"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you." Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
Hey, Hemingway. Hey.
Today in History:
Red Cross volunteer Ernest Hemingway is wounded in the trenches near Fossalta, Italy on this day in 1918. His recovery will be memorialized in fiction later in A Farewell to Arms.
awesomepeoplehangingouttogether:
Roald Dahl & Ernest Hemingway, London, 1944
Procrastination Theatre: June 11, 2011
Because Tumblr is not the best at keeping secrets, I knew what was going to happen at midnight in Paris before I went to see the movie. The Boyfriend, however, did not, and I shushed anyone who came close to mentioning it before the movie started. Which meant that when the dapper young man introduces himself as Scott Fitzgerald with his wife Zelda, the look on the Boyfriend’s face was pure joy and delight. It was a beautiful thing.
Not surprisingly, we loved it. It feels good to see such a fresh cast in a Woody Allen movie, and one that is up for the challenge of such a fresh, uncumbered script. I loved the playfulness, the hopefulness, both of which Owen Wilson perfectly embodied. Sometimes Woody Allen gets caught up in his own neuroses to the extent that you feel smothered (at least in his more recent work), and it’s no longer funny the way it’s supposed to be. Michael Sheen and Rachel McAdams made terrible people and things funny in the perfect way. And I’m not even talking about the literary angle yet.
Which was delightful. Apparently I’m now going to read Hemingway and enjoy it (I feel a little conned, but it was too good a performance to not give into.) Midnight in Paris is magical because it meets and talks about Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Stein not the way Paul (Michael Sheen) would, but the way someone who really has given themselves up to literature and made themselves vulnerable to it does -like old friends, poking fun and getting drunk together. It was lovely. Also lovely was the unfolding of the nostalgic past, and all the erroneous versions of history that Nietzsche would have loved to lecture us about.
One final thing: the Boyfriend had a very clever thought. He mentioned when we got home that he wished we’d have met Faulkner, but that, after all, Gil Pender (Wilson’s character) is an oft-drunk writer who’s trying to break free of the commercialism of Hollywood screenwriting. In other words, we did get a Faulkner proxy throughout the whole thing.
Serious Entertaining: To Have or Have Not (Serious Eats)
In which my favorite new food blog does Florida Keys-inspired recipes like Stone Crab, Mahi Mahi, mango salsa, sweet potato casserole, Key Lime bars, and the Florida Hurricane, in honor of Ernest Hemingway’s (and the beginning of Bacall & Bogie’s love story) To Have or Have Not.
