Hemingway’s True at First Light – The Final Allotment

Finally. The last chunk of pages was dangerously slow going. (Here’s my explanation of why I had to digest this wreck of a book in chunks.) Mary remains in Nairobi. Hemingway shops in a village for the camp and his staff. He kills a leopard. He hunts by moonlight. With a spear. He fawns over Debba, his second “wife.” He ruminates on religion. Mary returns and there’s some tension there which is resolved. They go and dig up and later plant her Christmas tree. They tell each other how much they love each other and Africa. It ends with them in bed in their tent, Hemingway listening to and thinking about the sounds of night-time Africa.

I’m tellin’ ya’, Hem’s heirs have got a lot to answer for, letting this thing be published. It’s crystal clear to me that it was never Hemingway’s intent to have this published. Occasional flashes of brilliant prose do not a book make; the author was casting about for something to hook this remembrance to and it simply wasn’t there. He’d already done it with Green Hills of Africa so why do it again unless you could do it better or differently but differently in a good way. With this, he could do neither, and though his final years were sadly battered by mental illness, at least he had the good sense to know this wasn’t publishable. Not without a lot of work.

Well, I did what I set out to do: to read the last bit of published Hemingway that I hadn’t read. So I have that. And I have the published work and the one posthumous work that’s worth anything, A Moveable Feast. (Though I have soft spots for Islands in The Stream and The Garden of Eden.) That’s plenty enough.

Hemingway’s True At First Light – The Fifth Allotment

A lot of self-indulgent talk about literature and Africa and other stuff. Then Mary gets dysentery and has to go into Nairobi for treatment and leaves the stage for a while. Hemingway kills a leopard that’s gone rogue and killing the natives’ cattle. There’s a very good section about the eagles Hemingway sees that triggers a memory of a hunt in the American Rockies that’s ranks right up there with the best of Hemingway. But most of this is, once again, Hemingway casting about, getting a feel for his material. He did this much better in The Green Hills of Africa, likely because he edited and shaped his material himself.

Without much going on, and with much repetition, and little forward movement, it was all I could do to get through this chunk of 50 pages. It looks like I’m not going to make that mad dash to the finish like I’d thought. Still, the end is in sight so I don’t have much longer to put up with this.

Hemingway’s True At First Light – The Fourth Allotment

Knocked out the next chunk of this interminable book. Mary finally shoots her lion but not without some controversy over who shot first and where. But the description of the hunt and the shooting is right up there with the best of Hemingway and he’s clearly in his element here. But Mary believe Hemingway shot first and it’s not really her lion and on and on and on. Hemingway goes to town for supplies and intermingles with colorful locals, then attends a dance at which he participates on one of the drums. I had to laugh at that image but you gotta hand it to the ol’ Nobel Prize winner for immersing himself in the local culture. Without the threat of the Mau Maus and the goal of shooting Mary’s lion, the tension begins to ease off. Again, I think Hemingway was just writing this thing to see where it took him and if he ever really considered publishing it, he would have made drastic cuts. Too bad his heirs didn’t do the same.

Oh, and by the way, in case your curious, the Hemingway’s enjoy eating some of the killed lion. Tastes like veal.

I’m up to page 200 on this, with only a little over 100 pages to go. I’ve got another book to finish before returning to my next 50 page allotment but I may just knuckle down and make a sprint for the finish line just to get this over with. The brief flashes of the old Hemingway hardly make up for the long stretches in between.

Hemingway’s True At First Light – the Third Allotment

I’m still sticking to my plan and now I’ve knocked off a third chunk of the book. The rains have quit and Mary’s lion comes closer to the camp – they even catch sight of it but Mary’s unable to get a clear shot. Oddly, Hemingway purposely omits the details of killing marauding baboons – some PC post-editing? – and then later goes on to describe the shooting of same. The escaped Mau Maus have been captured and are no longer a threat. Hemingway visits the shamba where he carries on shamelessly with Debba, his mistress. Much sexual innuendo follows as he describes how Debba caresses his gun. I kid you not. While Mary and GC talk of London, Hemingway tosses off several wonderful paragraphs of Paris in the old days, a nice precursor to A Moveable Feast. Mary awakens sick and can’t hunt her lion for the day.

Hemingway retains his magic. Here’s a paragraph as proof:

We saw them coming across the new bright green grass of the meadow; the same size, Charo as black as a man could be, wearing his old soiled turban and a blue coat, Mary bright blond in the sun, her green shooting clothe dark against the bright green of the grass. They were talking happily and Charo was carrying Mary’s rifle and her big bird book. Together they always looked like a numero from the old Cirque Medrano.

So, done for now. I see no reason to abandon the plan – neither to drop this book entirely to just race ahead to the end and get it finished. But finding paragraphs like the one above makes these short spurts worth it.

Hemingway’s True at First Light – The Next Allotment

As planned, I’ve knocked off the next 50 page allotment of True at First Light on my way to the next Kelton book on my bookpile. I was looking forward to a return to Africa but not too terribly much was going on since I left. Hem’s still game wardening around, taking to the sky to inspect a suspicious farmer’s property and worrying about a possible attack by escaped Mau Maus. Mary still wants to kill her lion; surprisingly, and thankfully, no animals were killed in this section. She’s both irritable with Hem’s behavior and endeared by it. Another surprise: Hem’s rumination of his prior safari and his admission he no longer hunts for trophies. An editorial insert by Hem’s son to make him more PC? Then the rains came and more ruminations, this time about books.

Well, those 50 pages are done. I’m got some more Kelton to read before coming back. This time, it seems like the drudgery I remember.

Hemingway’s True at First Light – So Far

I’ve knocked off the first two chapters (and the introduction) of Hemingway’s True at First Light. (I’ve blogged here about my difficulty with the book. It’s not that it’s a difficult read; none of Hemingway’s books are. It’s just that the book commits the cardinal sin of being boring.) That brings me to page 64 which is a good stopping place for now.

I have to admit, though, once I pushed on through the places where I’ve halted my reading before, things went a little more smoothly. Oh, sure, it’s still boring – we’re mainly going from one place to another stalking and shooting and butchering game, while intertwining the three plot threads of Hemingway’s wife, Mary, and her hunt for a lion, Hemingway’s silly infatuation with a much younger African girl, and the threat of assault by escaped Kamba Mau Maus – hey, wait a minute, I just described a pretty good story there, didn’t I?

Knowing this is a posthumous publication that doesn’t benefit from the author’s own editing, I can’t shake the feeling that what I’m reading is strictly first-draft material. But it’s first draft material that’s shot through on occasion with brilliance. Hemingway’s understated and precise descriptions of landscape and weather are without match. And though I have no desire to hunt down and kill animals, I’m enjoying more than I thought I would the details of the safari. (Hey, it’s almost like I’m at Disney’s Animal Kingdom on the Kilimanjaro Safari ride!)

But a deal’s a deal: my goal is to take this thing at 50 pages at a time and I’ve done that. Time to move on to what’s next on my reading list. Surprise, surprise, I’m looking forward to returning to this.