An impressionable youth
We all know this about me: I am easily influenced, highly impressionable and moderately obsessive. But even I am surprised.
You see, I read a book.
To put this in context, this is probably the first non-science book I read in several months. I was on vacation, and a friend lent me her Kindle. Upon her recommendation, I delved into The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain. It is about Ernest Hemingway's first wife and their beautiful yet wrenching love story, marriage and demise. I don't even know very much about Ernest Hemingway, and have not read much of his writing because in high school, when I took American literature, I happened to have a very anti-establishment teacher (ironically, educated at Harvard and Yale), who concentrated mostly on African American, feminist and gay/lesbian literature instead of "dead white male" literature. She had a vendetta against "dead white males." While others read The Great Gatsby, I read Olivia Butler, the name of which book I don't even remember.
When I was 7 years old, I was sick with pneumonia, and lying in bed for days got really boring. For entertainment, I read a short story by Turgenev called Asya (a girl's name). I don't remember what it was about now, only that there was something about a girl and a boy, and the boy misses his chance because of pride or stupidity, and a chance at a beautiful love is wasted. I was 7. And I was so upset about this, I actually threw the book under the wardrobe. I kept thinking and thinking about it for days. I may have cried about it. That was age 7, before I had any sort of experience with love and could reference the pain on a personal level.
So, here I am on vacation. I started reading this book. I stayed up late and ruined my eyesight reading by the dim light of the Kindle. It is written very simply, but told from the first person, the supposedly fictionalized account of their tumultuous 5 years together is so touching, and the end of it is so terribly classic and banal that it's almost poetic. Ernest falls in love with another, better, richer, younger girl, but still loves his wife, and wants to have both, inviting the lover on vacation with them. He then gets angry at his wife when confronted. Finally, she has no choice but to leave him, nobly stepping aside. It burrowed under my skin and into my heart and I have not been able to get it out of my mind!! Something about their nick names for each other, the way their sex life is described, their little son Bumby, the roaring twenties all around them with the drinking, absinthe and dancing, tragic historical figures living out their destinies as we know them..... All this has caused me to develop some very acute feelings.
I don't understand it because, as I said, it's not exactly an original turn of events when you think about it, and it has a happy ending, at least for the wife: she is introduced to a glamorous life, eventually gets remarried, and 40 years later, Hemingway apologizes to her (supposedly). Plus I feel like a fictional first person account of things and people that actually existed is pretentious and may even be capitalizing on Hemigway's very persona. The reader ends up forgetting that this is fiction and processes the story as a memoir. But how can the author surmise what Hadley felt, what she was thinking in the most painful, most joyous, and most private moments? I mean, if the author's message was about misplaced passions, the shelf-life of love, women enablers and the untameable nature of the artiste, it could have been done with fictional characters. If her goal was to shed light on the life of Hadley Richardson Hemingway and her marriange to the iconic literary figure, then why write it in the first person 30 years after her death?
All that doesn't matter though, because there is something about wasted passion and ends of eras and unrequited love that really bothers me. Enough that I cannot get this book and the (fictional?) dialogue out of my head.
Although, I do wonder if this was admittedly fictional with invented characters, would I have had the same reaction?
So, now, I am obsessively looking up everything I can find on Hemingway. And I am absolutely amazed at my own ignorance (damn you, progressive high school teacher! I am missing vital chunks of dead white male education).
Not to mention, that I suddenly have the worst urge to travel to Europe.
I would also like to go back and read what Heminghway has written, fill in my dead white male gaps, so to say, but I am scared. I hear his fiction is devastating, and I don't know if I can handle it, even though I know it's fiction. Plainly, I would like to continue living in my little bubble because thought provoking, emotional things are too sad and make me too anxious. Is it wrong that I don't want to read things that will make me upset? It's the same reason I can't watch the news: too many horrible things. How am I supposed to enrich my life if all I can read is pulp detection fiction and all I can watch is romantic comedies without a point?
I don't know, but I do know that this heavy feeling in my chest is crushing me and I don't think that's adequate...
You see, I read a book.
To put this in context, this is probably the first non-science book I read in several months. I was on vacation, and a friend lent me her Kindle. Upon her recommendation, I delved into The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain. It is about Ernest Hemingway's first wife and their beautiful yet wrenching love story, marriage and demise. I don't even know very much about Ernest Hemingway, and have not read much of his writing because in high school, when I took American literature, I happened to have a very anti-establishment teacher (ironically, educated at Harvard and Yale), who concentrated mostly on African American, feminist and gay/lesbian literature instead of "dead white male" literature. She had a vendetta against "dead white males." While others read The Great Gatsby, I read Olivia Butler, the name of which book I don't even remember.
When I was 7 years old, I was sick with pneumonia, and lying in bed for days got really boring. For entertainment, I read a short story by Turgenev called Asya (a girl's name). I don't remember what it was about now, only that there was something about a girl and a boy, and the boy misses his chance because of pride or stupidity, and a chance at a beautiful love is wasted. I was 7. And I was so upset about this, I actually threw the book under the wardrobe. I kept thinking and thinking about it for days. I may have cried about it. That was age 7, before I had any sort of experience with love and could reference the pain on a personal level.
So, here I am on vacation. I started reading this book. I stayed up late and ruined my eyesight reading by the dim light of the Kindle. It is written very simply, but told from the first person, the supposedly fictionalized account of their tumultuous 5 years together is so touching, and the end of it is so terribly classic and banal that it's almost poetic. Ernest falls in love with another, better, richer, younger girl, but still loves his wife, and wants to have both, inviting the lover on vacation with them. He then gets angry at his wife when confronted. Finally, she has no choice but to leave him, nobly stepping aside. It burrowed under my skin and into my heart and I have not been able to get it out of my mind!! Something about their nick names for each other, the way their sex life is described, their little son Bumby, the roaring twenties all around them with the drinking, absinthe and dancing, tragic historical figures living out their destinies as we know them..... All this has caused me to develop some very acute feelings.
I don't understand it because, as I said, it's not exactly an original turn of events when you think about it, and it has a happy ending, at least for the wife: she is introduced to a glamorous life, eventually gets remarried, and 40 years later, Hemingway apologizes to her (supposedly). Plus I feel like a fictional first person account of things and people that actually existed is pretentious and may even be capitalizing on Hemigway's very persona. The reader ends up forgetting that this is fiction and processes the story as a memoir. But how can the author surmise what Hadley felt, what she was thinking in the most painful, most joyous, and most private moments? I mean, if the author's message was about misplaced passions, the shelf-life of love, women enablers and the untameable nature of the artiste, it could have been done with fictional characters. If her goal was to shed light on the life of Hadley Richardson Hemingway and her marriange to the iconic literary figure, then why write it in the first person 30 years after her death?
All that doesn't matter though, because there is something about wasted passion and ends of eras and unrequited love that really bothers me. Enough that I cannot get this book and the (fictional?) dialogue out of my head.
Although, I do wonder if this was admittedly fictional with invented characters, would I have had the same reaction?
So, now, I am obsessively looking up everything I can find on Hemingway. And I am absolutely amazed at my own ignorance (damn you, progressive high school teacher! I am missing vital chunks of dead white male education).
Not to mention, that I suddenly have the worst urge to travel to Europe.
I would also like to go back and read what Heminghway has written, fill in my dead white male gaps, so to say, but I am scared. I hear his fiction is devastating, and I don't know if I can handle it, even though I know it's fiction. Plainly, I would like to continue living in my little bubble because thought provoking, emotional things are too sad and make me too anxious. Is it wrong that I don't want to read things that will make me upset? It's the same reason I can't watch the news: too many horrible things. How am I supposed to enrich my life if all I can read is pulp detection fiction and all I can watch is romantic comedies without a point?
I don't know, but I do know that this heavy feeling in my chest is crushing me and I don't think that's adequate...
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