February 23, 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I just finished Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms a couple of days ago. I hadn't read him since I was in my teens or early 20s, and while I found the sensibility informing the novel rather foreign, I admired the cleanness of the prose, and the author's attention to the prose's rhythms. I was always aware of that attentiveness: I never felt like he lapsed and settled for something less than what he wanted. Though his work is often described as understated, this unwavering focus gives it an intensity, a rigor, that I found wearying at times, but nonetheless fascinating, and occasionally gripping, notably in the final chapters.