Old and Black in America
disillusioned by the best
in this white world

Henry the phoney

i reread the catcher in the rye yesterday out of boredom and got a big goofy smile when i read the following:

"What gets me about D.B., though, he hated the war so much, and yet he got me to read this book a farewell to arms last summer. He said it was so terrific. That's what i can't understand. It had this guy in it named Lieutenant Henry that was supposed to be a nice guy and all. I don't see how D.B. could hate the Army and war and all so much and still like a phoney like that."

he did, however, like the great gatsby. one of my personal favorites. i love Holden even more.

I finished A Farewell to Arms today. I know it's sad, but i really do absolutely NOTHING at my stupid job. So since i'm a little high off paint fumes and still a little pissed since I had to wait for the internet far longer than my limited reserve of patience would allow, this half-ass entry is going to be insanely short and probably not have any point.

warning: spoilers ahead if you haven't finished reading

Hemingway's style of writing still seems too abrasive for me to ever fully appreciate, but i noted an arresting quality to his blunt language that brought the story to bloom. For me it was easy to read abot Aymo's sudden death and Rinaldi's syphilis and pass it all off as some side note. I took the dripping of blood on Frederic from the dying soldier who lay on the stretcher above him all in good stride and it wasn't until the end when it was pretty obvious what was going to happen to Catherine and I realized how accepting I was of her fate that I began to wonder why in the hell I was so complacent about all the tragic stories in this little book. For me it was casualness of the writing and of my reaction to this story that struck me. It made me think that maybe I'm not giving Hemingway as much credit as he deserves. Maybe I'm the one who is the idiot, because i'm the one wasting my time searching for some hidden deeper meaning when it's staring me right in the face.

The line that stuck with me most and seemed the binding force of the entire novel was the following:

"If people bring so much courage to this world teh world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. the world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. but those that will not break it kills. it kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially."

the story was told from teh point of view of young Frederic Henry who survived pretty unscathed from the war. every other character we meet, however, ends up getting fucked in one way or another whether it be catching some venereal disease, getting shot in the head, or becoming a whiney whore that irritates the hell out of everyone including the reader. For some reason the world spares Frederic for a time and he survives it all, including the deaths of Catherine and his son. Frederic is the one telling the story and its his words that are so abrupt and perhaps even a bit fatalistic. for me, it was the way that the story was told that showed just what a bitch war and life in general can be. The way he approaches the story, how he relates the details in a way that seems strangely removed, you see just how broken he was by the events of the war and the general atrocities of this cruel world. It was the obvious lack of passion and heart in some of the passages that revealed Frederic's sympathy for a world bound by the cold bonds and fetters of pain and war and death. i felt that the great tragedy of this story was the price frederic had to pay for this wisdom and for this empathy. I got the impression that before Catherine he had never loved anyone or anything before and though that love was the strongest thing he had ever felt it wasn't strong enough to conquer the doom of this world.

The last part of the novel was pretty hot. Very quaint and pleasant. For Frederic and Catherine, Switzerland was a haven from the war and the world. Frederic had left the war behind even in his thoughts and his dreams and they had serious good times "playing" and drinking enough alcohol between teh two of them to keep that baby small (was anybody else disturbed by that?), but in the end death and suffering found them. There is no escaping the great tragedy of life in this world and we must all bend and break in submission to our fates or die fighting a war that can't ever be won... nor ever really fully lost (note frederic's conversation with the priest in chapter 26).

and i was also wondering if John Knowles got the title for A Separate Peace from a line in chapter 34 that reads, "i was going to forget the war. i had made a separate peace." I thought about it for a bit and it seems as if the two novels have a few similarities: the wars raging on, seeking refuge in some safe haven, the atrocities of a savage world that breaks and kills all (e.g. frederic v. catherine, Leper and Gene v. Finny), the tragic deaths of the gentle and the innocent who perhaps were too good to live in a world so consumed in death and madness, the survival of the one who is wiser and learns to make "a separate peace" from the cruelties of the world in a way that allows him to courageously continue living in it.... etc. I don't know. i think i'm just rambling now.

so basically I'm the idiot because hemingway is a genius with the subtle and serious implications of his simple and what many would say obvious style of writing.

let me know what you kids think. I may write more when i'm more in the mood, but these are just some quick notes to get a real post on this blog and to start some sort of discussion.

whoa. that was longer than i expected, but once the kristin gets her groove on crazy things happen.

just a test post