Across the River and into the Trees (Hardcover)

by Ernest Hemingway (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

In the fall of 1948, Ernest Hemingway made his first extended visit to Italy in thirty years. His reacquaintance with Venice, a city he loved, provided the inspiration for Across the River and into the Trees, the story of Richard Cantwell, a war-ravaged American colonel stationed in Italy at the close of the Second World War, and his love for a young Italian countess. A poignant, bittersweet homage to love that overpowers reason, to the resilience of the human spirit, and to the worldweary beauty and majesty of Venice, Across the River and into the Trees stands as Hemingway's statement of defiance in response to the great dehumanizing atrocities of the Second World War. Hemingway's last full-length novel published in his lifetime, it moved John O'Hara in The New York Times Book Review to call him "the most important author since Shakespeare."

About the Author
Ernest Hemingway ranks as the most famous of twentieth-century American writers; like Mark Twain, Hemingway is one of those rare authors most people know about, whether they have read him or not. The difference is that Twain, with his white suit, ubiquitous cigar, and easy wit, survives in the public imagination as a basically, lovable figure, while the deeply imprinted image of Hemingway as rugged and macho has been much less universally admired, for all his fame. Hemingway has been regarded less as a writer dedicated to his craft than as a man of action who happened to be afflicted with genius. When he won the Nobel Prize in 1954, Time magazine reported the news under Heroes rather than Books and went on to describe the author as "a globe-trotting expert on bullfights, booze, women, wars, big game hunting, deep sea fishing, and courage." Hemingway did in fact address all those subjects in his books, and he acquired his expertise through well-reported acts of participation as well as of observation; by going to all the wars of his time, hunting and fishing for great beasts, marrying four times, occasionally getting into fistfights, drinking too much, and becoming, in the end, a worldwide celebrity recognizable for his signature beard and challenging physical pursuits.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (April 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684844648
• ISBN-13: 978-0684844640
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #429,221 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hemingway's and 20th century's most underrated novel, July 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Across The River And Into The Trees (Paperback)

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.

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strange at first, but very good nonetheless., January 6, 2002

By	Angry Mofo "angrymofo" - See all my reviews

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.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moving, February 1, 2000

By	Adam (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Across The River And Into The Trees (Paperback)

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.