To Have and Have Not

Lots of spoilers in here.Yet another Hemingway – and boy, is this one the most racist and sexist that I've read! You can hardly go a page without hearing how bad Cubans are in the story. Also quite a lot of violence, and I don't mean the gunplay that comes up. People are frequently getting smacked in the head. Very early on you get this:* p38 - But I felt bad about hitting him. You know how you feel when you hit a drunk.No, Hem, I can't say I do know how it feels to hit a drunk! There's also this ditty:* p144 - “What's the matter with your old woman?” asked Harry cheerfully. “Why don't you smack her?”   “You smack her,” Albert said. “I'd like to hear what she'd say. She's some old woman to talk.”Just some casual domestic violence for everyone to read about. There's a fair bit of that.Around page 40 or so I closed the book and flipped it around because I was sure I'd read, “the dramatic story of Harry Morgan, a good man who is forced...” But that is not what it says, it says Harry Morgan is an honest man. And those are two very different things. I can say quite easily that I'm honest. But good is another thing. Harry Morgan is not especially good. Apart from his racism and his criminality and everything else, he is double crossing and schemeful.I have to say, re-reading the back of the book, some of this stuff doesn't really occur to me. Maybe it's because there are several vignettes of other characters that appear to only vaguely connect to Harry's story.I often think about when Hem's books were published, knowing that his life ends with his suicide. It is clear that Hemingway was depressed his entire writerly career. This book, published in 1937, is full of self-hatred and contemplation of suicide.Some made the long drop from the apartment or the office window; some took it quietly in two-car garages with the motor running; some used the native tradition of the Colt or Smith and Wesson; those well-constructed implements that end insomnia, terminate remorse, cure cancer, avoid bankruptcy, and blast an exit from intolerable positions by the pressure of a finger; those admirable American instruments so easily carried, so sure of effect, so well designed to end the American dream when it becomes a nightmare, their only drawback the mess they leave for relatives to clean up.p238 - (TB: emphasis mine.)It's 24 years until Hemingway ends his life, but you cannot read this book and not see the evidence of thought. The paragraph above almost savors it.Similarly, he writes about the psychic pain of depression. Two different characters talk about how difficult the nights are. This is the exact same vocabulary as Jake, Hemingway's protagonist in [b:The Sun Also Rises 3876 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1509802323l/3876.SY75.jpg 589497], uses. Also, one of the vets in this story talks about being able “to take it” and uses these words over and over again. Then:“Because we are the desperate ones,” the man said. “The ones with nothing to lose. We are the completely brutalized ones. We're worse than the stuff the original Spartacus worked with. But it's tough to try and do anything with because we have been beaten so far that the only solace is booze and the only pride is in being able to take it. But we're not all like that. There are some of us that are going to hand it out.” (page 206, emphasis mine.)The same language is given to Harry's widow in the ending pages, as she is contemplating how to move on in her life. She has no idea. She mirrors both the nights line, and the taking it line through a few pages of her thoughts:I don't know what to do. It ain't like when he was away on trips. Then he was always coming back but now I got to go on the rest of my life. And I'm big now and ugly and old and he ain't here to tell me that I ain't. I'd have to hire a man to do it now I guess and then I wouldn't want him. So that's the way it goes. That's the way it goes alright. ... I wonder if he thought about me or what he thought about. ... Nothing is any good to wish. ... Nobody's going to tell me that and there ain't nothing now but to take it every day the way it comes and just get started doing something right away. But Jesus Christ, what do you do at nights is what I want to know. ... You just go dead inside and everything is easy.(Across pages 260-261 in various paragraphs, emphasis mine.)Hemingway clearly loves Marie's character. The love between Harry and her seems pure and mutual. They make love, they seem to adore each other. It is maybe the most mutual relationship that I've read in Hemingway so far. Maybe I need to re-read For Whom the Bell Tolls and Farewell to Arms (especially Farewell to Arms) before making that claim. But it feels mature and respectful.There's also the episode in Chapter 19, p176-177, where a writer character witnesses a woman cross a street in tears. He mentally ridicules her, calling her a “battleship” and a “big ox.” He instantly goes home and makes up a whole story for her to work into his book and make her a point of comparison to a “young, firm-breasted, full-lipped little Jewess” (great... yikes...). I read this in fair horror. Then Hemingway gives a sentence to identify this woman and the reader suddenly understands everything (if they didn't already) and you are made to understand just how cruel this little exercise is, and you fairly hate the writer. I think this is no mistake. I think this is Hemingway hating himself, and to an extent, his craft.All in all, I found this very readable. It wasn't until the final two chapters that this went form middling thing to something I really liked. It's all sort of an over-the-top man doing something sort of dumb because he isn't willing to just get a regular job (something which, thankfully, the man realizes after it all goes terribly wrong). But when these actions are given their consequences in the lives of others, and when Hemingway probes the experiences of others in the yachtyard, we get something really special. This is certainly not my favorite Hemingway, but there is some very raw stuff here that I think comes right from his soul and struggles.—Notes/Highlights:* p38 - But I felt bad about hitting him. You know how you feel when you hit a drunk. * TB: No, Hem, I can't say I do.* p62 - “God looks after rummies,” I told him and I took the thirty-eight off and stowed it down below.* p98 - He was mean talking now, all right, and since he was a boy he never had no pity for nobody.. But he never had no pity for himself either.* p107 - Well, I got something to think about now all right. Something to ddo and something to think about besides wondering what the hell's going to happen. Besides wondering what's going to happen to the whole damn thing. Once they put it up. Once you're playing for it. Once you got a chance. Instead of just watching it all go to hell.* p128 - “His goddamn face,” she thought. “Every time I see his goddamn face it makes me want to cry.”* p144 - “What's the matter with your old woman?” asked Harry cheerfully. “Why don't you smack her?”   “You smack her,” Albert said. “I'd like to hear what she'd say. She's some old woman to talk.” * Little casual domestic violence for the vintage Hemingway fans.* p174 - I guess it was nuts all right. I guess I bit off too much more than I could chew. I shouldn't have tried it. I had it all right up to the end. Nobody'll know how it happened. I with I could do something about Marie. ... I wish I could let the old woman know what happened. I wonder what she'll do? I don't know. I guess I should have got a job in a filling station or something. I should have quit trying to go in boats.* p176-177 - TB: there is a great little scene here where a writer observes a woman crossing the street. He has an internal monologue where he talks about how ugly she is and calls her a battleship. He starts to use her in his writing immediately and constructs a whole little tale to explain this woman that he's seen crossing the street in tears. Hemingway does a great little smash cut at the end in the last paragraph identifying her and the reader immediately understands her tears and there is a new dimension to the mental cruelty of the writer. One of the phrases that Hem puts into this writer's mental scribblings is, “It was good. It was, it could be easily, terrific, and it was true.” Probably Hem's most central piece of writing advice is boiled down to, “write one true sentence.” This is how I know this little two page vignette is an artifact of self-hatred. There are a lot of artifacts of Hem's self-hatred in this book.* p185 - “I was so sentimental about you I'd break any one's heart for you. My, I was a damned fool. I broke my own heart, too.” * TB: this whole paragraph is fantastic. More: “It's broken and gone. Everything I believed in and everything I cared about I left for you because you were so wonderful and you loved me so much that love was all that mattered. Love was the greatest thing, wasn't it? Love was what we had that no one else had or could ever have. And you were a genius and I was your whole life. I was your partner and your little black flower. Slop. Love is just another dirty lie. Love is ergoapiol pills to make me come around because you were afraid to have a baby. Love is quinine and quinine and quinine until I'm deaf with it. Love is that dirty aborting horror that you took me to. Love is my insides all messed up. It's half catheters and half whirling douches. I know about love. Love always hangs up behind the bathroom door. It smells like Lysol. To hell with love. Love is you making me happy and then going off to sleep with your mouth open while I lie awake all night afraid to say my prayers even because I know I have no right to any more. Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book. All right. I'm through with you and I'm through with love. Your kind of picknosed love. You writer.” (TB: emphasis mine. Another artifact of Hem's self-hatred. It's no mistake he puts these words in the mouth of the writer's wife.)* p191 - “Well, it's all over, so why be bitter?” (TB: really great emotional stuff from a Hemingway male character... Fuck this guy.)* p195 - The whiskey warmed his tongue and the back of his throat, but did not change his ideas any, and suddenly, looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar, he knew that drinking was never going to do any good to him now. Whatever he had now he had, and it was from now on, and if he drank himself unconscious when he woke up it would be there.* p202 - TB: there's an exchange with some vets in this area, I guess 201-203 and maybe a little past that. I feel like there is more than what's on the page. I expect I will re-read this someday. But here are parts that stand out to me: * “Let us in,” the bloody-faced one said. “Let in me and my old buddy.” He whispered into Richard Gordon's ear, “I don't have to hand it out. I can take it, see?” ... “I can take it” ... “It's a secret.” “Sometimes it feels good,” he said. “How do you feel about that?” * “First it was an art,” he said. “Then it became a pleasure. If things made me sick you'd make me sick, Red.” * TB: Clearly they're talking about pain, the context is basically taking punches. But it's got to be a lot more than that. I think it's Hem talking about being able to take emotional pain. That “Sometimes it feels good” seems to me like something a ruminator says. I'm a ruminator. Sometimes you imagine terribly dark things and you imagine people you love being very cruel or saying things they would never say. It doesn't feel good. But I understand exactly what he's saying. It feels terrible, but there's something to it. Like smashing in your tear ducts. There's something to it.* p206 Related to previous note - “Because we are the desperate ones,” the man said. “The ones with nothing to lose. We are the completely brutalized ones. We're worse than the stuff the original Spartacus worked with. But it's tough to try and do anything with because we have been beaten so far that the only solace is booze and the only pride is in being able to take it. But we're not all like that. There are some of us that are going to hand it out.” (TB: emphasis mine.)* p212 - As Richard Gordon watched him he felt a sick feeling in his chest. And he knew for the first time how a man feels when he looks at the man his wife is leaving him for.* p221 - What he was thinking as he watched him was not pleasant. It is a moral sin, he thought, a grave and deadly sin and a great cruelty, and while technically one's religion may permit the ultimate result, I cannot pardon myself. On the other hand, a surgeon cannot desist while operating for fear of hurting the patient. But why must all the operations in life be performed without an anaesthetic? If I had been a better man I would have let him beat me up. It would have been better for him. (TB: emphasis mine.)* p225 - “A man,” Harry Morgan said, looking at them both. “One man alone ain't got. No man alone now.” He stopped. “No matter how a man alone ain't got no bloody fucking chance.” He shut his eyes. It had taken him a long time to get it out and it had taken him all his life to learn it.* p229 - TB: line here about a side-character being impotent. Interesting. Hem seems to have a lot of impotent or rumored-impotent characters (do I only think this because I just re-read Sun Also Rises? Maybe). It's relatively interesting given all his affairs and all his characters' affairs and the extreme heartbreak in so many of his works.* p230 - “Didn't you ever notice any difference in nights?” (TB: character talking about how during the day it's hard enough but at night it's another matter. Two characters in this book have this thought and it's the same thought that Jake in Sun Also Rises returns to. Things are harder at night. A lot harder.)* Chapter 24, from page 227 to 247, has vignettes of other characters throughout the yachtyard. Just incredible. I loved all of them. * p238 - Some made the long drop from the apartment or the office window; some took it quietly in two-car garages with the motor running; some used the native tradition of the Colt or Smith and Wesson; those well-constructed implements that end insomnia, terminate remorse, cure cancer, avoid bankruptcy, and blast an exit from intolerable positions by the pressure of a finger; those admirable American instruments so easily carried, so sure of effect, so well designed to end the American dream when it becomes a nightmare, their only drawback the mess they leave for relatives to clean up. (TB: emphasis mine.)* p260 - I don't know what to do. It ain't like when he was away on trips. Then he was always coming back but now I got to go on the rest of my life. And I'm big now and ugly and old and he ain't here to tell me that I ain't. I'd have to hire a man to do it now I guess and then I wouldn't want him. So that's the way it goes. That's the way it goes alright. ... I wonder if he thought about me or what he thought about. ... Nothing is any good to wish. ... Nobody's going to tell me that and there ain't nothing now but to take it every day the way it comes and just get started doing something right away. But Jesus Christ, what do you do at nights is what I want to know. ... You just go dead inside and everything is easy. * TB: emphasis mine. These are from Harry's wife from pages 260 to 261 across several paragraphs of thought.