I consider this novel a real work of art. The first section of the triptych shows the hero living a solitary life on an island in the Bahamas. He’s experienced some hard things, but has dedicated himself to art and it’s rewarded him. The character is a painter, which allows Hemingway to render the scenery with a detailed eye.

Every page of this novel pulses with love. Hemingway loves the sea. He loves to fish. He loves guns. He loves to drink. He’s a slave to art. You can see that it’s the work of a man who is absolutely uncompromising with himself. He won’t let himself write a bad sentence, no matter how much he himself suffers for it. Whatever he’s writing about, he loves it too much to let himself write a lazy sentence about it.

There’s extraordinary tenderness. His sons come to visit, and you love them as their father does.

And then the world of the novel is as cruel as the real world, and as senseless. The other two triptychs are of the protagonist, broken by that cruel world. He’s in a daily battle with despair, as with a chronic disease. He has to manage it at every turn; he’s become competent at reading his moods, and so have those around him.

There’s a fantastic section in which he gets some terrible news. Because of the time and place, and the nature of the news, several of his friends are able to guess it. They’ll be talking to him as normal, and then they’ll suddenly start crying. Because something in the conversation, totally invisible to the reader, showed it.

The protagonist is often controlled by such hidden currents of grief. Those who know him well can sense these currents dimly. But nobody can navigate them.

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To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is not Hemingway’s best work.

The biggest problem is that he doesn’t have a good enough reason for switching characters. When your main character is seriously wounded, we want to know what happens next. It’s very irritating when you switch to some other character for no good reason. And even worse when your reason is transparently political.

It started feeling like a hard-boiled detective novel. Yes, we know smuggling is dangerous. No, even at the high of prohibition it couldn’t have been the murder-fest depicted here. Not every job ended with blood in the water. But if it’s a noir detective story, that’s okay. The various unrealistic excesses are forgivable in that context.

Then it becomes clear that there’s no overarching conspiracy to dismantle. No Maltese Falcon to find.

The best part of the book happens during one of the digressions that hurt the narrative so much. We’ve followed some random character to some random bar. He has nothing to do with the story. Oh, wait, the main character’s wife passes him on the road at the end. But who cares? Anyway, this guy goes to this bar and sees one drunk smashing another drunk’s head into the sidewalk. The random character and a police officer break up the fight. Then one of the drunks ask the police officer for a dollar.

Anyway. To Have and Have Not either lacks Hemingway’s classic subtlety and style, or I’m not wise enough to detect it. There are a few good jokes and character sketches. Far more racial slurs than I’m comfortable reading. A mangled plot and a transparent political bent that doesn’t feel like Hemingway at all.

I’d almost say it’s like an imitation Hemingway novel, and the author hasn’t read Hemingway. Only bad reviews of Hemingway. Maybe this is the novel that’s the foundation for all those bad reviews.



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In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In Our Time is an Ernest Hemingway sampler pack. All his favorite topics are in here: fishing, literature, drinking, bullfighting, horses, war, hobos. If you like Hemingway for his choice of topics, you’ll find something to enjoy here.

People write a lot about the last chapter of Ulysses. My own theory about it is that it has a particular and rare kind of enjoyment to offer. Which is that it’s been subjecting you to some kind of discomfort, and then at the end, it releases you from it. Like, the author has walled you into a crypt, and the last chapter knocks a hole in the bricks and lets the sun in.

For Ulysses, the prison is the over-analytical minds of Bloom and Dedalus. The Molly chapter finally lets in some light. For In Our Time, the prison is all interpersonal relationships. Heartache and pride and anger and fear. The Big Two-Hearted River chapter, in which Nick does nothing but hunt and fish, is our escape from all that.

This has made me think a lot about how to end a novel. There are a lot of strategies, of course. But if your novel has been full of complexity and difficulty, letting up at the end might be good. Giving the reader a door out. This probably won’t work if your book has been a rollicking good time from the start. Which is why a certain kind of reader might find Big Two-Hearted River boring.

But I liked it. After so many painful yet beautiful portraits of human complexity, it’s a relief. He returns to the simple pleasure of living off the land.

It is very, very American.



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