Book Notes: "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This was so good I couldn't get the circulation flowing in my hand for ages and the over-stretching of my back was killing me. By the time I got back to shore - hey, hang on, I was only reading this! For a moment there my imagination was so vividly fired up I was in the story. This now-classic is nothing less than brilliant.



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Book Notes: "Jasper Jones" by Craig Silvey

Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I usually would not read fiction of this variety but my hand was forced by circumstances. Nonetheless, the critics’ reviews had me anticipating a novel which explores Australia’s deep-seated racist culture in such a way as to put Silvey in the same league as the American Harper Lee. Lee wrote about the racism she observed as a child and I was expecting something similarly honest from Silvey. Instead, a lazy combination of artist and critic that would have bewildered Oscar Wilde left me with a potentially good read, including some brilliant teenage dialogue, which otherwise lacks credibility. The lazy combination began with the critic who obviously didn’t read the entire book and instead simply regurgitated Silvey’s own references to Harper Lee and Mark Twain. This was off-putting as it smacks of the cultural cringe which sits comfortably with racism as a form of illogical behaviour so prevalent in Australian society. Silvey writes well and parts of the story had me racing ahead to find out what happened next, but it also left me confused. The first half of the book reads like a set-text for high school English (much like “To Kill a Mockingbird”) while the second-half suddenly jolts into racism, teenage sex, child sexual abuse, adultery, and the emptiness and boredom of living in a small Australian mining town. When viewed in isolation, this might be seen as a jolting technique to break away from the set-text model. Hopefully teachers will not be as lazy as the critic and will read the entire novel before setting the text for younger students. Yet endlessly painful anachronisms signify the author’s lack of historical knowledge and keep rearing their ugly heads throughout the story, leaving the reader begging for an honest word from Hemingway rather than another distraction from Silvey. To be sure, fiction is made-up, but researching the setting and the context properly adds credibility and ensures the reading of fiction is not an intellectual insult. Despite the accolades and the awards for “Jasper Jones”, I give Silvey a credit grade for a well-written piece of work that suffers from too many themes, too many anachronisms and a lack of credibility that ultimately stems from lazy research.



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Book Notes: "A Clean Well Lighted Place" by Ernest Hemingway

A Clean Well Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I've always had a nagging thought that short stories were a cop-out for an author of novels - a bit like a media article compared to a journal article or a monograph for an academic. This particular short story seems to have been popular for its treatment of the Lord's Prayer, but I am spellbound by Hemingway's ability to shake loose a raft of emotions in such a short space. Maybe it is his self-centredness I identify with - I am not sure - but I seem to be able to identify with all of the characters, torn from the feeling of working with the public in a dull job,to being grateful for a job, to being old and not wanting to be in a popular place but to drink one's poison in a "clean well lighted place", then to hopelessness with a sense of resignation, then dignity and contentment all in one. Doing all of that in a short story is nothing short of remarkable, and consequently, I have changed my mind about short stories generally.



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Book Notes: "The Last Tycoon" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


If only I had read this work years ago... There is much to be learnt by reading an unfinished book, especially this with the author's chapter plan, character sketches, unedited rants and revisions. I expected Fitzgerald's colleagues to have attempted to finish the novel. Instead, however, the rawness of "The Last Tycoon" provides a window into the mind of an author in full swing. Yet if it were finished I doubt it would have had the same impact. On finishing reading the book I was at once melancholy - for the author, for the characters, for the friendship/comradeship/competition between Fitzgerald and Hemingway, for the thought processes that we would like to think are far too human, too prosaic for those who have written and written well. The scholarly care for the development of the piece is amplified precisely because of the scaffolding Fitzgerald left behind at his death, much like seeing the inner workings of a precision timepiece normally hidden from view. Fitzgerald's plot does the same to Hollywood. So much so that he couldn't have planned it better, or written truer at all, had he finished the story. "The Last Tycoon" immortalises Fitzgerald as a glorious death in battle for a warrior king. Only we are much the poorer for his early demise.



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Book Notes: "Hemingway: The 1930s" by Michael S. Reynolds

Hemingway: The 1930s by Michael S. Reynolds

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I was saddened to learn, as I went to write this review, that Michael Reynolds died in 2000. Initially, the concept of the book made me wonder whether Reynolds' work is merely a retelling of the master's work: whether Reynolds had much talent at all and simply used another's carefully-crafted public image as a topic for elevating one's own status. Moreover, my first thoughts were that chronologically-ordered books tend to be a hard slog to read. Australian war historian Lex McAulay came to mind as he writes very well-referenced, precisely-detailed and scholarly work which can be incredibly difficult to read other than for research purposes and I couldn't help seeing the similarities in style from a "readability" perspective. Nonetheless, Reynolds successfully melds chronology, at-times lengthy quotations, details and historical context with his own blend of character depictions and descriptions, without ever appearing to over-step the mark and over-dramatise history in what is an essentially good, scholarly and entertaining read. Reynolds' ability to capture the history of a character who was synonymous with the spirit of so many of the more romantic elements of the twentieth century is remarkable. I was reading Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast" and a number of his famous short stories while also reading Reynolds' work, an approach which I intend to continue as I read and study more of Hemingway's legacy while reading Reynolds' "The Paris Years". Nevertheless, I couldn't help but notice how the chronologically-ordered chapters move from year to year until the last few chapters where the years are suddenly jammed together as if the author became frustrated with the approach and forsook the planned structure in order to finish the book using less words than originally intended. On learning of Reynolds' death, and reflecting on Hemingway's witnessing the beginnings of his own legacy, however, i cannot help but think that Reynolds' work stands on its own two feet and is worthy of much praise as a historical piece. While not in the same vein as Hemingway's oft more glamorous career, I can not help but think that Reynolds' lifetime effort to record for posterity the lifetime of another was, in its own way, a life worth living. With that in mind, I suspect the true greatness of Reynolds' work is in the entire series on Hemingway, and not just this one volume.



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