Hemingway and Pynchon

[Paul Mackin]

Enjoyed reading the quotes from FWTA and even broke out my own copy for
further research. My god it's easy to see why the book's kind of ridiculed  
by feminists as a projection of male ego. Of course how could it be
otherwise being as it is a first person account. How does a Jane like you
react to such male text? Probably with complete aplomb I suspect. But
forheavensake Catherine is frigging perfect up to and including the
fact she dies and leaves Frederic with a perfect love to forever
contemplate. There could be many quotes cited from throughout the book any
one of which completely proves the ego projection but that  goes without
saying. There is much else in the book to contemplate. I suppose the title
is double meaning--the farewell is both to war and to love--the arms of 
Catherine that it. All very ambiguous. The critics will have much still to
like about the book.

			P.


On Thu, 1 Jun 2000, J Suete wrote:

> 
> While it's true that one should not lapse regularly into casual descriptions of great writers of fiction, in terms of Manliness, Hemingway may be no Picaso, but Pynchon is no Hemingway. Hemingway and Pynchon, while very different men, have much in common as authors. A few more quotes from the final chapter of FWA: 
> 
> Now Catherine would die. That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you. 
> 
> I had no religion but I knew he ought to have been baptized. 
> 
> Everything was gone inside me. I did not think. I could not think. I knew she was going to die and I prayed that she would not. Don't let her die. Oh, God. Please don't let her die. I'll do anything for you if you won't let her die….Please, please, please… You took the baby but don't let her die
> 
> I felt no felling of fatherhood. 
> 
> He nearly killed his mother. 
> 
> It's just nature giving her hell. 
> 
> There's just a child that has been born, the by-product of good nights in Milan. It makes trouble and is born an you look after it and get fond of it maybe. 
> 
> I remember thinking at the time that it was the end of the world and a splendid chance to be a messiah…but I did not do anything….
> 
> It's just a dirty trick. 
> 
> Think MalignD is right about the booze.
> 
> Give it to me, she says, he turns the gas up to three, four. Lots of metal, pain, and booze is the stuff for pain, but it comes with a price. 
> 
> Speaking of metal and pain, Tchitcherine's view through the binoculars is the conclusion of the Zone and the beginning of the Counterforce. "What does it signal this time?? 611 
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