Lit Monday: Yeah, I Really Enjoy Hemingway

Everybody, in one point in their lives, has had a huge crush on Hemingway (men, women, children, and probably various species of wild cats).  Even those who prefer Faulkner to him can't help but be drawn in by his prose, his emotion...his virility (his words, though sparse are so pregnant that they gestate in seconds, seriously). If not his words then they crave his action, his spark of living and living and living without stopping, without dare trying to. The twentieth century version "You Only Live Once," except classier, and with scotch. 

To me, Hemingway illustrates pain better than any other modern writer (well, save Fitzgerald, in all his sad glory.) The pain of lost love, the pain of war, the pain of literal castration by said war....there are many options, each very unique and sometimes bizarre (perhaps a post for another time, even. Hemingway deaths are a favorite of mine.) The one story I always find myself coming back to is a tiny four-page one, deep into his collection but well-known just the same: "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." I've read it after deaths of loved ones, and I've read it on nights where you find yourself wrapped in a  loneliness Snuggie.

Note: I don't do summaries, I don't. They're vile, and unless you're attempting to read David Copperfield in a night for a midterm, don't do them. Sometimes I get impatient and read them, only to succumb to such unyielding shame afterward. To get all Hobbity on you, it's the journey people. As a writer, and foremost a reader, doing so has done me no greater disservice.

While I don't do summaries, I will post the shit out of quotes. Here is the reason why I has christened this blog as such:

"I am one of those who like to stay late at the café," the older waiter said. "With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night...each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be someone who needs the café."

"Hombre, there are bodegas open all night long."

"You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant café. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows on the leaves."

 I will not pretend these words will become your well-lit café, because you need to find your own. Instead, this is my own well-lit café, a place to feel OK, even if sometimes I'm not. 

Bodegas and bars are dim, and full of games where no one wins though everyone is deluded into thinking they've won. Cue memories of  every bar I've ever visited in East Village, east of Avenue A. There, every truth is veiled in some gross shadow from some grimy curtain, and I leave the bar feeling violated even though no one touched me. (This phenomenon can also be accounted to possible psy-vamps, whom I have not fully discounted, even though I lack belief in them.)

But then I imagine I'm in a diner, on some deserted upper avenue of the Upper East Side, eating a potato or a stuffed mushroom. I see how a well-lit café, for those who wish to drink in the light, is a beautiful thing. Sometimes those who need the café barely feel warmth, even in the muggiest days of spring. Yet a clean, well-lighted place can afford them exactly that. This is what Hemingway grasps so well in this story, and I apologize for not explaining it to your further...but I just can't. As Ernie said it best in A Farewell to Arms, "If you have had it you know."

As for the URL, it harkens back to a dream I once had, where I would write a blogpost seconds after waking each morning, no matter how incoherent and stupid. It would be called, "Amy Wakes Up."Alas, I'm a horrendous morning person, so this dream has died faster than the career trajectory of B2K. But it sounds cool, and one day, when I'm old and better at circadian regulation....I may conquer it. 

Yes, I am probably aware that if he was alive, Hemingway would hate me. But I'd probably hate him in real life, too...so much so, I'd probably try and sleep with him. Eh, it happens. 

Courtesy of Wikipedia, as well as Hemingway's chiseled jawbone.