Is admitting you’re fond of For Whom the Bell Tolls like confessing you’ve been putting tinned meat in your sandwiches? I’m considering rereading it and feel I’m owning up to something less than noble. It’s not Hemingway’s finest hour but is an improvement over the work of the 30’s (although I like To Have and Have Not and I don’t care what anyone says). Edmund Wilson’s New Republic review swims with way too much praise.
As an action/love story I’m sure it still stands up. Will I get choked up again when Anselmo buys it at the bridge? There’ll be that wonderful dialogue that looks good on paper but sounds dumb out loud.
The 1943 film version is disappointing, and I’m hoping somebody does a remake and gets it right this time because there’s no reason why it can’t be a great flick. The original is not just an example of what happens when you try to be faithful to a Hemingway text; the sets look phony and the characters are like cartoons. Then there’s Gary Cooper, filmdom's most convincing corpse.
Please forgive this question, but who's Michael Arlen?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at December 8, 2004 09:01 PMFrom Burmese Days, chapter seven:
Elizabeth lay on the sofa in the Lackersteen's drawing-room, with her feet up and a cushion behind her head, reading Michael Arlen's These Charming People. In a general way Michael Arlen was her favourite author, but she was inclined to prefer William J. Locke when she wanted something serious.
I had never heard of Arlen or Locke and took it as Orwell's way of demonstrating Elizabeth's shallowness. You won't find much on Arlen on the web. Even less on Locke. Playwrights, I think.
Posted by: Bobby Farouk at December 9, 2004 06:05 AM