So glad I found your channel. We seem to have a lot of the same reading tastes. I am looking forward to future videos (and am having fun looking back at your old ones too). I found you while I was searching for a review of an amazing book I just finished entitled “Endurance”. Glad you loved it as much as I did 🤗.
I just finished the novel. It is extraordinarily well written. I think it is easy for people today to see this as about five alcoholics who travel from France to Spain and back again and how their meaningless lives are, in part, due to their drinking and living a self-absorbed life. But I don’t think people had this type of understanding at the time. They saw them as people who had been traumatized by WWI and so were drinking to tolerate their pain. There was no treatment that worked for alcoholism at this time. There was no AA. It was a fairly hopeless disease so these are really about a group of hopeless people who will self destruct. Just my immediate thoughts.
While I enjoyed the book, am sure I will come back to it and that it has a lot of depth for rereading, I didn't respond to the writing on a per sentence basis. What little descriptions there were seemed anti-imaginative, staggered and lifeless. I guess on purpose he must have wanted to make style a storytelling device but the prose felt like he was on a mission to convince blind people that they weren't missing out on anything.
This is a book about a generation with ptsd. World war one fractured the concept of progress and of western civilization itself. Europe never recovered from this trauma but developed a deep scar tissue to mask it.
I just finished the book. I have to say I hated it from top to bottom found it awfully dull and just lacking any depth. I did think it reminded me of the Woody Allen film although that had better scenery. Thanks for the review and further explanation.
I have just read this book without any previous introduction to the 'plot' or themes. It was my first Hemmingway novel although I have read a few small pieces by him. In part I have come online to hear other peoples views and whether or not it is highly regarded. I found the book incredibly hard to enjoy with the exception of EH's description of Trout fishing and the Saint Fermin fiesta. The relentless descriptions of vacuous behaviour of most of the main characters left me almost hoping for a rampaging bull in one of the 'good' bars or cafes they returned to constantly. Bretts almost complete empty headed charmless repetitive comments left me wondering why she could ever be considered desirable other than a for a drunken fumble. The lost generation narrative I have read about doesn't really add up with these characters. It feels to me that they are for the most part like this anyway regardless of being from a post war generation. Jeez they were very annoying. Credit due to EH as I am sure he intended a lot of this but sometimes his passages are grinding. For instance if you are going to deliver a vacuous dialogue about drink or food being nice or wonderful, don't cue it up with things like ..he opened the door, he closed it behind him, he saw her, he went over, there was an empty chair, he went over, he sat down in the chair, it was a comfortable chair, a green chair ,it was a good chair. I'm paraphrasing of course but I expected EH to be a touch more economical in the mundane and the beautiful descriptive talent he has to feel more to the fore. It has happened to me before where I have read a book and struggled to find the quality in it, but sometimes after a re-read I totally change my mind. Should I try again?
I absolutely agree with you.. on all of that. I read about 200 out of the 230 pages and couldn’t bring myself to spend much more of my time on the remaining pages. A simple flip through and I got the point… sadly. I tried to convince myself that I was missing something. But it seems I’m grasping- perhaps in the future I can reread it and actually finish it, but I almost don’t see that happening at all. Rarely have I been so turned off by a novel. I’m hoping to delve into more of his work and maybe come to appreciate him as an author more than I have with this particular novel..
I, too, just read this novel for the first time. It was my first Hemingway novel as well. I found it a bit boring. Some of his descriptions were beautiful, but I felt a lot of it was just filler. He would also start and end paragraphs with the same declaration, the latter being hardly paraphrased. There was a lot of redundancy. However, I did like the subtexts and his, I thought, successful attempts at portraying the characters. I hated every single one of them deeply. Except for Jake. But given enough time, I think I would have grown to hate him too. Overall, it was underwhelming but decent.
@@austinlaubacher9509 The plot is indeed a bit boring, but I think that is the point of the story and themes. These characters are all deeply depressed and feel a large emptiness, yet none of them know how to address it. I agree that most of the characters are somewhat unlikeable, but I feel the beauty of this novel is in finding empathy for it's own characters. Brett is very spontaneous and seemingly shallow, but I believe this is her attempt at finding meaning. She doesn't know what will fill this void in her and so she bounces from man to man and appears very indecisive but it his her misguided attempts at feeling happiness. Cohn is a very annoying character, but again you feel empathy for his situation and it's very sad. Mike has spurts of anger and rudeness, which is again a sign of his dissatisfaction in his life. I actually kind of liked Bill, he seemed like he had some issues but actually seemed like he was trying to have a good time. I also liked Jake. It seems to me that Jake has some sort of emptiness but he has come to a sort of peace with it and doesn't lash out at others. He stays to himself and is going with the flow of his life. You know he loves Brett but there is a feeling of mostly inner peace.
I think the plot is intentionally boring as a function of the themes. The characters aren't supposed to be likable. For me the enjoyment came with garnering empathy for the characters and plopping myself in the setting with them. There is a really beautiful sort of sadness especially between Jake and Brett. Each character manifests their struggles differently, but it's never really spoken about. You just kind of have to unravel each character's stories by the way they act.
Totally agree. The most pointless, boring book I've ever read. Cafes,drinks, money, no plot. Only slightly picked up in the last 1/10 of the book. Very disappointing.
I read the book. I didn’t like the plot. Drunk people moving from cafe to restaurant to bar, dull dialogues. What am I missing? I do read a lot of classics but I didn’t find the grip on this one. I failed to see why it deserved to be told the way it was told. If this book weren’t written by Hemingway but by someone else who never wrote more than one book, would it still be liked as much? Is it just the EM Halo effect that make people want to say good about it? Or is it really the story?
I’ve read this twice myself. I absolutely love it. Very interesting times period.
So glad I found your channel. We seem to have a lot of the same reading tastes. I am looking forward to future videos (and am having fun looking back at your old ones too). I found you while I was searching for a review of an amazing book I just finished entitled “Endurance”. Glad you loved it as much as I did 🤗.
I just finished the novel. It is extraordinarily well written. I think it is easy for people today to see this as about five alcoholics who travel from France to Spain and back again and how their meaningless lives are, in part, due to their drinking and living a self-absorbed life. But I don’t think people had this type of understanding at the time. They saw them as people who had been traumatized by WWI and so were drinking to tolerate their pain. There was no treatment that worked for alcoholism at this time. There was no AA. It was a fairly hopeless disease so these are really about a group of hopeless people who will self destruct. Just my immediate thoughts.
While I enjoyed the book, am sure I will come back to it and that it has a lot of depth for rereading, I didn't respond to the writing on a per sentence basis. What little descriptions there were seemed anti-imaginative, staggered and lifeless. I guess on purpose he must have wanted to make style a storytelling device but the prose felt like he was on a mission to convince blind people that they weren't missing out on anything.
This is a book about a generation with ptsd.
World war one fractured the concept of progress and of western civilization itself.
Europe never recovered from this trauma but developed a deep scar tissue to mask it.
I just finished the book. I have to say I hated it from top to bottom found it awfully dull and just lacking any depth. I did think it reminded me of the Woody Allen film although that had better scenery. Thanks for the review and further explanation.
Thanks ❤️
I have just read this book without any previous introduction to the 'plot' or themes. It was my first Hemmingway novel although I have read a few small pieces by him. In part I have come online to hear other peoples views and whether or not it is highly regarded. I found the book incredibly hard to enjoy with the exception of EH's description of Trout fishing and the Saint Fermin fiesta. The relentless descriptions of vacuous behaviour of most of the main characters left me almost hoping for a rampaging bull in one of the 'good' bars or cafes they returned to constantly. Bretts almost complete empty headed charmless repetitive comments left me wondering why she could ever be considered desirable other than a for a drunken fumble. The lost generation narrative I have read about doesn't really add up with these characters. It feels to me that they are for the most part like this anyway regardless of being from a post war generation. Jeez they were very annoying. Credit due to EH as I am sure he intended a lot of this but sometimes his passages are grinding. For instance if you are going to deliver a vacuous dialogue about drink or food being nice or wonderful, don't cue it up with things like ..he opened the door, he closed it behind him, he saw her, he went over, there was an empty chair, he went over, he sat down in the chair, it was a comfortable chair, a green chair ,it was a good chair. I'm paraphrasing of course but I expected EH to be a touch more economical in the mundane and the beautiful descriptive talent he has to feel more to the fore. It has happened to me before where I have read a book and struggled to find the quality in it, but sometimes after a re-read I totally change my mind. Should I try again?
I absolutely agree with you.. on all of that. I read about 200 out of the 230 pages and couldn’t bring myself to spend much more of my time on the remaining pages. A simple flip through and I got the point… sadly. I tried to convince myself that I was missing something. But it seems I’m grasping- perhaps in the future I can reread it and actually finish it, but I almost don’t see that happening at all.
Rarely have I been so turned off by a novel. I’m hoping to delve into more of his work and maybe come to appreciate him as an author more than I have with this particular novel..
I, too, just read this novel for the first time. It was my first Hemingway novel as well. I found it a bit boring. Some of his descriptions were beautiful, but I felt a lot of it was just filler. He would also start and end paragraphs with the same declaration, the latter being hardly paraphrased. There was a lot of redundancy.
However, I did like the subtexts and his, I thought, successful attempts at portraying the characters. I hated every single one of them deeply. Except for Jake. But given enough time, I think I would have grown to hate him too.
Overall, it was underwhelming but decent.
@@austinlaubacher9509 The plot is indeed a bit boring, but I think that is the point of the story and themes. These characters are all deeply depressed and feel a large emptiness, yet none of them know how to address it. I agree that most of the characters are somewhat unlikeable, but I feel the beauty of this novel is in finding empathy for it's own characters. Brett is very spontaneous and seemingly shallow, but I believe this is her attempt at finding meaning. She doesn't know what will fill this void in her and so she bounces from man to man and appears very indecisive but it his her misguided attempts at feeling happiness. Cohn is a very annoying character, but again you feel empathy for his situation and it's very sad. Mike has spurts of anger and rudeness, which is again a sign of his dissatisfaction in his life. I actually kind of liked Bill, he seemed like he had some issues but actually seemed like he was trying to have a good time. I also liked Jake. It seems to me that Jake has some sort of emptiness but he has come to a sort of peace with it and doesn't lash out at others. He stays to himself and is going with the flow of his life. You know he loves Brett but there is a feeling of mostly inner peace.
I think the plot is intentionally boring as a function of the themes. The characters aren't supposed to be likable. For me the enjoyment came with garnering empathy for the characters and plopping myself in the setting with them. There is a really beautiful sort of sadness especially between Jake and Brett. Each character manifests their struggles differently, but it's never really spoken about. You just kind of have to unravel each character's stories by the way they act.
Totally agree. The most pointless, boring book I've ever read. Cafes,drinks, money, no plot. Only slightly picked up in the last 1/10 of the book. Very disappointing.
Where you been at? Working on that newsletter thing you were talking about?
Great video!
I read the book. I didn’t like the plot. Drunk people moving from cafe to restaurant to bar, dull dialogues. What am I missing? I do read a lot of classics but I didn’t find the grip on this one. I failed to see why it deserved to be told the way it was told. If this book weren’t written by Hemingway but by someone else who never wrote more than one book, would it still be liked as much? Is it just the EM Halo effect that make people want to say good about it? Or is it really the story?
Yes!
Yes
Yes a great book.
Thats only the surface. This is a masterpiece of simple writing on a par with Dick and Jane. The deeper meaning is on every page if you understand it
Let’s go visit Paris!