I finished For Whom The Bell Tolls yesterday and my verdict is a hearty thumbs up.

Hemingway has his faults. Okay, he has a lot of faults, with general misogyny being the most glaring. I don’t doubt his portrayal of how many men felt about women during the era. However, I greatly question his portrayal of women of the era and Hem’s ideas of how and why they act the way they do. In FWTBT, the love interest is Maria, a woman who has virtually no character of her own. She submits entirely to the will of Robert Jordan, the Hemingway hero, and the pain of her being gang raped is somehow alleviated by falling in love with him. Odd, that.

Anyway, I give Hemingway a lot of grief even though I tend to enjoy his work. FWTBT has the distinct advantage of being set during the Spanish Civil War, and Hemingway’s love for the country shines through. His description of the Spanish is unerring, and he’s right on the mark with Spanish culture, too—the recollections of the bullfighter and eating paella in Valencia being two noteworthy passages.

The book also piqued my interest in reading more about the Spanish Civil War, since I know very little about it besides the fact that Franco won. I didn’t know, for instance, that the Nationalists were pro-church and the Republicans had banned religion. As a precursor to WWII, it’s also interesting to see which countries provided aid to which side, while other countries like the United States chose not to get involved—which was tantamount to giving the Nationalists support. Ah, remember when the US was an isolationist country? I’m interested in checking out Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia now, and trying to dig up some other major works in English about the war.

I picked up and put down about three dozen books at the used book shop yesterday while repeating the mantra “Focus, focus, focus.” I started One Hundred Years of Solitude yesterday and it’s been an easy sell, although I wonder how the book may be different based on the translation. It’s more like trying to translate poetry than prose, I’d imagine.

I can’t decide whether I’ll try to read more early 20th century American stuff (I’m looking at you, Dos Passos) or whether I should hit more South American magic realists. Or more likely, I’ll just run out of time before the semster starts.

Speaking of which, my professor announced two books on the reading list for my writing workshop entitled “Magic and Wonder.” One is Johnathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude and the other is George Saunders’ collection CivilWarLand In Bad Decline. The rest will be short fiction.

I’ll do another post of my classes and reading lists, but not until mid-January. I’m out of school until January 22.

And good news on this front. I cleaned up my story “Sleeping Weather” and got it out today. My story “Pastures of Plenty” is now 3/4ths done and I should finish it tonight, which means some of you should be seeing it shortly.

And can I just say how annoying Glimmer Train’s form reject is? It contains the phrase “It was a good read.” This can’t possibly be true of all the stories submitted, so why say it? “Thanks for sending us your work” is fine, as is “we appreciate the opportunity to read it.” But “it was a good read?”

Current Mood: Fair |
Currently Listening To – Wilco – “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”