Published in 1926, Ernest Hemingway told the spicy, dramatic tale of a group of passionate and broken expatriates spending a wine-hazed week at the Pamplona Fiesta, where all their interpersonal dramas come to full boil. Things are heating up for Ol' Matty, too, as he finds seducing a volcano for a ride out of the Center of the Earth was more than he bargained for. I'm not even surprised anymore. Sure, seduce a volcano.
Turns out the writer of Ol' Matty's available is just as lazy as Verne, and the lethally dead-end plotline of wandering his subterranean prison are coming to an abrupt and epic end. After successfully turning the volcano on with a whole new segment, things got a little too saucy and lava-y for Ol' Matty as he is shot out of the volcano like a cannon, skyrocketing toward the surface. Quite a bit hungry, he uses this convenient burst of heat to make the spicy and boozy sandwich based on Ernest Hemingway's spicy and boozy novel, The Sun Also Rises. Say what you will about the Ol' fool, but he knows how to see the silver linings in things, and always when is the right time to drink - it may be his last, after all.
Finding himself back on the surface eventually, and more importantly back in his element with his idol Hemingway, Ol' Matty may be elevated but he is delving deeper and deeper into history and literary analysis all the same. I was about to be impressed to be honest, I mean, the guy seems to be able to summon an orchestra for dramatic readings, but then he was attacked by a bear and it got weird again.
Even though he now has paws for hands (Yes, both hands. Don't ask), once again Ol' Matty has created a wonderfully delicious word sandwich with a dangerously high alcoholic content, shimmying down the skinny of history (bread), story (meat), characters (cheese), themes (sauce) and his final thoughts (seasoning). But get this, he may have stitched bear paws on but he is healthier, he added both tomato and lettuce just for kicks!
The novel is a impassioned, and beautifully spun and exaggerated roman à clef: the characters are based on real people in Hemingway's circle, and the action is based on real events. Hemingway presents his notion that Gertrude Stein's "Lost Generation"— who she and many else considered to have been decadent, dissolute, and irretrievably damaged by World War I—was in fact resilient and strong. Hemingway investigates the themes of love and death, the revivifying power of nature, and the concept of masculinity.
Love stories? Love hearing about the tales of old with Ol' Matty but want to know them yourself? Want to join the Book Club Sandwich but don't have the time or desire to sit down and read? Well, you dolt, check out Audible, where you can drive to your destination and faraway lands all at once. P.S. Audible, please sponsor me.
For more short stories like the one featured here, see The New Yorker either online or subscribe to have the magazine delivered for those delectable morning reads. You sponsor me too, New Yorker. Look at me GO.
I have only ever read the book with my own eyeballs so I can't personally vouch for any version on Audible, however there is one read by William Hurt who I know is quite good and think we can trust, Quixotes.
If you really don't want to read or listen, I recommend the 1957 film. Hemingway himself didn't like it because it was shot in Mexico for budget reasons, but the script itself treats the original text as gospel, the story is streamlined excellently and the dialogue is more or less directly lifted from the book. While Errol Flynn was glorious casting, and Ava Garner turned in a fine performance as Brett Ashley, other than Flynn the cast is terribly miscast on account of age, all at least 20 years older than they should be. Nevertheless, you forgive Ava Garner and Errol Flynn due to their solid performances, and Tyrone Power and Mel Ferrer are eventually believable as Jake Barnes and Robert Cohn. I...
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