#33 - A Farewell to Arms

When it comes to recommending real literature for a guy who doesn't love the subject for itself - who won't sit and gush over the layers of the themes and the structure of the dialogue - there aren't many big names. For women you have your Austens and Brontes and plenty in between. For men, there are a couple of newer ones - Chuck Palahniuk springs to mind - but most of the older books don't immediately spring to mind as "dude lit". Three Musketeers discusses jewelry and clothing an awful lot - Don Quixote has sappy poetic love stories - but hiding just on the verge of modern is the patron saint of manly literature, Ernest Hemingway.

There is no other way to describe Hemingway that doesn't involve his testosterone. He is, by every definition, a bad-ass motherfucker. Dude fought things, had sex with things, grew beards, hunted, drank, gambled, and managed to still appreciate the beauty of things before he stomped on them with his dirty black boots. This generally manliness transferred entirely to his writing - he speaks in short, gruff sentences, describing things simply and callously. It also extends to the dialogue - mono-syllabic discussions on war and religion. For a while, it seemed to me to be a weakness - there were no passionate speeches, or witty banter. Then came a passage right near the end, where Count Greffi plays billiards. On an old man, the wisdom of the short phrase suddenly became clear - the lines were sharp, and the point was made. Hemingway still found the time to be an imagist, but instead of flowery purple prose, it was a dingy beige.

The back of my edition of A Farewell To Arms speaks of a wonderful romance between Tenente Henry and Catherine Barkley. So when I got into their first romantic sections, I had to read the back again. THIS was romantic? Barkley and Henry exchange false <3's as they both use each other as something to lean on - the mood swings on both parties are signs of not only damaged people, but near schizophrenia. For people who have read it, I'm not just referring to the opening closed-eyes kiss. The entire relationship is a series of fantasies, without any real moments between them. In the end, I suppose, that's not the question. If their relationship disturbs me, that's one thing - but is it real, and is it well-written? And again, I have to say yes. The final stream-of-consciousness passage, as he sits and waits for Catherine's labour to end, was written by Hemingway as he waited for his own child to be born. That kind of raw connection to the text is what makes Hemingway's stiff, coarse language work, and work it did. I enjoyed all of it - I wanted to keep reading, I wanted to see Henry go more places, and meet more people. I don't know if A Farewell to Arms will end up being my favourite Hemingway novel, but it was my first, and because of it, it certainly won't be my last. So now joining Don Quixote, On The Road, Ulysses and Crime and Punishment as the 10/10 books on my list is...A Farewell to Arms.

10/10