The universe wants me to pay attention to Hemingway and Dostoyevsky. I think it may have started about a month or so ago when my fiancé and I were drowning ourselves in episodes of Lost. It was season two, and we were just being introduced to the two-faced character of Ben Linus (although he was purporting to be a wayward hot air balloonist, Henry Gale, at this point). Locke had given “Henry” a copy of The Brothers Karamazov to help pass the time as the Oceanic 815 posse’s prisoner in The Hatch. Locke then remarked that Hemingway always wanted to be as great a writer as Dostoyevsky but felt he never lived up to that challenge. I think this comment was meant to be a thinly veiled metaphor for how some of the characters feel in the show, but that’s now beside the point. The point for me is that this aside caused me to pick up my $1.50 copy of The Sun Also Rises that I purchased from a Goodwill Store a few weeks before and test my memory of The Brothers Karamazov for comparison.
Reading The Brothers K senior year of college made me feel literate and worldly and smart. I was reading Russian Literature. I was enjoying reading Russian Literature. I felt that I understood man’s existential dilemma (or something like that). I sat in my college’s student center for hours, always at a sticky table next to the campus Burger King, giving myself eater’s remorse (no matter how good they smell, Burger King fries are never a good idea), and pondering God’s existence, man’s propensity for evil, and the curiosity of fate. And while I had to remind myself of plot points and characters’ names from sparknotes.com all these years later, I still remember the feelings of transcendence from reading the novel; I felt edified, contemplating character motives and the moral implications of their actions. It was exciting to think about the greater scheme of things; it characterized my ideal of what one does in college (even though my reality often included drinking cheap beer and stalking my classmates on Instant Messenger).
So if Dostoyevsky made me intoxicated with the thought of man’s redemption, then Hemingway made me want to partake in activities from which I would need redeeming. Normally a novel the length of The Sun Also Rises would take me a few days to a week to read (depending on my time constraints and overall attraction to the book); however, this little gem took me weeks. It’s not because the plot was especially boring or that the characters were uninteresting, but because every time I picked the book up I wanted to drive to the liquor store for a bottle of scotch. Everyone was always drinking wine and getting “tight”, and I wanted to participate, too. I could only read a chapter or so at a time, or else the temptation got too strong (as enjoyable as daytime drinking can be, I figured it wasn’t a healthy idea to make a habit of it, even if it only lasted 250 pages).
The Brothers Karamazov made me feel closer to understanding the mysteries of the universe; The Sun Also Rises reminded me of my fiancé’s father and my study abroad experience in Spain (duh). Like the protagonist Jake Barnes, my fiancé’s dad is a newspaper man, fancies fishing (actually “fancies” is a gross understatement), and enjoys a good drink (it’s really no surprise that his favorite author is Hemingway). When on vacation in Newport Beach, CA with his family this summer, “papa” and I would sip our Pacificos on the promenade-facing patio, perusing the local papers. I’m pretty sure that if Orange County ever opened a bullfighting ring, my future father-in-law would be there, wineskin slung cross his shoulder, maybe wearing a shirt, but definitely sitting on the “sol” side of the arena, adding to the half-century plus years he’s spent sitting directly in the sun’s light every weekend, sifting through the Saturday and Sunday newspapers.
Like I said before, the universe wants me to pay attention to Dostoyevsky and Hemingway.
Today while reading the New York Times I came across two articles that affirmed this supposition. The first, in an article by Mike Ives, laments the fact that an old flame no longer wants to cavort around the world like his high school hero as a disillusioned expat (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/fashion/03Modern.html?ref=fashion). The second, a piece by Michael Cunningham, who finally learns to write for his reader after meeting a woman who deemed the suspense Crime and Punishment above the writings of Ken Follett, but still subpar to that of Scott Turow ( http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/opinion/03cunningham.html?_r=1&ref=opinion).
Was Dostoyevsky really a more prolific writer than Hemingway? The answer, I suppose, is debatable. For me, what matters is that the author is able to bring me to places I’ve never been or places I long to return to. He can make me feel uplifted and spiritual or he can make me feel craven and carnal. The point is that he can make me feel. Cunningham asserts in his article that “what any good reader needs [is] absorption, emotion, momentum and the sense of being transported from the world in which she lived and transplanted into another one.” Any book that yanks at a feeling, no matter inspired or basic, is worth the read.
