Comments on: Hemingway – Across the River and into the Trees

By: Rich

Rich — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:45:06 +0000

I found this review through the sources page on Wikipedia. I just finished the novel yesterday. I enjoyed your review and I pardon your typos. As a writer, I make them too. For me, I found the plot itself to be too cloyingly sweet, nostalgic and wholly unbelievable. Yet I have never read a bad novel so well written. The contradiction was jarring, like a hoax. I loved his descriptions of the market. I was in Venice in 2008 and the memory is still fairly fresh so his descriptions got the little details right. I will point out one thing about your critique–in the scene you described at the garage: I think that there’s not as much age-gap resentment as you say. On multiple occasions in the novel the colonel reacts sharpy toward orders or real questions of his judgment. The colonel is angry with Jackson because Jackson didn’t just take his word. He also gets angry at Renata this way when she orders him to tell her about the war. Finally, I think that my reading of this book was colored by the other late Hemingway pieces, like Garden of Eden, that I read that were seedier and more self-indulgent. The woman’s desire to “be” her lover was a theme Hemingway obsessed over. I also was prejudiced by a recording that heard on youtube of a Hemingway interview in which he haltingly, almost drunkenly, describes his work. His description of it arising from a haze in Harry’s Bar made me think less of the work and I almost didn’t want to read it. Still, in the end, I’m glad I did. Thanks for your thoughts.

By: Ruth

Ruth — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:28:52 +0000

I had never read anything by Hemingway until last week. I decided it was time. First, the classic, “Old Man and the Sea.” Second, this novel. I was vaguely disturbed by the novel and a sense that I missed parts of what Hemingway was trying to show us through the relationship of the Cantwell to Renata. Your essay helps me to grasp that. Thanks.

I am still confused by the book’s parting paragraph and feel that I missed some key symbolism here, but all in all, I found this to be a very interesting book and I appreciate your thoughts.

By: H. N. Pomainville

H. N. Pomainville — Sat, 23 May 2009 18:33:17 +0000

Maxwell Perkins, the chief editor at Scribner’s, was one of the few people from whom Hemingway would take constructive criticism. It is tragic that Perkins, who died in 1947, could not have been present to edit the manuscript of Across the River and into the Trees.

Wallace Meyer, who succeeded Perkins as the chief editor at Scribner’s, was painfully aware of this novel’s defects but was afraid of alienating his firm’s star writer. The result was that Hemingway was allowed to publish a bloated self parody. Perkins might have been able to hone down the manuscript and emphasize the book’s strengths, thus saving Hemingway a lot of embarrassment.

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:09:49 +0000

I just read this book,,. greatly done, I truly enjoyed reading this,. It gave me a little bit more, then just reading the novel,. thanks ! =)

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:05:47 +0000

Nathan,. Hemingway, theres nothin wrong with that spelling

By: Leigh

Leigh — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 21:43:33 +0000

Love your essay! However do you know if thier is any significance in the title???

By: christian

christian — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:27:58 +0000

Cerebral I meant, but I believe Hemingway made plenty of typos, right?

By: christian

christian — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 07:07:26 +0000

This novel, for all its obvious faults, is one of my favourites. I have much more of an emotional than celebral reponse to it. A man who clearly loves life, and knows how to appreciate life, is dying; and there is something so gut-wrenchingly tragic about that. With his grumpy nostalgia, Cantwell evokes some of the best people I know.

Venice in winter, painted in so few stokes, is wonderfully alluring. Maybe Renate is far too wise and too good to be a realistic 18-year old and maybe the launch-drivers, gondolieri and waiters are too heroically humble and honest, but its not for realism that I like this book – I’m just terribly fond of it.

I don’t think the Peter Goldsworthy comparison is fair though, because he is not trying to create the same effect as Hemingway.

By: Warren Woessner

Warren Woessner — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:14:14 +0000

Very nice writing about “Across the River’ but if you are still having trouble with his “intelligible abstraction”, (when Renata and the Colonel take their gondola ride) let me know.

By: Brian Klade

Brian Klade — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:36:48 +0000

Nice essay. well reasoned and thought out. As a Hemmingway fan, I salute you.