"A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway

A second read of this classic.  I saw the movie too, but I didn't like it too much; too stiff and dry, which is definitely not the book, if you understand it right.  The first time I read it, it was in translation, and translation never does justice to the real thing.  That's one of the reasons I am trying to learn as many languages as possible. Hemingway's English is a special language.  It is simple, creeps up on you without you even noticing and grips you and won't let go, like that little animal from Jack London's stories.  The language is simple, the words are simple, but it is in that simplicity that the most horrifying events and the deepest emotions, loss, love, in-love, out-of-love are described with more emotional effect than the most pompous 19th century prose.

Hemingway started out as a journalist, so his style started in journalistic factualism and brevity.  He also fought in WWI, and in the the Italian Army, so the character in the book is largely himself, though, of course, poetic license allows for plenty of 'what could have happened' scenarios.  The story is of an American volunteer in the Italian Army, driver of an ambulance and also a low-rank officer.  He sees and talks about the real war.  Not the patriotic BS that the masses are being fed in the cities, but the pointless, senseless killing and apathy and absence of any morale or will to fight, except among the dumb and the idiots and the ones profiteering from it.  The only respite from the constant killing and attempts to escape the front on the smart ones part are the whorehouses, and the big event there is when the girls get changed.

Our hero drinks hard, talks hard and records even harder conversations of his fellow men, half of which despise him, especially the higher-up officers, and the other half are trying to get something from him.  Just like real life.  It is the realism of the novel that is most striking. It happens during WWI, but it could be any conflict, anywhere, anytime, from the Romans to Libya, human nature doesn't change.  Homo homini lupus est.  And it has to be that way, otherwise we wouldn't have evolved.  And nowhere that is more evident than during time of war.  There is a love story, of course, though it doesn't get fully developed until the end of the book, and it is better that way, as the infantile English nurse with her constant gibberish gets on one's nerves, and, no matter how awful it sounds, there is a smidgen of a relief when she doesn't survive the childbirth.  The character goes back to his hotel, his wife and child dead. That is the last sentence of the novel.

The real pleasure in the novel is the language.  The language flows and is natural and is interesting in ways and places one would not expect to have interest, especially for the reader in the second decade of the 21st century - not enough sex or graphic description of violence and suffering.  Everything is understated and explained in regular, everyday language, which only makes it more authentic and genuine.  One has a feeling that is actually there and knows that the author has been there.