I cannot express to you how glad I am that I am taking this class. I am
thoroughly enjoying Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises is one of the best books I've
read in quite a long time. For a while there, I was, for God knows what reason,
taking Physics and Chemistry and Biology. It is really an adventure to be back
with books and words and reading. I am also amazed that I never could read more
of Him when it wasn't an assignment. And how is it that when I am told to write
"a 3-5 page essay" I can only come through with two-and-a-half, but a
"one-page response" always wants to be twenty pages long?] I finished
reading SAR around ten o'clock tonight. I could have taken it all in one big
gulp when I began a week ago, but I couldn't do that. It wanted me to bring it
out slowly, so I often found myself reading five or ten pages and laying it
aside to absorb without engulfing. A man gets used to reading Star Wars and pulp
fiction and New York Times Bestsellers and forgets what literature is until it
slaps him in the face. This book was written, not churned out or word-processed.
Again, I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I never noticed it until it was brought up
in class, maybe because it wasn't a point for me in In Our Time, but He doesn't
often enough credit quotations with, ",he said," or, ",said
Brett," or, ",Bill replied." In SAR it stood and called attention
to itself. I wasn't particularly bothered by His not telling me who said what,
but it was very...pointed. I first noticed around the hundredth page or so. Then
I realized I couldn't keep track of who was speaking. By not dwelling on it,
though, sort of (hate to say this) accepting it, I managed to assign speech to
whomever I felt was speaking. Gradually I came to enjoy it, in another plane of
reading, figuring out from whom words were originating. To not notice it, as if
it were one of those annoying 3-D posters that you can't see until you make a
concerted effort not to try and see, became simple - much like those 3-D
pictures are once you know what not to look for. (I abhor ending sentences with
prepositions...) His not telling was heightening to the story. It made things
come even more alive. As a conversation that you're hearing at a nearby table in
a restaurant, the exchanges flowed, with me as a more passive reader than in a
story written to be read instead of lived. It has always been troubling for me
to read a book with the knowledge that there are things I am supposed to be
catching, but not quite. The fish in the pools and the allegory and analogy and
symbolism aren't fond of me. Trying to see that the bull-fighters and their
purity or lack and how it relates to Him as a writer surrounded by a universe of
new fiction printed for the masses, that is all fine and well. The short
sentences, the lack of qualifying, "he said"s and "she saids"
and such, the tragedy of his love for Brett, those are the things I enjoy
reading. Those are the reasons I read and the reasons a man like Him writes.
There are stranger things, Horatio...or something like that. I believe Paul
Simon read Hemingway at some point in his life. It is a good book. I was
surprised that more was not given to the bulls. The entire story was leading to
it, and then it was done and they were gone. Very powerful they were but
fleeting. I want to go now, of course, to Pamplona, as I'm sure everyone who
reads does after finishing. It is probably terible now with touristas and Coke
and Nike all around, but I bet still beautiful. A man was killed this year, did
you know?