I didn't like A Farewell to Arms much. My favorite is The Old Man And The Sea.
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I didn't like A Farewell to Arms much. My favorite is The Old Man And The Sea.
I have to toss in my ballot with The Sun Also Rises. I prefer not only the characters and plot (or lack of it) but I think his prose was stronger here, in A farewell to arms his prose seem's to lack the same preciseness as in TSAR. In AFTA the dialogue also seems more artificial, compared to that dialogue of TSAR where you really do feel the scene and conversation to be so alive.
Also I love how in TSAR Hemingway perfectly captures the sense of being young, rich and bored. Numb to life yet lacking nothing. The only writers who catch that sentiment better are Byron and Tolstoy, but even then Hemingway is up there when it comes to the novel. I would rank him second only to Tolstoy.
I agree to a point, but Hemingway's character Jake Barnes did work in The Sun Also Rises. He was a journalist. I don't think his character was bored as he was spending free time between jobs with his friends on vacation. I also don't think he was necessarily rich, but lived among the rich and had a salary to keep up. Being that Jake is the protagonist, I didn't always feel that Hemingway was portraying life as easy, so much as his characters living a really nice lifestyle.
It wasn't that the characters were particularly wealthy but they were in comparison to the French, whose currency was very much weaker than the US dollar. People getting paid in dollars were on easy street in post WW1 France and Spain.Quote:
Originally Posted by jersea