Group Read, January 2014: For Whom The Bell Tolls

Happy New Year all!

This is the thread for our January read, For Whom The Bell Tolls.

I read this book a couple of years ago and loved it - 5 stars. However I know others don't like Hemingway's style or attitudes so it will be interesting to read your comments.

I started reading For Whom the Bell Tolls some time in 2013, but didn't finish it, just read the first couple of chapters but it didn't draw me in so I put it away.
I'm still a bit on the fence about Hemingway, I like some of his work but not everything. I don't know if I'll have time to take up this one in January, but it might be a good idea to try to tackle it again with a group read, just to give me some 'back-up'.

I picked up a copy today in the library.... will be my next book after I finish the one I'm working on.

I've never been particularly impressed by Hemingway... the only thing I've ever enjoyed was the short story Hills Like White Elephants. So, I guess there's some hope since I did like one.

I read it and greatly disliked it, but not as much as his two others I read which I absolutely detested.

I'm with Polymathic on this particular title... despite The Old Man and the Sea being one of my favourite novels.

I am really angry now... Months ago I wanted to buy the audio version but was warned of by reviews saying it was "censored". Now I bought the only available Kindle version, because I didn't want to read a German translation and that's what I had to read today about 10% in within what must be just one page in a paper copy:

"That we blow up an obscene Bridge and then have to obscenely well obscenity ourselves off out of these mountains?"

(...)

"Go to the unprintable", Augustin said. "And unprint thyself."

(...)

"Yes, " said Robert Jordan. "If it is not unprintable", naming the principal obscenity that had larded the conversation.

(...)

"No", Augustin said. "From people less unprintably equipped than I"

(...)

"Care well for thy unprintable explosive"

It would be very funny it it wasn't so sad. I mean - what is the use of it? It's obviously all forms of the f-word. Which school child (I guess it was all done "for the impressionable souls of innocent kids" who'll probably later in the book not be saved from descriptions of bloody battle scenes) won't ask what this rubbish means? And what will parents/ teachers say then? "It's a bad, baaaaad word in the original and if you see that a great American author used it deliberately you might be tempted to use it yourself and that would be very bad for your soul" ?

This is war, those are people who might be ripped into pieces by some mine any moment. They are allowed to swear as much as they like! Censuring it this way takes them their dignity.

So - did you all get uncensored versions? I am now considering switching to a German translation if I can find one at my library.

I seem to recall there being "unprintables" in my paper edition as well.

> 6 I'm with you when it comes to the silliness of this censorship but

"Go to the unprintable", Augustin said. "And unprint thyself."

is an early candidate for quote of the year.

#8: That's what I thought - it could be really funny, if it weren't so sad.. Fact is that on the first occasion I didn't even get what was happening because the characters were just discussing a password they couldn't remember. I thought "obscene" must be the password and they were just playing around with it. This is my first acquaintance with such open censorship.

I read on a bit and there is a love scene where I didn't have the impression anything was removed or substituted. So whoever the censor was seems to be concerned exclusively with the swear words.

>8 Henrik_Madsen: Yeah, I found the sentences quite amusing.

You do realise that the "censor" here is Hemingway himself, I hope?

Andejons is right: Hemingway is the censor. I just read the book and actually liked it a lot that Hemingway references foul language with words such as 'unprintable' and 'obscenity'. For example, he translates the Spanish expression 'Me cago en la leche' (literally 'I shit in the milk') repeatedly as 'I obscenity in the milk'. I thought it quite original!

Wow, thank you! Then I am quite relieved, because that means at least the book will be complete. I feared the anonymous censor had maybe in other places changed or cut off parts of the story to his liking and I was just considering getting another edition to compare.

But seriously - how should one know that, not being very well read yet, and far from being a Hemingway expert? Lately books and even movies have been changed again and again (also thinking of some childrens' books in Germany, or "E.T.") in order to be more PC, so a "note to the reader" on the first page might be of use in this exceptional case.

Now I wonder how some people on amazon can complain about "foul language" if H. himself removed it all before publishing? Are there 2 versions in circulation?

I did realise it was Hemingway's own doing, but I can understand why people might be confused by it. I'm not really amused by it though; I mean, it's funny at first, and then I just found it annoying...

Deern in #13: I'm guessing the commenters on amazon are also assuming that it is censoring that was added later on and weren't aware that it was Hemingway's own doing.

#13. You can't really know that, I guess. I didn't either, but somehow it made sense to me because he also uses 'thy' and 'thou' which to me as not-native English, seems quite formal and old-fashioned. So was the censoring to me. I thought it funny because in other novels Hemingway isn't that prude (I don't know if this is the right word, I hope you know what I mean).

I just read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao some weeks ago which I think is on the 2010 list. It was full of untranslated Spanish swearing, and I thought that maybe this was the only way the author could get it past the editors. So Hemingway chose a different path for the same issue.

I didn't really wonder about the "thee" and "thou" - there are also some remote parts of Italy where similar forms are used, so I just thought "well translated". And Simone2 - you're right: From Hemingway I would have expected the cursing to be spelled out nicely and completely.

Anyway - thank you all for clarifying it. I am mainly relieved that I can read on now without having to fear for worse.

I didn't know either so thanks for clearing that up.

I intended to read the English edition but now I'm kind of curious to see how it's been translated.

I had assumed it was him and not an outside censor. I found the sentences themselves amusing, because it was so ridiculous, but yes, it was also annoying. It was one of the least annoying things he did, though, so that didn't really stick in my mind much, heh.

My friend has wanted me to read this for a long time. Maybe now's the time to attack it!

P.S. Thankfully mine has the obscenities included!

I am about half through the book now and still not sure what to make of it. I don't love it as I loved A Moveable Feast, but so far I like it much better than the pointless The Sun Also Rises (of which the objective probably was to show the pointlessness of the characters' lives in Spain, then it was very well done).

I don't hate it. It has some lengths and those dialogues often are too drawn out and repetitive and therefore not easy to read, but they are taken from life and the dynamics in the group are very well observed and honest.
Okay, that great love story doesn't touch me a bit, even if the earth has been shaking..
Pablo's woman is a very interesting and complex character. It is also interesting how the boredom of the waiting is interrupted by memories of violent acts (what happened in Pablo's village, the bull fights..). Those people have all suffered too much and now there isn't much left to say, except for those repetitive stupid phrases when they are drunk in the evening.

I am really struggling to get through this one... the repetitiveness of the conversations is driving me absolutely crazy. I'll admit I'm basically skimming at this point. I'm also about halfway through and keep hoping that something is going to happen sometime soon to move things along.

So far, this book has just reminded me why I don't like Hemingway.

I'm not quite a quarter of the way through because I'm also working on two other group reads simultaneously, but so far I am loving it! This is my first Hemingway and I'm really loving the atmosphere, "natural" dialogue and characters... Having just read and loved the much hated Where Angels Fear to Tread, apparently I'm meant to love what everyone hates!

I am now at 76% and will finish it either very late tonight or tomorrow. I am maybe less annoyed with the writing than others, because for my (foreign) ears it doesn't sound that rough. Apart from the love story I see it as an extremely honest account of Hemingway's war experiences.
The love story is such an obvious dramatic device to make Robert suddenly care for his own life and that of another person. I am unspoiled, but I guess it can only end with one or both of them dying. It's as sweetish as Toni and Maria in the West Side Story, but there it fit the context. Here I just don't care and want to go on with the bridge and the fates of the rest of the group.
I also like what he does with the language in the dialogues, when the one guy speaks Pidgin-Spanish with Roberto although he understands everything. Then in contrast to everyone else there's that other extremely eloquent guy (Fernando?). While I think the repetitiveness can be explained by the monotony of their lives, I was wondering about the constant mind-changings in the group. Pro-/anti-Roberto, pro-/anti-Pablo, pro-/anti-Roberto-and-Maria... And the over-use of "rabbit" is by now making me a bit aggressive.

This is my first Hemingway since The Old Man and the Sea in high school, and I didn't know what to expect. I've got an audio version which I'm enjoying very much. The "censored" words tripped me up for only a few moments. Since I've got an audio version, I know from experience that any kind of alterations from the author's work would be disclosed up front. There wasn't any such warning, so I had to assume that those were Hemingway's own words. I won't pretend to speculate on why that might have been done, since I've noticed other words that could be considered obscene which have been left intact, and obviously some very obscene behavior has been clearly described. But, the comments here have raised a question in my mind: is this not the way Hemingway originally wrote the story? I didn't think that he wrote the story and then went back after the fact and redacted some of the words -- did he?

The character I'm finding most interesting - at about the mid-point - is Pilar, Pablo's woman. She seems to have a great deal of power, and seems to have assumed it for herself from Pablo. Since it appears that Pablo used to be the undisputed leader and is recognized to be very intelligent, I'm curious about how or why that shift occurred.

The romance strikes me as trite, but since I'm not familiar with Hemingway's writing, I don't know whether that is significant for him or not. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I'll assume for now that he has put this in for a reason.

I agree with some of the other comments here - let's move on to the bridge already!

I typically like Hemingway, but this book, not so much. I think the main difference is his other books are short and he packs so much into each sentence, whereas this one is dragging on and on. I'm more than halfway done with the book and I feel the story is only now starting.

A note on the use of 'thee' and thou'... I wasn't sure what the point of this was, but I read on wikipedia that Hemingway was trying to capture the nuance of the Spanish language and their different forms of 'you'. I had kept forgetting that the conversations between Robert Jordan and Pablo's crew are in Spanish. I was amused by their conversation about Robert teaching Spanish, something like 'Why do you teach Spanish? Wouldn't it be easier for you to teach English? Since you speak English.'

#25 I thought that was a pretty amusing conversation, too. I talked to a high school Spanish teacher once who took students to Spain sometimes. He said that the Spanish he speaks, and teaches to his students, is very formal and old-fashioned. Maybe like the "thee" and "thou" being described in this book. He said that he can communicate in a Spanish-speaking country, but that natives can instantly recognize him as a foreigner by his speech patterns - not to mention his American accent!

I also read that about the Spanish, and it is right that in Spanish there is a formal and an informal word for 'you': 'usted' and 'tu', just like in French you use 'vous' en 'tu'.

However, the Spanish don't use those pronounces, except when they want to emphasize something. Normally, when you say 'I am a woman' in Spanish, it will be: 'Am a woman'. The 'Am' makes clear it is me I am referring to.

So I don't understand what wikipedia means in relation to the 'thee' and 'thou' Hemingway uses.

I usually enjoy Hemingway and that is also the case here. I'm about halfway through and not really desperate to get to the bridge yet, but I do expect to get there eventually!

I have been a bit puzzled by the Thee and Thou theme, but it seems plausible that Hemingway is trying to show nuances in Spanish. (He might have been wrong, like Simone2 says, but it could still be his intention.)

Any idea why the Spaniards are just 'Pablo' or 'Pinar' when 'Robert Jordan' is always 'Robert Jordan'?

I agree that the romance is pretty un-inspiring, but I like the development of the characters, especially Pablo. He might not be the most likeable but he is complex and probably more disturbed by the staged execution of the fascists in his hometown than he is letting on.

Generally I enjoy the reflections on the civil war as a civil war. Anselmo reflects on the need to atone for the great sins comitted, even though he thinks the actions have been justified.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but at the back of my mind is the idea that the thee/thou thing had something to with the fact that they were speaking Catalan, rather than Spanish, at times. I thought something about this was mentioned near the start of the book, but I could well be mistaken.

#29 Yes, I think you're right about that - I remember it, too

> 29 Now that you mention it, I also think you are right. I also think the story is located in Cataluna.

I finished the book last night and I loved the second half. Gripping portraits of people pushed to the limit.

>32 Henrik_Madsen: Well said Henrik. I finished too. The second half improved for me, but I still wasn't won over. I agree with Deern's spoiler comment about the role of the love scene. Perhaps this is why I was dry eyed over what should have been a teary last scene between Robert and Maria.

>33 aliciamay: I'm actually surprised that I liked the book as much as I did, because I agree that the love story was awfully uninspiring. I just never understood why Maria loved Robert or why Robert loved Maria.

>34 Henrik_Madsen: Call me old fashioned, but they don't even know eachother! What's love got to do with it? It's quite uninspiring indeed. And the Rabbit-calling worked on my nerves. Still I also liked the book a lot.

Finished today. Rather an abrupt ending, but - except for the parting of Robert and Maria - I thought it was well done. I don't usually get worked up about writing - I like good stories, but the writing is secondary. But in this book, I found myself impressed by the words. The dialogue, and especially the internal monologues, were the most natural I've run across in a book. Someone commented earlier about the repetitiveness of the speeches, which is true - but that is exactly the way people talk. Repeating themselves to emphasize a point, or just because they like the way it sounded. And Robert's internal monologues were the best - his arguing with himself and bargaining and the justifications of his actions, sounds a lot like what goes on inside my head sometimes.

I liked the book much, much more than I expected to.