Hmmm. . . I've been thinking about this for the past few days. I don't necessarily know that something is "lost," in the sense that you don't know what you're missing, but that something is "gained" or "enhanced" by reading it with that knowledge, like you're being shown a new dimension that was always there but you weren't able to see.

Great idea! What other authors do you recommend?

here's some quick reading --

RoadJunky.com has a gonzo travel writing short list. 12 finalists, each story is no more than 2000 words. here's the theme this year:



one of the finalists is actually a good friend of mine

Never have. Why should Aggie care?

sorry, what?

i only read the well known stuff, but I like these authors a lot:
Jorge Luis Borges
Julio Cortaza
Carlos Castaneda

Read The Old Man & The Sea in 6th grade. I remember nothing of it, other than the guy saying "Fish, fish" and getting his hands burned by the line.

The volume of Nick Adams short stories is remarkable, though.

A Farewell to Arms
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Old Man and the Sea
The Sun Also Rises
The Garden of Eden


These are the ones I have read. Like Ox, it has been a while for me with most of these, and I am going by my thoughts from junior high through maybe my sophmore year of college with these.

i've only read The Sun also Rises and The Old Man and the Sea and really liked those. i'm planning to read more of his novels, when I'm finished with Russell's History of Western Philosophy. great book, but a very long one too.

Old Man and The Sea
Sun Also Rises
Snows of Mount Kilimanjaro and other stories

I didn't like Farewell to Arms, even though it seemed like something I should like. I just could not get interested in those characters. Maybe I should read it again.

Be interested to hear your take on this one, Alky.

Never read Hemingway other than "Snows" and "Old Man & The Sea"---kinda trite compared to other stuff I have read since then. Why should I care about Hemingway?

trite? i think he's an awesome writer. try The sun also rises. it's a bit different from The old man and the sea. more things happen there, and i personally liked it's plot/characters much better. The old man and the sea is like this testament to humanity and whatnot, but The sun also rises is much more engaging, cos it explores a wider range of human relationships/emotions.

A Moveable Feast
A Farewell to Arms
Garden of Eden
The Nick Adams stories
For Whom The Bell Tolls


Warts and all, I don't think I love any writer like I love Hemingway.

YES
where else can u get semi-autobiographical fun in paris chilling w/ gertrude stein??


yes

Same here. Well, and I felt sorry for the fish.

Same here. [spoiler]And, didn't the fish get eaten by sharks?[/spoiler]

half of it

I haven't read The Old Man and the Sea since high school. I'm Ernie's #1 fan, but I don't remember liking it very much. I read it for sophomore English and I wish they had chosen a more colorful Hemingway, because it turned me off of him for years. I got the feeling it was the department's way of saying "boys will be boys" and trying to appeal to the impenetrable dudes in public school English classes, who would rather read about fishing than a beautiful novel about, say, Italy and castration.

i like old man and the sea! i would recommend a reread

I'll give it another try.

It was taught really badly: all biographical, nothing about the actual literature. Before we read it, my teacher spent a week talking about masculinity and safaris and I was like "who does this hemingway asshole think he is" and barely read it. She could have at least thrown in a good wine binge on the Riviera.

I've been wanting to read Mailer for a long time.
Any suggestions for a good starting point?

I'm reading The Naked and the Dead right now.
It's 700 pages of painstakingly detailed WWII, so maybe not for everyone, but I really like it so far.

I'm not sure if that's what I'm looking for.
Anything a bit more accessible?

You know, that's one of the things that prevented me from reading any more Hemingway too, the whole macho bullfight fanboy thing.

b-b-but thats one of the best reasons to read hemingway

The bad rap doesn't come from the sportiness but he's perceived as a mysoginist, I think.

I don't know. Maybe I'm a bad feminist, but I think he's one of the few male writers from that era or ever who wrote believable female characters.

girls are crazy

Ha, maybe, maybe not.

Too many writers see the female mind as this impenetrable mass of crazy and write female characters accordingly. The result is these dense, illogical creatures who are just not believable. Even if you take feminism out of the equation, they're just badly written characters, which takes away from the literature. Hemingway's women are sometimes unbalanced, evil, manipulative, but their psyches seem as transparent as their male counterparts'.

do you watch much godard or bergman?

no

Surprisingly, the best male writer of the female POV I have ever read is Stephen King...c.f. Gerald's Game, Rose Madder, Dolores Claiborne and Lisey's Story. (and Carrie to some extant, although it being one of his earliest novels, he sheepishly admits he had a lot of problems writing about menstrual periods and had to consult with his wife on that issue)

then don't. all their women are basically stupid whore incapable of human feelings, or just plain whores.

i had this thought on male-centric art after watching films, but it never really occurred to me when reading books. i don't know why.

isn't it true that most forms of art are created by males? and wouldn't it be a bit naive to expect all these male artists to be impartial to the opposite sex? i guess it only matters how strong your feminist side is when you read, watch, see those artists.

really? i feel kind of weird arguing cliche feminist anti-hemingway position, esp since i usually play captain save-a-legend when folks try to tear him down, but i'm not sure i agree.

i think his rep as a misogynist might be overblown compared to, well, the entire history of modern lit, and he certainly has had respectable, interesting female characters in certain novels, but in other ones - i'm thinking 'farewell to arms,' 'for whom the bell tolls,' much of his short stories (its been awhile since i read nick adams but i cant think of any complex female characterizations) the women are 1-dimensional, for real. Especially the ones he falls for ... i know the idea in 'bell tolls' is supposed to be a characterization of his growing love for Spain but she's basically undercut as a believable character in every way, she is portrayed as an earnest partner w/ no agency of her own. Similarly I dont really remember getting much character out of the woman in 'farewell to arms.'

the characters who come across as matronly, mother-figure types - i'm thinking the gertrude stein-ish woman from 'bell' here, the woman who had the affair w/ the bullfighter, her name escapes me - do get more intricately drawn. But even then they are stuck in the role as advisers and certainly arent engaged w/ the main characters beyond this coaching thing

i'm not in the best state of mind to argue this right now as hungover + @ work alt-tabbing between spreadsheet and internets when coworkers walk by but i think i made sense?

Well I'm only halfway through it so far, but it is interesting in times. It's nice to see the way she traces the threads of suburban development through the styles (picturesque enclaves, mail-order houses, etc.) but I'm kinda thrown off by the weird feminist issues she tosses in. She's perfectly right in that these stereotypes and issues existed, but I don't know that this book is the place for them. If thats an area she wants to explore, it sounds like a great idea for another book, rather than interjecting some awkward sentences in an otherwise historic approach.

Sounds like someone decided to fold in part of their Masters' research...

Nice primer on Petraeus...

Glad to see a good representation of Hip-Hop, sadly little Industrial (is it THAT bad?).

Here is my real problem: NO Swans.......NO Angels Of Light........BUT some Oasis.

OASIS?

OASIS?

GAH!

There's no difference between bullfighting and dogfighting or cockfighting [insert joke here]. That makes him as skeezy as Michael Vick. Any misogyny he's guilty of just enhances the aura of decrepitude.

100 years of solitude, pg 101

Yeah, I just find that disgusting.

Almost done with this.

It's so fucking good.

LOL AT THE TAMPAX BOX

what's it like? i keep hearing about that author.

trying to get through as much of these as possible before summer ends

Just finished this:


A big old "meh." Can anyone here tell me what the big deal was supposed to be? I have no problem with meta-fiction if the fiction itself is somewhat captivating. This, however, seemed all about itself just for the sake of.

This, on the other hand, is better than I thought it'd be so far:

Aw man, I'm sorry to hear you weren't impressed. I guess what still intrigues me about it is that the reader doesn't really understand what the book is REALLY about until "The Navidson Record" portion is finished. I love it, though, even if I still can't accurately say what the whole purpose was (and Danielewski isn't telling anyone).

I really haven't read any other book that physically and emotionally pulls you into itself like this one. If you didn't like this, you certainly won't like his follow-up Only Revolutions (I read it once, but won't again).

However, if you still want some nerdy insights, jump over to the forums at www.houseofleaves.com

I finally get a day off and I have some catching up to do: