Holidays and Hemingway

As it’s holiday season, I have once more been Reading A Novel. This is not something that happens during the normal course of things, since reading a large amount for work purposes tends to discourage reading for pleasure. But it makes a very refreshing change in the holidays.

I am currently about halfway through Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, a second-hand book I bought for a pittance a while ago on the basis that I would quite like to read it at some point in the not-too-distant future. Unlike most books that I do this with, I am now actually reading it.

If you ask me why I wanted to read that particular book, I would quietly admit that it is partially because there is a song of the same name by Metallica. But it’s more because I’ve read a bit of Donne in my time. And yes, the band named it after the novel, not the ‘no man is an island’ business. (I don’t want to give the impression that I normally base my reading on recommendations by rock bands, its just that it was something I’d heard of and wanted to have a look at. It also falls into the category of ‘classic’ literature, which makes me something of a sucker for it.)

So, thoughts on Hemingway. More or less the only thing I know about the man himself is that he was fond of a drink. This is something that comes through in the novel, but Hemingway certainly isn’t sympathetic towards the untrustworthy, bristly, porcine drunkard Pablo, whose shadow is cast over the plans of the bold American, Robert Jordan. Nonetheless, there’s already been an awful lot of wine, whiskey and absinthe (especially absinthe, inspiration to author and protagonist alike) and I’m only halfway through the book. So, the music I listen to influences my choice of reading, and Ernest’s love of liquor influences his writing. So far, so reprehensible.

Hemingway seems to have a slightly irritating habit, starting about a third of the way in, of wandering off on a series of stream-of-consciousness type monologues. These clearly help to develop our view of the war and the characters’ views on it, but they are less interesting than the dialogue and actions of the characters themselves.

Despite this, I’m really enjoying the book. The high point so far (and this says a lot about me) has been a flashback narration of the execution of some fascists in a small town at the start of the war. The fighting is dealt with laconically; the pathos of the executions is the real focus. There is blood and drink, and the instability of the crowd and its painfully inevitable degeneration from dignified and reluctant executioner to howling mob is riveting. The humanity of the scene is affecting, and the predictability of the clean, ideal revolution spiralling into bloodshed is hypnotic.

At this stage in the book, very little has actually happened. The small-town origins of the revolution were distanced from the action of the plot, and Robert Jordan’s main objective of demolishing a bridge is really just beginning to come to prominence. Much of the first half is about humans and how they behave around other humans, and this, I think, is where Hemingway is at his best. The Shakespeare-lover in me enjoys his pseudo-translated, pseudo-antiquated Spanish with its idioms and its ‘thees’ and ‘thous’. The rest of me, of course, enjoys its carefully-crafted insults and curse-words, ‘in which the acts are never stated but only implied.’ So, for now, I bid thee unprintable thyself and obscenity on thy way.

And incidentally, the title of this blog is also from Hemingway. I just happened to like that part too.