Brad’s Comments (group member since Dec 27, 2008)

Brad’s comments from the The Importance of Reading Ernest group.

Gary wrote: "i still feel that way. but think of hemingway's lifestyle, and the times he lived in,and his macho image, i'd venture to guess old papa felt doc was being a coward in that...." I think Papa would have killed himself quicker if he'd lived in our times for this very reason. Times were different back then, and the man that Hemingway was possible when he was alive. His persona is no longer possible, and it would be attacked today with fervor. And I'm not sure that's fair, but it is what it is.

Gary wrote: "what makes hemingway, hemingway,is it's all left to interpretation! wish we could ask papa himself, eh?..."

I could never ask an author what they intended. For me, once they publish it they lose claim to the story and their intention matters not a whit for me anymore. But damn, he is fantastic. I would have loved to go fishing with him, maybe spar with him, get drunk with him, but I think I would have stayed away from his meanings.

Does the wife really talk him down from his anger, or does he just realize that he's really not pissed at Dick but his wife, and he can't killer her, so it's best to just calm down?

Gary wrote: "oh, faulkner is wonderful. an entirely different writer then hemingway. did you know they despised each other??? would make rude comments about each others works,and yet one of hemingway's most fav..." Yeah, I think that is kind of a fun fact. They were both utterly brilliant. I don't think they could possibly have liked each other. It was impossible. They were both so damn important to literature, and they knew it, and they knew that they were really the only competition the other had -- even though they were so different.

Absolutely. It is amazing what Hemingway can do with so little space. Setting, character, dialogue, action, it's all there and it all creates a perfect mood with nothing wasted at all. And you're bang on about the way it builds to the ending, Gary. Deliberate.

I never really thought Wilson was happy that Macomber was gone. You mentioned in another post that you imagined him wearing the permanent smirk, and I totally see that too, but I think that smirk extended to Margot. He'd have sex with her; he'd cuckold Macomber without any guilt, but he wouldn't want Margot to himself. Too much maintenance. Too foolish. Too annoying.

Well, I really do like them all (and dislike them too). There is something in each of them that engages me. But I feel that way about all of Hemingway's characters.

Hemingway certainly venerated courage and toughness, but I have never found that he dislikes the characters we might call "sissies," nor that he was making any comment on their unfitness for living.

Yet Hemingway does explore courage in many of his works (maybe in all of them), and in his works courage takes on myriad forms. So no easy answers about courage. His exploration in Macomber was fascinating for me because of the way it explores the importance of courage in men for the women who love them or are supposed to love them...or in one kind of woman since Hemingway's women are too complex and too different to simply have one standard view of courage. But Macomber's wife, she's the kind of woman who believes in the survival of the fittest, and we see the result.

I'd like to take a look at those Gary. Where'd you find them?

stroking six toed cats, no doubt

Weigh in folks. Is the Doc stealing those logs? Is it enough that the company may not return for them?

Good stuff, Gio. I feel similarly about the fact that the Doc really is stealing those logs, and that Dick's spot on. And it has to drive the Doc extra crazy having Dick be the one to tell him. I think you're right...it is too easy to make Dick the bad guy. I don't think he's so bad.

Our story for August is going to be Hills Like White Elephants.

That should make for lots of conversation, methinks.

Preb and Emilly have pointed out that the Doc and his wife don't seem to be doing to well, and that the Doc, at least, seems unhappy with his wife. Is there anyone who feels differently about them? And if you feel the same, what in their relationship seems to be the problem?

Does anyone else think that maybe, just maybe, there is a moment of cowardice on the part of Doc, or at least a moment that he himself perceives as cowardice? It is nice to think that a man who walks away is "the better man" but many men find that walking away difficult because of what they themselves see it as.

Preb brushed up against this in his first impression comment, wondering aloud if this was the same gun that the Doc (or Hemingway's father) took his own life with, but this time through the story I read that scene not as the Doc contemplating revenge on Dick, but as the Doc contemplating suicide right then, right there.

The weight of the moment: his insufferable wife, the seeming meaninglessness of his work as a Doctor, his possible cowardice in the face of Dick's insults...could all of this have him contemplating shooting himself right there in that moment? I think possibly. And maybe it is only the thought of Nick, the boy who loves him and whom he loves, that saves him.

My first impression of the story is sadness. Something feels missing and aching in the Doc, and this suggests sadness to me more than anything else.

Emilly's fine suggestion is this month's story. When the first impressions start rolling in please speak up. And please keep checking back so that the discussion can grow as the month goes on.

I think Hemingway has a knack of making his "detours" seem real, mimicking the way people (or maybe it's just me) think. Strange connections are made and the mind follows them and then one's suddenly thinking of something seemingly unrelated to what one was thinking of a moment before. There also seems to be a strange beauty in the way Hemingway moves that appeals to me.

As for the triangle...it reminds me of a quote I read a long time ago from Truman Capote about Hemingway (I paraphrase though): "For a man who supposedly loves women so much, he sure understands what it means to be gay." Now how do I come to that quote from a heterosexual handjob? I am glad you asked. There is a book by Eve Sedgwick called Between Men, which talks about homosocial desire and the classic literary triangle of relationships. In it she talks about how men are denied intimacy with other men, and how they long for it, and the triangle becomes a way for men to be intimate with one another without homosexuality (or even as a homosexual wish fulfillment if that is what the man needs), so that Nick is not actually having sex -- being intimate -- with Trudy, but with Billy (and maybe through Billy he is being intimate with his emotionally distant father).

Gio wrote: "are those observations about his dad really a detail? or is it a son remembering things better than they were. its something nick's son tries to do with his dad in the end, but nick prevents that...."

I would argue that, even if they are improved remembrances, they are still details that of Nick's world that have become memories, and it is in expressing details, both tangible and ephemeral, that Hemingway's prose comes most alive, at least for me. And like you say, Gio, it is always there for a reason. This reminds me of one of the things that has always frustrated me about Hemingway's longer novels: there is much more superfluity, and the sparing exactness is lost in works like For Whom the Bell Tolls (which I do love nonetheless)

I am interested in what you're saying about Nick's lack of insight, which we also may have seen quite a bit of in Alpine Idyll. There are so many stories about Nick that once one's read them all we feel we know Nick, but maybe we know him because of the lack of Nick detail and the presence of the details that Nick perceives. I am going to keep that in mind when I reread Big Two Hearted River.