For Whom The Bell Tolls

Image Courtesy Onion Reads

So I've been stuck in a hotel for two days for a workshop for my job but the good news is that I had 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' by Ernest Hemingway with me!

'For Whom the Bell Tolls' is perhaps the most profound piece of literature that I've ever read. I mean... f**k. I you're an aspiring writer, here's a warning, reading this could make you never want to pick up a pen and paper again. Because whatever you write it will never be as perfect, s.what's the point? But on the same note, he can make love the craft so much that you can't help but try...

My favourite chapter is chapter 13, let's talk about it. The protagonist, Robert Jordan talks about love. A lot. He loves Maria and will love her for the rest of his life which measures up to be, oh, about 48 hours give or take a little.

Here's my favorite line from Robert Jordon on Maria "sweetheart, Cherie, prenda, schatz. He would trade them all for Maria. There was a name." So you live all your and the fairytales, odes, sonnets, telenovelas and tales of epic love are forced down your throat and then all of a sudden you meet someone and you have a name, a face. A new understanding of this thing that has driven the work of so many of the great thinkers of our time.

I love it, I'm all over it and before you roll your eyes let me just tell you that I hate all of that stuff the silly movies, the roses, that God awful Valentines Day. The stuff is just a concept and it's not what we should be looking for, that ideal exists on its own without us. What Hemingway is saying is that we need to find the person that enables us to understand what everyone was so wild about. To interpret the concept in our own way, to make it our own. That's the real goal.

God I love this book. I borrowed it from the library but I think I need to go buy it now.