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Hi all, I would like to start reading A Farewell to Arms in October this year. It will be my first Hemingway. I wondered if anyone would would like to join me in reading and discussing this great work?

Lisa , after you finish the book, watch the old movie with Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes. It's quite good,and the whole film is free on youtube...which is where I saw it.

Thanks Gary

I'm planning on reading A Farewell to Arms in October, too. I'll have to look in and comment with you.

Thanks Nick, that will be great!

They have a revised version with the original text,and then added to the end are like 30 different endings Hemingway came up with.....it's available in hardback now in stores,and on Amazon. I also have a MP3 set of discs that has all his major novels in audio,and I plan to listen to Farewell to Arms with that disc,and to read along with the book.

My bookclub read this book a couple years ago,and discussed it on Ernest's birthday in July. I had a cake made with his picture on the cake,and we sang Happy Birthday,and had a birthday party before we discussed the book.

@ Gary- I've got that version via kindle!
@ Nick- I was thinking of taking 5 weeks, one 'book' per week and sharing my thoughts per book.

Lisa wrote: "@ Gary- I've got that version via kindle!
@ Nick- I was thinking of taking 5 weeks, one 'book' per week and sharing my thoughts per book."

Great!

Book 1

This is the first time that I have read Hemingway.
I'm enjoying his conversational style and simple use of imagery to convey the setting. There is some contrast of opposites. He describes the beautiful, tranquil setting then drops the contrast of the chaotic war.
There's a feeling of watching things happen as they happen.
I'm struck how Henry is initially detached from Catherine, she sounds like another potential conquest in a line on conquests. Yet there is an early sense that she is different and he will fall for her, and fall hard.
Busy with chapter 9, not quite done with book 1

Book 2
I'm still struck by the simplicity of language and subtlety. It feels as if one is listening in on a conversation.
In book 2, after Henry is injured, he is sent to Milan for surgery and recovery. Catherine follows. They live an idyllic life which seems too good to be true. The realities of war are distant. I'm struck by Catherine's constant need for reassurance and fears of loss and death- is this her way of defending against reality or is this a premonition of what will be. The pregnancy brings a complication which Hemingway again approaches with minimalism.

I am always struck by how Hemingway creates a mood and image with 5 cent words. He doesn't need the flourish and yet you feel what he means intensely. I love the interation Frederic has with his army buddy.There is such a loneliness when Frederic leaves the hospital in the rain in the last scene. It packs a punch.

Christine wrote: "I am always struck by how Hemingway creates a mood and image with 5 cent words. He doesn't need the flourish and yet you feel what he means intensely. I love the interation Frederic has with his a..."

I totally agree, Christine! Hemingway really writes gritty raw stories,and does it with few words..... a man of few words that really whollops you in the head. (is that a word?) lol.

wallops?

Wallop

I agree Christine, very minimal language.

Have you seen the movie Silver Linings Playbook, where the main male character throws Farewell to Arms through the window? Great movie, if you have not seen it!

Lisa wrote: "Wallop

I agree Christine, very minimal language."

Hemingway is the master of inferences,and drawing conclusions, which is what makes his writing great!

I have seen it, the book is even better. A more accurate portrayal of mental illness

Saw Silver Linings Playbook at laughed at that scene. Yup, the ending is sad as is For Whom the Bell Tolls (well all of them actually) but just amazing. I agree that the book of Silver Linings is so much better.

Not plugging my "stuff" but I have a blog called theblogalsorises where all is Hemingway all the time if you ever need a Hemingway fix.

I'm just happy people are still reading him.

Book 3
I'm reading far faster than I had intended. I'm absolutely hooked. Henry returns to the front and is caught up I a retreat. There's something magical in Hemingway's prose as there is nothing said directly to indicate terror, and yet it is palpable. I'm on the edge of my seat...

I am telling you....it is a great book. People don't know what they are missing by not reading Papa!

Well, I'm definitely glad I've started.

Uh oh, Book 4 in 45 minutes...
The escape is fantastic: terrifying, humorous & tender all at once. I want a happy ending... But I know I'm not going to get one:-(

You know, when we read this for bookclub, there were 7 women,and me...one man.....two of the women hated this book,and think hemingway is a jerk....my wife being one of those women..... theydidn't think anything was tender about it at all.....I was like, did they read the wrong selection? How can this be? I read this book,and thought it was a beautiful love story...I don't get it.....

I think Hemingway has written some great love stories. For Whom The Bell Tolls is an amazing love story and I, contrary to common opinion, think he does a pretty good job capturing women's feelings. I hate war and bullfighting and hunting but that doesn't take away from his magic and prose and stories.

It is tender but subtle in that tenderness. When Henry has to flee, there's no question of Cat not going with. And they support eachother so gently while crossing the lake.

I agree, Lisa. It's very moving.

I just don't get it ladies, why other women in my bookclub thought the character was such a jerk.....

I don't get that either. Maybe they felt that he didn't take enough care of Catherine but it was clear that his love was real and that her love changed him. What was "jerky" about him, in their minds?

I read this earlier this year and the impression I got was that Henry loved Catherine but didn't respect women. I can't remember specific details now, but that was my general impression.

10/17/1918 - Letter from Agnes Von Kurowsky to Hemingway: "Kid dear, I wish I could think up some new and original titles for you and surprise you with, but I always seem to come back to my first attempts. Of course, you are 'why girls leave home', 'the light of my existence', 'my dearest and best', 'my hero', and many more that I will not fill up the page with...I love you still - ever- Agnes.

3/7/1919 - Letter from Agnes Von Kurowsky to Hemingway: "I somehow feel that someday I'll have reason to be proud of you but, dear boy, I can't wait for that day and it's wrong to hurry a career."

Books like this tend to polarize people.
Henry is flawed. He is a 'ladies man' to start with and is initially drawn to Cat because of her beauty but not true feeling. He tells her initially that he loves her to appease her.
What redeems him, is that when he falls for her, he is devoted. He returns to Milan for her. He searches for her when she has left. He asks if she wants to flee Italy or stay.yet it is all done in simple, non- flowery language.
To like him, you need to forgive him his past and also accept the seeming simplicity of language.

I want to hop into the book a give the stupid Dr a 'snot klap'. Beer is not good for babies!

Finished.
That last chapter is heart breaking. Obviously, due to exposure to media like the Silver Linings Playbook, I knew how it would end; but I kept willing the words to transform into 'They lived happily ever after'. Sniff. Sniff.
I understand that the book is not autobiographical, but that Hemingway did love his nurse in the war (thanks for the letters). After the war, she left him. I wondered about the psychological representation of Cat's death. Is it because Hemingway felt that Agnes's loss was like a death, leaving him empty and incomplete so much so that he could not conceptualizer a happy ending. Or was it a symbolic 'murder'- you broke my heart and in my world, you do not deserve to live? Any other thoughts?

Based on my understanding of Hemingway (which is limited) I tend to believe in the symbolic murder of Catherine.

Hemingway was young and idealistic. He saw the war from a male-ego viewpoint; as a right of male passage more than a humanistic fight for a cause. Agnes was older than him, and winning her ‘true love,� as evident from her letters, validated and enforced his ego. When she became practical about her relationship with him she rejected him by means of that letter. I think that Hemingway was not only heartbroken but also emotionally injured, and Catherine’s death is a reflection of that emotional truth as well as a form of emotional revenge.

Among the reasons why I think that this is true, is that all of Hemingway’s books tie back to certain events in his life. But the events are only a means for Hemingway to reach and capture the emotional feelings associated with them. To him, the emotions that he felt at: his loss of Agnes, the emptiness of his expatriate associations, the carnage of the Spanish Civil War, the hopelessness of a lone and aged Cuban fisherman, and the loss of his youthful abilities, are possibly the truest things in Hemingway’s life. Hemingway could easily dismiss and forget the physical pain of an event, but the emotional memory lived on. For that reason, the emotional memory of an event probably seemed to be the truest part and is probably what Hemingway used to write his one true sentence again and again.