To Have and Have Not

Hemingway is not one for happy endings. That's part of what makes his prose so hauntingly beautiful.

Halfway through "To Have and Have Not" I was thinking it might be my favorite Hemingway novel. By the time I finished I wasn't sure what I felt.

Then I remembered the words Mark Twain penned about his classic tale "Huckleberry Finn":

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
                                                  BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
                                                   Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance."

Sometimes you just have to enjoy the story, and in order to do that it means you stop trying to find the lesson in it. When a book includues murder, robbery, adultery and suicide as its main arteries, it's a bit hard not to attempt to find some sort of redeeming lesson to take from it.

As hard as I try I can't seem to find it.

A good story is a good story.

No matter how depressing.