Well I guess I'm kinda back to Hemingway per "Papa's own assertion." Am now rereading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Completed. Amazing thing to read again after the first go-round forty+ years ago. Like so much else as age advances, get a perspective beyond an impressionable teenager's. Can't think of a better way to proceed after reading a Twain bio.
Need a break. Will head back to EH short stories on the fly.
For Christmas, I received the DVD for the 2008 film, The Garden of Eden. Despite the largely negative reviews--I consider the rational criticisms, but still prefer to make my own judgments--I enjoyed the film. Jack "Ben-Hur" Huston is excellent in this, and is probably a much better actor than the films in which he appears. He'll end up becoming the David Warner of his generation. Mena Suvari gives a game performance as well, and Caterina Murino is suitably ethnic.
Lovely cinematography, costumes, and Satie/Copland-inspired score by a chap called Roger Julià that I wouldn't mind owning, should it ever see a legitimate release.
Time for some very dry Martinis...and maybe even some Absinthe. It makes everything easier...seem easier.
Love it. Hemingway is best partaken the more fatalistic the mood.
Last week I re-read A Day's Wait and A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for the umpteenth time.
Atta boy, Howard! You've become the old waiter or maybe even the lonely customer in the cafe. Last stop: The Old Man and the Bridge, or for the young morons at the olde FSM Boarde, The Capitol of the World.
I love me some Hemingway-inspired depression and ennui. Throw in some Allenesque Chronic Dissatisfaction, and the next bottle of Pernod will be on me.
Have you watched Hemingway and Gellhorn? It was the film that finally convinced me that Nicole Kidman is a great actress. I've also lightened up on ol' Clive Owen, as well. Sure, the movie makes too much use of "Viva La Quince Brigada", but I was long used to the song thanks to Pete Seeger's 1963 Carnegie Hall album.
Here's a pretty long Vanity Fair excerpt on the whole bloody affair:
