Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Old Hem


PBS has an American Masters bit on Ernest Hemingway...so much written...so much written!...


anyway...Hemingway liked to lift and 'steal thunder'...lemerun a few searches...brb...


I did a "hemingway ezekiel' search and it turns this thread up which has the famous quote from A Farewell to Arms (a fellow on Charlie Rose interview has a book that uses this title...about folk with chronic pain and debilitations)...


quote


"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. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."


unquote


like I said...we're butterflies on the radiator grill...Hemingway is always using long sounding sonorous vowels that roll along like long waves and make it all sound very godly..for goodness sake...which is why parodies of his writing generate a contest every year in Key West...or maybe that's a lookalike!..or that too...anyway...one fellow in the thread notes chapter 34...and chapter 34 in Ezekiel...lets see where that goes...brb...well I cant make a go of that search!...but spent some time reading about a cobbled together posthumous book called The Garden of Eden...brb...try another...


quote


"Well, Fitz, I looked all through that bible, it was in very fine print and stumbling on that great book Ecclesiastics, read it aloud to all who would listen. Soon I was alone and began cursing the bloody bible because there were no titles in it -- although I found the source of practically every good title you ever heard of. But the boys, principally Kipling, had been there before me and swiped all the good ones so I called the book Men Without Women hoping it would have a large sale among the fairies and old Vassar Girls.




unquote


I think that was the Chinese during the Gold Rush...one more..brb...


quote


Lt. Henry muses, “I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glory, and
sacrifice and the expression in vain. [. . .] Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage,
or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the
names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates” (185).




unquote


I was looking for a bit on Hem's take on religion...and that page has some of it...Hem's basically a sports journalist that could throw together Rolling Stone magazine like tales...y'know...tales that could be read waiting for a haircut.


one more...the shoot 'm up of the animals...brb..well I did search "hemingway killing animals" and it turns up an endless scroll of critical essays and such...which inspired....


It's all like little bay waves full of trash and debris and dead fish and hamburger wrappers lapping on the breakwater barnacle covered rocks..and it's hot and sweaty and the hook and bait near the bottom can only illicit the wan hope of a many time caught and released flounder that's scuttled along the oil and gasoline saturated bay muds colonized by tube worms brilliant red with little flower feathers gleaning the impenetrable polluted water for...food.


Life eats...get over it.
Charlie Rose is on and they're talking about General Patraeus...and the big "if".


DavidDavid


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