A Farewell to Arms

Having finished reading a 4th novel by Grazia Deledda , I decided to choose a novel from Dr. Jordan Peterson's list of the Great Novels. On the list are three works by Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea. I have a memory of reading the first two - along with The Sun Also Rises - in the late 1970's. Although I can't recall much of those three novels - it has been more than forty years ago, after all - I didn't feel, at first, that those novels should be included in a "Greatest Novels of all times" list.

Still, Hemingway is on Dr. Peterson's list, so I'd pick up there. Just having finished four wonderful novels from an Italian/Sardinian writer, it seemed appropriate to reread Hemingway's World War I novel (which takes place in Italy) A Farewell to Arms.

I immediately concluded that my memory of having read this novel is, perhaps, a false memory. There is absolutely nothing in the novel that I remember. True, it has been more than 40 years ago, but I first read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment during the same time period, and most of that novel is recognizable when I reread it.

As for A Farewell to Arms, I can understand now why it is on Dr. Peterson's list. I did not, however, find anything about the relationship between Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley worthy of the rest of the novel. I especially did not care for the ending. According to the wikipedia article on the novel,"Hemingway struggled with the ending. By his count, he wrote 39 of them 'before I was satisfied.' However, a 2012 edition of the book included no less than 47 alternate endings".

Unfortunately, I do not have access to that 2012 edition, so I will remain ignorant of those alternate endings.

I've gone on now to read For Whom the Bell Tolls. It is slightly more memorable to me. From there, I will go on to the third Hemingway work on the list, and finally round it out with one that didn't make the cut - The Sun Also Rises - this will be a continuation of my new habit of reading writers in clusters of "fours" - as I have this year with Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Edith Wharton, and Grazia Deledda.

This could very well lead to my rereading Yukio Mishima's tetralogy of novels, The Sea of Fertility later this year.