Customer Reviews

Across the River and Into the Trees

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This is a book meant, like most of Hemingway, to be read slowly. Originally received with mixed reviews, now unhesitatingly dismissed, it is his most culturally rich, most allusionistic, most finely structured novel. And the one most subject to crude and hasty misinterpretation. Some of the chapters read as beautifully as the finest short stories, though the cynicism and wisdom of age now simmers and seathes beneath them. In old Europe where the May-September marriage is not considered perverse, where smug American market-aggression and cultural vacuity are givens, where the destruction of the war still (then) dominates everyone's daily reality, where the loss of the WW II generation - though less celebrated - was far more devastating; in other words, where the contextual fits and insights are better appreciated, this book fits and comprehensively glows. It is his best on art history and culture, on mortality, on bureaucracy and antiestablishmentarianism, rich (som! etimes prophetic) in military history and political contemporaneity, and dotted with numerous literary judgments, often savage in the Colonel's self-educated bombast (but not contraty to Hemingway's beliefs). The schizoid extremes of the Colonel constitute Hemingway's perhaps most profound personal portrait anywhere; the dawning intelligence, quiet dignity, and intelligent denials of Renata are anything but "accommodating cardboard female," as so many are wont to hastily claim. The cross generational allegory and the very concern about how generations feed each other lie well beyond the ken of wise-a** critics and p-c faddists, but ring sadly relevant to the displacement we see so clearly now fifty years later. An extremely well structured, beautifully descriptive, at times savagely satirical, but sadly lonely book set in historically mystic and unapologetically byzantine, old-tough Venice - after modern war. It is the acculturated- (though unpolished-), survivin! g-warrior sequel to For Whom the Bell Tolls, wiser now in t! he bombed out European aftermath. It is personal and universal at the same time in its profound regret, deep reverence for life, and cantankerous but accepting self assessment. Read it slowly, carefully, luxuriatingly. Innure yourself against the colonel's cliche's and bluster (he is not a fancy speech former, but he is groping after central value and meaning, however suspect in post modern parlance), consider Renata more carefully than nations raised on Hollywood's idiotic icons can - see HER management of Cantwell - and you will come away breathless, knowing the only thing that prevents you from getting more out of the book is the time you wish to allow before reading it again. The elegaic, autumnal beauty alone will bring the poetic reader back.

This novel encapsulates all the frustrations of late Hemingway. It begins well, but lapses rapidly into sollipsism and self-parody. Just when the reader has his arm cocked to hurl it across the room, the novel improves; and just when the reader leans forward, savoring the Hemingway prose and waiting for what happens next, it goes bad again.

Like The Garden of Eden and Islands in the Stream, Across the River and Into the Trees contains wonderful elements that are worthy of the best Hemingway but it is marred by a central flaw: There seems to be no compelling reason for the book to exist other than to update Hemingway's personal mythology.

Hemingway's early work was powered by several powerful elements: the author's willingness to face hard realities unflinchingly and without romanticism; and an ability to frame his characters' situations so that they took on the force of universal metaphors.

Alas, in this novel, flashes of the old brilliance can't overcome the main character's self-absorption and his creator's wishful thinking.

And yet . . . and yet . . . after I finished rereading Across the River and Into the Trees, I went to a bookstore and found that all the books I examined looked slight by comparison.

And the next day I found my emotions were very close to the surface, proof, I think, that Hemingway's power to move his readers and embed archetypal themes in his narratives persisted despite his decay.

Very strange.

Exactly what sort of book would one expect from a writer who had just written "For Whom the Bell Tolls"? I don't know either, but probably not this hushed, elegiac novel. It's not the brooding melancholy of "Across the River and Into the Trees" itself that's surprising - it's that the book contains no action and no climax of pretty much any sort, and that it still manages to be so good.

Essentially, the book is the restless consciousness of one Richard Cantwell, Colonel in the United States Army, veteran of two world wars, recipient of many grave wounds, who is travelling through Europe one last time to shoot some ducks, meet some old friends, and spend a couple of days with his last, real and only love, a nineteen-year-old (!) countess named Renate. The book is aptly titled - it flows like a quiet old river, slowly but surely and a bit sadly. Like many a Hemingway hero, Cantwell is stuck with an empty existence, a profession he doesn't much care for, and awareness of both of the above. Love Renate though he does, he lives in the past, constantly reliving this and that battle, moving imaginary troops one minute, then wondering about the meaning of it all the next.

Renate herself is the least realistic of all Hemingway women, and as a female lead she's poor indeed. That is not, however, the way she should be seen. She is described as having almost unworldly gentleness and purity, an enormous contrast to the colonel (esp. given her youth). In a way, she becomes almost a symbol of the youth the colonel has irrevocably lost, an epitome of everything he missed out on - and the stories of the battles he tells her become almost like religious confessions. In the end, Cantwell ruefully realizes that he cannot tell her everything, that she could not possibly understand all the sorrows he suffered and never was freed from, that he thus cannot be redeemed, and the book ends on a funereal note.

Lack of action notwithstanding, the poignant, honest self-analysis and wistful tone make this book beautiful in the same way a stately, quiet funeral dirge is. Cantwell is likely Hemingway's most autobiographical character - indeed, we get further inside his head than we did in Jake Barnes's, or Robert Jordan's, or Harry Morgan's - and probably well reflects Hemingway's own state of mind at the time. In the long mental soliloquys about politics, Europe, war and life in general, the line between author and character disappears. Indeed, it's difficult to imagine an American officer (of such rank) thinking in such terms - no, this is Hemingway himself, writing down his thoughts and feelings and donning a colonel's uniform for the occasion. And if you felt like that, you might well have come to the same conclusion the author did.

Almost all of Hemingway's tales include the loss of love, hope, and/or life. His novels are very well written but can be depressing. This novel was written in his later years and I think the hard-lived colonel it details is a depiction of Hemingway himself. He must have felt that his life was soon over and he learned to love at all the wrong times. The book was excellent however and did a worthy job of capturing average simple conversions in a colloquial type of manner.

I don't know why everyone is apt to be so sure this book is weak or sentimental. It's a difficult subject, what people call a tough ask; Hemingway is trying to describe the last luminous moments of a love that knows itself to be both utterly transcendant and also doomed. I think he succeeds, because the love scenes and their clumsiness and cliches and groped-for words are intespersed with thickly jargon-laden and nearly incomprehensible war recollections and also with perhaps the most radiant descriptions of Venice ever written (yes, better than Mann or Ruskin or James); the one of the Rialto market is especially powerful. This love has a place and a time; it's therefore also about the impossibility of even the purest love fully transcending these.

I am tired of eveyrone saying tsk tsk about Renata's age; surely this is simply realistic? Old alpha males do like young girls, and young girls are the only ones gentle and honest and tender enough to bother with alpha males as grumpy and difficult as the colonel. He knows this himself. And at nineteen you don't set limits on your own generosity as you do later. That's lovely to remember, even if you also remember what it turned out to cost you. Renata is not stupid just because she is not feisty or assertive or spunky. I am tired of the conflation of strength with these traits. The literary portrayal of women has become a kind of anxious hymn to restless self-assertion. Can't there also be women with more self-belief? Try this book and see if you think there can; I can guarantee that it's beautiful even if you end up disliking its content.

This was surprisingly my favorite Hemingway story in recent years. Readers in search of the typical bravado, bullfights and war scenes will be in for a shock. The dialogue between the main characters is really what drives this.

The novel is about the story of an army colonel finding the love of his life too late to enjoy her. It contains the bittersweet pain of a premature ending that all will know comes too soon. Both the colonel and his young countess realize they are on borrowed time, and Hemingway shares the pain with his readers. The foreshadowing is reminiscent of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" although it is not an action oriented novel per say.

Also touching is the undertone of a loving friendship built between the colonel and the staff at his favorite hotel. There too, the dialogue is at it's finest. You can read the care between old comrades, and feel the spirit of their kinship.

Read it expecting romantic dialogue intertwined with the pains of love, and you will enjoy it. Read it looking for the big game hunting or submarine search and you'll be disappointed.

Surely one of Ernest Hemingway's most memorable novels, Across the River and Into the Trees, is the touching story of love that comes too late.

First released in 1950 the novel covers three days in the life of Cantwell, a retired Army officer. He is now 50-years-old and has returned to the place where he nearly lost his life during World War II. Cantwell is a bitter man, feeling that he was unfairly demoted after losing a major part of his brigade during a forest battle. He was actually following orders, and believes the Army simply needed someone to blame and chose him.

He spends his time in Venice dictating his memoirs, railing against top brass - Eisenhower, Patton, Montgomery. He also becomes involved in a love affair with a 19-year-old girl. This character is said to be based, at least in part, on a young girl Hemingway met when he visited Venice in 1948.

For those unfamiliar with the story, there'll be no spoilers here by revealing the ending. Suffice it to say it is both moving and memorable.

It's thrilling to hear voice performer Boyd Gaines read. The opening lines "They started two hours before daylight, and at first, it was not necessary to break the ice across the canal as other boats had gone on ahead." set the stage for a remarkable performance. Gaines is an experienced award-winning stage, film, and television performer, and he brings this wide range of experience to his audio narration resulting in a stunning rendition of this classic tale.

- Gail Cooke

Again, I see why Ernest Hemingway is adored by so many. This story of an old Army Colonel in love with a wealthy young woman is quite moving. The realism is excellent. I won't give the book away but the emotional depth of this book is outstanding. I would recommend this book not only to Hemingway readers but to all those hopeless romantics out there.

Across the River and Into the Trees is definitely Hemingway at his weakest. But the thing is that even the weakest Hemingway is much better than what most mediocre writers produce in their entire lives. What we have here is a short plotless novel about an old army Colonel and his young mistress spending a romantic weekend in Venice. There is nothing inherently wrong with this set up: Venice is a beautiful city, and Hemingway describes it well; the relationship is unconventional, but believable (I recall that Hemingway had a very similar love affair at some point in his life); and last, the lack of plot is nothing new-- The Sun Also Rises was a brilliant bit of meandering. The reason why the novel is a failure is that the relationship between Renata and Col. Cantwell is dull, trite, and meaningless. The entire 280 pages is full of inane lines like "oh, don't talk so rough" and "you are my one and only love." The vast majority of these pages is taken up by conversations between the two lovers which is, unfortunately, the least interesting part of the novel. If Hemingway had spent more time exploring the Colonel's psyche and less time having him exchange trivialities, he might have pieced together a good book.

A perfect example of the ruined brilliance of this novel is on page 213 where the Colonel says "Every day is a new and fine illusion. But you can cut out everything phony about the illusion as though you would cut it with a straight-edge razor." Classic Hemingway. But then Renata follows up this great line by saying "Please never cut me," and he says "You are not cut-able." The profound insight of the conversation degenerates that quickly into mindless pillow talk.

In the end, this novel is definitely worth reading if you're a Hemingway completist, or even if you have any special affection for the city of Venice. I suspect too that former or current soldiers would especially relate to the Colonel's frustration and nostalgia after decades of harsh battle. But to someone new to Hemingway or someone looking for classic modernist literature, you're much better off reading The Sun Also Rises or even For Whom the Bell Tolls.

This story is set in Venice a few years after World War II, the main character is (former) US Army colonel Robert Cantwell. Col. Cantwell is a veteran of the European campaign and commanded an infantry regiment during the war, and is now dying of a heart condition. This story is the tale of his last few days. There are two main threads to this story. First, Col. Cantwell reflects on his life as a soldier, what he has seen, what he has done, and his regrets. He is somewhat angry and embittered, but is trying hard to put these emotions behind him. Second, this is a love story as Col. Cantwell has fallen in love with a young Venetian girl. He is experiencing true love probably for the first time in his life. He was married once previously, although that relationship ended poorly.

This is an introspective tale, and there is very little `action' in this story (I would say virtually none). It is really a character study of a man who has seen more than most men should, who is undergoing a great transformation through the love of the young woman Renata, but who ultimately realizes that he and his relationship are doomed by his age and failing health. I loved this story and thought it was one of the top novels written by EH, although judging from some of the other reviews, there are clearly many that felt otherwise. This is not, generally, considered to be one of EH's best works. This book is also an homage to Venice (I would love to have the means to lounge around the city as Cantwell and Renata do in this novel!), and it is a vehicle for EH to comment on the European War and some of the principal actors.

I found this to be a wonderfully engaging tale, better than some of the nominal EH classics. EH has wonderfully captured the emotions and regrets of Col. Cantwell. My enthusiastic opinion is not uniformly shared, however, and this book should be approached with caution. I think the reason that this novel is not generally loved is that there is virtually no `action'. This is an introspective story from start to finish. If you are new to EH and looking to read your first novel, you should not start here.