TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT by Ernest Hemingway is an unflinchingly racist product of its time.
The scary part is that many people today have inherited this painfully elitist mentality, but in the age of political correctness, it often takes secret recordings to expose the type of thinking that was published quite plainly here in the 1930s from a Nobel Prize winner, who is still today one of America's most celebrated storytellers.
I read this for a 'Most Popular Book Set in Your State Challenge' in my online book club, The Reading Cove. This cynical, disjointed book that uses 'nigger' and 'chink' as nouns almost gleefully in nearly every other line, is today in 2016 the most popular book set in the state of Florida.
What's it about? Basically about a crummy, homicidal sailor named Harry Morgan trying to survive in the Depression-era by using his boat to transport illegals and/or liquor between Cuba and the Florida Keys. He and his wife are basically trashy and poor, yet they never miss the opportunity to be gross elitists.
Harry suffers major setbacks, but keeps trying to make a go of things on his boat...you can't help but wonder why he didn't at least attempt to seek other work. But in the end, he got what he had coming, IMO. Racism aside, he wasn't a sympathetic character, even the narrative seemed to find him lacking, as it strayed to other pointless character POVs throughout the middle.
So overall, I couldn't recommend this story, but I suspect men can enjoy it more than women. While there was some dry humor sprinkled in, it's poorly structured, lacks focus and seems to explore the woes of the 'have nots' much more readily, with only a rushed, tacked-on glimpse at the 'haves' towards the end. C-.
The scary part is that many people today have inherited this painfully elitist mentality, but in the age of political correctness, it often takes secret recordings to expose the type of thinking that was published quite plainly here in the 1930s from a Nobel Prize winner, who is still today one of America's most celebrated storytellers.
I read this for a 'Most Popular Book Set in Your State Challenge' in my online book club, The Reading Cove. This cynical, disjointed book that uses 'nigger' and 'chink' as nouns almost gleefully in nearly every other line, is today in 2016 the most popular book set in the state of Florida.
What's it about? Basically about a crummy, homicidal sailor named Harry Morgan trying to survive in the Depression-era by using his boat to transport illegals and/or liquor between Cuba and the Florida Keys. He and his wife are basically trashy and poor, yet they never miss the opportunity to be gross elitists.
Harry suffers major setbacks, but keeps trying to make a go of things on his boat...you can't help but wonder why he didn't at least attempt to seek other work. But in the end, he got what he had coming, IMO. Racism aside, he wasn't a sympathetic character, even the narrative seemed to find him lacking, as it strayed to other pointless character POVs throughout the middle.
So overall, I couldn't recommend this story, but I suspect men can enjoy it more than women. While there was some dry humor sprinkled in, it's poorly structured, lacks focus and seems to explore the woes of the 'have nots' much more readily, with only a rushed, tacked-on glimpse at the 'haves' towards the end. C-.
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