"Ernest Hemingway at the Battle of the Bulge" Topic

"On 16th December 1944, the famous author Ernest Hemingway was in the Ritz hotel, Paris, having a drink. It had been six months since D-Day, the great allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France. Everyone thought the German army on the Western front was a spent force. They were wrong. World War II was not going to end easily for the Allies. The Battle of the Bulge was about to commence.

At 05:30 that morning, thirty German divisions had surged through the heavily-forested Ardennes region of Belgium against initially weak American opposition. Their ultimate objective was to capture Antwerp, splitting the British and American armies, giving Germany a chance to develop its wunderwaffe (wonder weapons), and so win World War II. This was Hitler's last major offensive, and his final desperate gamble…"

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Armand

Interesting, though strangely little about the Battle of the Bulge…

(Hemingway is my 9th cousin once removed.)

The book, of course, became "Across the River and Into The Trees," which is not his best, but is filled with lots of commentary and anecdote about the war, some of it interesting and perceptive, some just splenetic. The central character is a composite of Buck Lanham and the man Hemingway most wanted to be.

Martha Gellhorn's comment on it was scathing- something to the effect of, "this time he has imagined himself as a fifty year old infantry colonel. The girls get younger with each book, this time she's sixteen," or words to that effect.

A great writer- but not the man of action he wanted to be, and the inevitable erosion time works on talent had been badly exacerbated by the booze.

5 bonus points for working "splenetic" into a sentence.

Hemingway could be a nasty, nasty man – his own son described him as having "dry rot of the soul"- and it comes through in that book. The central character orders very strong martinis as "Montgomerys" (15 parts gin to one part vermouth), a libel on the field marshal's supposed reluctance to attack without overwhelming odds in his favor, and some of his other utterances (in the book and elsewhere) were as bad or worse- he and Lanham both referred to Ray Barton as a "coward," alleging he stayed safely in the rear at the Hurtgen.

There's a fascinating dualism in Hemingway's relationship with Buck Lanham. Hemingway always liked men he perceived to be "men of action," and he liked them even more if their unconventionally afforded an obvious reason for higher command's slighting of them- for example, Eric Smith-Dorman, who supplied him with the Mons stories that made it into "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." Lanham had that quality, and for his part, Lanham craved literary recognition (which in his case, capped out with being the Army's head of PR after the war). It might have been interesting to have been a fly on the wall at the 22nd Infantry CP in the Hurtgen, but I suspect Hemingway was probably blotto a lot of the time.

Hemingway's chaotic personality and lack of self-discipline would have kept him from ever being a good soldier, but soldiering obsessed him, and his writing about it was some of the best of the century. Evelyn Waugh (who was at least as good a writer, and a better soldier) remarked after the war that it had taught him the difference between a man of action and a man of letters, and it might have been better for everyone around him if Hemingway had realized that, too.

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Armand

I find it difficult to come up with any reason to respect Hemingway, aside from SOME of his writings.

Well, duh: he was a writer, after all. And he was often a brilliant writer: of how many men can that be said? Read "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," or "A Way You'll Never Be," time yourself, and then spend an equal amount of time trawling, say the Ultramodern Warfare board at TMP, and you'll start to understand how rare truly great writing is. A lot of writers were awful people: Evelyn Waugh insulted half of London, Tolstoy had a persistent habit of knocking up his peasants' daughters, Dostoyevsky was a compulsive gambler. They deserve to be judged on the quality of their writing. Hemingway kept writing after he was past his peak- but that peak was pretty high.

There are those who appreciate Hemingway, God bless your hearts. I consider him nothing more than "required reading". "Silas Marner" was required reading in 8th Grade.

I'm not surprised.

Glup!

Armand

I don't have enough literature background to judge what a great writer is but I have enjoyed several of Hemingway's works.
However it is hard to enjoy anything that is "required reading".

Joe

"Silas Marner" is considered a classic and was written by my wife's 2nd cousin 5 times removed (or something like that).

For it to be required reading at 8th grade seems pretty rough though. Mind you in my 12th year of school we had to read the Forsyte Saga, which as I recall was a pretty grim time in my education . . . :~)

Cheers,
John

"Silas Marner" is considered a classic

Talk to the kids who were forced to read it. Then get back to me with a more nuanced answer.
Anything you have to force people to read is not a classic.
Look at the kids In Ralphie's class in A Christmas Story.

I don't think I need to produce "a more nuanced answer". I said it wasn't appropriate to force 8th graders to read it. On the other hand, some people would not read anything if not forced to, especially by an English teachers, so "anything you have to force people to read" is not a good definition of the quality of a book. Some people would have to be forced to read Shakespeare, or to watch any number of classic movies. I'll repeat, making 8th grade students read Silas Marner is stupid. All it does is turn people off a great writer of the 19th century. What's the good in that?

Cheers,
John

"I don't think I need to produce a more nuanced answer"

Exactly right, but you're probably not going to get one, either.

Put me in the camp that considers him overrated. I did visit his house in Havana; that was pretty cool.