I'm about two-thirds of the way through
re-reading the 1926 American novel
The Sun Also Rises, set in Paris and Spain.
The title is from Ecclesiastes which passage
is quoted just after the dedication page, the
page for his wife Hadley. Author: Ernest
Hemingway.
Thirty one years after publication in 1926,
this novel was made into a movie in 1957
with a large, big name cast, directed by
Henry King. Almost the only thing I can
remember about that movie is a shot of
movie star Ava Gardner, presumably
playing the character of Brett, sitting in
the stands watching a bull fight while
holding in her hands a pack of Chesterfield
cigarettes. I spotted it because long ago I
made a lot of money as an actor and as
a model. Acting in TV commercials was
sometimes demeaning but at least, I tell
myself, I didn't hold a product in a
theatrical movie; that's as about as
sneaking and lowdown pathetic as it gets
in the movies. Poor Hemingway. It's time
he was given a break today.
One reason I'm closely studying this first
novel written by Hemingway is that it has
been grossly misunderstood and
misrepresented. A clue, I have discovered,
to what it is really about is the late novel by
Hemingway, perhaps of all his work the
one that was most under-appreciated,
titled Across The River and Into the Trees,
another title taken from the Bible. In the
first novel, his first literally, Hemingway
has the first person narrator actually say a
prayer half a page long. In that prayer the
narrator asks forgiveness for his being a
"rotten Catholic." Just above the quote
from the Bible there is given a quote from
conversation by Gertrude Stein: "You are
all a lost generation." Why might she have
said that? Couldn't it have been said in
sympathy for the tortured psyches of all
those who were damaged by the
ghastliness of World War One? the war
which witnessed the first bombing
of civilians, and the debut of the machine
gun? One of the reasons so many millions
were killed is that everyone was very slow
to really get how many bullets were being
fired so rapidly.
Years after pocketing his Nobel Prize for
Literature, years after his books were
trashed by the movies, years after Feminists
decided Ernest Hemingway was The
Enemy, the author revisited the subject of
the damaged soldier in the even greater
novel, Across The River and Into The
Trees. Today, young damaged soldiers are
again in our midst, live. Recently they've
committed suicide. Four returning
soldiers, all four returning to the same
Stateside Army Camp, murdered their
wives. And in the news today our soldiers
are being charged with murdering Iraqi
women and children. One job a novelist
can either consciously or unconscioulsy
take on is that of the person to sound the
alarm. Hemingway sounded the alarm.
It made him rich and honored, but part
of him, I believe, wished he'd been
listened to more.
Barry