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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46167.A_Farewell_to_Arms?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="A Farewell to Arms" border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51WX7K1S9CL._SL160_.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46167.A_Farewell_to_Arms?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">A Farewell to Arms</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1455.Ernest_Hemingway">Ernest Hemingway</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7914847?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 3 of 5 stars Cannot resist posting this review by Orlo Williams published in the Times Literary Supplement of November 28, 1929. A genuine time capsule.
 
 Mr. Ernest Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS (Cape, 7s. 6d. net) is a novel of great power. Though it adds one to the now many novels of war, it is unlike any other, for Mr. Hemingway's method and outlook are entirely his own. Though his mental processes, his language and his subject-matter are not what we in England should call "typically American," he is one of the few writers in the English language who is distinctively and absolutely American. To everything British he is foreign, and the British, though he likes them, are foreign to him. Nobody but an American could have his staccato style, his particular turn of dialogue, his power of rejecting everything that is extraneous to his keen but selective vision, his dismal animation, his unrationalized pessimism. It is always the same mind, the same man — one who finds no comfort but in vivid circumstance and pleasure of the senses — who tells the story: he tells it to himself, either in long passages of terse dialogue or in direct reflections of his own retina, hardly ever stopping to register a mental comment.
 
 Here, at all events, he has found a theme more suited to him than any before. The events — ambulance work on the Isonzo, the bursting of a trench-mortar shell in a dug-out, a wound, hospital in Milan, return to the front, the great retreat after Caporetto, escape from shooting by the "Battle Police" at the Tagliamento and a further escape at night in a boat from Stresa over the Swiss frontier — are episodes in a world-agony, not merely the adventures of Bohemians; the characters depicted, with a masterly handling of dialogue (particularly the Italian surgeon, Rinaldi), are more interesting than the drunkards of "Fiesta "; the love of Henry and Catherine Barkle, the English nurse, is rendered with an extraordinarily intense simplicity; and the peculiar hopelessness of Mr. Hemingway's humour finds an ideal scope in the contrasts and contradictions of war. The actual scenes of war are biting and brilliant: they are so vivid and yet effortless that it is hard to believe one is reading fiction. Mr. Hemingway's description of the retreating Army — the blocking of the roads, the effort of the American lieutenant Henry and his three mechanics to get a motor-ambulance along, their failure when it is bogged in the mud, their flight, on foot, the lost moral of the stragglers, the ruthless shooting of senior officers, as they are singled out from the ruck crossing the Tagliamento, the American's plunge into the river and his journey in a gun-truck to Milan – has a note of complete authenticity, and singularly corroborates a similar description in Riccardo Bacchelli's novel "La Citta degli Amanti." Yet, in these nearly identical descriptions, there is an abyss between the two mentalities. The American, completely disillusioned, understands both the patriotism of an Italian officer and the innate opposition to war of an Italian soldier. The undisciplined talk of Henry's drivers is as masterly as that which reveals the Southern scepticism of Rinaldi, the faith of the chaplain or the patriotism of his comrade Gino. Yet, while he understands, he accepts nothing. His only comments are to the effect that any glorification of life is false.
 
 Abstract words such as glory, honour, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of the regiments and the dates. Gino was a patriot, so he said things that separated us sometimes, but he was also a fine boy, and I understand his being a patriot. . . .
 
 If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you, too, but there will be no special hurry.
 
 So drink deep and go a-whoring while you may is the very plainly illustrated motto, and love truly, as Henry and Catherine loved, if you can; but the world will get you in the end, as it got Catherine, who died in childbirth with her child at Lausanne, leaving Henry with nothing, on a rainy night. The frankly sensual love-relation between Henry and Catherine is remarkable, not for any loftiness, but for its beautiful precision. Catherine is a stupid girl, with nothing but love and great courage to recommend her. Henry made love to her at first as a game, but when he came back wounded to Milan he fell passionately in love. In the simple, almost foolish exchanges of their conversation is built up a picture of a union that transcended difference, of a Phoenix and Turtle on the fleshly plane. The view of Catherine is purely a man's view, but as such it is unfalteringly delineated. After their happy days in Switzerland the end is unbelievably painful, for no horror of that tragic maternity is left to the imagination. And with that death and Henry walking back to the hotel in the rain this gripping story ends abruptly, leaving all its pain raw. Mr. Hemingway's pessimism is his own affair: we can only recognize that it animates an extremely talented and original artist.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/354189?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Ginnie's review
rating:

bookshelves: family, war

Cannot resist posting this review by Orlo Williams published in the Times Literary Supplement of November 28, 1929. A genuine time capsule.

Mr. Ernest Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS (Cape, 7s. 6d. net) is a novel of great power. Though it adds one to the now many novels of war, it is unlike any other, for Mr. Hemingway's method and outlook are entirely his own. Though his mental processes, his language and his subject-matter are not what we in England should call "typically American," he is one of the few writers in the English language who is distinctively and absolutely American. To everything British he is foreign, and the British, though he likes them, are foreign to him. Nobody but an American could have his staccato style, his particular turn of dialogue, his power of rejecting everything that is extraneous to his keen but selective vision, his dismal animation, his unrationalized pessimism. It is always the same mind, the same man — one who finds no comfort...more Cannot resist posting this review by Orlo Williams published in the Times Literary Supplement of November 28, 1929. A genuine time capsule.

Mr. Ernest Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS (Cape, 7s. 6d. net) is a novel of great power. Though it adds one to the now many novels of war, it is unlike any other, for Mr. Hemingway's method and outlook are entirely his own. Though his mental processes, his language and his subject-matter are not what we in England should call "typically American," he is one of the few writers in the English language who is distinctively and absolutely American. To everything British he is foreign, and the British, though he likes them, are foreign to him. Nobody but an American could have his staccato style, his particular turn of dialogue, his power of rejecting everything that is extraneous to his keen but selective vision, his dismal animation, his unrationalized pessimism. It is always the same mind, the same man — one who finds no comfort but in vivid circumstance and pleasure of the senses — who tells the story: he tells it to himself, either in long passages of terse dialogue or in direct reflections of his own retina, hardly ever stopping to register a mental comment.

Here, at all events, he has found a theme more suited to him than any before. The events — ambulance work on the Isonzo, the bursting of a trench-mortar shell in a dug-out, a wound, hospital in Milan, return to the front, the great retreat after Caporetto, escape from shooting by the "Battle Police" at the Tagliamento and a further escape at night in a boat from Stresa over the Swiss frontier — are episodes in a world-agony, not merely the adventures of Bohemians; the characters depicted, with a masterly handling of dialogue (particularly the Italian surgeon, Rinaldi), are more interesting than the drunkards of "Fiesta "; the love of Henry and Catherine Barkle, the English nurse, is rendered with an extraordinarily intense simplicity; and the peculiar hopelessness of Mr. Hemingway's humour finds an ideal scope in the contrasts and contradictions of war. The actual scenes of war are biting and brilliant: they are so vivid and yet effortless that it is hard to believe one is reading fiction. Mr. Hemingway's description of the retreating Army — the blocking of the roads, the effort of the American lieutenant Henry and his three mechanics to get a motor-ambulance along, their failure when it is bogged in the mud, their flight, on foot, the lost moral of the stragglers, the ruthless shooting of senior officers, as they are singled out from the ruck crossing the Tagliamento, the American's plunge into the river and his journey in a gun-truck to Milan – has a note of complete authenticity, and singularly corroborates a similar description in Riccardo Bacchelli's novel "La Citta degli Amanti." Yet, in these nearly identical descriptions, there is an abyss between the two mentalities. The American, completely disillusioned, understands both the patriotism of an Italian officer and the innate opposition to war of an Italian soldier. The undisciplined talk of Henry's drivers is as masterly as that which reveals the Southern scepticism of Rinaldi, the faith of the chaplain or the patriotism of his comrade Gino. Yet, while he understands, he accepts nothing. His only comments are to the effect that any glorification of life is false.

Abstract words such as glory, honour, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of the regiments and the dates. Gino was a patriot, so he said things that separated us sometimes, but he was also a fine boy, and I understand his being a patriot. . . .

If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you, too, but there will be no special hurry.

So drink deep and go a-whoring while you may is the very plainly illustrated motto, and love truly, as Henry and Catherine loved, if you can; but the world will get you in the end, as it got Catherine, who died in childbirth with her child at Lausanne, leaving Henry with nothing, on a rainy night. The frankly sensual love-relation between Henry and Catherine is remarkable, not for any loftiness, but for its beautiful precision. Catherine is a stupid girl, with nothing but love and great courage to recommend her. Henry made love to her at first as a game, but when he came back wounded to Milan he fell passionately in love. In the simple, almost foolish exchanges of their conversation is built up a picture of a union that transcended difference, of a Phoenix and Turtle on the fleshly plane. The view of Catherine is purely a man's view, but as such it is unfalteringly delineated. After their happy days in Switzerland the end is unbelievably painful, for no horror of that tragic maternity is left to the imagination. And with that death and Henry walking back to the hotel in the rain this gripping story ends abruptly, leaving all its pain raw. Mr. Hemingway's pessimism is his own affair: we can only recognize that it animates an extremely talented and original artist....less

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