the master at work

Call me a sucker. A rube. But, I just love it when Hemingway gets rolling. The way he strings clumps of straight-from-the-gut words together into a jumbled, awkward mess of male emotion gives me chills and tears that well up in the corner of my eyes. From “A Farewell to Arms”:

We two were talking while the others argued. I had wanted to go to Abruzzi. I had gone to no place where the roads were frozen and hard as iron, where it was clear cold and dry and the snow was dry and powdery and the hare-tracks in the snow and the peasants took off their hats and called you Lord and there was good hunting. I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring. Suddenly to care very much and to sleep to wake with it sometimes morning and all that had been there gone and everything sharp and clear and sometimes with a dispute about the cost.