Still a year behind myself, but catching up! And here we go….

I had the Dorian Gray slip in front of me and picked three others. One of them was The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. This was one of the eight books that I voted for throughout that summer on PBS and my feelings about it are still quite strong.

The first time I met up with and read this book was in school. What writing was all about was forever changed. Of course, you have to factor in that I read it following a required book by Faulkner. Now I don’t want to be caddy. But then again, it is most likely way too late for that.

Okay, here’s the deal. I hate Faulkner. Well true, I don’t know him. And he’s been dead way too long for me to rectify that situation. But his writing is a whole lot of things I hate!

A Faulkner book, for instance, will start with one sentence about a cowboy walking into the bar and sitting down. And then we jump to…

But first! Let’s spend 80 pages taking you all the way back to how his grandparents got to this country, their bout with cholera, their bitter children, cowboy dude wasn’t wanted, him growing up, coming out west…

Then a dusty whore sits down across from him and asks him why he’s in town.

But first! And there we go again with her entire history.

Mr. Exposition and me don’t get along all that well. Mr. Exposition and William Faulkner drink together till they get silly and cough up a book.

But then I read Hemingway. The entire roof flew off the dump. I didn’t know anyone could write with that much economy. There were no extra words, much less extra scenes. I specifically remember pages of dialogue emanating from a table of expats and you knew who was speaking without Ernest having to hand out a crib sheet.

I’m saying all of this because I picked it, my second title I am reading again. I’m not as scared that the bloom will be off the rose with this one, as I am with some of my other favorites. I know this will be good. And the main reason I grabbed it is because I really need a good read.

Let’s hope I am remembering all of this correctly. I really hope I’m remembering it right. That’d be swell.

• THE SUN ALSO RISES
• by Ernest Hemingway
• [rated by PBS readers as #65]
• [one of 8 I voted for in the list]
• 250 pages

8/27/19 – FINISHED IT

It took me a while to read this – not due to the book, but due to my life – and truth be told, I’m a little amazed that my first entry about it is when I am done. I had just taken the time to finish some other books and then poured into this one.

I know I wrote of its huge influence on me. And it was a book that I was bittersweet about reading. I had loved it so. With a poignancy as I turned each page, I realized that I had remembered it differently than it now read.

But not beyond hope.

Initially remembering its brevity, it was wordier than I expected. But still the journalistic way Hemingway writes feels heady to me. He says stuff like “the sand was yellow.” No more than that. He challenges himself and you – to limit any description, supposing that a longer one would be weaker. I tend to agree.

I love the house of cards quality to his work. Say that you loved a passage or a paragraph where he has visually put you right in the middle of this place. You don’t quite know how you got there. You try to go back and analyze why it worked, and guess what? It vanishes! You can’t find how he put you there. You are just instantly there. A transparent line of almost subliminal connected images have taken you exactly where he wants you to go. Truly amazing.

Easily the most shocking thing about this book, that I expected would hold few to no surprises for me, turned out to be a big one. Remember those scenes that I mentioned that I have tried to model some of my writing after? Where the expats are sitting around a table and the dialogue is flowing and you know who is saying what without even being told? Those changed my life. I will never forget those scenes and the way they were written…

Except that they don’t exist.

They are not there. No way, no how. A complete figment of my imagination. Wow! I see where the kernels of that kind of insouciant banter came from. The book is full of that. But that huge, visceral memory… Wow. How did I go there? Was I thinking of another book? Who knows? Way too long ago to sort.

Anyway, it was a great read. Couldn’t be more right that it is on this list. I loved it and treasured it all over again. And though I experienced it a little differently now, I will always be grateful, as a writer, that this man’s work began to show me the way.

Tough reading act to follow, but I will!

Okay, so I picked a couple of titles. One was Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, which I have read and bought to read again. But with our country’s ridiculously explosive political situation, it seemed to be too much for now. I also picked some other post apocalyptic title and wasn’t feeling that either.

But the other two titles felt okay. One is The Count of Monte Cristo, which just seemed endless. Kind of funny too, cuz there are all these disclaimers in the front of it explaining that, due to modern concerns, it had been reduced from its original 3-volume set to just the 600 pages that it is now. Ouch! Hope I like it!

My thought is that I’ve now read 13 of the list’s books in the first year. So this might be the right time to do a longer one. Don’t want to start a year off with something that is endless and then spend the rest of the year catching up to my 10 book self-imposed quota (well, really, 100 books in 10 years – kind of see how this has to go!).

I also picked Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. I ordered it. I might be totally entertained by Monte Cristo and not need a diversion, but it seemed like a good idea to have something set aside to go to in the middle of this somewhere, if need be. But that is for a bit later, when it comes.

Be sweet and not too long winded to me, Count!