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Joel D.If someone were to ask me about the large wars which began in the 1930s, I would no doubt, like many people, think of the Second World War while completely glossing over a rather large conflict which preceded it by only a year: the Spanish Civil War. On Grammys and Afgha… on Afghanistan National Institute…

Stanley Vick on The Lost History of Christiani… Now Available My Armenia Novel in Paperback ($8.95) and #Kindle – (I’d Buy the Paperback).The Lost History of Christianity – A Review.This is not a novel that glorifies war, and for that – at least – I am grateful. But the novel does let us think about war about its consequences and above all it reminds us that it is to be avoided. There is nothing political (or at least intellectually so) about Hemingway’s writing that would make one believe he considered the implications of a war without heroes. Hemingway doesn’t go into any of this in the novel, at least in any meaningful way. But the communists, with their political project dripping with blood and a slavery more wicked than even our own? Well, those obviously aren’t the good guys either.

The fascists – who can like them? Backed by Hitler, wicked and violent and thick. The Spanish Civil War had nothing of this narrative. We are accustomed, we from America, to thinking of civil wars as an epic effort of violence to expunge that which is vicious from society our own expiatory war the prime example – the violence which atoned once and for all time of the ‘original sin’ of slavery. Spain is a lovely place, full of history and significance and the civil war which rent asunder her social fabric in a time not too long ago was noteworthy in its violence and brutality but also in it being one without good guys. Nevertheless, I’m glad I read this novel.

Those pages are to a degree poetic and I found them charming, if the end somewhat abrupt and without resolution. The closest Hemingway gets in this novel to giving Jordan a personality is the last four pages of the book where, after an accident that leaves him unable to move, he is providing cover for his fellow revolutionaries and waiting to die. There are many people who like this – I am just not one of them. His style is clean and crisp, built on simplicity and momentum not the infinite digressions that usually accompany literary fiction. His books are simple and straightforward, without nuance or any sense of understanding or any real exploration of the inner lives of the characters. So shoot me, but I’ve now read quiet a lot of Hemingway (including A Movable Feast) and I think the challenge I have with his writing is that he is not an intellectual.