A review by rvandenboomgaard
True At First Light by Ernest Hemingway
5.0
Hemingway Hemingway, oh my dear Hemingway!
I feel like I’m beginning to discover the unique, individual, particular value and contribution of Hemingway in the literary canon. After all, somebody does not receive both a Pulitzer Prize and a Nobel Prize without reason — or at least one should be safe to assume.
Next time I read something of Hemingway’s, I should have finished 5 to 10 books of prose — preferably novels, rather than novellas — before delving into his again. I figure that would be the amount of ‘standard’ beautifully written prose I need to digest to have a solid contrast with the ugly prose of Hemingway. Because that’s what it is, ugly.
Nevertheless, the ugliness conveys the beauty of not truth, but authenticity. Naturally, I am aware that his style is “deceptively simple”, but actually more thought out than one would expect. Whatever the truth to that may be, his writing can be positioned on a very interesting middle ground between stream of consciousness and prose.
It is rather close to stream of consciousness, but it has been polished with minor grammar and structure — therein also bordering not so much poetry, as a poetical prose. This results in a reading that lulls you, soothes you, encapsulates you in the mind of Hemingway, without having to consciously do that work yourself. You’re basically hypnotised in a fatherly way befitting his famous nickname; Papa Hemingway.
I’m much more personal in this review than I am in others, too. I believe that also says something about the experience.
I feel like I’m beginning to discover the unique, individual, particular value and contribution of Hemingway in the literary canon. After all, somebody does not receive both a Pulitzer Prize and a Nobel Prize without reason — or at least one should be safe to assume.
Next time I read something of Hemingway’s, I should have finished 5 to 10 books of prose — preferably novels, rather than novellas — before delving into his again. I figure that would be the amount of ‘standard’ beautifully written prose I need to digest to have a solid contrast with the ugly prose of Hemingway. Because that’s what it is, ugly.
Nevertheless, the ugliness conveys the beauty of not truth, but authenticity. Naturally, I am aware that his style is “deceptively simple”, but actually more thought out than one would expect. Whatever the truth to that may be, his writing can be positioned on a very interesting middle ground between stream of consciousness and prose.
It is rather close to stream of consciousness, but it has been polished with minor grammar and structure — therein also bordering not so much poetry, as a poetical prose. This results in a reading that lulls you, soothes you, encapsulates you in the mind of Hemingway, without having to consciously do that work yourself. You’re basically hypnotised in a fatherly way befitting his famous nickname; Papa Hemingway.
I’m much more personal in this review than I am in others, too. I believe that also says something about the experience.