Footnotes to myself

Across the River and Into the Trees, Hemingway

For a while now I’ve kept extensive reading notes. A few of the quotes, ideas, and observations are thrown into what I write, but a lot never finds a place.

This series is my attempt to make use of that surplus. Not quite a book review, but not quite a summary either; something a little more like marginalia. Here are the bits I underlined, and here’s why I thought they were worth underlining. Some of it will be thematic, some of it fragmentary, all of it deliberately loose. Enjoy.

Across the River and Into the Trees, by Ernest Hemingway

I have always loved Hemingway, because I am a man and he writes about what it means to be a man.

This is based on a romance Hemingway has in Italy with a young Adriana Ivancich, whom he used as the model for the female character in the novel. It’s one of his later works, being published in 1950; it’s mostly overshadowed by the work it inspired, however; it got such negative reviews that it made Hemingway furious, and in response the following year he sat down and wrote the draft of The Old Man and the Sea in eight weeks.

I have so little political development that I believe all honourable men are honourable.'

'Oh you'll get over that,' the Colonel assured him. 'Don't worry, boy. You've got a young party. Naturally you make errors.’

One of the things I’ve always loved about Hemingway is the dialogue. Just from this alone he conveys the speed and tone of this conversation. Even the facial expressions are implicit. It’s all there.