For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, author of The Old Man and The Sea, my note on that is at https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-killers-by-ernest-hemingway.html where I have a few hundred other reviews - 8 out of 10

 

For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, author of The Old Man and The Sea, my note on that is at  https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-killers-by-ernest-hemingway.html where I have a few hundred other reviews

 

8 out of 10

 

The Old Man of The Sea is included among The 100 Greatest Books of All Time, as compiled by The Norwegian Book Club, when they asked luminaries such as Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, John Irving, Nadine Gordimer (for the latter I am not sure though) which would be the great magnum opera and ergo we have the answers

 

For Whom The Bell Tolls and Farwell To Arms, along with The Old Man and The Sea are all placed on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, while you will find The Sun Also Rises among the 100 Best Novels of The Modern Library assessment, which is to say that Erenst Hemingway was one of the best authors ever.

Alas, I do get some of theta ‘vibe’, I enjoyed The Old Man and The Sea, short stories https://realini.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-snows-of-kilimanjaro-and-other.html and when read for the first time, The Sun Also Rises seemed exuberant, wondrous, but tried for a second run, it failed to make me as exuberant

 

Hemingway was quite a character, he became the most acclaimed novelist and was paid fifteen thousand dollars (was it that figure, which is anyway many times higher at the current rates, or is this a mistake?) for the publication of one work, in a series, in one of the journals of America, where he also attracted criticism

Those of the left, as in far on the extreme, communists, Marxists and the like, attacked Ernest Hemingway for not pleading the cause of the poor, they wanted him to show the deprivation, starvation of the oppressed masses, and albeit there is merit in exposing injustice, I am very much against communism…

 

I even took part in the December 1989 Revolution http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html that took down Ceausescu, one of the worst dictators in history, somebody like Orange Jesus aka Trump, if you are younger, and you don’t know about those villains, he was the local Orange Felon

The Hemingway family had a huge problem, out of eight members, four committed suicide, and in spite of the fact that Erenst Hemingway was upset with the act of his father – if I remember well, he called him a coward or said that was insensitive to his mother – he would later do the same thing, and the self-killing appears in his writing

His father came home one day, talked to his wife, said he is going upstairs for a rest, and then ended his life…there are female writers, well, at least one, who are impressed with the way Erenst Hemingway could describe what females feel, think, only this would not be seen as a compliment by the macho author…

 

He was very much attracted by the corrida, bullfighting, and ‘masculine’ activities, although he wrote so well about the agony of a woman who dies in child birth, he also took a long time to finish that passage, apparently, he wrote multiple versions, tore apart some forty versions of it, with the hero thrown out of the ward

In my case, I am clearly biased by what I have read in the fabulous The Intellectuals https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/intellectuals-by-paul-johnson.html by Paul Johnson about some of the great minds, Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Erenst Hemingway and other such super stars of the letters

 

Hemingway was not the most repulsive, maybe that title goes to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who left his children at the door of the orphanage, in the Middle Ages, when nine out of ten children would die in the situation, nonetheless, Hemingway does not appear as the most gentle, charming, loveable human being you could meet

On the other hand, there is the Golden Rule of Aristotle https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/aristotle-in-ninety-minutes-by-paul.html it looks as if one has skills and abilities, but when gifted in the extreme in one department, a need for balance makes them get into the ‘regression to the mean’, mentioned in a psychology classic

 

Daniel Kahneman is the only psychologist that has won the Nobel Prize, there is no such trophy for psychology, he won it for economy, he is the author of the fantastic Thinking Fast and Slow https://realini.blogspot.com/2015/07/thinking-fast-and-slow-by-daniel.html in which he explains regression to the mean

As for The litmus test, there are some criteria to use, one would be Schopenhauer and his good dictate ‘bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind. In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited…’ not that Hemingway’s are there

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life. As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality’ this quote is from the enlightening To The Hermitage https://realini.blogspot.com/2022/09/to-hermitage-by-malcolm-bradbury-author.html by Malcolm Bradbury and it comes down to assessing if I like the characters, and if it is all subjective, we are talking about my pleasure, or lack thereof, and Hemingway does not exactly bring flow, the smile of the Buddha, ethereal radiance, somehow, The Rolling Stones and their ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’ come to mind, however much it is my fault, the novelist is with the crème de la crème, nec plus ultra, but he just does not appeal to yours truly, more so ever since learning about his character in The Intellectuals

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

 

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”