5/21/21.I woke up early and started reading The Sun Also Rises. What an anti-semitic novel, I forgot that. I guess it was before WW2, so antisemitism was in the air. Hemingway doesn't transcend it, he uses it. Unfortunate. I haven't watched the PBS documentary because I'm pretty familiar with the dark side, the myth has worn off on Hemingway for me. The joys of middle age disillusionment. I'm not canceling him, I've read his books so many times. I'm just probably not going to read anything after this last reading. I've been to the Hemingway museum in Chicago, and the Hemingway house in Key West. I've been to the cafes in Paris he went to. I've read all his books, except the postumus one. Maybe I'll read that. I liked The Left Hand of Darkness, so I can handle androgyny. I could see teaching a short story or Farewell To Arms or For Whom The Bell Tolls.
I tried to read a mystery set in an English department in Amherst, that was sort of about Dickinson, but I just couldn't do it. Twenty five pages in and it was just too hackneyed and unartistic. It read like a cheesy 50's movie script, not a novel. I sometimes try to read easy novels to just prime the reading pump, but this wasn't working. It turned me off another Transcendental mystery published 15 years earlier by the same novelist. Great thing about libraries is you get to return the book, you don't feel bad throwing it out.
5/23. He makes Robert Cohen more sympathetic. Reading Wikipedia page on book, Cohen was based on Harold Loeb. Never heard of him. There are 20 ratings of 3 of his books on GoodReads, The Professor Likes Vodka has 9 ratings.
My bookmark says 4th reading in 2001. So this is probably my 6th reading. I'm a much better reader now, but I'm grabbing paragraph by paragraph at the park while watching my daughter.
I read that in events that this novel is based on, the river Hemingway fished on was polluted. That's really bumming me out somehow. I wish I hadn't read about that. I don't think you get into the background, but I did. Hemingway invites the mythology of his life, so I suppose it's a bit of a setup.
5/24. Talked to someone who saw some of the Hemingway documentary recently by Ken Burns. She watched it until they got to the bullfighting and her love of animals prevented her from continuing. She can't just shut her eyes, what she heard was too much.
I've been a bullfight in Spain. Pretty horrible stuff. They weaken the neck muscles by sticking these terrible sticks into their necks, barbed, so they stay there, festering. I hope you won't think less of me if I admit to being nostalgic about a lack of empathy, and just enjoying the culture. The part of me that is like Hemmingway, and enjoys the art of it all. Of course it's barbaric and should be in the past, I hope we've evolved past such "sport".
Ontology recapitulates philology: We go through the stages of evolution as we gestate in the womb. We have a tail for a little while. Same with civilization. That is why I love the Shakespeare histories. They are terrible and brutal, but they are part of human history. Now you've got Harry, the sensitive ginger, winging about how the press destroyed his mother, living in California and partying with all the hollywood stars with his multiracial wife. It's a glorious vector, but hardly Henry the 6th getting sex lessons from his advisors while going at it with his wife, hoping they have a heir. I bet Johnny Carson would have liked to chop off the heads as he discarded his wives, like Henry the 8th, instead of paying them alimony. A man could really live a little back in those days. Falstaff would be in rehab, complaining about how nobody likes his humor in our times.
Hemingway is reaching back into the mythology of the human species. But there are great turns of phrase, and his style is still to be appreciated. I loved the sections in A Million Tiny Pieces where he copied Hemingway's style.
Sure, he was bastard to Sherwood Anderson who got him his first breaks, and unappreciative of Fitzgerald saving his first great novel, by strongly suggesting cutting the first 30 pages. He changed wives like they did on the pony express, never taking a break to be alone with himself. Many people are bastards and have clay feet, but the who mythology of "papa" was part of the story that helped sell his brand, his fiction and other writings.
Jake Barnes is an asexual pillar of virtue compared to the decadent hedonists. Not really committing to Catholicism, but it does open up some things for him.
5/25. I read the chapter I really like, chapter XII. There's a webpage that helps to explain some of the references (here). I like the playful banter, paradoxical and nonsense play. Makes me think of the clown Lance in Two Gentlemen from Verona in scene 3, act 2:
Nay, 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping;
all the kind of the Launces have this very fault. I
have received my proportion, like the prodigious
son, and am going with Sir Proteus to the Imperial's
court. I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured
dog that lives: my mother weeping, my father
wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat
wringing her hands, and all our house in a great
perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed
one tear: he is a stone, a very pebble stone, and
has no more pity in him than a dog: a Jew would have
wept to have seen our parting; why, my grandam,
having no eyes, look you, wept herself blind at my
parting. Nay, I'll show you the manner of it. This
shoe is my father: no, this left shoe is my father:
no, no, this left shoe is my mother: nay, that
cannot be so neither: yes, it is so, it is so, it
hath the worser sole. This shoe, with the hole in
it, is my mother, and this my father; a vengeance
on't! there 'tis: now, sit, this staff is my
sister, for, look you, she is as white as a lily and
as small as a wand: this hat is Nan, our maid: I
am the dog: no, the dog is himself, and I am the
dog--Oh! the dog is me, and I am myself; ay, so,
so. Now come I to my father; Father, your blessing:
now should not the shoe speak a word for weeping:
now should I kiss my father; well, he weeps on. Now
come I to my mother: O, that she could speak now
like a wood woman! Well, I kiss her; why, there
'tis; here's my mother's breath up and down. Now
come I to my sister; mark the moan she makes. Now
the dog all this while sheds not a tear nor speaks a
word; but see how I lay the dust with my tears.
There's almost an absurdist quality like Beckett, that I like. Bill Groton can blather funny pretty well.
Then we get into Jake Barnes' being an aficionado of bullfighting. "...there was no password, no set of question that could bring it out,". I think about The Sheltering Sky, and not being a tourist but really traveling. He sets up something good and pure to be ruined. The expatriates will ruin his relationship with the hotel manager, their bond through passionate attention because they don't care about anything. The expatriate hedonists ruin things because they have to take a dump on meaning, life.
5/31. Guy in the park said "enjoy" about the book and we talked about Hemingway. He watched the 3 part documentary recently. You have to become a member of PBS to watch now. I should have watched it when it seemed to be free. I'm almost done, going to finish it today.
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