Not All Cigars Are Cuban

I suppose the less I write the better my point will be. Imagine a glass cage. It has four equal sides, a mesh wire top, and sand on the bottom. Inside there is a mouse wheel with a rat running along the tracks. It is running quite fast for a rat, but there is something particular: it has a red “X” burned into its back. I have just created a scene in four sentences.

The magic in writing isn't all about what you say, but also what you don't say. I never said what color the rat's hair is, the color of the sand, if the room the rat was in is dark or bright, or if a room even existed. However, I bet you instantly created all of those images. For me the room was dark (probably because I am writing in a dark room), the rat had gray fur, and there was an annoying sound of spinning metal – or maybe that's my computer fan. Whatever it is, I didn't write it, I left those images for your mind to create, and it happened.

So often we think what we want to write and then feebly attempt to transpose the exact image into our reader's mind. That's no fun. Stories are best written in open spaces so the mind may wander. If you spend all your time describing only minute details you are defeating yourself and, much more importantly, you are strangling the reader's magic. The ashen colour of the rat's fur, the unnerving darkness of the cellar's laboratory, or how thick, shinny, or sharp the cage's glass is irrelevant to point being made: there is a rat and it has a red x on it's back. Over describing only strangles the mind, and when you strangle the mind the reader falls asleep.

At about this time you are probably wondering about the title. I suppose an explanation is appropriate. “Sit down.” a man said tapping on the desk. A Carnegie Steel foreman was just closing the door, “I heard there was a break in at the shipyard?” “They knew the shipment came.” he turned to grab a cigar out of a wooden box on his desk, “would you like one?”... Remember every cigar is NOT a Cuban cigar, the point isn't the quality of what they are smoking, the point is that something important was stolen by a competitor from Carnegie's shipyard.

The Sun Also Rises: Book Review

"This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste." - Brett

Hemmingway died. If you have read Ernest Hemmingway you will realize the misfortune of his passing, but others will at once find that statement cold and realistic. Every day people die but we never go about speaking of it – like an unnatural secret. It happens so often and so fast we don't believe it will ever happen to us. The book The Sun also Rises is a quaint story about the oh-so-often disillusionment of love and friendship. Following Jake and Brett through the night clubs of Paris and the bull rings of Spain, they move from pleasure to pleasure trying to hide their pain. It happens so often and so fast that they don't believe it would ever happen to them. So I intend to be both cold and realistic when I say, “Hemmingway died.”

Now there is nothing particular that I would say concerning Hemmingway's passing – nothing regarding a rifle or an empty house, neither seizure induced electrical therapy nor depression, but to stir the apparent curiosity about its happening. For the only apparent thing is how apparent it was for me and not for Hemmingway that Hemmingway died.

As a lost generation writer, Hemmingway believed what he heard, wrote what he saw, and lived the life he dared to avoid. The Sun Also Rises details his story of a time of comings and goings quickly faded and lost by a generation that feared to believe. Feared to believe that they walked the back alleys of happiness and combed the desolate wastes of a world gone wrong. Close to the hearts of both Hemmingway and his fictional characters, they walked down the lonely streets called “yesterday” and breath a sigh reassuring themselves that nothing crooked can be straighten for the devil we call “tomorrow.” What is apparent to every reader is that Hemingway died long before his physical suicide.

His life and aspirations were beset with forgetfulness and he made it known in this story: A week spent for a fishing trip far away from home, a night at the bar to sedate the soul of regret, and a vacation to Spain for the festival of the bulls to drown out the noise of a fallen conscience. Wrought by “could-have-been's” and “should-have-not's” this story's moral was an open experience, not a closed idea. Things came and went and the reader was forced to make up his mind. Left to question your own artifices, one begins to wonder how easily one's life could be squandered, and challenges you to have the strength to change it. Sadly, most do not, and for Hemingway he foretold his future.

The main characters illustrate a real sense of the modern soul-train bound for nothing. Brett and Jake, were “matter-of-fact” with both their hearts and minds. Their languages accented the modern man - foul and carefree - and full of despair and inability to survive. Night clubs, the far-fringes of loved called romance, Bull fights, fairs, and drinking ripped and sagged under the weight of their hearts and souls, barely able to keep the characters alive to the end... barely.

I love reading and I love a vast array of authors, but Hemingway still isn't there for me. His stories are cold and realistic, strong and clear, but his passion is always lacking. The experience was mussling and foreboding, and left me with a sombre assurance, “it was a good book, it was a good book.” And that's the difference between a good book and a great book.