A tableau of mostly drunken characters (and their various travails) in Key West. The focus is on a fisherman/bootlegger and the risks he takes to provide for his family. His life and marriage is contrasted with an adulterous writer whose wife leaves him for another man and various wealthy yachters. There's a fair amount of violence and a message of hopelessness.

اگر نتوانم بخوابم چه کنم؟ لابد آن را هم همانطور می فهمم که فهمیدم شوهرم از دست رفت. لابد آخرش میفهمم. لابد آدم همه چیز را در مدت زندگی کثیفش می فهمد. لابد میفهمد. خیال می کنم همین حالا هم دارم می فهمم. فقط کافیست دل آدم بمیرد. دیگر همه چیز سهل است. فقط آدم باید مرده باشد همان طور که بیشتر مردم بیشتر اوقات هستند. خیال می کنم این طور راحت است. خب، شروعش که بد نشد. اگر کاری که باید کرد همین است شروع خوبی کرده ام. خیال می کنم همین کار را هم باید کرد. لابد همین است. لابد کار به همین جا هم می رسد. خیلی خب. پس شروع خوبی کردم. حالا از همه خیلی جلوترم

Compared to "For Whom the Bell Tolls" this book was a disappointment; there was an emptiness at its heart lives without purpose. It is a good yarn and well written but it left me dissatisfied.

This was my third time reading it. The first was in 1999, borrowed from the local library when I read/re-read a lot of his books for his 100th birthday. The second was when I bought a copy with a Border's gift certificate that my wife had given me in 2007. This time was when I brought it with me to read during a trip to Key West for my birthday because he wrote it there and it takes place there.

The highlight of reading it this time was reading it in our Key West hotel room on the Sunday that Isaac blew through town. We were just a couple of blocks from the Southernmost Point.

This is one of his most noir books, powerfully first person, and uniquely so in that he speaks through the minds of many of the characters. It is everyday people dealing with the desperation of everyday life, in powerfully frank ways.

It was interesting going to Captain Tony's, the original spot for Sloppy Joe's, and sitting in the place that doesn't seemed to have changed much since Hemingway wrote about it and put several of the characters there in the book.

Often jarring in its depiction of hard lives in hard times, this may not be one of his critically acclaimed novels, but it has so much power that it continues to deserve to be read.

One of the lesser works of the master. There's limited coherence in this novel: a collection of loose stories, excellent in themselves, with protagonist Harry as a binding character. Also the underlying themes are variegated: the little man's fight against injustice and social misery, the contrast with the opulent life of the rich; the harshness of life, etc. Hemingway clearly experimented with the form, with sometimes beautiful effects, but - as said - there's no real unity in the book.

Oh I really wanted to love this book! I'm very aware that Hemingway is a literary genius and writes fabulous novels, but this book had me scratching my head. Basically I could summarize it in one sentence "A man drives his boat between Florida and Cuba and runs into violent and illegal happenings." And that. Is. It. I was really looking forward to reading Hemingway, as I never have before, and he is my Dad's favourite author but I just didn't get it the point of this novel. I'm not sure if there was some deeper meaning and I just missed it or if it was one of those realism stories, but not much went on at all. It was also very violent, and a lot of people were murdered. Which could be a positive if you like that kind of thing, but I do not. And at times the main character, Harry Morgan just bugged me! I didn't understand why he was so obsessed with his boat and refused to get a more stable and safer job. To sum it all up, I'm glad I tried this genre, but the lack of plot and obscene violence was a strange mixture between confusion and disgust that made it a very bizarre reading experience.

How do you get through nights if you can’t sleep?
I guess you find out like you find out how it feels to lose your husband. I guess you find out all right. I guess you find out everything in this goddamned life. I guess you do all right. I guess I’m probably finding out right now. You just go dead inside and everything is easy. You just get dead like most people are most of the time. I guess that’s how it is all right. I guess that’s just about what happens to you. Well, I’ve got a good start. I’ve got a good start if that’s what you have to do. I guess that’s what you have to do all right. I guess that’s it. I guess that’s what it comes to. All right. I got a good start then. I’m way ahead of everybody now.
Outside it was a lovely, cool, sub-tropical winter day and the palm branches were sawing in the light north wind. Some winter people rode by the house on bicycles. They were laughing. In the big yard of the house across the street a peacock squawked.
Through the window you could see the sea looking hard and new and blue in the winter light.
A large white yacht was coming into the harbor and seven miles out on the horizon you could see a tanker, small and neat in profile against the blue sea, hugging the reef as she made to the westward to keep from wasting fuel against the stream.

Hemingway writes brilliantly - and there are some amazing scenes in this book. It starts great!

For me the ending feels disjointed and not thought out and sometimes I feel like Hemingway is more interested in being Hemingway than in pursuing a specific artistic intent.

Still I did enjoy this book, just not quite as much as I thought I might.

What a raw, primal, men’s book this is. Brutal writing by Hemingway and brutally honest.

The broken man who did wrong to his fellow man and his internal dialogue is as honest as it gets:

“What he was thinking as he watched him, was not pleasant. It is a mortal sin, he thought, a grave and deadly sin and a great cruelty, and while technically one’s religion may permit the ultimate result, I cannot pardon myself. On the other hand, a surgeon cannot desist while operating for fear of hurting the patient. But why must all the operations in life be performed without an anesthetic? If I had been a better man I would have let him beat me up. It would have been better for him. The poor stupid man. The poor homeless man. I ought to stay with him, but I know that is too much for him to bear. I am ashamed and disgusted with myself and I hate what I have done. It all may turn out badly too. But I must not think about that. I will now return to the anesthetic I have used for seventeen years and will not need much longer. Although it is probably a vice now for which I only invent excuses. Though at least it is a vice for which I am suited. But I wish I could help that poor man whom I am wronging.”

The woman’s psyche, the psyche of a wrecked, disheartened and hardened woman was explored too, opened up in a ferocious and truthful manner, an incessant flow of her mind, showing the deepest thoughts, feelings and reasonings one could imagine. A long passage incoming, but worth it – though if you plan on reading the book skip it, please, it will hit twice as hard in it’s natural flow:

“It makes you nervous, she thought. But you have to sleep. I wonder how Eddie would be if we were married. He would be running around with someone younger I suppose. I suppose they can’t help the way they’re built any more than we can. I just want a lot of it and I feel so fine, and being someone else or someone new doesn’t really mean a thing. It’s just it itself, and you would love them always if they gave it to you. The same one I mean. But they aren’t built that way. They want someone new, or someone younger, or someone that they shouldn’t have, or someone that looks like someone else. Or if you’re dark they want a blonde. Or if you’re blonde they go for a redhead. Or if you’re a redhead then it’s something else. A Jewish girl I guess, and if they’ve had really enough they want Chinese or Lesbians or goodness knows what. I don’t know. Or they just get tired, I suppose. You can’t blame them if that’s the way they are and I can’t help John’s liver either or that he’s drunk so much he isn’t any good. He was good. He was marvelous. He was. He really was. And Eddie is. But now he’s tight. I suppose I’ll end up a bitch. Maybe I’m one now. I suppose you never know when you get to be one. Only her best friends would tell her. You don’t read it in Mr. Winchell. That would be a good new thing for him to announce. Bitch-hood. Mrs. John Hollis canined into town from the coast. Better than babies. More common I guess. But women have a bad time really. The better you treat a man and the more you show him you love him the quicker he gets tired of you. I suppose the good ones are made to have a lot of wives but it’s awfully wearing trying to be a lot of wives yourself, and then someone simple takes him when he’s tired of that. I suppose we all end up as bitches but whose fault is it? The bitches have the most fun but you have to be awfully stupid really to be a good one. Like Helène Bradley. Stupid and well-intentioned and really selfish to be a good one. Probably I’m one already. They say you can’t tell and that you always think you’re not. There must be men who don’t get tired of you or of it. There must be. But who has them? The ones we know are all brought up wrong. Let’s not go into that now. No, not into that. Nor back to all those cars and all those dances. I wish that luminol would work. Damn Eddie, really. He shouldn’t have really gotten so tight. It isn’t fair, really. No one can help the way they’re built but getting tight has nothing to do with that. I suppose I am a bitch all right, but if I lie here now all night and can’t sleep I’ll go crazy and if I take too much of that damned stuff I’ll feel awfully all day tomorrow and then sometimes it won’t put you to sleep and anyway I’ll be cross and nervous and feel frightful […]”

The book is very different than the Humphrey Bogart film, which, although very good, has gotten rid of all the social commentary, the men’s angst against injustice, against the cruel soulless capital which forces them – on each part of the spectrum – to act as animals, to harden, to do things a man normally wouldn’t, to behave as beasts.

“They’ve got to get rid of us. You can see that, can’t you?”
“‘Why?”
“Because we are the desperate ones,” the man said. “The ones with nothing to lose. We are the completely brutalized ones. We’re worse than the stuff the original Spartacus worked with. But it’s tough to try to do anything with because we have been beaten so far that the only solace is booze and the only pride is in being able to take it.”

Short but great book.

Re-reading a book is its own unique experience. The plot and characters are already known, and the mind has the luxury to pay attention to details and ideas that tended to be overlooked on the initial journey. Re-reading is filled with information that is free to float into the reader’s view.

This is my second time reading To Have and Have Not and I would say that this time through was the more enjoyable of the two. My initial reading created the impression of a poorly assembled story that depicted the stereotypical Hemingway hero. Harry Morgan was created by Hemingway to suffer and to bear his burdens with dignity. Of all his novels, this one is probably the most simplistic when it comes to forcing a Hemingway hero to live by the “grace under pressure” code of conduct.

This time through, however, opened up the idea that To Have and Have Not was a dedication to the modern-day working poor, the “conches,” of Key West during the Great Depression. Based on my slowly acquired understanding of Hemingway, I believe that he had an affinity for these simple, hard-working people. Hemingway drank cheap rum with them in the clapboard bars of Kew West, and considered their hard work worthy of his respect.

The conches grubbed, fished, and smuggled in order to live, and they lived at the bottom of society. They were often times considered as outcasts by an absentee government. They were in the way of an outside desire to transform Key West into a luxury destination populated by the type of rich tourists depicted in Hemingway’s novel. The conches were also on the receiving end of fallout from the political turmoil and revolutionary fighting taking place in Cuba located just 90 miles away.

To Have and Have Not is still a poorly assembled novel, but it captures a people in their time. It’s a snapshot of them. Consequently, it captures a people that would have otherwise been forgotten.

Clearly not Hem’s greatest work sandwiched as it was between two of his great masterpieces about Spain, A Farewell to Arms and For Whom The Bell Tolls. I had read the first third of the book as part of his Complete Stories, but despite the action being well-described and the dialogues being as realistic as usual form Hemingway, the book as a whole comes off disjointed. This was a period of life for Hemingway during which his married life with Pauline was falling apart and his love affair with Martha was taking off (only to die out with a whimper almost as soon as they were married). The characters are taken from folks in his life and incidents both real and imagined. The description of Key West as it transitions from a disconnected backwater to a tourist trap (mostly owing to Hemingway’s celebrity) is vivid and makes me wish I had seen that older, wilder Key West rather than the drunk frat boy / Jimmy Buffett / oriental tourists taking selfies version that is has become since.
The interest for this particular book lies in its documenting of this period of H’s life, a few sections of stream of consciousness prose (particularly when Dorothy is masturbating towards the end), and the action scenes. It is to be read AFTER having hit the true highlights of H’s career: The Sun Also Rises, the Spanish novels mentioned above, and the The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingways.

Don't miss my review of the Meyer biography of Hemingway: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

"a man ... ain't got no ... hasn't got any ... can't really ... isn't any way out. No matter how ... a man alone ... ain't got no bloody chance."
tHarry Morgan

A novel of the Depression Era, To Have and Have Not follows the struggle of Harry Morgan to make ends meet, to live a decent life. He is a boat owner sailing the waters between Cuba and Key West, renting out to rich tourists lookinh for the thrill of big fish chasing. The novel opens with a spectacular gunfight in front of a bar in Havana and continues with an episode of marlin fishing in the Gulf Stream. Harry is one of the 'have nots' and, after one of the 'haves' pulls a fast one on him and disappears without paying for renting the boat, he is forced to accept shady jobs on the wrong side of the law. He has a wife and three girls to provide for. Smuggling persons and hard liquor in and out of Cuba is not for the faint hearted, and Harry Morgan is forced to get tough in order to survive. All I have is my cojones to peddle. . But his luck has turned against him and everything he tries seems to end badly.

The story is told through internal monologues and hard edged dialogue with Hemingway signature spare prose and with his typical protagonist of few words and brooding visage. The timeline is broken into separate episodes in Harry's career outside the law, each one illustrating another step down on the ladder of respectability and success. For the good parts, I really liked the time spent on the sea and the way the relationship of Harry with his wife is described. Most of the problems I had with the story come in the second half of the novel, where the author loses the focus and starts to write about a lot of secondary characters loafing around Key West and having little to no connections with Harry's story. I suspect Hemingway was on a deadline, had only enough material for a novella and filled in the required pages with several unconnected episodes from his work in progress pile. These additions have a strong autobiographical vibe, especially the episode of the alcoholic writer who has a row with his wife. An interesting literary device has the author jumping from ship to ship in the Key West harbour and look inside each cabin at the thoughts of the owners as each contemplate failure, despair, suicide, anguish, ill health, loneliness. I could see Hemingway lounging in his own boat on an evening, looking around at his neighbours in the marina and imagining their life stories, putting everything down in his notebook for future use. Another bother is that my edition always uses the N word for the black characters in the book, and to make matters worse these black characters are rather poorly constructed and illustrate an uncomfortable level of prejudice in an author I greatly admired in my youth.

My dissapointment may have another source : I have seen the movie version three or four times, and I was expecting something along the lines of Casablanca with a cool cucumber Bogey, Lauren Bacall swinging her hips with a wicked smile while she sings a jazz tune and some idealistic anti-Nazi message.



The novel is instead closer to the theme of futile struggle against fate from The Old Man and the Sea and to the social militancy of The Pearl by Steinbeck.