Author: Ernest Hemingway
Year: 1937
Hemingway is such a divisive writer that he either has to be one of your favorites or you think he's an untalented hack. I have always been one of the former, and yet still feel divided about the quality of his work on the whole. On one hand you have the classic novels like The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and A Farewell to Arms as well as his numerous poignant short stories. On the other, you have his in-between works like To Have and Have Not and Across the River and Through the Trees. Luckily, most Hemingway haters haven't read these lesser works, because they'd have easy fuel for their resentment.
With that said, though, To Have and Have Not isn't total garbage. The novel reflects Hemingway's "Key West" phase of life, where he spent a lot of time fishing, drinking, and well sporadically writing. This wasn't one of his most creative periods, and making the novel even more scattered and disjointed is the fact that he wrote each of the three sections at different points in his life. The book starts off like a pulp crime novel, with a bloody shoot-out on the streets of Havana. Things get even stranger when the main character, Harry Morgan, gets involved in an elaborate double-cross with a kidnapping Chinaman. You can imagine how this all feels on paper: classic Hemingway understatement, with some pretty hard-edged subject matter. The first portion of the book feels an awful lot like Faulkner's Sanctuary, and equally brutal noir-ish conception seemingly influenced by Hollywood and the pulp detective stories of the time.
But the book spins off on a different course for its second section, shifting to the third person perspective and showing Harry on a bootlegging trip gone bad. The third section gets even stranger, involving Harry in a gripping bank heist then completely ignoring his story to focus on the doings of wealthy Key West yacht owners. The transition from Harry's tale of grit and desperation to the demure philandering of these unlikable socialites is so abrupt and unexpected, that the novel feels like a locomotive blown off the tracks. The majority of the final chapters are filled with drinking and sexual shenanigans, and worst of all: a trite moral lesson contrasting the privileged (haves) and the struggling lower class (have nots... hence the title, get it?).
And it's such a shame the ending of this book is so rotten, because buried among all the preaching and loathsome flat characters is the gripping story of Harry Morgan. If Hemingway had isolated these parts and released them as a novella, it would be a solid piece of pulp fiction, freed from his usual literary pretension. It still wouldn't qualify as one of his greatest works, but it would be a damned good read. Oh, and Harry's last words: "a man alone ain't got no bloody chance" ... beautiful, haunting, tragic. It's as if he summed up Hemingway's entire life and career in a single line.
Year: 1937
Hemingway is such a divisive writer that he either has to be one of your favorites or you think he's an untalented hack. I have always been one of the former, and yet still feel divided about the quality of his work on the whole. On one hand you have the classic novels like The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and A Farewell to Arms as well as his numerous poignant short stories. On the other, you have his in-between works like To Have and Have Not and Across the River and Through the Trees. Luckily, most Hemingway haters haven't read these lesser works, because they'd have easy fuel for their resentment.
With that said, though, To Have and Have Not isn't total garbage. The novel reflects Hemingway's "Key West" phase of life, where he spent a lot of time fishing, drinking, and well sporadically writing. This wasn't one of his most creative periods, and making the novel even more scattered and disjointed is the fact that he wrote each of the three sections at different points in his life. The book starts off like a pulp crime novel, with a bloody shoot-out on the streets of Havana. Things get even stranger when the main character, Harry Morgan, gets involved in an elaborate double-cross with a kidnapping Chinaman. You can imagine how this all feels on paper: classic Hemingway understatement, with some pretty hard-edged subject matter. The first portion of the book feels an awful lot like Faulkner's Sanctuary, and equally brutal noir-ish conception seemingly influenced by Hollywood and the pulp detective stories of the time.
But the book spins off on a different course for its second section, shifting to the third person perspective and showing Harry on a bootlegging trip gone bad. The third section gets even stranger, involving Harry in a gripping bank heist then completely ignoring his story to focus on the doings of wealthy Key West yacht owners. The transition from Harry's tale of grit and desperation to the demure philandering of these unlikable socialites is so abrupt and unexpected, that the novel feels like a locomotive blown off the tracks. The majority of the final chapters are filled with drinking and sexual shenanigans, and worst of all: a trite moral lesson contrasting the privileged (haves) and the struggling lower class (have nots... hence the title, get it?).
And it's such a shame the ending of this book is so rotten, because buried among all the preaching and loathsome flat characters is the gripping story of Harry Morgan. If Hemingway had isolated these parts and released them as a novella, it would be a solid piece of pulp fiction, freed from his usual literary pretension. It still wouldn't qualify as one of his greatest works, but it would be a damned good read. Oh, and Harry's last words: "a man alone ain't got no bloody chance" ... beautiful, haunting, tragic. It's as if he summed up Hemingway's entire life and career in a single line.
Value: Iron
You know I've never read Hemmingway, but I still enjoyed your review. Your blog looks really nice, good job! Oh, and thanks for the link (That's me being sarcastic)
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