Book Review - To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

 To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955 (1971 printing, first published 1937)   ISBN 0140010653

What a mish-mash of a book. I've reviewed a couple of Hemingway titles on this site with mixed feelings about them. This is the worst, by quite a way, and in many ways a very lazy book. It is also a book that is very much a reflection of Hemingway's fears, addictions, obsessions and pride, with references to drinking (I counted 72 in 205 paperback pages), suicide (an extraordinary paragraph describing in detail the differing ways a man could take his life), sex and machismo.

Hemingway famously engaged himself in literary brawls, and could not bear to be one-upped by anyone, which cruels this book very much. The problems with the book begin with the fact that it consists of two short stories (chapters 1 and 2) which have been joined together with a longer third section. There is also the issue of Hemingway trying to cram too much into a short book, which goes back to his burning need to be better than everyone else.

We have, in these 205 pages, an attempt at multiple viewpoints per William Faulkner, an attempt at stream-of-consciousness a la James Joyce, and social insights stuffed in here and there in an attempt to cover Steinbeck and Fitzgerald. All of this in what is, at base, a simple story of a boat owner who mixes charter fishing and smuggling to try and get by. It is the basic story - Harry Morgan's attempts to make a more-or-less honest living, failing, and his misadventures when he crosses to the wrong side of the law, that actually isn't bad. At points Hemingway goes too far with his stylistic quirks, but the story, as thriller, works.

Unfortunately, to get all his social commentary in, he adds much superfluous material that doesn't gel with the main narrative. This produces the mish-mash that I mentioned at the beginning of the review. As a reader, you are left with bits and pieces of various stories that don't go anywhere, and don't get tied together. All-in-all To Have and Have Not reads like a book that Hemingway slapped together because he thought that he needed to write something,  grabbing material wherever and however he found it. It's quite dissatisfying.

Not the place to start in earnest with Ernest.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell