Back to Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" today-  His prose is powerful, clean and painful, with his own life just barely hidden below the surface. The more I read by and about E.H., the more I feel like I have a brilliant but very sad friend whom I just can't help.  Reading "Sun Also Rises" after reading "A Moveable Feast", you can see his mistakes, self-indulgences and potential, all swirling around in a whirlpool just outside your grasp...you want to get his attention, to warn him, because you know how it will all turn out, but you can't.  You're on the other side of a thick, plate glass wall, knocking, banging, yelling...he doesn't hear you and he never will.

Books that are now in my bullpen are...Dearie, The Remarkable Life of Julia Child, by Bob Spitz, J.K. Rowling's new novel, The Casual Vacancy, Twelve Patients, Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital by Eric Manheimer, MD and Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1.  Truth be told, I am halfway through Mark Twain's Autobio and love it.  I would have liked to have known him...and especially attended public events with him, as he was such an acerbic commentator on the foibles of those around him.  Am sure, at serious, sober events, many folks had to stifle a laugh at his "under his breath" and right from the podium comments.  As much as I am enjoying Vol. 1, what on earth could there be in Volume 2, as Vol 1 is over 600 pages, with very, very tiny print?

As I've mentioned before, I am obsessed with Ernest Hemingway.  I am reading The Sun Also Rises right now...his prose is so clean, his wit and sarcasm perfectly placed- am loving his description of the running of the bulls in Pamplona....p.164, "Suddenly a crowd came down the street.  They were all running, packed close together.  They passed along and up the street toward the bull-ring and behind them came more men running faster, and then some stragglers who were really running."  Can't you just see that?  The last line is so funny!  Many thanks, Mr. Hemingway.