Overrated Hemingway?

I recently read A Farewell To Arms, Hemingway’s anti-war novel from 1929. This isn’t the first Hem novel I’ve read, but it will probably be the last. Apart from the scene where the hero, Lieutenant Frederic Henry, is wounded by shrapnel (marvellously rendered by Hem as a shockingly violent out-of-body experience), there is precious little about the war. What I felt as I closed the book was a weird sense of unfulfillment. Hemingway was very good at skimming along the surface, describing cocktail bars and the slightly stilted talk between barmen and hero in a mixture of Italian and English. This may be considered verisimilitude. Okay. But Time has moved on and left Hemingway’s sophisticated martini swilling in a museum of irrelevance. I remember being in Hemingway’s villa in Key West in the late 80s. I got into conversation with a man who had been a Marine in WWII. He raised a small criticism in respect of Hem’s lack of real experience of war. I’ve felt for years I let go an opportunity to hear what it was really like when the bullets were flying. I doubt my WWII vet would have had much to say about martinis.

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