My 70 Days With Hemingway And Me are over. Ernest and I had a grand time together. He regaled me with countless tales (10 novels worth in fact) that covered a wide variety of subjects. If I had to condense everything I gleaned from him – condensation being the sincerest form of flattery in this […]
Entries from August 19th, 2009
The Islands Upstage The Characters
August 19th, 2009 · No Comments · Islands in the Stream (Movie)
Not even the sizable talents of George C. Scott can elevate Islands In the Stream from its place among the worst of the Hemingway movie adaptations. There’s an interesting parallel between this movie and an earlier Hemingway adaptation, To Have And Have Not: A boat captain with a rummy first-mate named Eddie. (Spelled “Eddy” in […]
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Cooper and Bergman Toll For Me
August 18th, 2009 · No Comments · For Whom the Bell Tolls (Movie)
Finally! After sitting through a string of lousy adaptations of Ernest Hemingway’s novels, I found one that lives up to the author’s lofty literary standards: For Whom the Bell Tolls, the 1943 movie that stars Gary Cooper (Robert Jordan), Ingrid Bergman (Maria), Akim Tamiroff (Pablo), and Katina Paxinou (Pilar). Paxinou won an Academy Award (Best […]
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The Last Hemingway Book – True!
August 12th, 2009 · No Comments · True At First Light
Okay, I sneaked a peek at the first paragraph of the Wiki entry for the last Hemingway novel published posthumously, True At First Light. Here’s what it says: True at First Light is a work by American novelist Ernest Hemingway released posthumously in 1999. It is designated a “fictional memoir” and describes a journey to […]
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Ernie Envy And The Dichotomy Of The Hemingway Style
August 8th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Ernie Envy
I’m a writer. At least, I think I am. I mean, I haven’t seen, heard, or smelled a bullfight…experienced, first-hand, the horrors of war…lived in Cuba…caroused in a quaint Italian village…or consumed my weight in absinthe. While I’m at it, I also haven’t hobnobbed with the literati in Paris…watched the sun rise in Spain…or won […]
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In The Beginning Was…
August 5th, 2009 · No Comments · The Garden of Eden
According to its entry on Wiki, The Garden of Eden is the second posthumously released novel of Ernest Hemingway, published in 1986. Begun in 1946, Hemingway worked on the manuscript for the next 15 years, during which time he also wrote The Old Man and the Sea, The Dangerous Summer, A Moveable Feast, and Islands […]
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As Close To The Book As Any Movie Ever Was
August 4th, 2009 · No Comments · The Old Man and the Sea (Movie)
As a movie The Old Man and the Sea, the 1958 film starring Spencer Tracy, is only a notch above a TV movie of the week. As an adaptation, however, it is one of the finest I’ve ever seen — if what you wanted to see was a movie made as close to a book […]
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Thomas Hudson Has A Lot of Hard-Drinking Friends
August 4th, 2009 · No Comments · Islands in the Stream
I don’t know what to make of Islands In the Stream, the first of three books published after Ernest Hemingway died. I know this much: 1. The protagonist is Thomas Hudson, whom Hemingway introduces early (in the second paragraph) — unlike his style in all previous books where the protagonist’s name is withheld from the […]
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You can call me Ernie. But don't expect me to answer to that.