A Farewell to Arms

I think I'm becoming a Hemingway fan. I read some of his books years ago, but they didn't seem that interesting at the time for some reason. A few months ago, I decided to read some of the books again, and see what I thought. I started with The Sun Also Rises, and really enjoyed it. I just finished A Farewell to Arms. I'm not a literary critic, so the best I can say is that I know what I like and for me these novels are very interesting and well written. I like Hemingway's spare, unadorned writing style. He writes almost as a journalist does, with few adjectives and adverbs. I have always heard the Hemingway's style is short, simple sentences made up of short, simple words. That's partly true. But I noticed he also sometimes used very long sentences. In A Farewell to Arms I found several long, long sentences. There were a few paragraphs made up of one long sentence. That's supposed to be a no-no for writers. But it worked, for me anyway. I noticed that he would sometimes stick a long sentence in between two short sentences, or follow a long sentence with a short one. The chapters in his books also varied greatly in length, from 2-3 pages to more than 20 pages. This provides relief and variety for the reader. Some writers think all chapters should be about the same length.

Like his life, Hemingway's writing style is enigmatic and defies easy analysis. He was a good writer. For me, a good book or author is one I enjoy reading and re-reading. In this way, Hemingway has passed my good-author test and I'll be reading more of his books.