My first thought was, "Wait, Hemingway is still alive? No way!"
My second thought was that we could keep the world less confusing and more entertaining if half the people named "Ross" would change their name to "Roos".
RIP NMM Lillian Ross, who wrote this profile, which supposedly "humanized" Hemingway. It actually seemed to create the modern Hemingway stereotype (if one still exists), neatly summarized in the OP.
If I keep reading, will I get to the part where he machine guns sharks?
I'm embarrassed that his taste in art is similar to mine.
You may appreciate the same works, but I doubt that your taste is similar. Hemingway seems to see his own outline in everything: as to which body parts, well, why speculate?
His poor wives. If he repeats himself that much over 3 days, how tiresome must he have been over years? Ugh.
Hemingway keeps popping up as a sort of malignant gun-crazy blowhard in Antony Beevor's "Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Final Gamble", in between long serious bits about Panzers and so on. I don't think Beevor likes him very much.
Is this the book recommendation thread? I need a book recommendation thread.
Awl!!!!! What sort of books would you like?
If you like Panzers, Belgians, and snow, and dislike Hemingway, then that's the book for you.
|| Uber will apparently be out of London by the end of the month; city government just withdrew its operating licence. |>
I doubt it will in practice. The appeal will drag on, and they can operate until it's resolved.
Hitler's Final Gamble
I have a theory that he was actually just playing Russian Roulette in Der Bunker.
I lack the will-power to get through that whole article.
I lack the will power to even feel bad that I did not get through that whole article.
Nobody said he was a military genius.
I guess lots of people said it, but none who were both objective and competent.
I took Thorn's long-ago recommendation and enjoyed I Capture the Castle as did ms bill. About as far away from bad Hemingway as one can get.
I've never actually done the running with the bulls thing, but I feel connect to Hemingway because I once ran from an angry sow.
I trekked all the way from France to Pamplona during the Festival of San Fermin, but then did not run with the bulls due to blisters.
I once watched a guy try to feed potato chips to a cow. Which is sort of the same thing except that the cow just walked away.
We were trying to shake off the great war our junior year of high school.
I took Thorn and neb's recommendation and read The Price of Salt aka Carol. Also unlike Hemingway.
I recently read The Snow Ball by Brigid Brophy, courtesy of the fanfuckingtastic backlisted podcast that i *think* someone here rec'd? And it was wonderful, best writer of sexy times ever, plus excellent on clothes, makeup, music and human relationships so all my bases v well covered, and then i skipped through The Finishing Touch which i found hilarious but is even more arch than the first so proceed having been warned.
best writer of sexy times ever
That's impossible, unless Brophy is also Chuck Tingle.
Which, I think, is something we cannot absolutely rule out.
I loved Hemingway and thought For Whom the Bell Tolls a literally perfect novel. But I was like 17. I'm kind of afraid to revisit him.
30: yes, it's really great. But the series is still at least two books away from being finished, so be warned.
32: Thanks. But "great" on which measure, exactly. I read the first few pages and the prose is clunky to say the least.
It's certainly in the top ten for series with incest and dragons.
32: Doesn't it seem virtually certain that George R.R. Martin is never going to finish it? That was my definite impression as an outsider.
He's already written the last chapter. Jon Snow wakes up in bed in Chicago with Suzanne Pleshette.
I really enjoyed the first GoT book, and read the next three enjoying them less and less -- at this point I assume the series won't ever be finished, and I don't much care. If you don't mind loose ends, I'd read the first at least, and keep going until you stop having fun. But if you're the sort of person who will be annoyed by not getting to a resolution, I wouldn't start.
36 is my impression too. But AIUI he has an anointed continuator.
Loose ends bug me to the extent I care about the story. Which means, I guess stop when I stop having fun.
33: then you probably won't enjoy the subsequent 3,281 pages. Great as in I enjoyed reading them, there's tension and good plotting that (though complex) hangs together, there are characters who come to life, and some really memorable set pieces and speeches.
31:I loved Hemingway and thought For Whom the Bell Tolls a literally perfect novel. But I was like 17. I'm kind of afraid to revisit him.
A friend who won a prize from the University of Mobyburgh Press for short fiction continues to praise In Our Time as one of her inspirations. That was early Hemingway, admittedly.
I've sen a few episodes of the series and it gives hints of this big intricate secondary-world history, for which I am a sucker.
You should read a Dan Brown novel to shift your Overton Window for clunky prose and then read GoT.
45: Everybody gets a prize here.
Strange to say, it wasn't a participation prize.
I read clunky nonfiction all the time, and amazingly clunky student assignments. None of it ever stops being painful.
I looked for the latest nuggets on GoT book release schedule and found Martin quoted saying "I do think you will have a Westeros book from me in 2018... and who knows, maybe two. A boy can dream." Which I presumes means his work is shaping up to be an even thicker goat-choker which might have to be split into two.
50: actually it means that he will be releasing a completely separate book about stuff that happened 200 years before the main story, and maybe also - but probably not - the next book in the actual series, which everyone has been waiting impatiently for since 2011.
Hey Thorn, email me for a book recommendation. It's nothing scandalous, I promise. Nothing very scandalous anyway; all good books are scandalous.
I'm finally, after 20 years, reading Mason & Dixon, which is glorious. I don't know why I read so many worse books over the last 20 years, even making allowances for grad school. On the other hand I probably wouldn't have gotten half the references in 1997. So my recommendation, awl, is to go ahead and read that book you suspect is great but just haven't gotten to for decades.
Possibly encouraging, from the fictional-history angle.
Hemingway's main contribution to literature was his role in convincing people of the greatness of Mark Twain.
I found the first three? four? G oT books perfect for commute* reading -- I think I read two on my phone. The prose is undemanding, and the world building is great, at least to start with. There are some truly excellent set pieces. On the other hand, I grew increasingly conscious of skipping long sections of sub-Tolkein nerdery: lists of all the imaginary families and their heraldry who are going to get slaughtered in the next chapter, or court intrigues among the dauntless pirates. I can't even remember if I finished the most recent one, though I think I must have done.
*on a train
I lost patience with Huckleberry Finn on the first page. I only opened the book because everyone else was drunk, I was bored, and there was nothing else to read.
I currently don't have a commute.
It's obvious to me how GoT is going to end. The last book will introduce a new character, Ser Jhorjar Arm'Arten, who will vanquish all the surviving villains, seduce all the surviving princesses, tame all the surviving dragons, and consume all the surviving banquets.
I really liked the first and third books, and the second was ok. I didn't get very far into the fourth, but not exactly because I disliked it, so I don't have a strong opinion.
GRR Martin really has a knack for ceremonial words. The vow of the Night's Watch is basically perfect. Ditto for "now his watch has ended" and "what do we say to the God of Death" etc.
I think I've said it here before but I think the world is due for a religion coming from a fiction which is at the same kind of seriousness-but-not-really that actually playing Quidditch as a sport has. GoT doesn't have anything that exactly works, because the religions are mostly unappealing and the Night's Watch isn't a religion. But I think a bunch of the ceremonial speeches are a good proof of concept. Wedding vows in particular is a place where I could see something taking off.
56: I think he lost his way a little around the time he had to break a book into two geographically distinct tomes. It meandered. There's chapters and chapters of Tirion has a roadtrip where a lot of nothing happens. Probably all side-effects of GRRM being more interested in other projects but knowing what butters his bread.
The heraldry exists--it's all over the ASoIaF wiki and it must have come from somewhere--but I don't recall it as very prominent in the books. Selective memory ftw.
61: Wicca is basically this, no?
I remember House emblems in the dramatis personae sections
I lost patience with Huckleberry Finn on the first page. I only opened the book because everyone else was drunk, I was bored, and there was nothing else to read.
Worst. New Year's. Ever.
31 I did too and would be afraid to revisit. I do have a feeling the Nick Adams short stories would still hold up.
A Farewell to Arms used to be one of my favorites, but last time I read it I was really appalled to notice that he barely even wrote a personality for the main female character.
70: Interesting. I read that when I was somewhat older (maybe 20?) and didn't like it at all, AFAICR because the protagonist is essentially narcissistic (or sociopathic, maybe). Whatever he wants at any given moment is right, good, and true. When he shoots or tries to shoot Italian soldiers fleeing the Germans, that's heroic.* When he himself deserts the entire army and evades the police en route to Switzerland that too is heroic. When his wife and child die he telegraphs his dad for money and walks away without a backward glance.
*At least, seems to be to the character, not necessarily to the author; though this would seem to be consistent with Hemingway IRL.
16/17
I was going to make a bad joke about Wills and Triumphing, but I guess I just lack the willpower.
38
I felt that way about Kristin Lavransdatter. The Bridal Wreath is great, but by the time you get to the third you're really meandering in the minutiae of medieval Norwegian politics. Since *SPOILER ALERT* all Norwegian nobility die in the plague anyways, it gets really hard to care.
Third volume of the triology, I mean.
Phony is a word no one uses any more, really.
You know who else used fire to deal with dotards? Gandalf.
74: Holden Caulfield said it a lot, didn't he? Hemingway was supposed to have been a huge influence on the young men of that era, but maybe everybody said it back then.
It's funny that he needed a goofy excuse for not smoking.
76: checked the n-grammar and we're wrong. More phony now than back then.
Cool, I just found by puttering around that you can make additive ngrams by combining search terms with '+'. (I wanted to see how it compared with "phoney" and how their union has fared.)
72: you remind me, tangentially, that I should finish The Saga of Gösta Berling one of these days. Here, I'll let the rest of you hunt around in this video for the sled scene... oh wait, no, here it is. In the book they throw a French novel at the wolves; I couldn't see what they threw in the video.
everyone should read murakami's 1Q84. way better than mason & dixon, yo.
also in re: hemingway: christ, what an asshole.
72 makes me wonder if I should give The Master of Hestviken another go (I read it ages ago, then started The Axe somewhat recently and abandoned it).
I highly recommend Njal's Saga and also Egil's Saga. Things move pretty fast in the sagas.
79
Huh interesting. I wonder if it's used more as an adjective now instead of a noun? It's pretty rare that I hear someone called "a phony." Or maybe it's a different group of people using it? I'm around intellectual hipsters all day, and that's an analogous group to 50s intellectuals. I was also thinking of Catcher in the Rye, since the overuse of the word phony was my biggest impression from reading that.
The Sagas are great. My dad used to read them to us as kids, and we ate them up.
In fact, the Norwegian national anthem is sort of about how Norway sucks so much as a place that the best thing about it is escapism through Sagas.* Norwegians really know how to sell themselves.
*There are also like, 8 verses about killing Swedes, but no one sings those any more.
Hemingway doesn't come off as a bore or a boor in that article. I'm guessing it was the New Yorker trademarked writing style that got you. Their celebrity encounters were carefully written and edited to provide a sense of knowing ennui. If you read past it, you get a pretty good portrait of the guy. I never thought much of Hemingway, though my mother was a big fan, but I kind of liked him in this article.
He did affect a rather macho style, which I think is one reason my mother used to like reading him. On the other hand, that style was repeatedly parodied, exaggerated and overdone, so I can understand a reaction to it. Still, he comes off a lot better in this piece than Hunter S. Thompson who affected a similar style.
I liked a short story of his that I read in high school so I read a book of short stories of his and came away liking one or two, of which one was one of the ones I'd already read. The Killers and The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio were the two I remember liking and I don't remember anything about the latter. I think I also read a Nick Adams story not in that collection. It wasn't memorable.
I read The Sun also Rises and hated it and its casual antisemitism and its characters and pretty much everything about it.
I started one story of his about baby shoes, but I never finished.
Quitting is fine. Unless it's something ridiculous, like two words from the end. That would just be lazy.
||
Contract renewal meeting in 1:09. Nervous.
|>
They'll fire me then for definite.
OT: Is it rude to ask a dental student waiting for the bus with me if she thinks the pain I have is from a loose filling? It's a molar, if that matters.
You've got this, Mossy! Or not, I suppose, in which case on to better things. But you wowed them with your presentation!
Hey, my AC just got fixed. It only took 5 days and me taking a day and a half off of work total. It was getting really hot and humid and gross in here, and me about to be worse since I wasn't able to do laundry since the dryers here vent a lot of heat into the apartment.
I did buy a fan for my bedroom. It's helped a lot.
We have ceiling fans, which are great. Except if we were tall people, we'd risk having our hands cut off if we raised our arms.
98: Since it's a molar, go ahead! Dental students love to talk about molars!
Once I got to read more of her jacket, it seemed she was a dental hygienist student. So I asked her if I was flossing well.
I actually have no idea what "It's mole!" is supposed to mean, but I find it funny anyway.
The mole isn't important. The sense of dawning revelation is.
Fans are great! I'm surviving 90 degree weather in a tiny studio with no cross ventilation by keeping my curtains shut and running a ceiling fan and a window fan. It's cooler than outside and the hallway, which I consider a victory.
I'm one of the last people in America (at least at my pay grade) to have an office with its own temperature control. I'm working nicely in the central air.
I don't have a thermostat. I have a vent in the ceiling with a little lever that adjusts the temperature of the air coming in through the vent.
It's an absurdly small office, barely 15' by 12'.
Thanks everyone, but I don't got this. Sigh.
Argh, man. You got other options?
I dunno. There is reasonable demand locally, but it's the same shit all over again, but almost certainly on worse terms all round. I might be able to teach older students rather than younger.
Come to Arrakis, there's quite a few teaching gigs here.
I'm tempted Barry, you make it sound so appealing!
Shit, Mossy. Capitalism does indeed suck.
On the other hand, the carefully constructed 100 comment thread design to persuade people never to read GoT by situating it between Dan Brown and Hemingway has really worked well.
Thanks. Good luck with your tiny office.
It's cheering to me when my boss is presenting in a conference call and gets a notification from Pandora.
The hope fell out after all?
I feel the precedent will serve me well when, as must happen eventually, I put unfogged up when it's my turn to present.
If I'm not supposed to comment during calls, why do I have two monitors?
Sorry, Mossy. All the best people are unemployed, though! It doesn't pay well, but the other perks are nice and you're free to spend unlimited time at the hospital.
IKR! So much more time for reading groups and stuff.
I am still employed until end October, have visa until end November, and lease to December 6. So.
The world isn't likely to end before January 2018.
I'm sad. I was really getting on top of this shit, even the parts I didn't like. I had my routine down to a well-oiled machine. A finely-honed knife. A well fed walrus.
Those are all skills that will serve you well. Who doesn't like walrus knife machines?
Thorn is right -- you're in excellent albeit largely miserable company. Still, I'm sorry. Do you now need to figure out what the hell you want to do with your life? It's been a busy year chez lk for the middle-aged navel-gazing, which is a lot like mid-20s navel-gazing, except with more panic.
Sorry, Mossy. Teaching rocs sounds so cutthroat, what with their tremendous size and thirst for human flesh. Hoping for a safe landing.
I've always already needed to figure out what the hell to do with my life. My plan to today was get meds, don't get fired, learn Chinese. 1 of 3! Yay, me! I'll try to get more work in the same line here, stay employed, work on other stuff.
142 is so good it's almost worth getting terminated for.
Congrats on learning Chinese in a day! Regarding "work on other stuff," I just yesterday decided to Taylorize my non-work non-family life and determined that I'm nominally working on enough side projects to keep ten of me busy. Well, fuck, I have to decide to fail at shit now instead of just letting it happen? I don't like this at all.
Ugh. Sorry. Now you have more free time to plan your cross-ocean (I'm assuming) move?
My local Democratic Socialists are reading China Mieville's October in October and I may actually be able to get to the discussion groups thanks to proximity to free writing classes for children, so for once I'll be reading with people who aren't you people. But I could read more here too, presumably.
146: If that's to me, I wasn't planning to move, oceanically or otherwise.
147: I just sent something to Heebie, actually. But it's short and war stuff.
You should ride out your term by showing up blackout drunk for every class and teaching nothing but Slayer lyrics for weeks.
I'm bad at rebellion. Also I'm actually on good terms with management and colleagues, and they may have useful connections. Also they haven't given me letters of recommendation yet.