A writer friend and I were talking about Ernest Hemingway. He’s a tricky subject in that conversations about Hemingway almost always follow the same trajectory: the extraordinary talent and output in his early years followed by decades of increasing macho strutting, misogyny, drinking, and despair that would end in his suicide in 1961. We limited our conversation to the beginning, when Hemingway, barely 30 years old, appeared seemingly out of nowhere with work that sounded unlike anything anyone had ever seen.
The passage like this for me was the opening of The Bell Jar.
“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they executed the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers -- goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me at every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves.”
Love the Diego death passage.
So poignant. Thank you.
The passage like this for me was the opening of The Bell Jar.
“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they executed the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers -- goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me at every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves.”
Extremely grateful Austin! 👍🏻🙂