maanantai 30. maaliskuuta 2015

Hemingway's fish

For some reason I've been making fun of Ernest Hemingway for years now (why? why? why am I always making fun of serious people?) so I thought that it might be a good idea to actually read his books (and not just excerpts and stuff like that). Unfortunately, it turns out that his books are very boring. Maybe the problem is that the only versions I could find are old Finnish translations, but... Jesus, so far they're painfully boring. It all seems so HUMOURLESS.

(But it could be that Hemingway was one of those people who seem humourless but are actually funnier than you.)

(By the way: did you know that children who hit puberty rebel against their family in order to decrease the chance of incest? Yeah, when I said "by the way" I truly meant "by the way", as this has absolutely nothing to do with anything and I'm not even sure if it's true. It makes biological sense though. Do teenagers in hunter-gatherer societies rebel against their family?)

I just can't bring myself to care about Hemingway's characters or anything happening to them. They don't feel real, and they're supposed to feel real I guess. I'll give them another chance, but. Barack Obama is my mother. There you go, I'm not making sense anymore. I love to eat trees. What's wrong with me? Yeah. So anyway. I'm also reading Ham on Rye by Bukowski again (two years ago Bukowski was so hot, you know, and I wanted to go back) and compared to that Hemingway's writing is just...so...very...uninteresting.

(I'm also reading other stuff and liking some of it and not liking some of it. I often dislike "important" books. It's like some books are important because they're boring. Like the people who decided that those books are "important" did it just to pretend that they were smart enough to like them, or something like that, it's hard to say right now because I have no idea where my feet are.)

Maybe there's some great hidden Point that you must find in order to get Hemingway. But right now it seems that Hemingway will continue to be a writer that I consider to be sort of funny and stimulating as a character but not so much as a writer. In that sense he's kind of like Miki Liukkonen. Somewhat funny and interesting as a character but rather boring as a writer. I don't know. I'm sure some people will consider me boring. I'm going to marry Richard Dawkins and he's going to live in my mouth. You see, Harry, that had absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about here. The only reason I wrote that is that I'm a melting clock in a Salvador Dali painting.

Yeah, okay

I almost managed to read The Old Man and the Sea (because it is short) and the only thing that I found interesting about it was the fact that the old man actually sees how intelligent and beautiful the fish are and feels bad for killing them, but keeps killing them anyway. That was interesting. I was surprised to find out that apparently, Hemingway was actually able to see an ethical dilemma with the whole animal killing thing. Of course, he kept doing it anyway. Because he was poetic and true and deep and all that, and my simple mind will never get all the deepness. Sure. I love you Aladdin, just give me a bedroom door and we can leave this town behind...

5 kommenttia:

  1. Read this, this is the best thing I've ever written. I'd love to be my friend, I'm so fucking funny

    VastaaPoista
  2. I have changed my mind:

    1) This is not "fucking funny", this is just mildly funny.

    2) "A Moveable Feast" seems to be a lot, lot, lot better than the other stuff I tried to read. Hemingway was capable of being pretty good.

    VastaaPoista
    Vastaukset
    1. ...actually, A Moveable Feast is one of the best (and funniest) books I've ever read in my life. http://brande-r.blogspot.fi/2015/04/disturbingly-sexy-lips.html

      Poista
    2. At this point I've read so many very good books that I'm starting to question whether A Moveable Feast is really one of the best books I've read. I only read it once. I should do it again.

      Poista
    3. This is a really pointless conversation between myself and myself and myself.

      Poista