I wrote in an earlier post that I was fascinated with the lines that seem to show up in As I Lay Dying, and after searching Hemingway's Snows of Kilimanjaro for...well, anything that isn't just there, you know, I realized that there are some interesting sentences about time in the story.
"He had seen the subtler change and he could remember how the people were at different times."
"There wasn't time, of course, although it seemed as though it telescoped so that you might put it all into one paragraph if you could get it right."
Trying to peer into this story I keep returning to idea of it being about writing. I know it's not very formal, but I imagine Hemingway writing this story as an antidote to writer's block. So much of it feels autobiographical (big shocker), and so much of feels like he was asking himself, what are you forgetting to write about? How can you write about these fragmented memories in way that makes them less aggrandizing and more, oh I don't know, manly and self-deprecating? I see the woman in the story as a metaphor for everything in life that an artist sells out to, or for. The mundane threads that keep people from being Hemingway's kind of man, or something. I was wondering if this woman was his kind of man. Probably not, because she actually admits to wondering why they appear to be having bad luck. He gives her the opportunity to man-up; he suggests that she could saw the leg off...but she is content to wait. The story of his life with her, this tragic and ironic accident in the African wilderness, is the impetus for getting all of these memories out -- memories of when he was in mostly homosocial environments. This is like a great lament for all the ways we betray ourselves by not using our talent. The narrator's talent is not his ability as a war correspondent, but as a writer, as a storyteller. Only he started weaving a new tale for himself, with a "rich bitch," (who I can't stop imagining is Kristen Scott Thomas; she simply has the most divine essence of 20s and 30s english literary feminine), and it's his slavish devotion to this "lazy" story that has taken him away from "making a living" with something other than "a pen and pencil." I think this could have well been one of Hemingway's greatest fears. Because I imagine this to be very much Hemingway's version of, "how to write a story." He actually teaches you how to write fiction by writing a story. You could read this and go off and write your own story, and there wouldn't be any mimicry involved, but it would be his thoughts in your head as you wondered how long you had to tell your own story, write your own code, and educate the world on how it has changed in your time.
I think he actually wrote book called In Our Time. I haven't read it. In fact, I've only read some short stories, A Moveable Feast, Farewell to Arms, and For Who The Bell Tolls, and The Sun Also Rises. Oh, and The Garden of Eden. I guess that's not too shabby. I don't know if there is really an argument for linear subtext in the story after all. Harry is actually sad that it will be the end of his story with her, and that it will be the end of her story with him. They're all stories. It's the most simple encouragement to write there ever was: Everything is a line -- time, life, reality. It's all a story with a point a and a point b. It's a long, painful sentence, with less words when there is happiness and so many more words when there is despair. Oh wait, maybe this story is more about parallel lines. Faulkner's lines are constantly at an intersect -- but Hemingway's lines move parallel, and do not meet -- maybe until death. What do they call that shen lines are almost, but not quite parallel? Inverted? That somewhere down the line they will meet? I wish I was better at math.
I suppose there is a really great Marxist reading in here too -- something about money and artists. But I'll leave that for another time. I'm too drawn to the idea of the broken in spirit playing much like a broken record, and that when our realities become stories our stories become the preferred reality.
Also, you know, for as much as Hemingway seems to despise Fitzgerald, he really writes about the same things. Snows is a lot about Fitzgerald, too. I know that is not very formalist of me, but I can't help wondering if Hemingway loved or hated the guy -- or maybe just couldn't make up his mind, or maybe just couldn't handle the competition very well -- or maybe I jsut project too much onto these writers and should stick to the text.
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