My latest Maisie Dobbs had not arrived, so I picked this one out - even though I have studied Hemingway extensively - at least in years past - I had never read this one.
If you clicked on this to make it larger, you would note how very old it is - as in the price was $1.65!! (And that was new!)It was your dad's copy for a class at the U I think. Anyway, the Maisie Dobbs books take place after WW I and focus a lot on the issues of that war and how it impacted so much of history. So this was another take - the war in Italy - told from an American point of view.
It is vintage Hemingway - and so some of the staccato dialogue got tedious at times.
But it's a good story - a sad one too - but instructive with the use of imagery and symbolism.
I'm thinking I will add both movie versions (1939 and 1961) to my NetFlix queue.
I'll let you know what I think.
3 comments:
I read A Farewell to Arms in 9th grade for my honors project (English culture and WWI). Although now that I think about it, I don't think AFTA has anything to do with England. It's been awhile.
I was glad you encouraged me to do my project on that topic. (I'm positive it was your idea.) I learned a lot and got to read all sorts of things I probably wouldn't have otherwise as a 13-year-old (Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, Wilfred Owen, Hemingway).
Seriously though...AFTA has THE saddest ending to a book that I can think of at the moment. As you said though, vintage Hemingway.
Which reminds me of the "Why did the chicken cross the road?" e-mail forward from a few years ago (click here). Ernest Hemingway's answer: "To die. In the rain."
That's funny.
And yes, I did encourage that course of study - I've been reading books that reflect life in that period and it's really a different time and place.
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