Anodyne
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
 
A Farewell to Arms

After all the unkind statements made here in the past about Mr. Hemingway, you'd think this an unlikely choice. Nonetheless, depressed and poverty-stricken, there I stood in Suburban Corporate Thrift Store last night, only to be accosted by a slightly unbalanced self-styled "book scout."

"What are you doing here?" was his opening line, followed by, "This is my turf." Followed by following me around, offering up books off the shelves:

"Do you need this one?" (Prince Charles: Portrait of a King-In-Waiting)

"No thanks."

"How about this one?" (Raise Your Puppy Right)

"Naw, that might take a while to sell."

"How about..." But I'd grabbed A Farewell to Arms and fled.

Not as manneristic as I'd imagined, with a few straight forward scenes that I want to later go back and carefully dissect (the awkward retreat from the front lines; some of the unvarnished descriptions of the mountainous Swiss landscape & etc.) and some more self-consciously "writerly" passages that quickly ripened into the "style" -- breathless purple prose -- clogging The Garden of Eden and Islands in the Stream.
- posted by cjb @ 10:17 PM


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