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Date: | Tue, 23 Jan 2001 12:50:22 -0700 |
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We see the impossible narrator
Hemingway’s own memoir about Paris competent invincible
skilled in all things
at age twenty-four
living amongst
a crowd of the famous
most of whom he dislikes
a saintly wife a perfect child
in the Eden of Saint Germain
and Montparnasse
Then suddenly blasted out
a world famous rocket coming off the booster of Europe out of heaven and into
the blackness
a world he never made from then on on love would be a function
children a by-product
life a long smooth bore barrel
leading down to a loaded breech and a cocked hammer
The memoir of a man who says
See my life here’s my life
pretty good fucking start huh
even when it gets bad
it’s better than anybody’s in this book
it’s better than yours will ever be
and this is the truth
Except it isn’t the truth it’s a lie
it’s the memoir of a man who knows
he’s going to kill himself
The impossible narrator never was
and most of it is based on grievance most of it is a suicide note
But you will read that book
its lovely descriptions will draw you in
its spiteful comedy will capture you its quiet authority
will kill you too
-- "Nobody Dies: An Inquiry" (c) 1995
GAVIN
Tim Bray wrote:
>
> I suppose it may be remotely possible that there are others reading
> this list who, like me, had never gotten around to Hemingway's "A
> Moveable Feast." I just did, and it's an awfully good little book.
> A couple of very intense portraits of EP, who used to play tennis with
> EH. The fact that they had the highest regard for each others' work
> kind of startles me. A picture of the two of them playing tennis
> (EH says EP was good, but not who won) in Paris would have been a suitable
> icon for 20th-cent EngLit in general, had anyone ever taken it. -T
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