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

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

What the f*ck? That comes out of nowhere, and it seems to out of place in a Hemingway story. I loved how it made everyone uncomfortable around her. I could almost feel the discomfort myself, actually.

I am going to have to read it again because I didn't find the dialogue bumpy at all when I went through it; still, my reaction to the dialogue was indifference, I didn't even notice it, and since I am usually a fan of Hemingway's dialogue, and it is usually something I notice, this indifference must say something.

What strikes me about this story is that it really feels like a strange companion to To Have and Have Not, and neither that novel nor this story feels like the usual Hemingway piece. Something else is going on here. But what?

I just remembered while I was doing some clean-up of the bookshelf that An Alpine Idyll was our first genuine Nick Adams story.

The man drinking with John was, in fact, Nick. Surprised I forgot that.

Nobody Ever Dies is one of Hemingway's published but uncollected short stories. Read the story and get us started, folks.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. That is exactly how I feel about her. Her strength, like Jake's, is incredible. The things they have faced with and without each other and the fact that they can carry on to have any life is astounding.

Great summation, Ruth, and you point out the irony of the title perfectly.

John and No Name ordering and eating seemed significant to me too. I immediately assumed, since this is a Hemingway story, that these men fought in WW1, and the way these men seem totally unaffected by Olz's story seemed to be evidence of the sort of dulling of death that those who've fought in a war (or have faced much death in their life) often display.

But now I wonder if there is a hint of the "beastly" in these men, if they have more in common with Olz than the more refined European men. John only cares about the taste of beer and food, while No Name can only talk about the weather and spending too long doing one thing.

This story has so many possibilities, doesn't it?

Meredith wrote: "This is also my favorite Hemingway book - favorite book PERIOD."

Mine too.

Meredith also wrote: I admire Lady Brett. I know many think her to be a man-eater, but I don't think she's truly ill-intentioned regarding Jake. I do, however, think she's in love with him because she can't have him. I don't think that's something that she's conscious of, however.

I couldn't agree more. I tire of hearing people attack Lady Brett (or Hemingway by extension), for her place as a "man-eater." I just don't see it at all. She is so much more complex than that. This is a woman who lost the man that she loved in WW1 and worked as a nurse, witnessing the kinds of injuries that have taken away her potential love with Jake and countless horrors that have clearly damaged her. She, like everyone else in the novel who was touched by the war, is a wounded soul who doesn't even know what she needs or wants or is looking for. She's tragic. And I find her constant seeking brave

I think you're right about this story being an iceberg, Ruth.

My first impression, the thing that has started me off thinking, is connected to the peasant man using his dead wife's mouth to hold the lantern. I wasn't appalled by what he did, and I think the non-reaction of the narrator and John might have been a subtle clue to my subconscious to not be appalled.

I've read this book every year since 1991, and it is never the same book. Like so many things in this world, The Sun Also Rises improves with age and attention.

Some readings I find myself in love with Lady Brett Ashley. Then I am firmly in Jake Barnes' camp, feeling his pain and wondering how he stays sane with all that happens around him. Another time I can't help but feel that Robert Cohn is getting a shitty deal and find his behavior not only understandable but restrained. Or I am with Mike and Bill and Romero on the periphery where the hurricane made by Brett and Jake and Robert destroys spirits or fun or nothing (which is decidedly something).

And then I am against them all as though they were my sworn enemies or my family. No matter what I feel while reading The Sun Also Rises, it is Hemingway's richest novel for me.

I feel it was written for me. And sometimes feel it was written by me (I surely wish it was).

Hemingway's language, his characterizations, his love for all the people he writes about (no matter how unsavory they may be), his love of women and men, his empathy with the pain people feel in life and love, his touch with locale, his integration of sport as metaphor and setting, his getting everything just right with nothing out of place and nothing superfluous, all of this makes The Sun Also Rises his most important novel.

It is the Hemingway short story writ large. It is the book he should be remembered for but isn't. I often wonder why that is, and the conclusion I come to is this: The Sun Also Rises is too real, too true, too painful for the average reader to stomach. And many who can are predisposed to hate Hemingway.

A terrible shame that so many miss something so achingly beautiful.

Here you go, Ruth. Thanks for leading our discussion this time through!

The next story is Alpine Idyll, Ruth. You can start reading now and get an early leap on the those complaints ;)

I, too, love it when Hemingway writes in the first person, Preb. "I re-read 'Farewell' every year and never get tired of being in good company." What a perfect way to put it. I prefer the bad company of The Sun Also Rises, however.

Hemingway is generally accepted as the master of the short story, as Joseph says, and I agree with that "academic" assessment. I think that short stories have become awfully boring in the last few decades. There is a standard beginning, middle and end. The focus of short stories has almost universally become telling what the experts call "a complete story." That in itself isn't a bad thing, but there was a time -- when Hemingway and Faulkner -- were writing short stories that the form was there for exploration, experimentation. Many writers, not just Hemingway, used the short story to explore character, dialogue, sensation, and a "complete story" was not important. A vignette, a moment in time, was all that was needed to express what the author wanted to express; hence the discomfort many feel at the way Hemingway's stories end, or don't end (depending on one's point of view).

Is there a sense of innocence and experience being explored in Out of Season? Where do the characters lie on the innocence to experience continuum?

You make a good point about the growth of Nick in In Our Time, Joseph, and it is certainly something important to consider. Out of Season is, however, not generally considered one of the Nick Adams stories. Still, I really think the "innocence to experience" theme you raise has some relevance in Out of Season. I will open up a thread for that, and maybe you could expand it giving us some thoughts on how that applies to the story.

I am curious what you mean by "ethnically correct"?

A topic that is sure to recur (it is Hemingway after all), but here is our first crack at fishing in our group, I think, and it doesn't actually happen. Yet there it is.

Obviously Hemingway loved to fish and that is why it becomes so important for his books and stories, but fishing is also deeply connected to relationships for Hemingway. What do y'all think Hemingway was saying about the relationships with fishing (if anything)?

I dig that Peduzzi has his own personal concerns, and that his concerns are all about making enough money for a drink. And I like him for it, maybe even despite it, there's an honesty in his selfishness. It makes the misunderstanding between the himself and the couple even more interesting.

And his drunkenness necessarily increases Tiny's distrust of the situation.

Still, I never get the sense that Hemingway wants us to dislike Peduzzi, nor that he himself dislikes the man. Some of that may have to do with seeing part of the story from his perspective, but there is also something almost Shakespearean in his appearance in the story -- like a Falstaff or a Gravedigger sort of role.

There is a feeling I had, just for a moment, that Tiny was being unreasonably cranky, but then the young gentleman says, "We were both coming at the same thing from different directions," and tt takes the sting out of Tiny's behavior. It contextualizes her frustration, and gives us a sense that she is maybe not so much a nag as that she's frightened for the young gentleman.

Does anyone else get the sense that she's pregnant?

Has anyone else ever done what the young gentleman finds himself doing? Gotten themselves into something they aren't comfortable with, but is carried along by external forces? I know I have.

Hemingway really captured that sense of inertia for me. I like what the young gentleman said to Tiny about how "We were both getting at the same thing from different angles." He wants to stop. He recognizes the trouble he could be in, but there he is, still doing it.

Ruth wrote: "I'll continue to read the Hemingway stories. I've not read many, but the characters remain and I'm trying to learn to accept fuzzy endings. ..."

Have you read any of his novels? I think you might really dig The Old Man and the Sea. (There's a good ending ;)) It is a novella, so a short and fast read, but it extends what is beautiful about Hemingway's writing into a much richer tale.

And I will definitely keep going with Galactica.I have been impressed, so far.

Ruth wrote: "Well, for another 'idiot box' allusion, I was not satisfied with the series finale of Battlestar, so maybe having questions about the ending or creating your own ending might be the better option. ..."

Don't be sorry. I thought it was a great point, and one that is a valid concern. Reader expectations of a satisfactory ending are an important part of the writer/reader relationship, and when those expectations aren't met it can be off putting. Some authors alter that relationship over the course of their work (like Hemingway...the more one reads him the more one gets used to his "endings"), but many authors who try to alter the relationship get nowhere because no one is reading their work.

I just started watching Battlestar Galactica this past week, so I am far away from the ending, but the general feeling I get is that it was a let down. Bummer

I have always enjoyed that about Hemingway myself, but I suppose it is just a taste thing. Subjectivity, I suppose.

I have always thought of his technique as giving us responsibility for what is to come, both to decide for ourselves how we want the story to go and to take the cues from the characters for what they will do. Of course, that could have been an early mechanism of justification that I used to not let the lack of "satisfying" endings bother me. I'm not sure. I've been reading him for so long now it's hard to say anymore.

I have a feeling you're not the only who's going to feel cheated, Ruth. I like your comparison to Sopranos. It's a good thing his short stories are mostly short so that it doesn't invest you too much before letting you down.