After an incredibly challenging, difficult and irritating year (not referring to my writing, although there have been some rough spots there as well), my family and I will be embarking on a 5 day cruise to Bermuda on Saturday. It's been 5 years since our last cruise and this one can't come soon enough. Looking forward to passing under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge sipping cocktails, and that first full day at sea (sitting and reading and listening to those wonderful ocean sounds). I won't bring my laptop, so any writing I do will be scribbling ideas down in a notebook. But mostly, this will be a chance to read, swim, relax and recharge the batteries.
Have a great time, Ed! I love cruises -- they are so relaxing. I'm off to the beach, but my kids will be there, so it won't be as relaxing as I fantasize.
Yay, have fun Can't even imagine what that's like anymore, the sun, the Caribbean... and here we have rain, and rain, and more rain...
Emjoy the time off In five days I will be... Oh wait, in work, probably reading this forum instead of working.
[MENTION=1349]Cogito[/MENTION] - there was a time I would have jumped at the chance for that. I had a mad crush on Mary Ann. Thanks, all.
Thanks for all the good wishes. Got back this morning. Five days (2 in Bermuda) was way too short, but it was what we could work out for this year. Spent a day at Horseshoe Bay and another in Hamilton. I love the "birdcage" on the corner of Queen and Front Streets. We were just passing it when an afternoon squall hit, and we ducked into a bookstore. I happened to see a copy of Hemingway's To Have and Have Not and picked it up for the day at sea coming home. Finished it in one day, too. Nothing like reading on the balcony as the sea drifts by at a leisurely 18 knots. Travel by ship is, to me, the most soothing there is. Probably goes back to when my father worked for Cunard Line. On the ferry from Hamilton back to King's Wharf, we sat with a couple and their daughter, a family from Pittsburgh. We wound up having one of those stream-of-consciousness conversations that bounced from the Steelers to student loans to opera to the Vietnam War and the draft. I got to tell my story about how I went for my pre-induction physical on a Friday in October of '72 and met my wife on Sunday (some weekend!). I had thought I'd use the trip as a chance to resolve some problems I'm having with my current project. Instead, I managed to hatch an interesting descriptive passage I can't currently use and a whole new story idea that I like so much I couldn't sleep the last night on board. I jotted down a few pages of outline and tried to stuff it in the back of my mind. Then, driving home on the Belt Parkway after we got off the ship, I finally hit upon an idea to solve one of the problems in my current project. So, all in all, a good vacation. The only downside was my son, who forgot to put sunscreen on his back and shoulders at Horseshoe Bay and wound up char-broiled. Ah, the joys of being Irish!
Welcome back, Ed! Glad you had a good time. I remember the old days when I used to vacation in Cancun every year. I'd get sunburned, and when I got home, for about a week afterwards, every time I pulled off my shirt I'd have to shake skin peelings out of it. Ugh. How was To Have and Have Not, by the way? It's one of the few Hemingway novels I haven't read.
I hadn't read it, either, which was why I pounced. I enjoyed it immensely, although I had the oddest feeling that he was tacking subplots on as he went, like maybe he was afraid it wasn't going to be long enough. It also struck me as being a bit ahead of its time in some respects - I tried to imagine anyone in my family reading that in 1937 (that is, anyone who was around at the time) and not being shocked. I couldn't. What was really interesting to me was that I had been, for several days, reading Marquez' A Hundred Years of Solitude, and while I had been enjoying it, I had felt I was starting to lose my enthusiasm for it, which is why I was so glad to find the Hemingway. His prose just felt so much more crisp than Marquez', which is why I shot through it so quickly. I also picked up John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came In From the Cold in Hamilton. I started it the last night of the cruise, but I find myself suddenly craving more Hemingway and may put it aside while I reacquaint myself with his works. It's been a long time.
I love For Whom The Bell Tolls. The way Hemingway renders the Spanish is original and fascinating, and the character of Pilar is probably the strongest female character Hemingway ever created. There are other great characters, too, especially Anselmo and Pablo, and some tremendous set pieces. I found it terrific all the way through.
