The Garden of Eden...

Hemingway


Hope you had a great Christmas and Happy Boxing Day. I am still transcribing the interview and I am now more than half-way through Hemingway's The Garden of Eden. It is the kind of book that I don't want to read too fast, because I have no more Hemingway to read after I finish it. I need to track down some more. I have read: The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and The Sea, A Movable Feast, Men Without Women, Death In The Afternoon and now The Garden of Eden. (Which has recently been made into a movie).


There is a great quote in chapter eleven: "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." Considering Hemingway's end it seems somewhat prophetic; however, it is difficult not to read foreboding into the way Hemingway writes about death. I don't find him depressing though, I enjoy Hemingway immensely and don't want to run out of books of his to read. I need to find copies of For Whom the Bell Tolls, To Have and Have Not and his books of short stories. Do you have a favorite Hemingway work?

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The Man Who Hated Children...

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I have just finished reading Christina Stead's 1940 novel, "The Man Who Loved Children". This was one of those reads born from guilt... why hadn't I ever read any Stead before now? Stead (1902 - 1983) was an Australian novelist who wrote at least sixteen novels and four books of short stories. Stead is described as "Australia's 'lost' novelist", partly because of her travels and partly because of her belated success. "The Man Who Loved Children" is considered to be her best novel and although it was published in 1940, it wasn't acclaimed a success until it was republished in 1965. Taking the 56th place of the 100 ALL TIME novels list, Time magazine described the book as:


"one of the most truthful and terrifying horror stories ever written about family life"


Stead had an interesting life, and lived in America and Europe from the 1930s up to 1974 when she returned to Australia, she wasn't published here until 1965. "The Man Who Loved Children" is an auto-biographical fiction, based upon Stead's childhood. The novel follows the social decline of a family, and the painful interactions between the estranged parents and their six children. It was remarkably well written, I was completely absorbed by the narrative, but it was very depressing and ultimately made me question humanity. She must have had an utterly horrid childhood, the father is based off her own father and the step-mother off her own step-mother.


Even though it was depressing, am I glad I read it? Yes.
Could I have put it down and not finished it? No.
Do I ever want to read it again? No.


It was like reading "The Sound and the Fury", mixed with "The Power and the Glory", but on speed. It makes Faulkner's Compson family look like the Brady Bunch and the children's misery in Stead's novel is almost on par to the misery the whiskey priest endures throughout Green's paradoxical novel. I have moved on now to Hemingway's unfinished, posthumously released novel, "Garden of Eden", so far, much less depressing... but only so far... What are you reading at the moment?

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Hemingway: Men Without Women...

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I read Heminway's Men Without Women today, it is a novella sized book of short stories, my favorite being "A Canary for One". In it there are bull fighting, fishing, war and love stories. They are beautifully brief, they sketch moments and small periods of time - a train ride or a conversation in a cafe - with an elegant conciseness that is compelling and complex.


This is my fifth Hemingway book (and I tried to read Death in the Afternoon, but it is just about bull fights and was too much for me) and I find that his work in general is solid but with warmth, he is a boxer, fisherman, hunter, bull fight lover and decorated solider; but he has compassion, he is reflective, observant and conscientious. I enjoyed sweeping though this little book of short stories in a day and meeting new Hemingway characters that he gives legs and eyes, sweat and fears, he makes them flesh. Such a wonderful writer, such a sad decline in alcoholism and depression; strangely his father and two siblings also committed suicide as well as a grand daughter.


Hemingway was also awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, the year after Sir Winston Churchill received it for Literature, still the only British Prime Minister to get one for Litertaure.

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Monday wrap up...

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I haven't been posting as much as usual of late because I am reading and writing for my literature review that is due next month. It is a lot of work, but in the process I get to read some amazing books and fantastic poetry. Over the weekend I read Michael Dransfield: A Retrospective, a book of Dransfield's poetry selected and introduced by John Kinsella, and I can't help but be amazed at the maturity of the poems and the prolific writings of Dransfield considering he died when he was only 24 years old. Drandsfield idolised Arthur Rimbaud who was also a prolific young writer, but who gave up poetry at the age of 21 and died at the early age of 37. Perhaps "the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long" to quote one of my favourite films - Bladerunner, based off the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick.


Have also been reading Parnassus Mad Ward: Michael Dransfield and the New Australian Poetry by Livio Dobrez, which contains some of the best close reading of poetry that I have come across. In other university related news, I am off to a conference in January at the University of Sydney - very exciting. Now just have to figure out how to get to conferences in New York, Paris and London etc. etc.


Today in the mail my copy of Hemingway's Men Without Women arrived, which I don't have time to read at the moment, but I was re-inspired by his work after watching Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure series recently. I also received last week my copy of The New Life by Orhan Pamuk and can't wait to read it also. Alain de Botton said that it "Brilliantly captures the atmosphere of the Turkish hinterland, the Anatolian steppe and its small towns with their statues of Ataturk, greasy bars and plastic billboards" and if that isn't evocative enough the Guardian described it as "Like Borges crossed with The Usual Suspects... You could become obsessed with this book." I love Borges and I want to read Snow by Pamuk also (maybe after the thesis?).

To add to my increasing list of books to read, I have also ordered the Lonely Planet guide to the Middle East in preparation for our adventure there next year and I have been watching documentaries about Egypt, the Moors and the Crusades. Also caught up with my twin sister and re-watched Annie Hall, still one of my top five movies of all time. So life is busy but good!

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Lost Libraries...

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I read an interesting article, Lost Libraries about what happens to writers libraries when they die... probably not what you think would happen actually. Found via The Casual Optimist. The article mentioned thousands of Hemingway's books were still at his villa in Cuba. This lead me to an article on Hemingway's Cuban villa, Saving the Hemingway Villa, but to see inside the villa check out this CBS clip.


Another interesting note: Hemingway only met Castro once in his twenty years on the island.
Hemingway survived two plane crashes within 48 hours of one another when in Africa.


“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master”- Hemingway

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