Was this you, Miles?: Hemingway wrote the same romance over
and over, but without the happy ending. Even "The old man and
the sea" is a love story on several levels.
************** Unless all romance is viewed as the same, I
have a hard time seeing Hemingway's as the same. It's hard to
imagine a more different romance than Brett and Jake in THE
SUN ALSO RISES and Jordan and Maria in FOR WHOM THE BELL
TOLLS. Diverging, I have noticed that it's very fashionable
for feminists who haven't read Hemingway since they got out
of school to label his writing as insensitive and
misogynistic. Nothing could be further from the truth, of
course. Hemingway's short stories, like "Cat in the Rain"
and
"Hills Like White Elephants" are good examples of Hemingway
examining male-female relationships.
That aside, Hemingway did write the same theme over and over.
All of Hemingway is about grace under pressure. Of course, I
guess that's so general that it could be said that's the
theme for all literature.
And Leslie Fiedler (LOVE AND DEATH) would wholeheartedly
agree with THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA being a love story. Any of
you familiar with Fiedler?
His book comes up often in the subject of violence in
American literature and the origins of hardboiled, so I had
to have it. Then I find out Fiedler's primary thesis is that
American literature is founded in homoeroticism. Huckleberry
Finn and Jim were hot for each other and Peequod and Ishmael
didn't mind sharing a bunk while searching for the big (Moby)
Dick.
miker
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up
Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 05 Dec 2003 EST