Characters: Jake Barnes (nar.), Robert Cohn, Lady Brett Ashley, Frances Cohn, Mr. & Mrs. Braddocks, Harvey Stone, the Count.
Rereading this book has been a good experience for me, but i wouldn’t say it’s been an especially pleasant one. This novel strikes a few well-hidden nerves of mine. It’s that Brett Ashley; she reminds me too well of a woman i have loved. A woman i often wonder about attempting to love again, because embedded under all that history and feeling is a chance at real happiness, real fulfillment. It’s a happiness, that if acquired and fought for, will stop me from writing books like The Sun Also Rises.
You can really feel the Hemingway influence in Raymond Chandler’s novels. Chandler must have really enjoyed what i enjoy about Hemingway: how tough his prose is. His prose has been called economic, precise, subtle…but what it really is is tough, with sentences like successive volts from a high-caliber revolver.
