Today’s little dose of foreshadowing irony comes from Ernest “Ate-a-gun-in-61” Hemingway. “Some made the long drop from the apartment or the office window; some took it quietly in two-car garages with the motor running; some used the native tradition of the Colt or Smith and Wesson; those well constructed implements that end insomnia, terminate remorse, cure cancer, avoid bankruptcy, and blast an exit from intolerable positions by the pressure of a finger; those admirable American instruments so easily carried, so sure of effect, so well designed to end the American dream when it becomes a nightmare, their only drawback the mess they leave for relatives to clean up.”
I just finished To Have and Have Not. They must have been hard up for good material in the 30’s because that book is largely a piece of crap. Hem pulls it out a bit in the final 20 pages, but meanders and drifts for the bulk of the work. I get the themes about class struggle and man verses man and whatnot, but what does that have to with three chapters of sitting in a bar getting obliterated? We won’t even talk about his love of the n-word, which is absent in the other things I’ve read by him. And just a little side note, I think I’ve got an idea why he took the cosmic hit on the 12 gauge bong. These are just a few of the medical conditions he suffered from at one point or another: Anthrax, a cut eyeball, a torn groin muscle, Spanish Flu, shell fragments, machine gun fire, concussions, loss of vision in his left eye, loss of hearing, crushed vertebra, ruptured spleen, kidneys, and liver, paralysis of the sphincter (WTF!), first and second degree burns, and, of course, depression. Can’t say I blame him for hitting the bottle.
Ares
Ares
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