My favourite writer is
Ernest Hemingway. He will always be remembered as a writer of prose in
which every word had meaning and where nothing was wasted. His style
had, in fact, such a widespread effect on British and American
literature that dozens of imitators appeared and today many novels are
accused of being "pseudo-Hemingway”. The son of a small-town doctor,
Hemingway was born in Illinois in 1898. He gained from his father an
early love of fishing and shooting, interests which were to colour his
life and work. Hemingway was educated at schools in America and France.
His father wanted him to be a doctor, but he became a newspaper
reporter, and then served with the Italian Red Cross as an ambulance
driver in World War I. Severely wounded in the fighting, Hemingway used
this, as well as his boyhood experiences, as the material for his first
books. In "A Farewell to Arms”, "For Whom the Bell Tolls” and "The Old
Man and the Sea” he wrote three classics of 20th century literature.
"A Farewell to Arms” is a powerful anti-war story, but it remains a
love-story, telling of the ill-fated romance between Frederic Henry, a
young American serving as a volunteer in the Italian army, and Catherine
Barkley, a British nurse. Frederic gradually decides to get out of the
war and make a separate peace. He and his wife manage to get to neutral
Switzerland where they are happy for a time. But the ending is tragic,
for Catherine dies. This novel shows Hemingway's hatred of the world
that "kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave
impartially”. It is very sad, but very interesting and very important.
It is my favourite book.
