Which book should be my first Hemingway

[Ron46]

Gee, I thought the world had forgotten about him. The Old Man and the Sea is a good starter. I liked For Whom the Bell Tolls if you want a real human perspective on the Spanish Civil War- the dress rehearsal for WWII and the global battle against Fascism. Read a little background on Hemingway and/or the Spanish Civil War on Wikipedia first.

It's a noble endeavor. If you are like me, you will wind up reading everything he wrote. His style is biblically lean and elegant.

[LJL]

I would vote for The Old Man and the Sea for your first one.

[SHOECHICK]

you guy are going to be the death of me

[Madam Broshkina]

I would go with "A Moveable Feast"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Moveable_Feast

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I thought the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded for a body of work, rather than a particular book.

According to Wikipedia, "Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 for his novella The Old Man and the Sea." Also according to Wikipedia, the prize is awarded for the whole of an author's work, although an individual work is sometimes cited.

[kennyc]

Old Man and the Sea won all the awards.

I love his short stories though -- just read "The End of Something"
also love -- A Clean Well Lighted Room and Hills like White Elephants.

Wonderful stuff!

I need to read For Whom The Bell Tolls - which I have not read.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

I recommend that you pick up the collection of his short stories.

++ I have "The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway"

I think it's available as an Ebook...

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Old Man and the Sea won all the awards.

I love his short stories though -- just read "The End of Something"
also love -- A Clean Well Lighted Room and Hills like White Elephants.

Wonderful stuff!

I need to read For Whom The Bell Tolls - which I have not read.

Yes, you need to. I read the complete short stories, and For Whom the Bell Tolls is better than all of them.

Actually, I might say it's a romance of a kind, but it's told like no romance ever was.

[jaxx6166]

I'll throw my vote behind The Sun Also Rises... ... it was deliciously angsty in that expatriot sort of way. Old Man was also a decent read that I should probably visit again sometime soon, just so my brain doesn't turn to mush.

[chlorine]

I have only read For whom the bell tolls and The old man and the sea. I didn't care that much for The old man and the see, but For whom the bell tolls is one of my all-time favorite books.

I had tried to keep reading books by him with To have or have not, but could not finish it. This thread motivates me to try some more books by him, starting with A farewell to arms.

A question to those who have read For whom the bell tolls: my copy has the word 'obscenity' used whenever a character uses a swear word (for instance: "I obscenity in the milk of thy mother"). Is that a feature of the original text, or do I have a prude edition?

[Fledchen]

Originally Posted by chlorine

A question to those who have read For whom the bell tolls: my copy has the word 'obscenity' used whenever a character uses a swear word (for instance: "I obscenity in the milk of thy mother"). Is that a feature of the original text, or do I have a prude edition?

The copy I just checked does the same thing. From what I saw when I skimmed the text surrounding the occurrences of this substitution, it appears to be a deliberate style choice by the author, but I could be mistaken in that interpretation.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Fledchen

The copy I just checked does the same thing. From what I saw when I skimmed the text surrounding the occurrences of this substitution, it appears to be a deliberate style choice by the author, but I could be mistaken in that interpretation.

I was not aware of this either (as I've not read it yet) but apparently it was intentional. I can't imagine why, but ....

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by rhadin

I'm going to disagree with The Old Man and the Sea choice. It is a good choice and should be read if you want to read Hemingway, but I think A Farewell to Arms or For Whom the Bell Tolls are better choices to discover not only the brilliance (or lack there of) of his writing, but his writing style. TOMS is really a novelette and written near the end of his life, although he did win a Nobel Prize for it. It is/was required reading in school primarily because it won the Nobel Prize, not because it was an outstanding example of his writing.

Isn't the Nobel prize for literature generally awarded as a recognition of the author's "lifetime achievements", rather than for a specific book? I can't think of any case in which it's been awarded to a young author, for example.

[chlorine]

From the wikipedia page on For whom the bell tolls (which is the first hit for a google search on 'Hemingway obscenity':

Since its publication, the prose style and dialogue in Hemingway's novel has been the source of controversy and some negative critical reaction. For example, Edmund Wilson, in a tepid review, noted the encumbrance of "a strange atmosphere of literary medievalism" in the relationship between Robert Jordan and Maria. [8] This stems in part from a distinctive feature of the novel, namely Hemingway's extensive use of archaisms, implied transliterations and false friends to convey the foreign (Spanish) tongue spoken by his characters. Thus, Hemingway uses the archaic "thou" (particularly in its oblique and possessive form) to parallel the Spanish pronominal "tu" (familiar) and "Usted" (formal) forms. Additionally, much of the dialogue in the novel is an implied direct translation from Spanish, producing an often strained English equivalent. For example, Hemingway uses the construction "what passes that" [9], which is an implied transliteration of the Spanish construction que pasa. This transliteration extends to the use of false friends, such as "rare" (from raro) instead of "strange".[10] In another odd stylistic variance, Hemingway referenced foul language (used with some frequency by different characters in the novel) with "unprintable" and "obscenity" in the dialogue, although foul language is used freely in Spanish even when its equivalent is censored in English (i.e. joder, me cago). The Spanish expression of exasperation me cago en la leche repeatedly recurs throughout the novel, translated literally as "I obscenity in the milk."

The choice seems strange to me also, but then I guess I lack the perspective, being French and living in 2010.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Isn't the Nobel prize for literature generally awarded as a recognition of the author's "lifetime achievements", rather than for a specific book? I can't think of any case in which it's been awarded to a young author, for example.

From Wikipedia:

The Nobel Prize in Literature (Swedish: Nobelpriset i litteratur) is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" (original Swedish: den som inom litteraturen har producerat det utmärktaste i idealisk riktning).[1][2] The "work" in this case refers to an author's work as a whole, though individual works are sometimes also cited. The Swedish Academy decides who, if anyone, will receive the prize in any given year and announces the name of the chosen laureate in early October.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_in_Literature