A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958 printing (first published 1929, first published in Penguin 1935)
I do wonder, if he had come onto the scene in the 21st century, whether Ernest Hemingway would have gotten a publishing contract at all. I suppose his narcisisism would fit well with today's society, but his misogynistic ways, violence and blatant alcoholism are certainly not what we want to read these days.
I also wonder whether Hemingway will survive as a "great novelist" into the future. While there is no doubt that his style was, if not a revolution, a major step in the development of modern writing, in some strange way his work seems to become more shallow as time has moved on, and doesn't stand as high in the pantheon of 20th century novelists as it did even thirty years ago.
Certainly, A Farewell to Arms is a book that was written by a young man, and a book that, I suspect, mainly appeals to young men, in much the same way as Seven Pillars of Wisdom and On the Road. Hemingway's story is a story that a young man wants to be a part of: danger, cameraderie, a submissive woman who stays in the background when required, and an ending that relieves the protagonist of any responsibilities.
On the back cover of the Penguin edition that I have just read there is a quote from the President of the Swedish Academy (who bestowed the Nobel Prize on Hemingway in 1954) saying "Hemingway is one of the great authors of our time, one of those who, honestly and undauntedly, reproduces the genuine features of the hard countenance of our age." I think only a man would say that, and the statement reminds us that, in the time that Hemingway was alive, it was men who formed literary taste, decided what got published and what got lauded in the press. So perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that as publishing, taste, and the world itself becomes more feminized, Hemingway's star is waning.
But what of the book itself? Many years ago I read For Whom the Bell Tolls and enjoyed it, although enjoying it is the only thing I can remember about the book. Of course, I was a young man then. Now that I am middle-aged, I found not a lot truly to enjoy in A Farewell to Arms. Frederic Henry, the protagonist, sees himself as sensitive, but comes across as a braggart, Catherine Barkley's character is not really developed at all, and she is simply the "perfect woman" for a young man - submissive, with no real mind of her own. Hemingway, at the time of writing, did not have a great understanding of women (and it could be argued that he never developed one). In fact many of the characters in this book are little more than cyphers.
We come to the Hemingway style. The short sentences. No unecessary adjectives. It caused a stir when he was first published, and that makes sense, given that the Edwardian, James-ian writing style of the immediately preceeding years was the polar opposite to the way Hemingway wrote; no doubt he was as a breath of fresh air to readers. For us in the 21st century, he can seem stilted and even a little old-hat. We need to be careful of course, because so many have imitated and learned from Hemingway that we have been influenced by them and perhaps don't see his style as so different. But it certainly was, from what had come before. Personally I found that, in A Farewell to Arms at least, the stacatto sentences and flat description was at times distracting from the story. But perhaps I am one who prefers my prose to flow more, and this may be a reflection on me rather than Hemingway (after all, how many Nobel Prizes have I won?).
One thing that cannot be ignored in this book is the drinking. Hemingway was a renowned alcoholic (one of many when it comes to 20th century American writers), and this fact permeates the book. The amount of drinking Henry undertakes is simply astounding. Reviewers have made fun of the amount of drinking James Bond does in Ian Fleming's novels, but the alcohol downed by Frederic Henry in the course of A Farewell to Arms is ridiculous. I felt drunk just reading about it. It's a sad thing to note when reading the book that Hemingway's decline into drunkeness and eventual suicide was literally there for everyone to see, if they chose to see it.
I don't think Hemingway wrote this book as an explicit anti-war statement (as I don't think he was explicity anti-war), and Henry, as an ambulance corpsman is not in the thick of action, but he does show the futility of war, and especially in many respects the plain-ness of it - that battle is in fact not often occurring, and when it isn't, troops are living as normal a life as they can manage. The great disasters on the Italian front that are depicted in A Farewell to Arms are almost peripheral to the characters, even as they live through the retreat and death that follows.
One of the problems with "great" novels and "great" novelists is the expectation that their "greatness" engenders in a potential reader. That reader expects to be filled with admiration and awe for the writing, and to love the experience of reading such a work or author. Of course that is often not the case. I have to state that I have been underwhelmed by A Farewell to Arms, while at the same time understanding its importance as a work of literature. I did enjoy the experience of reading it, but, soon after finishing it, I don't feel that is has moved me in the way that much of my reading of great literature has.
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