For years we've been trailing in his footsteps. Name any bar in the world and chances are, he got there before us. He's been getting on my nerves for years, but there are certain hallowed grounds one is never supposed to tread upon, and the unshakeable belief of 'those Determiners of Literary Greatness' have deemed Hemingway as being a 'Great American Writer'.
And my response is he is without a doubt 'A Great American Drunk'.
It was Stresa on Lake Maggiore when I finally decided that enough was enough and that it was time to start questioning the 'Authorities'. Is Hemingway all that he's cracked up to be? Were you also force-fed 'The Old Man and the Sea' in high school English classes?
I have just finished reading "A Farewell to Arms" as our tour bus traces the route that Frederic Henry chooses to escape arrest when he flees Italy for Switzerland. Only in his case, rather than hopping on a tour bus, he rows across Lake Maggiore with his very pregnant girlfriend, Catherine or 'poor Cat'.
If you met this guy in real life, you would run fast in the other direction, and one wonders what Cat saw in him.
Reading the dialogue of these 'star-crossed lovers' is enough to make you upchuck even if you aren't dealing with morning sickness. Just the sheer repetitiveness is aggravating. Talking about courage and bravery, one must be a brave and courageous reader to wade through a lot of crap to get to Hemingway's nuggets of brilliance. Of course, they are there. And there is no doubt that if you actually do get to the end of this depressing story, you get to walk away with the image of a stillborn child described as a 'freshly skinned rabbit'.
Hemingway may be deemed the Great American Writer because he leaves you with bloody carcasses in his wake. What do you think?
