Let me tell
about a true master piece. A one of a kind book that I have to confess, made me
doubt that I could ever write as well if I tried to write and get a book published.
But Hemingway did it, and he was only 27 when it happened.
Now I have read a few reviews and analyses by
critics and so called experts, and the opinions vary. I find it funny that so
many have the stones to question this master piece. Because it is well written,
no doubts, trust me. And the story is solid. But that’s the magic of the book.
You see, you can take book, like the first Harry Potter book, and you can see
that it was clearly well written, and the story was solid. But it will always
lack (in my opinion) the true artistic touch that make certain writers into
gods. But you know, we will get to that.
First let
me tell you a bit about the books synopsis. It is about the American writer
Jake in Paris (I guess Hemingway wrote about himself in some extent). And he
runs around with his friends (the cream of café society in Paris) and he falls
in love, and agrees to travel to Spain with his new friend Mike Cambell (one of
the most well written characters in history!). And they run into all sorts of
common things, that really don't involve anything out of the ordinary.
This is
where Hemingway gets on his creative core and describes nature in deepest
sense. There are these moments of emptiness where simple conversations make the
book worth reading. The people in the novel represent the restless generation
at its fall, no purpose and just decadence really. And somehow Hemingway
manages to capsulate a story, so living with such living characters that you
really feel like you are in the conversations of each page. I even love the
title. I know Gertrude Stein must have been proud, as Hemingway clearly wrote
about her coined expression the lost generation. This book doesn't have any
real themes, no lessons learned, no great truths, the novel just captures the
essence of a group of people in the middle of no purpose. And that moment, it
reflects and delivers the essence of what man is without purpose.
We as
people are but souls who wander in light of fulfilment. We as people want, or
need the feeling of being in the moment, no matter what that moment reflects.
I know my
"thesis" of this book is very hazy, because to be honest, I can't
reflect it as well as Hemingway would have. To be honest, I don't believe that
Hemingway tried to teach readers anything, except to introduce the reader to
one of his immortal characters.
Hemingway
will in my book, always be the true artist of describing people, and their
suffers. That makes Hemingway the best writer in the world, even if he is only
my second favorite writer in the world.
