Hemingway Summer

This summer was our Hemingway summer even though technically it started in the winter.

Johnny called me one day when I was in Hawaii with my mom after her heart surgery. While my dad drove us home from a doctor’s appointment, Johnny told me that he was reading The Sun Also Rises and he had questions.

“They’re out drinking and they keep saying they’re ‘tight.’ What does that mean?”

“Well, it means they’re drunk, not falling down drunk, but buzzed.”

My parents listened to my half of the conversation with some curiosity.

“What’s an ex-patriot? Why were they in Paris? Why were they called the Lost Generation? Why were they disillusioned?”

I explained as best as I could off the cuff, and told him I hadn’t read Hemingway since I was in college. Nothing like a pop quiz decades later. I told him I was sure his professor could give him better answers than I could.

Then he told me that he wasn’t reading it for a course. He called me so that I could be his teacher. No pressure there! He also said that he’d convinced his roommate to read it too, and they were having some good discussions about it.

I promised him I’d read it when I got home, and then we could talk some more.

       Back home in Washington, I pulled The Sun Also Rises off a dusty shelf and started reading. It was slow going, especially compared to the fast-paced, action packed plots of books and movies now. The slow pace made me wonder if it would get published if Hemingway tried to get it published now. Once I settled in, it got better. It was as I remembered it, lots of drinking and bullfights.

John decided to read it too. When the sun also rose over our back yard, he’d be out on the deck reading. He agreed that it was really slow.

Ernest Hemingway

When I asked Johnny why he liked the book so much, he said that he really liked how simple things were back then. People weren’t in constant communication with texting, cell phones, and the internet. His favorite part of the book was when Jake and Bill went on a fishing trip in Spain. At one point, they decided to take a nap on the grass, out in the open. Johnny was amazed that they could be that relaxed.

He also said that people often discredit Hemingway saying that his writing style was overly simplistic. Johnny thinks that is a strength. Hemingway chose each word carefully and made each one count to describe scenes vividly.

In mid-summer, I discovered a movie called Midnight in Paris playing at an independent movie theater in Tacoma. I convinced Sarah, and eventually Johnny and John to go and see it with me.

Owen Wilson plays a writer who is visiting Paris. Wandering the streets of Paris one night, he is transported back in time to the 1920s and gets to hang out with Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein, and other artists from the lost generation.

Sarah didn’t read Hemingway this summer, but she’s spent two summers writing a novel set in the past, so she could relate to Gil Pender (played by Owen Wilson). She also got a kick out of Pablo Picasso and Salvadore Dali, since she’d learned about them in an Art History class.

We kept shooting looks at each other over our popcorn whenever actor Corey Stoll delivered a classic Hemingway line. Directed by Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris captured how it must have been back then. It fit in perfectly with our Hemingway summer.

Laura Keolanui Stark probably has her nose stuck in a book. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.