the Quixotic Chica: ernest hemingway

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May 22, 2013

100 Best Novels: The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway is very quickly becoming one of my favorite writers, and I couldn't be more happy about it! Though I want to save some of his books for later down my Best 100 list, I'm glad that I went back to him for The Sun Also Rises so that I could be familiar with the story for our evening at the ballet.

In short, I enjoyed this novel. Though Hemingway's writing style tends to be terse yet nuanced, I thought that his prose in this particular novel was more fluid than in A Farewell to Arms. This brought me into Jake and Brett's world more quickly than anticipated, and while it was still true to Hemingway's trademark style, I do think it has a different feel to it than other books.

Part of the reason why I love novelists like Fitzgerald is because of the allure of the Jazz Age. Champagne, dancing, traveling, money-- they're all part of the magical lifestyle that many of his characters live in. It's easy to slip into the glamorous dreamlife of Gatsby and idealize that era. What Hemingway has done, however, particularly in The Sun Also Rises, is remind us that party must at some point come to an end. Those wild parties where the alcohol flows like water start to feel uneasily out of control. The characters struggle with hangovers, go to bed feeling ill, and Lady Brett Ashley is purported to be an alcoholic. Even the frivolous spending is revealed to be mindless, as the characters ignore their bankruptcy and rack up debts. This is not a whispy, lovely daydream in West Egg-- this is the reality of people who drink too much, spend too much, and end up alone.

As uncomfortable as that reality is, Hemingway still manages to infuse beauty amidst the tragedy. The simple moments like fishing in the countryside, away from the raucous cities and belligerent relationships, are the moments of true peace. The scenes where Jake and Bill split up to fish in the river are endearing, yet it also stuck out to me that Jake only finds calm when alone. Keeping that in mind, it might be okay that Jake will not be with Brett. Though maybe a bit lonely, he's also at peace when away from others. Maybe, we can hope, Jake will be okay in the end. Maybe he can keep dreaming, and maybe Brett will spin herself into oblivion, but maybe he will be okay.

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100 Best Novels

1. "Ulysses," James Joyce

~~2. "The Great Gatsby," F. Scott Fitzgerald~~

~~3. "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," James Joyce~~

~~4. "Lolita," Vladimir Nabokov~~

5. "Brave New World," Aldous Huxley

6. "The Sound and the Fury," William Faulkner

7. "Catch-22," Joseph Heller

8. "Darkness at Noon," Arthur Koestler

9. "Sons and Lovers," D. H. Lawrence

10. "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck

11. "Under the Volcano," Malcolm Lowry

12. "The Way of All Flesh," Samuel Butler

~~13. "1984," George Orwell~~

14. "I, Claudius," Robert Graves

15. "To the Lighthouse," Virginia Woolf

16. "An American Tragedy," Theodore Dreiser

17. "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," Carson McCullers

~~18. "Slaughterhouse Five," Kurt Vonnegut~~

19. "Invisible Man," Ralph Ellison

20. "Native Son," Richard Wright

21. "Henderson the Rain King," Saul Bellow

22. "Appointment in Samarra," John O' Hara

23. "U.S.A." (trilogy), John Dos Passos

24. "Winesburg, Ohio," Sherwood Anderson

25. "A Passage to India," E. M. Forster

26. "The Wings of the Dove," Henry James

27. "The Ambassadors," Henry James

~~28. "Tender Is the Night," F. Scott Fitzgerald~~

29. "The Studs Lonigan Trilogy," James T. Farrell

30. "The Good Soldier," Ford Madox Ford

~~31. "Animal Farm," George Orwell~~

32. "The Golden Bowl," Henry James

33. "Sister Carrie," Theodore Dreiser

34. "A Handful of Dust," Evelyn Waugh

35. "As I Lay Dying," William Faulkner

36. "All the King's Men," Robert Penn Warren

37. "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," Thornton Wilder

38. "Howards End," E. M. Forster

39. "Go Tell It on the Mountain," James Baldwin

40. "The Heart of the Matter," Graham Greene

~~41. "Lord of the Flies," William Golding~~

42. "Deliverance," James Dickey

43. "A Dance to the Music of Time" (series), Anthony Powell

44. "Point Counter Point," Aldous Huxley

45. "The Sun Also Rises," Ernest Hemingway

46. "The Secret Agent," Joseph Conrad

47. "Nostromo," Joseph Conrad

48. "The Rainbow," D. H. Lawrence

49. "Women in Love," D. H. Lawrence

50. "Tropic of Cancer," Henry Miller

51. "The Naked and the Dead," Norman Mailer

52. "Portnoy's Complaint," Philip Roth

53. "Pale Fire," Vladimir Nabokov

54. "Light in August," William Faulkner

55. "On the Road," Jack Kerouac

56. "The Maltese Falcon," Dashiell Hammett

57. "Parade's End," Ford Madox Ford

58. "The Age of Innocence," Edith Wharton

59. "Zuleika Dobson," Max Beerbohm

60. "The Moviegoer," Walker Percy

61. "Death Comes to the Archbishop," Willa Cather

62. "From Here to Eternity," James Jones

63. "The Wapshot Chronicles," John Cheever

~~64. "The Catcher in the Rye," J. D. Salinger~~

65. "A Clockwork Orange," Anthony Burgess

66. "Of Human Bondage," W. Somerset Maugham

67. "Heart of Darkness," Joseph Conrad

68. "Main Street," Sinclair Lewis

69. "The House of Mirth," Edith Wharton

70. "The Alexandria Quartet," Lawrence Durrell

71. "A High Wind in Jamaica," Richard Hughes

72. "A House for Ms. Biswas," V. S. Naipaul

73. "The Day of the Locust," Nathaniel West

~~74. "A Farewell to Arms," Ernest Hemingway~~

75. "Scoop," Evelyn Waugh

76. "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," Muriel Spark

77. "Finnegans Wake," James Joyce

78. "Kim," Rudyard Kipling

79. "A Room With a View," E. M. Forster

80. "Brideshead Revisited," Evelyn Waugh

81. "The Adventures of Augie March," Saul Bellow

82. "Angle of Repose," Wallace Stegner

83. "A Bend in the River," V. S. Naipaul

84. "The Death of the Heart," Elizabeth Bowen

85. "Lord Jim," Joseph Conrad

86. "Ragtime," E. L. Doctorow

87. "The Old Wives' Tale," Arnold Bennett

~~88. "The Call of the Wild," Jack London~~

89. "Loving," Henry Green

90. "Midnight's Children," Salman Rushdie

91. "Tobacco Road," Erskine Caldwell

92. "Ironweed," William Kennedy

93. "The Magus," John Fowles

94. "Wide Sargasso Sea," Jean Rhys

95. "Under the Net," Iris Murdoch

96. "Sophie's Choice," William Styron

97. "The Sheltering Sky," Paul Bowles

98. "The Postman Always Rings Twice," James M. Cain

99. "The Ginger Man," J. P. Donleavy

100. "The Magnificent Ambersons," Booth Tarkington

May 20, 2013

Project DC: The Washington Ballet

I am a big supporter of the arts and try to go to various performances whenever I can, but the truth is that with my student budget and hectic schedule, it's not always possible to go as much as I'd like. A few months ago I was browsing the Kennedy Center website, wanting to reconnect with the lovely performances they host, when suddenly the Washington Ballet's season caught my eye. I saw that they were doing an interpretation of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, and I was intrigued. Hemingway in ballet form? It deserved to be investigated.

I'm not a ballet expert, but I do know what I like. I used to dance as a kid, and my sister and I often went to performances by NYC Ballet and American Ballet Theatre when I lived in New York. I love those two companies, and since I hadn't yet seen the Washington Ballet perform, I figured I needed to give them a chance. Bonus: We unknowingly picked the night that the King and Queen of Sweden were in attendance! We are so fancy. :D

I just love the view from the Kennedy Center balcony!

First of all, the design of the show is very cool. They used digital projection to display the words that Jake, the protagonist, is typing on his typewriter and to portray conversations between characters, giving the sense of watching a silent movie. The black-and-white set and costumes in the first act also contribute to that feeling. There were so many beautiful moments in the first act, but I especially loved the whimsy of the characters barhopping through Paris and the enjoyable pas de deux between Jake and Georgette. Jake's nightmare of being back in World War I and the desperation of his bathing scene at the close of Act I were especially gripping and emotional, and Jared Nelson did a wonderful job of depicting Jake's struggle and isolation.

Act II comes alive with a burst of color as the characters make their way to Spain. The bullfighting takes center stage, and Tamas Krizsa brought the bull to life remarkably well. Edwin Aparicio stole the stage with his tremendously talented flamenco dancing. Seriously, it made me want to jump to my feet and dance! The fight scene was also fun, and the dancers kept their energy high.

The minuses were that there were a few moments where I didn't think the dancers and the orchestra matched up very well at the end of certain pieces, and it momentarily took me away from what could have been a strong ending. It was by no means a sloppy performance, but details like that are important to me. I also could have done without the can-can dance because it seemed a bit out of place.

Overall, the hubs and I both really enjoyed the performance, and we highly recommend it. I'm especially impressed that the hubs had such a great time because he is definitely not a ballet aficionado, yet he was smiling throughout most of the show, and he thanked me more than once afterwards for bringing him. Success! I'm interested to see how the Washington Ballet does with more classical pieces, and I will definitely return to the Kennedy Center to check them out again.

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Want to read more about having fun in DC? Follow along as I embark on Project DC:

~~1. Go to the Air and Space Museum.~~

2. Go for a leisurely hike in Rock Creek Park.

3. Go on a White House tour.

~~4. Buy DC artwork at Eastern Market.~~

5. Visit Old Town on a day trip.

6. Take a day trip to Annapolis.

7. Go to the Newseum.

8. Go back to Jazz in the Garden when it starts up again in the spring.

9. Go to the Holocaust Museum.

~~10. Eat at Ben's Chili Bowl.~~

11. See the FDR Memorial.

~~12. Take the hubs to the Lincoln Memorial.~~

13. Go to the National Portrait Gallery.

14. Go to the Corcoran.

15. Visit the Vietnam Memorial.

~~16. Go inside the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.~~

17. Go to more embassy events.

~~18. See a show at Rock & Roll Hotel.~~

19. See the drum circle at Malcolm X Park.

20. Mini golf at H Street Country Club.

21. Evening drinks at POV.

22. Visit the National Archives.

~~23. See a Washington Ballet performance.~~

24. Walk through the National Arboretum.

January 30, 2013

100 Best Novels: A Farewell to Arms

In my quest to read the 100 best novels, I decided that my next venture would be A Farewell to Arms. Truthfully, I did not expect to like it all that much. I tend to fall for flowery descriptions and gripping tragedies, and while Ernest Hemingway could hardly be called a comedic optimist, my memories of joylessly reading The Old Man and the Sea in middle school left me thinking that Hemingway just couldn't capture my love the way that Fitzgerald does. I opened up my battered library copy of A Farewell to Arms, sighed, and reminded myself that if I didn't like it, I could just stop reading it.

Then I didn't put it down.

The thing about Hemingway is that he is deceptively simple. By that I mean that his writing can at first seem terse and even dispassionate at times. It's easy to interpret this as being boring and basic. However, after a few lines, something strange starts to happen. Those basic sentences, despite their brevity, start to change shape and describe very intense situations and emotions. He just hints at what is happening beneath the surface, but if you're listening, you soon have a sense of the fuller emotions and turmoil. As I read more and more, I found myself being sucked in to the story of Frederic Henry, an American fighting for the Italians in World War I.

Spoilers below!

(via)

This novel follows Henry as he meets Catherine Barkley, an English nurse, and kind of sort of falls in love with her. At first their interest in each other seems to be driven mostly by a desire for distraction, and their interactions seem rather superficial. As Henry recovers from a brutal injury and spends more time with Catherine, however, I got the impression that maybe they really did need each other to find solace from the war and from the memory of Catherine's late fiancé. Catherine becomes pregnant, and Henry has to leave to return to the front, leaving the reader to wonder just what will become of the both of them.

The descriptions of the front are quite memorable, not necessarily because they bring to life what it was like to be fighting in the army, but because they highlight the emotion of the war. Throughout the book, soldiers are debating when the war will end, and the men seem so detached from the fighting. They are tired, and they have little more to give. The most powerful moment for me was when Henry and his men get separated from the rest of their unit, and their ambulance is stuck in the mud. Two men refuse to help get the ambulance out of fear of staying in the area for too long, and as they run away, Henry shoots one of them. His fellow solider, the ruthless Bonello, shoots that man in the head, and they leave his body on the side of the road. As they finally rejoin the rest of the troops, the Italians are retreating, and officers are being executed by other soldiers for seemingly meaningless reasons. Henry manages to escape and find his way back to Catherine.

The violence of those scenes really stuck with me. Any rationale for the war that might have lingered was by now long gone. Violence, it seemed, was inevitable, including from Henry, but it was also a violence that had the distinct air of desperation and confusion. Nobody wanted to be fighting anymore, yet they were trapped to continue to do so, anyway.

The true tragedy comes in the reunion with Catherine. Henry is facing arrest for deserting the army, and the two of them manage to escape to Switzerland. By now Catherine is nearly ready to give birth, and they start to construct a fantasy life in the mountains. However, as Catherine nears the end of her pregnancy, she is overcome with a sense of dread about their fates. Sadly, their child is a stillborn, and Catherine dies soon after from complications. The final scene of Henry walking alone in the rain back to their hotel stabbed me in the heart. After all of that, after all they had been through, Henry ends up alone. There is no happy ending here. Death is inescapable, whether on the front or in private lives.There is no hope, no permanent solace from the elements.

A Farewell to Arms was an easy, quick read, and I enjoyed it so much more than I thought I would. It is a sad story, but one that I think is important for how it portrays how people try to make sense and escape from violence and death. It is ultimately heartbreaking, for the characters never truly experience any relief or solace. There are no answers, just the sense that this uneasy tension will continue to persist. It's uncomfortable and sad, and that is what makes this novel an unforgettable one.

"Maybe... you'll fall in love with me all over again."

"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"

"Yes. I want to ruin you."

"Good," I said. "That's what I want too."

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