I've knocked off the first two chapters (and the introduction) of Hemingway's True at First Light. (I've blogged here about my difficulty with the book. It's not that it's a difficult read; none of Hemingway's books are. It's just that the book commits the cardinal sin of being boring.) That brings me to page 64 which is a good stopping place for now.
I have to admit, though, once I pushed on through the places where I've halted my reading before, things went a little more smoothly. Oh, sure, it's still boring - we're mainly going from one place to another stalking and shooting and butchering game, while intertwining the three plot threads of Hemingway's wife, Mary, and her hunt for a lion, Hemingway's silly infatuation with a much younger African girl, and the threat of assault by escaped Kamba Mau Maus - hey, wait a minute, I just described a pretty good story there, didn't I?
Knowing this is a posthumous publication that doesn't benefit from the author's own editing, I can't shake the feeling that what I'm reading is strictly first-draft material. But it's first draft material that's shot through on occasion with brilliance. Hemingway's understated and precise descriptions of landscape and weather are without match. And though I have no desire to hunt down and kill animals, I'm enjoying more than I thought I would the details of the safari. (Hey, it's almost like I'm at Disney's Animal Kingdom on the Kilimanjaro Safari ride!)
But a deal's a deal: my goal is to take this thing at 50 pages at a time and I've done that. Time to move on to what's next on my reading list. Surprise, surprise, I'm looking forward to returning to this.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment