Dunno

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