Ernest Hemingway was born on this day in 1899. Now, his 115th birthday is pretty meaningless as an anniversary, particularly since he’s dead, but since the opportunity presented itself, I thought I’d share a few thoughts.
Hemingway has become one of my favorite authors. The first book I read by him was The Old Man and the Sea, which everyone else seemed to love and I thought was the dullest 100 pages I ever read. I think this was middle school or early high school. I had no intention of picking up any more Hemingway any time soon.
But for 11th grade English, I had to read three required books (The Jungle, The Metamorphosis, and Their Eyes Were Watching God) and a choice of one from a list of six. I picked The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway because it was the shortest.
I loved it. I looooved it.
I’ve been working my way through his books since then – his collection of short stories are some of my favorites (all compiled in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway). People often single out For Whom The Bell Tolls as his best novel, but my favorite by him is either The Sun Also Rises or A Farewell to Arms. I know it’s so cliche that I can’t choose, but I really can’t.
The Sun Also Rises is a beautiful, sad love story. They both are, but this one was a different type of sad. Plus, it was very much about expatriots, members of “The Lost Generation” (the generation of people who came of age during World War I). The only part I didn’t much love was the bullfighting. I really hate any kind of animal killing that is for anything that isn’t food (and even then, I have a very high standard about what’s acceptable and what’s not).
A Farewell To Arms was recommended to me by a dear friend who is no longer a dear friend, and it reminds me of him, so I haven’t read it in awhile, but I loved going through Europe with Fredric and Catherine and watching them fall in love.
I have a new Hemingway book to read in my pile – Death in the Afternoon. It’s non-fiction. I may or may not have another one in the pile, but Death in the Afternoon is the first non-fiction book I will read by him, and I’m sure I’ll love it, but it’d be hard to live up to the other two.
I always recommend either A Farewell to Arms or The Sun Also Rises when someone says they want to read Hemingway. They are two of my favorite books ever, and I’m not one for love stories, but they are exceptional. I have always wanted to write stories, but now I want to tell a story in such a way that I love it as much as I love those two novels.
words in scarlet ink 