Hello from Princeton

Hello from Princeton, home of boxing legend Robert Cohn. I actually finished yesterday on the bus (it's a nice bus book) and will post my thoughts on the novel when I get home (something for us all to look forward to). I have to say that while the book was quite different from everything else I've lately been reading, I really really liked it for a few reasons. Namely, I think he truly succeeded in making every aspect of the novel put the "lost" in Lost Generation. Hemingway gives us such a comprehensive portrayal of directionlessness, and I think the key to really appreciating the novel is to see it as a great snapshot of the period to which it's attributed. Beyond that, I think that some of his ideas speak (as Caryl Emerson is quoted saying on the back of an Anna Karenina translation) "from within it's own time, but for all times." This is clear from the quote from which the title is taken, the idea of a continuing cycle and progression of time that pushes humanity forward even when they have nowhere to go. Hemingway's narration style is interesting in its portrayal of time and chains of events, mostly because the subjectivity of Jake's perspective is assumed, and thus his bland, literal recounting of events and mundane actions tells us something in itself of how time keeps pushing the days forward even though they don't seem to go in any direction. Think about how Brett reads Romero's palms and the way it looks out onto the future. This is especially noteworthy given that the novel is so caught up in the past (the Great War) even though it rarely makes explicit reference to it.

Those are my thoughts for now. I will look over my notes and put something more cohesive together later on. I was kind of tight last night. I used the book as a coaster for beer... I thought that Hemingway would have liked that.