Hello Survivors, how is the winter treating you? It’s getting cold where I live. We have our first snow. My hands are so cold it’s hard to type, and there’s not enough daylight to get anything done.
But, hey, I don’t need to worry about mosquitoes.
I’ve got an ask for you, right up front this week, wherever you are listening to the show, take a second and ‘like’ it and/or leave a quick comment. This gives us some ‘noticeability’.
Also, If you haven’t, go take a look and comment on our website, oldmanapocalypse.com – I drop all these outro notes there with the links and I’m going to start doing more short articles there as well.
I’m in the early stages of consolidating my web sites. I have a half a dozen or so that I own. I just bought ChrisRussellAuthor.com and I’m going to consolidate under that.
The first book in the novelization of the After the apocalypse series, ‘the old man’, is in the capable hands of our publisher and should see the light of day in the next couple weeks.
The second season manuscript is off to structural edit.
By the way, my structural editor is Christine over at www.clevereditors.com – feel free to reach out to her if you need help with that unpublished novel gathering dust in your bottom drawer, and tell her I sent you.
My stretch goal would be to get all five seasons through the publishing process as a set by the end of 2025 – but I’m not promising anything.
I am unreasonably excited to hold the book in my hands.
By the way, I know some of you are cross-over listeners from my other podcast, RunRunLive. That’s a long-distance running, interview-based podcast that I’ve been doing for over 15 years and 500+ shows, millions of downloads.
If you’re interested in hearing a different side of my life/voice – just search your podcast feed for RunRunLive – all one word.
Like I said, it’s cold outside these days New England, where I live, but it’s warmer in my office because I am insulated by teetering piles of old books.
One of those old books keeping me warm, that I just finished reading, is “Islands in the Stream” by Hemmingway.
This particular copy is a used paperback from the 1970’s, or maybe 80’s, because there is no copyright date in the front matter. Because I looked. It’s one of the things I do when I open a used book so I can position it in time – get a bearing. But it must be from somewhere after 1977, because it has a picture of the actor George C. Scott on the cover, taken from a movie made based on the book that was released in 1977.
I have not seen this movie, I’ve never even heard of this movie, but now I kinda want to, because to attain such anonymity it must be hilariously bad.
The novel was published in posthumously 1970 by Papa’s last wife Mary after his death. But, he originally wrote it in 1950-1951 as what he called his ‘Islands’ novel.
It is a progression of 3 novellas that follow the same character across three phases of that character’s life. This is what Hemmingway was trying to do. Show the phases of a man’s life with the sea as the backdrop or canvas.
Why didn’t he publish it? I’m guessing he wasn’t happy with it.
I’m not going to ruin the plot for you, but I felt the first book, Bimini, was the best of the three. It felt alive and crisp. The prose was classic Hemmingway. The characters were strong, and the dialogue was sparse and snappy like you would expect from the master.
The second book was darker and not as well written in my humble opinion. Maybe this darkening of a man’s life across time echoes Hemmingway’s own life experience. The characters are looser and less lovable as they wallow in depression and alcoholism.
The third book comes off as a bit farcical, knowing what we know about Hemmingway pretending to chase U boats during World War Two. It reads like a parody of a Robb White novel. It’s out of place, neither dark nor heroic.
I think I can see what he’s trying to do across the arc of the three books. We follow the artist protagonist through the phases of his life, his challenges, loss and final resolution. But, for me at least, it doesn’t work.
The novels, especially the last two, read like they were written by someone pretending to be Hemingway. That’s probably why he never published it – he knew it did not accomplish what it set out to do.
I think this arc of the three books could have worked if he had leaned into the dark tragedy of life. The artist’s struggle against the world and age and circumstance stalking him and closing in.
This would make it more like The Swimmer, by John Cheever – a masterpiece of a short story – and a passable movie with Burt Lancaster - because that’s what it felt like to me.
It left me sad. Sad that the author could not rationalize the darkness of life.
But, even as a missed opportunity, it is still Hemmingway and by God you’ll find some joyous prose nuggets in there.
It’s worth a read, if nothing else than to complete the cannon.
With that, I think I have now read almost everything by Hemmingway.
Which in itself make me sad.
But I’m a better writer for it.
Don’t forget to like or leave a comment wherever you consume your podcasts.
Prepare yourself for the Book One launch party.
We’re going to have mulled cider and clowns…you know, the kind of clowns that hang out in the sewers.
You gotta watch out for those.
Don’t let them into the bunker.
Throw another old book on the fire and keep surviving.
Comments