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Just reread Ernest Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa. What a wonderful read and oh for the Springfield!
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Just finished that book last week, I liked it. Now reading “True at First Light”, what’s called a fictional memoir written by his son from unpublished notes. Notes from safari in ‘53 I believe.
"I was born in the log cabin I helped my grandfather build"
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I finished Green Hills last month. My first time reading it. Most enjoyable.
Rex
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I love that book and used to read it annually when I really had a thing for African hunting.
Tried to read True At First Light and it wasn’t nearly as excited about it. Can’t remember if I finished it.
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A friend gave it to me a while back and I just started it.
Never take life to seriously, after all ,no one gets out of it alive.
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Campfire Kahuna
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Don't know how many times I've read Green Hills, but it's been quite a few.
True at First Light has some good passages, but Hemingway was getting more erratic by the time he wrote of the material.
“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.” John Steinbeck
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Try,”The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”.
Fiction, but supposedly used the famous ph Bunny Allen as a model. He apparently and frequently “bedded” wives that accompanied the guided hunters. Maybe, bs, but it’s a good read.
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I like Green Hills also. Currently reading Use Enough Gun by Robert Ruark. Highly recommend that also
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I have the book and read it in my young days when I had dreams. Today Africa has become a place to just show off wealth, or piss away your retirement if you're poor and dumb. I'll have to stick with fishing for bream and trout from the bank and chasing southern whitetails.
By the way, he keeps calling his wife(I assume) P.O.M. Wtf does that stand for??
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I never quite did understand why Hemingway became pretty much the only hunting writer who is also popular with people who are not hunters, but literature enthusiasts. I've only read Francis Macomber and Snows of Kilimanjaro as well as some of his non-hunting stories at this point, but I'm starting to think that the case can be made that (at least in these books) he didn't really intend to write about hunting, but something about the human condition and what have you. Is Green Hills of Africa similar in this regard or is it more sort of an account of actual hunts?
They don't make 'em like they used to
Don't tread on me
Nothing runs like a Deere
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P.O.M.,Hemingway’s wife, Mary. “Poor old momma”
"I was born in the log cabin I helped my grandfather build"
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I have the book and read it in my young days when I had dreams. Today Africa has become a place to just show off wealth, or piss away your retirement if you're poor and dumb. I'll have to stick with fishing for bream and trout from the bank and chasing southern whitetails.
By the way, he keeps calling his wife(I assume) P.O.M. Wtf does that stand for?? Huh?
Conduct is the best proof of character.
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I love Green Hills of Africa and have returned to it more than once. Wish I had never touched a copy of True At First Light. Hemingway lovers, and readers of English, should avoid like a moist pile of dog.
I do not entertain hypotheticals. The world itself is vexing enough. -- Col. Stonehill
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There was a reason Hemingway never finished TAFL - h couldn't figure out where he was going with it. Much of reads like a stream of consciousness or a collection of day dreams. Never could figure what the real deal with Debba was. This was set in 1953 Kenya, the same period as Tuarks Something of Value and both covered the Mau Mau insurgency in their own way. I like Ruark's much better.
"The Democrat Party looks like Titanic survivors. Partying and celebrating one moment, and huddled in lifeboats freezing the next". Hatari 2017
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid." Han Solo
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For Whom the Bell Tolls is a great follow up.
"There are no dangerous weapons. There are only dangerous men." - Robert Heinlein
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As for True At First Light - it's not fair to judge the man's work when he never finished it and never got a chance to edit it himself. After all, he was the one who said the first draft of anything is [bleep]. At best it's interesting in passages, at worst it is an illustration of his working method I would say.
Green Hills of Africa, I read it a long time ago. I got tired of the campfire conversation criticizing other forgotten writers of the time.
I wish Hemingway had written more about his hunting in the states, elk hunts and what have you. But he wasn't really a hunting writer at all. He wrote about people. Meaning himself I suppose.
"A person that carries a cat home by the tail will receive information that will always be useful to him." Mark Twain
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Carlsen, If you read "The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway" he has several fishing stories in there based on his childhood trips to Michigan. Some small game hunting to as I recall.
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The area I live in is rich with Hemingway history. I helped build the house next to the historic Hemingway cottage on Walloon Lake, named Windemere, I believe. I cross over Horton Creek nearly weekly and have fished Horton Bay. I spent many hours this past winter fishing Walloon Lake. I worked in a house in Petoskey, Michigan that he is purported to have rented a room in and have dined in a restaurant that he frequented. I've fished upper peninsula streams that he wrote of.
I'm not name or location dropping, but only saying that while I appreciate all things Hemingway and being surrounded by Hemingway culture, I can recall being captivated by only one of his works, and that is, "The Short Happy Life Of Francis Macomber". Such a sad and poignant tale.
4 out of 5 Great Lakes prefer Michigan.
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The short stories are excellent to keep in a pack pocket on a hunt where some sitting may be required. My father in law has a good story about an english professor he had at Uconn before he left for the Army. The gentleman was a huge Hemingway fan and had done all sorts of dissection on his writing. He proudly showed his students a long letter he sent to E expounding on his thoughts about some of it, ....... and the reply that was short and to the point. "Your full of $hi%". " EH.
I used to only shoot shotguns and rimfires, then I made the mistake of getting a subscription to handloader.......
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