At 05:10 PM 3/14/2002 -0600, you wrote:
>There's been some discussion of Hemingway on list
even though he hasn't
>written alot of hardboiled stuff. He wrote one
hardboiled novel called To
>Have and Have Not. Forget the movie. it was good but
again you must go to
>the book it is far far darker and more
hardboiled.
The movie just wasn't good, it was a classic. Even though it
isn't as dark or hardboiled as the book, it has some of the
best one-liners in the movies, and snappy dialog is a
hall-mark of hard-boiled. For example:
"What are you trying to do? Guess her weight?" --Bacall, when
her character decides that Bogie's is taking a bit too long
to set down the resistance fighter's wife.
"He couldn't write and faster than he could duck." --Bogie,
after the playboy is shot before signing the check.
"I think he was trying to get me drunk. He don't know me very
well." --Walter Brennen's character's response to attempted
interrogation.
And there are plenty more besides the famous "whistle" scene.
Also, there's some of the best use of light and shadow you'll
ever see anywhere in the B&W movies.
>The first half
>of the book is actually some of Papa's best writing.
In the last half he
>seems to lose focus and meander a little, it is still
good stuff however.
This happens a lot in Hemmingway's novels, that is, the
second half losing focus and wandering. For the record, my
belief is that his best novel is "A Farewell to Arms." The
worst offender is "Islands in the Stream," but that may be
unfair because Hemmingway didn't get a chance to work with
the editor before it was published. Hemmingway was a master
of shorter fiction--the Nick Adams stories and "Old Man and
the Sea" being prime examples.
Ray
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