hi everybody,
so to be historical, does a novel just need to be set in the
past, or should it deal with some specific real historical
incident?
hemingway's _to have and have not_ is set in early 20th
century cuba. jeffrey meyers, in his hemingway biography,
criticized the book for being about thugs. i read this
comment before i'd even heard the term hard- boiled, but even
then i thought he was dead wrong. _to have and have not_ did
an excellent job of carrying hemingway's recurrent theme of
the struggle to get by in a tough world. of course, there's a
lot of things that i disagree with the hemingway biographers
and critics on... better not get started on that.
if you like hardboiled and don't mind if its not a detective
story, i highly recommend this book. the action starts on
page one with a machine gun battle. the scenes are painted
vividly, and harry morgan is a bad ass guy, with an
impressive array of other nasty characters. the ending is as
good as jd mcdonald's _deep blue goodbye_, with the
hardboiled philosophy up there in flashing las vegas
lights.
have you seen the movie? its pathetic and deplorable. the
story's not even close. the movie people were obviously
trying to create another casa- blanca.
miker
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