Light's beginning to fade

I'm a two or three-book a week guy, unless I'm struggling through something by Octavio Paz or someone else equally remote from my life. It took me three weeks to finish this Hemingway book and, sadly, it is not the best book that I've read this year. EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS was a much better book with the same theme, an aging man comes to grips with the world he finds himself in and is not real happy with the reality he encounters.

Be that as it may, I am an unabashed Hemingway freak. I was force fed THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA in high school, soon after it was released, and I was not much impressed. I read SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO and THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER right after Hemingway suicided and began to think that I was missing something by reading so much Ian Fleming instead of Hemingway. It wasn't until 1969, when I found myself captured by his COLLECTED SHORT STORIES and FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS (my favorite Hemingway reads), that I found myself strung-out like a dog on his work. Carlos Baker and your big book on the man be damned, Hemingway still has my vote for American Author of the Century. I wish that TRUE AT FIRST LIGHT was representative of his better works, and it's not.

Wordman epined on the book a few weeks ago and we have been corresponding about his review and my views of the book. Wordman makes reference to Hemingway's later works as weaker than his early stuff, and I disagree as THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA was a later work and some folks thought that one was really good, big prize quality. At this moment I find myself more in agreement with Wordman than I'd like to be.

TRUE AT FIRST LIGHT describes Hemingway's idea that things are seen in their purest form early on in the process, that time changes and distorts things. Hemingway is finding this metaphor sadly true with the Africa of the mid-fifties, his relationship with his wife Mary, and with his African lady friend, Debba; all are changing from what they were when he first knew them. He gives short-shrift to Africa's need for self determination, his wife's growing and maturing and, finally, his relationship with Debba withers for lack of nurture. He resorts to using a line from the past, "Love is a movable feast."

Hemingway, when asked by Fitzgerald to describe his philosophical position, said that he was an Ethical Hedonist. Well, I adopted that for a while and I couldn't make it work, and neither could Hemingway and it's an obvious failure in this book. Hemingway tries to make the position work with his relationships with Mary and Debba and fails. He tries to make it work with the major players on the safari, Keiti, Mthuka and Ngui and they all end up tolerating his boorishness and protecting him from consequence.

But, at the end of all this drivel I've written about the book, there are some genuine nuggets of mother lode Hemingway nestling among the book's three hundred and eleven (311) pages. There are individual sentences that are "truly written" to use his words. There are paragraphs that resonate with tone and meter and have me counting, like listening to jazz that I understand, wondering how he's going to get it back to the melody line on time. And he does it. He writes better about Africa in the pre Mau-mau period than any white writer I know, including Ruark. His descriptions of animals and weather and scenery are clear and remind me of why I love the man's writings.

Patrick, his son, could have left this manuscript alone. If anyone had the right to publish it, I think that Mary should have gotten the nod. She certainly put up with a dreadful time during his last years, after Cuba. But Patrick brought it out and I bought it and I'm taking time to write this epinion, my first. If you like Hemingway, then, of course, get on Amazon and buy it for $18. If you are looking for a Hemingway book to read, I'd suggest that you try his collected short stories or some early stuff or THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. I enjoyed this book, parts of it touched me as only Hemingway has been able to do, but I find it difficult to recommend it to you, unless you love Hemingway.