding of the personalities and characters of the Spanish people. It also is balanced in the sense that it shows that atrocities were committed by both sides.

However, my main complaint with the book is that it seems like nothing happens. It is not until probably the last 100 pages or so that action begins to take place. (Granted, there were many instances during the Spanish Civil War where the lines were at a standstill and nothing DID happen, so perhaps in that sense it is quite accurate). But despite how much Hemingway tries to build up to the destruction of the bridge, it's not exciting by the time you actually get to that point.

The other thing that irritated me (and this is just as a Spanish speaker) was that the dialogue is written as though it was literally translated word-for-word from Spanish conversation rather than translated for meaning. For example, the dialogue reads, "That he comes soon," ("que venga pronto") instead of, "I hope he comes soon," or "He better come soon." It just makes the dialogue awkward and unnatural.

Despite my complaints, I will not let this be my only reading of Hemingway and I will try out something else of his in the near future.

Average customer rating:

The Depressing American Novel
A Soap Opera
A classic!
Brilliant
"I thought she might be a little crazy"

A Farewell To Arms
Ernest Hemingway
Manufacturer: Scribner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0684801469

Amazon.com

As a youth of 18, Ernest Hemingway was eager to fight in the Great War. Poor vision kept him out of the army, so he joined the ambulance corps instead and was sent to France. Then he transferred to Italy where he became the first American wounded in that country during World War I. Hemingway came out of the European battlefields with a medal for valor and a wealth of experience that he would, 10 years later, spin into literary gold with A Farewell to Arms. This is the story of Lieutenant Henry, an American, and Catherine Barkley, a British nurse. The two meet in Italy, and almost immediately Hemingway sets up the central tension of the novel: the tenuous nature of love in a time of war. During their first encounter, Catherine tells Henry about her fiancé of eight years who had been killed the year before in the Somme. Explaining why she hadn't married him, she says she was afraid marriage would be bad for him, then admits:

I wanted to do something for him. You see, I didn't care about the other thing and he could have had it all. He could have had anything he wanted if I would have known. I would have married him or anything. I know all about it now. But then he wanted to go to war and I didn't know.

The two begin an affair, with Henry quite convinced that he "did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards." Soon enough, however, the game turns serious for both of them and ultimately Henry ends up deserting to be with Catherine.

Hemingway was not known for either unbridled optimism or happy endings, and A Farewell to Arms, like his other novels (For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises, and To Have and Have Not), offers neither. What it does provide is an unblinking portrayal of men and women behaving with grace under pressure, both physical and psychological, and somehow finding the courage to go on in the face of certain loss. --Alix Wilber

Book Description

The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Hemingway's frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while his description of the German attack on Caporetto -- of lines of fired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized -- is one of the greatest moments in literary history. A story of love and pain, of loyalty and desertion, A Farewell to Arms, written when he was 30 years old, represents a new romanticism for Hemingway.

Customer Reviews:

The Depressing American Novel.......2007-10-20

Well, being the 363rd review listed here on Amazon for this book, there probably isn't too much that hasn't already been said by the average reader about this book. Having read this and other Hemingway novels for my 10th grade honors English class (and a subsequently painful paper) I can honestly say I enjoyed this a lot more than I did back then at age 14 or however old I was at the time.

My "little" book group read this one--we'll read anything, and take turns picking stuff out, and this was not my pick, but it is kind of an unspoken rule in this group that if someone wasnts to read something like this, we'll all do it. I was pleasantly surprised. Hemingway's writing was as spare a I remembered it, but also much more readable than I recalled, despite the run on sentences, giving an almost stream of consciousness feel to the dialogue. It really served to lend itself to the desperation of these lonely souls trying to find solace anywhere during a war that is clearly un-winnable by all sides.

Not a romantic love story--Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley find each other and cling to the idea of their relationship, even though anyone can see that outside of these terrible circumstances, theirs is not a relationship that would last. She is clearly no Mrs. Henry. It is a relationship about sex and comfort, and little else, sadly.

The most prominent feature that stood out for me about the whole novel is that it is so clearly a very modern feeling anti-war novel. Our little group was surprised at the familiar "this isn't our war" sentiment that hovers over Lt. Henry's person.

Full of some great moments, this book should be read by all college bound students and all Americans.

A Soap Opera.......2007-09-23

I re-read this recently. I don't know why. I guess a friend of mind is into Hemingway. Here's what I found: this seminal work of the American 20th century fiction reads like a chick flick or soap opera, especially the rather embarrasingly overwrought last chapter.

A classic!.......2007-08-27

I read this book in high school and I fell in love. This book has it all: adventure, love, and a incredibly tragic ending. This is the type of book that should be required reading in schools!

Brilliant.......2007-08-13

At first I was not a fan of Hemmingway's writing style but the story overpowered whatever problems I had. Wonderful depictions of war and love. Emotional when you least expect it. An amazing journey. Must Read Classic.

"I thought she might be a little crazy".......2007-07-26

The only justification for WWI, if there is one, is that it serves as a great backdrop for this marvelous novel, the story of wounded ambulance driver Frederick Henry and his nurse -lover Catherine Barkley as they try to survive that ignoble war (which began with dancing in the streets of Vienna and ended in the pointless slaughter of millions. Remember?). Early in the book, Frederick says of Catherine, "I thought she might be a little crazy." Well, Yeah! Is it any wonder considering she has treated about a thousand casualties with injuries ranging from self-inflicted foot wounds to splintered limbs and assorted other dripping war wounds? Together they make the only sane decision they can make under the circumstances: they escape to neutral Switzerland where they manage to make a life for themselves, away from the war--but never really free from its underlying curse. Out of a time when kings and keisers (not renegade vice presidents) made war, Hemingway, the master of macho angst, creates the premier anti-war novel. If only Bush had been reading it to the kids in Sarasota the morning of 911 instead of the lamb book, what a different world it might be today...

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition

Average customer rating:

Snappy prose!
Short stories of Ernest Hemingway
Mixed
Great Reading. Paper Back Covers Suck...
a comprehensive collection

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition
Ernest Hemingway
Manufacturer: Scribner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0684843323

Book Description

THE ONLY COMPLETE COLLECTION BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR

In this definitive collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, readers will delight in the author's most beloved classics such as "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "Hills Like White Elephants," and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and will discover seven new tales published for the first time in this collection. For Hemingway fans The Complete Short Stories is an invaluable treasury.

Customer Reviews:

Snappy prose!.......2007-08-14

It's fantastic to have all these stories in one book. "Hills Like White Elephant's" is still my favorite story, but I also enjoyed some that I had never heard of. I like the short declarative sentences; it makes for an easy read. I love that I can open it up to any story and just start reading. You don't have to start from the beginning and read it to the end. Each story only takes an hour at most to read - some probably twenty minutes if you're an extra fast reader.

Short stories of Ernest Hemingway.......2007-03-25

This book is great!! The stories are organized well and it is a complete collection. I'm really enjoying it!!

Mixed.......2007-03-01

First of all, it is difficult rating; Some stories deserve 4 maybe 5 stars while others only 2.

Finca Vigia is his home in Cuba ("Lookout Farm"). This book contains 21 stories in addition to the "the first forty-nine"; average length is under ten pages. Some are as short as a thought, a page out of a novel, or unfinished. Many of the stories take place in Florida, Cuba, the Midwest, and Spain and are written in first person; some very early in life.

At times the worldly Hemingway just writes about the mundane, while the next story we may be sitting in an arena watching a graphic bull-fight. The reoccurring subject matter: hunting, war, medicine, tragedy, marriage/relationships, death, fishing, sports, and drinking.

Racial epithets are frequent throughout. Many of the stories can be uninteresting, banal (as if making a report) and confusing (overly informative). He then can make the shift to simple everyday dialog, containing amazing and eloquent observations. He introduces native dialect and uses hidden subjects. Can the stories be traced to his personal experiences? His novels are better.

Wish you well
Scott

Great Reading. Paper Back Covers Suck..........2007-02-06

The book is amazing. Buy it.
Nevertheless, I hate these new paperbacks that are extremely soft.

a comprehensive collection.......2006-12-19

It's no mystery Hemingway wrote a ton of material, and while some people say his stories are all kind of the same, I disagree. I haven't read all of his work, but stories like "The Killers" and "Hills Like White Elephants" reach into completely different aspects of human nature. "The Killers" is shocking and alarming when you consider the utter indifference the hitmen in story have towards life - especially at how accurate this portrays the behavior of a sociopathic killer. "Hills like white Elephants," one of his most commonly discussed short stories, shows the natural depravity of our nature, and shows a common kind of inability to handle the consequences of our actions.

Anyway, the point is, even though Hemingway had a distinct style that can seem homogonized at times, he really grew as a writer, and this collection of short stories really demonstrates this.

"The Sun Also Rises" is definitly my favoraite Hemingway story, and most people would agree it was his cleanest/tightest work of writing, but you simply will not get the full sense of who Hemingway was as a writer and the impact he had on literature if you don't tackle his short stories as well. This I'm pretty sure has all of them, or at least vast majority of them. I would say this is one of the more important texts to get, because personally I didn't even get into hemingway untill I read "The Killers" and "The Nick Adam's Stories," and saw for myself how much life Hemingway had a grasp on.

Average customer rating:

Beauty in words
A True Classic
Absolutely terrible
Sitting Around, Feeling Sorry for Themselves
Hemingway good, story bad

The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway
Manufacturer: Scribner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0684800713

Amazon.com

The Sun Also Rises first appeared in 1926, and yet it's as fresh and clean and fine as it ever was, maybe finer. Hemingway's famously plain declarative sentences linger in the mind like poetry: "Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy's. She started all that." His cast of thirtysomething dissolute expatriates--Brett and her drunken fiancé, Mike Campbell, the unhappy Princeton Jewish boxer Robert Cohn, the sardonic novelist Bill Gorton--are as familiar as the "cool crowd" we all once knew. No wonder this quintessential lost-generation novel has inspired several generations of imitators, in style as well as lifestyle.

Jake Barnes, Hemingway's narrator with a mysterious war wound that has left him sexually incapable, is the heart and soul of the book. Brett, the beautiful, doomed English woman he adores, provides the glamour of natural chic and sexual unattainability. Alcohol and post-World War I anomie fuel the plot: weary of drinking and dancing in Paris cafés, the expatriate gang decamps for the Spanish town of Pamplona for the "wonderful nightmare" of a week-long fiesta. Brett, with fiancé and ex-lover Cohn in tow, breaks hearts all around until she falls, briefly, for the handsome teenage bullfighter Pedro Romero. "My God! he's a lovely boy," she tells Jake. "And how I would love to see him get into those clothes. He must use a shoe-horn." Whereupon the party disbands.

But what's most shocking about the book is its lean, adjective-free style. The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway's masterpiece--one of them, anyway--and no matter how many times you've read it or how you feel about the manners and morals of the characters, you won't be able to resist its spell. This is a classic that really does live up to its reputation. --David Laskin

Book Description

The Sun Also Rises was Ernest Hemingway's first big novel, and immediately established Hemingway as one of the great prose stylists, and one of the preeminent writers of his time. It is also the book that encapsulates the angst of the post-World War I generation, known as the Lost Generation. This poignantly beautiful story of a group of American and English expatriates in Paris on an excursion to Pamplona represents a dramatic step forward for Hemingway's evolving style. Featuring Left Bank Paris in the 1920s and brutally realistic descriptions of bullfighting in Spain, the story is about the flamboyant Lady Brett Ashley and the hapless Jake Barnes. In an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions, this is the Lost Generation.

Customer Reviews:

Beauty in words.......2007-09-17

Ernest Hemmingway in his unique style delivers a masterpiece in adult fiction. His prose is concise and words beauty known only to the reader. He creates a wonderful atmosphere of the locations and his character's travel through the landscape and through emotions is captured exceptionally well.

This is a timeless classic. There is nothing I can say to convince anyone to read it. The characters are well-developed. There is love and passion and pain and beauty. The world that Hemmingway recreates belongs with these characters. The book launched a successful career and in me it set in motion the desire to read everything ever written by this brilliant writer.

A True Classic.......2007-09-03

The Sun Also Rises turned out to be quite a remarkable read and a novel worthy of classic status. It is absolutely amazing how much symbolism and hidden meaning Hemingway can sneak in through his distinctive clear and simple prose style. On the other hand, if you are not paying attention and miss the implied messages then this novel will strike you as nothing particularly special.

The book is about a group of American and English expatriates residing in Paris during the 1920s. They live aimless, purposeless lives after World War I because their whole value system has been shaken up. They are members of the "Lost Generation", a term popularized by this very book. Although the plot is simplistic, with Jake Barnes and his friends traveling to Spain for the Pamplona fiesta, the brilliance of the novel shines through in the relationships and dialogue between characters. The rambunctious Lady Brett Ashley is the target of four men's desires and Hemingway uses her to exemplify the destructiveness of sex and the male insecurity felt after World War I. It is a world where everyone drowns their sorrows in alcohol. The novel ends in an outstanding description of a bull-fight and on a hopeful, wishing note.

The novel opened my eyes to how drastic the effects of WWI were on soldiers and how disenchanted some of them became with prewar values and notions. I also was truly impressed by Hemingway's bullfighting descriptions and how he made them seem almost like poetic events. The characters were likable and compelling, too, and gave the novel much life even without an enchanting plot. Although I couldn't relate to the characters all that well, I'm sure someone who has had more of life's experiences will have no trouble doing so. Altogether, Hemingway created a novel that changed the literary world forever and will leave a lasting impression in many minds for generations to come - it sure did in mine.

Absolutely terrible.......2007-08-02

I'm no scholar, no student of literature. I just like to read. Everything from Huxley to HST to Dan Brown... if a book is good, I'll read it. If a book sucks, I'll usually put it down about halfway through.

That's what bothers me the most about The Sun Also Rises. I've heard nothing but good things about Hemingway, how he's the greatest American author of all time. So even though page after page of this book was boring to the point of tears, I kept reading. I gave Hemingway the behefit of the doubt that at some point, SOMETHING other than dinner, drinking, and everyone taking their turn on the neighborhood whore would happen.

Unfortunately, nothing happens. There's no plot, no conflict -- wait, that's not true... everyone hates the Jewish guy and everyone wants to sleep with the same woman... let me clarify -- there's no conflict interesting enough to carry a novel, no interesting characters (everyone is either an alcoholic or a slut, who you'd think might be interesting, but they are really just sad and pathetic), and absolutely no action. I wish I had read something else by Hemingway first, because odds are that ANY book would be better than this one. But now that this is my first impression of him, unfortunately, I don't know if I'll ever pick up another one of his books. It really is that bad.

DON'T READ THIS BOOK!!!!

Sitting Around, Feeling Sorry for Themselves.......2007-07-08

In the shallow world of the characters of Ernest Hemingway, everybody seems to spend most of their time feeling sorry for themself. Going beyond the tragic hero, the charcters are perhaps best described as arrogant and self-centered. Coupled with the terse writing style of Hemingway, this makes for a quick read with a somewhat clever plot.

While bull fighting actually takes place in the plot, it is also a clever metaphor used in the story. The main character Robert Cohn follows Lady Brett Ashley around like a stupid bull follows a bull fighter. It is hard to feel sorry for Cohn when everybody realizes Brett's disinterest in Cohn except Cohn. It comes to a head when Brett falls for the bull fighter and Cohn assaults his friends for viciously taunting him about Brett's disinterest.

While the main theme is somewhat clever, much of the other prose seems to be self-loathing and scenary. When the characters get drunk, they pour their hearts and failures out like spilling wine. Even when Bret finds her resolution, the reader could anticipate the downfall.

It is difficult to like any character in the story which may leave the reader with an awkward feeling. The characters are depraved and infantile while searching for a love that eludes them. While the search for an elusive love is one that readers can identify with, the flaws in the characters make evident why their goals elude them.

Hemingway good, story bad.......2007-06-24

I've often wondered how I got through college as an English major without reading any Hemingway. The classics have always been my favorites, and American lit specifically. So, as an adult, I've tried to add some of those critically acclaimed books I missed in undergrad to my "Have Read" list. The first Hemingway book I read post-college was A Farewell to Arms. I liked it ... not loved, but liked it enough to read more of his work. But this one ... I struggled through it. I felt like each page was the same -- group of friends who don't all like each other and lots and lots of alcohol. I did make it to the end despite my minimal interest in the story (or lack there of) because, no matter what the story is, Ernest Hemingway's style of writing is a great example of a true gift.

Average customer rating:

Hatred of adjectives
Frustration and confusion over contradictions
Hemingway's Last Best Work
One of the best!
A good present for someone going to Paris

A Moveable Feast
Ernest Hemingway
Manufacturer: Scribner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 068482499X

Amazon.com

In the preface to A Moveable Feast, Hemingway remarks casually that "if the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction"--and, indeed, fact or fiction, it doesn't matter, for his slim memoir of Paris in the 1920s is as enchanting as anything made up and has become the stuff of legend. Paris in the '20s! Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, lived happily on $5 a day and still had money for drinks at the Closerie des Lilas, skiing in the Alps, and fishing trips to Spain. On every corner and at every café table, there were the most extraordinary people living wonderful lives and telling fantastic stories. Gertrude Stein invited Hemingway to come every afternoon and sip "fragrant, colorless alcohols" and chat admid her great pictures. He taught Ezra Pound how to box, gossiped with James Joyce, caroused with the fatally insecure Scott Fitzgerald (the acid portraits of him and his wife, Zelda, are notorious). Meanwhile, Hemingway invented a new way of writing based on this simple premise: "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."

Hemingway beautifully captures the fragile magic of a special time and place, and he manages to be nostalgic without hitting any false notes of sentimentality. "This is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy," he concludes. Originally published in 1964, three years after his suicide, A Moveable Feast was the first of his posthumous books and remains the best. --David Laskin

Book Description

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. It is his classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, filled with irreverent portraits of other expatriate luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein; tender memories of his first wife, Hadley; and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft. It is a literary feast, brilliantly evoking the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the youthful spirit, unbridled creativity, and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.

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"You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil." Begun in the autumn of 1957 and published posthumously in 1964, Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast captures what it meant to be young and poor and writing in Paris during the 1920s. A correspondent for the Toronto Star, Hemingway arrived in Paris in 1921, three years after the trauma of the Great War and at the beginning of the transformation of Europe's cultural landscape: Braque and Picasso were experimenting with cubist forms; James Joyce, long living in self-imposed exile from his native Dublin, had just completed Ulysses; Gertude Stein held court at 27 rue de Fleurus, and deemed young Ernest a member of rue génération perdue; and T. S. Eliot was a bank clerk in London. It was during these years that the as-of-yet unpublished young writer gathered the material for his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, and the subsequent masterpieces that followed. Among these small, reflective sketches are unforgettable encounters with the members of Hemingway's slightly rag-tag circle of artists and writers, some also fated to achieve fame and glory, others to fall into obscurity. Here, too, is an evocation of the Paris that Hemingway knew as a young man - a map drawn in his distinct prose of the streets and cafés and bookshops that comprised the city in which he, as a young writer, sometimes struggling against the cold and hunger of near poverty, honed the skills of his craft. A Moveable Feast is at once an elegy to the remarkable group of expatriates that gathered in Paris during the twenties and a testament to the risks and rewards of the writerly life.

Customer Reviews:

Hatred of adjectives.......2007-08-08

What a poisonous, vituperatve, jealous, mean-spirtied man he must have been. Also self-righteous and condescending.
Does anybody read his tripe anymore?

Frustration and confusion over contradictions.......2007-08-07

That's all I felt as I picked up this book to read. Is it fact or fiction? To me, and others that I have spoken to, it makes a world of difference as to how I approach a book, it's characters, location, and events that take place. This book is supposed to be Hemingway's memoirs. I have no idea who is on the cover.

There is a disclaimer by the publishing company that this is a work of fiction.

Not to mention Hemingway's own explanation that does not make a bit of sense. "If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what was written as fact."

Following that, there is a note written by M.H. that states that this book covers the years 1921-1926 in Paris.

Lastly, there are nine black and white photographs of people and places that supposedly do not even exist.

I became so frustrated with all of these contradictions that I did not even bother to read the book.

Hemingway's Last Best Work.......2007-06-11

Published posthumously, this memoir is a series of sketches recounting episodes from Hemingway's life in Paris in the early 1920s. It is probably the best thing Hemingway wrote in his late years. This is the period when Hemingway perfected his laconic style and produced several of the short stories that form his most durable work. Many of the sketches display the economy of style and eye for telling detail found in Hemingway's best short stories. Much of the book is devoted to describing his life as a young writer trying to perfect his style. It contains interesting, though not necessarily objective, portraits of Hemingway's friends Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The presiding spirit of this book is Hemingway's first wife, Hadley Richardson Hemingway.
This book has a more than wistful quality because of the circumstances under which it was written. Hemingway produced it in the late 1950s when he was struggling with his alcoholism, bouts of depression, and not very successful attempts to produce major novels. The contrast with the vigor, productivity, and happiness of this Parisian period must have been painful for Hemingway though only at the very end of book does a note of self-pity creep in.

One of the best!.......2007-06-01

So many good things have been said of this book and I can add nothing more. Anybody wanting to understand Hemingway and disciplined writing should read or reread this book.

A good present for someone going to Paris.......2007-03-08

This book by Hem was published after his death. You can of see this, Hem would never have published some of these stories if he was alive and kicking - at least he would have edited them heavily. Still it is an amazing book filled with beautiful memories of a fantastic city when it was both good and affordable. Today Paris is still a good city, but it's hardly affordable. Anyway, if you intend to travel to Paris by yourself or if some of your close friends will visit Paris, they will be most happy to get this as a present. Afterwards they will keep thanking you every time you meet them - yes, it's just that good...

Average customer rating:

Good excerpts from Hemingway. Not a comprehensive book on the subject of writing
Hemingway Uncensored
Author should be ashamed.
Publisher's tricks
He won the Nobel Prize in Literature for a reason

Ernest Hemingway on Writing

Manufacturer: Scribner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0684854295

Amazon.com

"Throughout Ernest Hemingway's career as a writer," says Larry W. Phillips in his introduction to Ernest Hemingway on Writing, "he maintained that it was bad luck to talk about writing." Hemingway seems to have courted bad luck. Phillips has amassed a slender book's worth of Hemingway's reflections on writing, culled from letters, books, interviews, speeches, and an unpublished manuscript. These musings are arranged into topics such as "Advice to Writers," "Working Habits," and "Obscenity" (of which there is plenty here). Sometimes ponderous, other times offhand, these thoughts form a portrait of a man driven to create not solely the best writing he could, but the best writing, period. Hemingway craved exactness, both in his work and in the work of others; he strove to make every word necessary. "Eschew the monumental," he wrote to Maxwell Perkins in 1932. "Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones." His aim? Mere perfection. "I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit," he confided to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934. "I try to put the shit in the wastebasket." --Jane Steinberg

Book Description

"Throughout Hemingway's career as a writer, he maintained that it was bad luck to talk about writing -- that it takes off 'whatever butterflies have on their wings and the arrangement of hawk's feathers if you show it or talk about it.'"

Despite this belief, by the end of his life he had done just what he intended not to do. In his novels and stories, in letters to editors, friends, fellow artists, and critics, in interviews and in commissioned articles on the subject, Hemingway wrote often about writing. And he wrote as well and as incisively about the subject as any writer who ever lived....

This book contains Hemingway's reflections on the nature of the writer and on elements of the writer's life, including specific and helpful advice to writers on the craft of writing, work habits, and discipline. The Hemingway personality comes through in general wisdom, wit, humor, and insight, and in his insistence on the integrity of the writer and of the profession itself.

-- From the Preface by Larry W. Phillips

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"Throughout Hemingway's career as a writer, he maintained that it was bad luck to talk about writing - that it takes off 'whatever butterflies have on their wings and the arrangement of hawk's feathers if you show it or talk about it." Despite this belief, by the end of his life he had done just what he intended not to do. In his novels and stories, in letters to editors, friends, fellow artists, and critics, in interviews and in commissioned articles on the subject, Hemingway wrote often about writing. And he wrote as well and as incisively about the subject as any writer who ever lived... This book contains Hemingway's reflections on the nature of the writer and on elements of the writer's life, including specific and helpful advice to writers on the craft of writing, work habits, and discipline. The Hemingway personality comes through in general wisdom, wit, humor, and insight, and in his insistence on the integrity of the writer and of the profession itself. - From the Preface by Larry W. Phillips

Customer Reviews:

Good excerpts from Hemingway. Not a comprehensive book on the subject of writing.......2007-06-03

I found the book interesting enough for a quick glance, but not fascinating enough to recommend it as a must-have. The book is comprised of excerpts from different sources that deal with the topic of writing. Since Hemingway never wrote extensively on the topic of writing, he considered it bad luck; this is the most thorough book on the subject for Hemingway fans. But BECAUSE Hemingway never wrote much on the subject, the reader has to settle for an incomplete tome on the subject of writing.
In conclusion this is the best book on Hemingway's thoughts on writing, but not a comprehensive book on the subject.

Hemingway Uncensored.......2005-11-15

Eye-opening excerpts from many Hemingway letters to his closest friends, typos and all. Insightful and revealing. A must-have for any Hemingway fan or aspiring writer. Mice: Pick this up at your own peril. This is true Hemingway, he pulls no punches. Such a short read though, regrettably much too short, although the Hemingway gems scattered throughout this sparse booklet are still well worth the price. Being that he never intended this material to be published, it shows his honesty as a writer as much as it reveals in snapshot style, his honesty in how he lived and survived his short, magnificent life. It's editor (Phillips) unwittingly perhaps, might have made Hemingway proud after all. Including not one, but many of the truest sentences you'll ever read.

Author should be ashamed........2005-06-24

This book is little more than sentence fragments and out of context quotations attributed to Ernest Hemingway. This book is not the least bit useful to a person interested in learning to write better. This book is not useful to a person hoping to learn more about the life or character of Ernest Hemingway.

The book is 140 pages, but each page has almost as much white-space as text.

This book is a sham, a scam, a ruse. [...] Or perhaps "assembled" would be a better word. [...]

Save your money. Don't buy this book.

Publisher's tricks.......2004-11-26

This is a review of the product (paperback version), not of the writing, nor of the editor's selections, which are well reviewed by other customers. I bought the book online so I did not get a chance to leaf through it before buying it. Had I been able to do so, I would probably not have bought it. The publisher has used every possible trick to stretch the limited quantity of material over as many pages as possible.

The main culprits are the huge margins. I measured the area of the page, and then the area used for printing the actual content (excluding the chapter and book names at the top and excluding the page number at the bottom) and found only 41% was being used. As a rough comparison, Stephen King's 'On Writing' (paperback version) uses almost 63% of the page.

Then there is the separator between quotations - over two centimeters for each. On pages containing three of them, almost 40% of the content area is taken up by these separators.

The first page of each chapter (there are thirteen chapters in a book of 140 pages) also wastes more space than necessary - 45% to 48% percent of the page is used for the chapter heading.

I could not enjoy this book because I was constantly distracted by the realization that I had bought a very small book dressed up to look much bigger.

He won the Nobel Prize in Literature for a reason.......2003-11-23

Of course, I've read everything he wrote, but I wasn't prepared to get the key information on writing enclosed in this little book. Most people think Hemingway was a rough and tumble guy who wrote in his spare time when he had the urge. Most other times, the legend goes, he was too busy drinking, fishing, or womanizing. This book clearly shows that ain't so. He spent most of his time, the way real writers do: Writing and thinking about writing. Often he would check into a hotel, let everyone know he was there, and then stay somewhere else so as not to be disturbed from his main mission. The gems of informations depicted here come in the form of advice to the Mice (H's term for young student writers) from Y.C. (your correspondent). Did you know, for instance, "Most live writers do not exist. Their fame is created by critics who always need a genius of the season, someone they understand completely and feel safe in praising, but when these fabricated geniuses are dead they will not exist." Or how about this gem: "If an sonofbitch could write he wouldn't have to teach in college." Particulary interesting is Papa's advice to writers about reading. He was of the opinion that most writers write too much and don't read enough. His advice is to master Tolstoi, Flaubert, Mann, Joyce, Fielding, Mark Twain, Stendhal, Dostoevskis, Crane, Kipling, Turgenev, Hudson, James, (on and on so fast you can't write them down, three times that many) before you start writing. Very good advice, I would say. His point being you must first read the literature before you can write literature. This book does omit one piece of advice that H never gave but which he practiced by example. He memorized the King James Bible (cf Moveable Feast) and could recite it by heart. He did this to get down into the very structure of his brain the cadences that express beauty and truth effectively. The secret of his terse style is therefore the secret of clear and simple expression as in that wonderful version of the Bible.

Average customer rating:

The sun Also Rises
Ignore the critics
The classic of American modernism
Classical Hemingway, need I say more?
Worthwhile, yet UN-earth-shattering.

The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway
Manufacturer: Scribner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0743297334

Book Description

The quintessential novel of the Lost Generation, The Sun Also Rises is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century

Customer Reviews:

The sun Also Rises.......2007-10-19

The Sun Also Rises

By: Ernest Hemingway

247 pages

The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway represents the generations that go by too quickly to notice. The title is symbolic in the sense that no matter what happens in the world the Sun will always Rises the next morning. Hemingway uses many ways to feed you information with out directly telling you. Jake Barnes, the protagonist of the book, has to find a way to live a normal life even with his life-changing WWI wound.

Lady Brett Ashley, Jakes brief companion, causes Jake much emotion pain though out the book with her constant affairs. Her unwillingness to give up sex causes her to leave Jake for other men. Jake, trying to get his mind off Brett, goes with Bill Gorton, a friend from war, on a trip to Pamplona to fish and later attend the town fiesta. While there the runs into Brett with Mike Campbell, her fiancé. They continue their fishing trip when they meet with Jakes close friend Robert Cohn. The book ends with Brett telling Jake: "we could have had suck a damned good time together" (247).

The key theme of this book is the harmfulness of sex. Brett could have been happy with Jake if it weren't for his War wound making him incapable of having sex. I would recommend this book to readers who like to feel the emotions of the characters they read about.

Ignore the critics.......2007-10-01

For some reason Hemingway seems to be a target for cheap criticism; I guess his spare, masculine style is easy to mock. But 'The Sun Also Rises' is not only a great masterpiece by one of the 20th century's best and most innovative writers, it's also terrifically entertaining, funny, subtle and ironic. And here's a hint for those who complain that nothing happens in the book. There's this amazing thing you should find out about: it's called SUBTEXT.

The classic of American modernism.......2007-08-23

All I can say is that the people who have rated this book with a low score are missing the point. This is a beautifully written book. The complaints that nothing happens and all the characters do is drink, fight, and fish is because this is a book about the LACK of meaning in post-WWI society. Meaninglessness IS the message. If you seek to understand modernism, this is the best novel for that purpose.

Classical Hemingway, need I say more?.......2007-08-23

Actually, I shall say a bit more. If you are looking for a cliche product of Hemingway, search no farther. It has a great style, flow, great diction. However, it is a very dry story. Through symbolism and imagery and anecdotes, Hemingway manages to describe a theme that could have been described in two paragraphs. Suggested for Hemingway fans. Not so much for anyone else.

Worthwhile, yet UN-earth-shattering........2007-08-22

One of my most recent reads has been Ernest Hemingway's [1926] novel, The Sun Also Rises.
Hemingway is one of those authors I have wanted to explore for a long time [along with James Joyce, Saul Bellow or John Updike] but I have inexplicably never really gotten around to it. Actually, this is not entirely true... I did read Hemingway's memoir-ish A Moveable Feast, and loved it.
But The Sun Also Rises was my second look at Papa, and I do want to read more.
It was entirely coincidental that I was reading it during the same days [seasonally speaking] in which the novel itself takes place.
The bullfights of Pamplona, along with the daily early-morning three-minute suspension of sanity known as the "Running With The Bulls" takes place from early to mid-July.
And that is where we find ourselves in this book.

Jake Barnes, [whom I could not help but identify with what I know of the persona of the author], is an American journalist stationed in Paris. He likes bullfights, drinking, fishing, and..... not working.
This book is like one long, extended party, where people venture from café to bar, and stay in either place only long enough to suggest the next rendezvous, the next café or bar where they will consume as much alcohol as is humanly possible!
I've never read of such wanton dissipation since, well..... A Moveable Feast!

So, in the first portion of the book we meet all of Jake's friends, beginning with Robert Cohn, the Jewish writer, ex-boxer. Cohn is the only person in this book that is not a severe alcoholic.
Then there's Lady Brett Ashley, the sort of English dame hottie that everyone not only wants, but also... has! Jake and Brett maintain a close, although platonic [for reasons I will not get into] relationship throughout the course of the book, and they are paranthetical characters, in my opinion.
The ever-insouciant [and ever-soused] Mike Campbell is Brett's boyfriend [well, she has others, too] and he hates Robert Cohn, not only because of Cohn's Jewishness, [racism abounds in this book] but because of the fact that Robert loves Brett.
Then there is Bill Gorton, sort of a happy-go-lucky guy who rounds out this fivesome of ne'er do wells. A spicy amount of secondary characters are peppered throughout, but suffice it to say, these principal five all end up in Pamplona for fiesta week, where they trample and gore their way through all of the hotels and bars like a wild herd of multi-horned rhinos!
At one point, a brief fight breaks out between Jake and Robert Cohn, and the following few lines illustrate the near skeletal way that Hemingway writes.

Jake narrates:
I swung at him and he ducked. I saw his face duck sideways in the light. He hit me and I sat down on the pavement. As I started to get on my feet he hit me twice. I went down backward under a table. [from ch.XVII].

I went down backward under a table?
Anyone writing this sparsely [not to mention disjointedly] nowadays would not be published.
And yet. And yet... there is something about this book that is good.
Something that makes it well worth reading. Hemingway [successfully] gets away with this sort of austere, clip-clop style... utterly devoid of pretense. Leaving you with the feeling that you have a brother, or maybe an uncle, that would have related these events to you in much the same way.
Or maybe even a Papa.
I enjoyed The Sun Also Rises, in a non life-altering way!

So what am I saying about this, my second foray into Hemingway?
Am I `fer it, or `agin it?
I say overall, it is a thumbs up! Read it.
Hey, and now that I think of it, I read Old Man and the Sea way back in high school.
But it was required reading, so.... doesn't count.
Reading under duress does not count!

Average customer rating:

on target
Excellent

Hemingway
Carlos Baker
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0691013055

Customer Reviews:

on target.......2002-12-12

well done. i don't usually care to read books by academics, but this is the exception to the rule. you get the full picture here about ernie, warts and all. you may not like some of the things you'll find out about the great novelist...but then, that's life. i say you'll still want to read ernie's books--because he was that good. ernie lives on!

Excellent.......1998-10-02

Insightful analysis of Hemingway's work for anyone who wants to get past the literal meanings to reach the symbolic. Reading Baker's book makes reading Hemingway an even more rewarding experience.

Average customer rating:

A Gem
to complete your Hemingway journey this is essential
Heard Better
Resonant and Revelatory
CHARLES DOES IT AGAIN !

Ernest Hemingway Audio Collection CD
Ernest Hemingway
Manufacturer: Caedmon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: 0694524980
Release Date: 2001-05-08

Book Description

Nobel Prize-winning giant Ernest Hemingway is widely considered one of the greatest American authors of the Twentieth Century. Here, listeners can experience his riveting style both from his own voice and from one of America's most esteemed actors.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro: Performed by Charlton Heston, I this is a classic story of a hard-drinking, ruthless and womanizing world adventurer who comes face-to-face with the one antagonist he cannot conquer: his own ignoble and imminent death.

The Old Man and the Sea: Also performed by Heston and nominated for a Grammy, this recording of Hemingway's Pulitzer Prize-winning story is a perfect example of his literary I precision.

Ernest Hemingway Reads: A rich sampling of Hemingway's brilliant, multifaceted writing which the Nation said "provides his readers the opportunity to listen for and appreciate the Hemingway wit. " Includes: The Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech; Second Poem to Mary; In Harry's Bar in Venice; The Fifth Column; Work in Progress; Saturday Night at the Morehouse in Billings, Montana.

Read by Charlton Heston and Ernest Hemingway

Customer Reviews:

A Gem.......2006-08-12

I am compelled to add my thoughts because the average of the reviews that have come before suggest this is a mediocre recording. Nothing could be further from the truth. The story is a great work. The reading by Heston adds to the experience significantly. This recording is one of life's gems - to be treasured. I do not wish to seem conceited or trite, but perhaps the listner must be along to a certain point in life to recognize the symbolism, and appreciate this must have effort.

to complete your Hemingway journey this is essential.......2006-03-09

I have read everything Hemingway wrote and visited his home in Key West, the man is a legend on many levels. In order complete one's Hemingway collection this CD is required. Enjoy the readings and the brief glances at the man's voice

Heard Better.......2006-03-08

Heston's reading of the old man and the sea is so-so, he did a much better job on the snows.

Resonant and Revelatory.......2005-11-02

Of the Charleton Heston readings of The Old Man and Snows little need be said; they are professional in all respects and fine as they can be. It is good to hear Hemingway's deceptively simple prose read well, for it discloses the fundamental modern English architecture beneath it: decidedly tuned to the ear, with conscious attention to alliteration and repetition of sounds and words. The stories are two of the most carefully crafted in Hemingway's canon, and the resonant voice of Heston will gratify repeated listenings.

The addition of a rare disc of Hemingway's own voice will seem, in context, a throw-away or add-on. First of all, the listener will be startled by the high, occasionally hesitant pitch of the author's voice, simultaneously tentative and clipped, and heavily accented. It is no species of stereotyped tough guy one might have expected, neither Jimmy Cagney nor John Wayne. Nor is it one used to public performance. It is quite obviously private, and distinctly regional -- the timbre found in many great plains settlers, with a distinctly 19th century timbre that by now has all but vanished.

The occasion was Hemingway's pal A.E. Hotchner (author of Papa Hemingway) bringing a tape recorder down to Cuba in the 1950s. Set pieces of the public non-fiction voice were what the author obviously found most comfortable in this experiment: introductions to an obscure play and the collected stories, and finally a very moving performance of the short Nobel speech. There is also humor -- a self-parody of Across the River and Into the Trees harder on himself than any critic, and an outrageous improvised bawdy tale that sounds rather boozed. Yet there are two incredible, serious performances here: the wartime Second Poem to Mary, and the first chapter of book III of the then unreleased Islands in the Stream. In the world of audio literature, this is about as good as it gets. The poem eerily harks back to the horrors of the World War II Battle of Hurtgen Forest; it sounds as convincing as a battle report, and is an anguished, angry testament to bravery amidst death and monstrosity and the tactical errors of top brass, leaving fighting men in an impossible situation. The Islands reading describes Thomas Hudson amongst similar unspeakable things. If not for everyday or for cruising through town, this disc is certainly for sometimes, preferably late at night and perhaps aided by a shot of your favorite tonic to help you take the hit. In such a setting you will quickly understand how and why this unusual voice became a standard in the war-ravaged "American Century."

The thoughtful listener might aid appreciation by picking up Caedmon's Gertrude Stein Reading, and listening to it at the same sitting. Here is another classic, lost Midwestern voice -- and Hemingway's perhaps most important Paris teacher. The similarity of the diction between her Picasso and his Second Poem is a grand revelation, and the sort only possible through this aural dimension Stein thought so essential to her pioneering sandblast job honing our modern English tongue. Yeah kids, maybe you can do it now, perhaps even in your sleep. But only because they did it first.

CHARLES DOES IT AGAIN !.......2005-09-26

How could you not enjoy another endeavor of Hestons talents, he delivers time and time again. What a team, Heston and Hemmingway!!!!

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