Kevin Sun

Hemingway in a Red Cross Ambulance (1918) A new edition of A Farewell to Arms (1919) has recently been published that contains a bunch of alternate endings and drafts of passages from the novel . Alas, I don't have a copy of it, but I have reason to get one, having just finished it and found it very moving a story. There was much I liked about the novel: the descriptions of the Italian countryside and the mountains, the lean dialogue, and the understated, sometimes corny but unsentimental romance between Lieutenant Frederic, an ambulance driver for the Italian army during WWI, and British nurse Catherine Barkley. I'd say that the moments that stand out in Hemingway's writing are those that you don't realize at the moment of reading—they're little points in time that you keep thinking about after you've turned to the next page and are still thinking about in the back of your mind. There was one paragraph, though, I had to share—it's a tender moment b...

A few highlights from Hemingway's A Moveable Feast , which came highly recommended by a few graduating classmates about a week ago (relevant selling points included "most bad-ass opening line, ever," which is always a good sign): Young Hemingway looks hungry. -Hemingway's sentences -Writing about the hunger of being a young artist (and also of skipping meals and just being hungry) -A description of Wyndham Lewis as possessing the "eyes of an unsuccessful rapist" -An anecdote about reassuring F. Scott Fitzgerald about his penis size and subsequently checking said penis in a restaurant bathroom to further reassure a visibly insecure Fitzgerald Hemingway also mentions his writing process, which is characterized by both discipline and patience. He would not stop until he had finished whichever section he was working on, and also liked to think a few steps ahead: I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what wa...