While browsing through a bookstore at the Portland airport on Saturday, I picked up a copy of “
For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway that was on sale for $7. Despite living in Oak Park (Hemingway’s birthplace) for 16 years, I never actually read one of his books until now. I finished the 470 page novel just before noon today. Here is what I think. One of the purposes of a novel is to create a sense of time and place so real that you enter into it completely. I told Marlene when I came to the end that if Robert Jordan or Maria or Pilar or Pablo or Augustin or Anselmo came through the door, I would know them instantly. That’s what great writing does. It brings you into a new world that you haven’t seen before and makes you part of it.
By the way I believe I read somewhere that Hemingway rewrote the ending of the novel something like 26 times. When asked why, he replied, “To get the words right.”
I would put “For Whom the Bell Tolls” up there with my two other favorite novels—"All the King’s Men” by Robert Penn Warren and “The Wall” by John Hersey.
