reading (A Farewell to Arms)
Jun. 25th, 2006 08:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eorI read "A Farewell to Arms" starting on Thursday and finishing up on Friday. With that kind of short time frame, the reading obviously went easily.
I enjoyed the book, but I couldn't help thinking that at times Hemingway was just filling time waiting for the next thing he wanted to happen. The dark poetic foreboding did get a bit heavy handed at times for me, but I probably understood it better than the person who had underlined bits and written notes in the margins of this copy. I respect the bits of incompleteness that he left about the fates of the minor characters that you met along the way.
One of my favorite bits as far as the technique goes is how he represents the Italians talking when there is a group of them. At first I was irritated by the confusion of seven people talking in one paragraph with no quote breaks or reference to who is saying what. Then I realized that confusion and profusion of words was exactly what he was showing. He drags the reading kicking and screaming into a garble of people all talking at once, responding to each other or opening up new threads, while the person listening is awash in a sea of words. Cool device which contrasted the two person back and forth he had elsewhere quite well.
19. Ernest Hemingway "A Farewell to Arms"
I enjoyed the book, but I couldn't help thinking that at times Hemingway was just filling time waiting for the next thing he wanted to happen. The dark poetic foreboding did get a bit heavy handed at times for me, but I probably understood it better than the person who had underlined bits and written notes in the margins of this copy. I respect the bits of incompleteness that he left about the fates of the minor characters that you met along the way.
One of my favorite bits as far as the technique goes is how he represents the Italians talking when there is a group of them. At first I was irritated by the confusion of seven people talking in one paragraph with no quote breaks or reference to who is saying what. Then I realized that confusion and profusion of words was exactly what he was showing. He drags the reading kicking and screaming into a garble of people all talking at once, responding to each other or opening up new threads, while the person listening is awash in a sea of words. Cool device which contrasted the two person back and forth he had elsewhere quite well.
19. Ernest Hemingway "A Farewell to Arms"
