A Farewell to Arms
The novel where Hemingway's iceberg theory fails to suppress the grief beneath. Lieutenant Henry's retreat from Caporetto and his love for Catherine Barkley produce the most devastating final paragraphs in American fiction. War makes everything meaningless. Love makes it worse. Published in 1929.
Catherine agrees with Frederic and little else: “insipid, silly and annoying,” says one reader, while another finished the book and admits “I’ve already forgotten her name.” Frederic is no easier company, “self-absorbed, unthinking, unfeeling,” which leaves the central romance without a person on either side of it, a couple critics describe as “in love with the idea of being in love.” The stripped dialogue creates its own confusion, with readers flagging pages where there is “absolutely no indication of who is saying what.” Between the retreat and the hospital sits a great deal of countryside and drinking that reads as “a travel log written by a soldier.” “He went there and had a beer.”
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
