Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
A book tainted with sadness. The fact that Hemingway writes it as an old, rather bitter man trapped in his Idaho home with a bullying wife while he dreams of his youth in Paris with his first wife and child is so touching to me. It's such a sad book, but so beautiful.
Next you’ve chosen Hemingway, A Moveable Feast.
Hemingway’s such a jerk in many ways. He’s so macho and he treated his wives terribly – until the last one! She kind of turned the tables. He was cruel to Fitzgerald who was a more fragile figure and probably a better writer, but I love this book. This book is written from a point of weakness, late in his life when his wife was caring for him but bullying him, and he’s looking back on his life as a young man – his first love! His first wife. He treated her terribly, of course, and left her for her friend, but here he’s talking about Paris and being poor with a baby and his wife, and there is something so moving about this macho man looking back at his life with regret. I live on the Rue Notre Dame des Champs which is where they lived in this period he’s writing about, and I walk past the apartment every day and think about them. It’s not just a portrait of a lost generation, but it’s about longing for youth and about regret. I mean, he was such an arsehole, but this is his best work, I think. Just writing about Paris and being young.
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Janine di Giovanni is one of Europe's most respected and experienced war reporters. Born in the US, she began reporting by covering the first Palestinian intifada in the late 1980s and went on to report nearly every violent conflict since then. Her trademark has always been to write about the human cost of war, to attempt to give war a human face, and to work in conflict zones that the world's press has forgotten.
