I liked the one where Catherine and the android took off in the spaceship together

Did you feel disappointed by the end of A FAREWELL TO ARMS? Don't worry, there are 46 more! And they're all in Simon & Schuster's new edition of the Hemingway novel (out next week). This artifact seems like as good a reason as any to continue to do some writing in longhand.

Take the Flavorwire 30 Before 30 Challenge, If You Dare

It's been at least 15 minutes since we've contended with one of those must-read lists, so let the games begin! Flavorwire just posted a "30 Books to Read Before You are 30" list, responding to a similar Divine Caroline piece. Conveniently, I still have a year and change to do something about these lists, so it's not too late to really make an impact. But should I bother?

Notes on the Flavorwire list:

• 20.5 out of 30 isn't bad (the half-point is for reading THE ODYSSEY, but not THE ILIAD). 
• Seeing somewhat of an emphasis on graphic novels between MAUS and GHOST WORLD.Two books out of thirty is significant -- not that I'm complaining,
• It's a shame that the author had to point out that PRIDE AND PREJUDICE is important to read "even for guys." As if there's some kind of mythic Lady List out there. (No boys can like Jane Austen! Back in the clubhouse!)
• I had no idea CAT'S CRADLE was Kurt Vonnegut's thesis. What an eternal badass.
• The described "best book in the Western canon" is -- a stretch. 
• All this said, I am surprised when I meet someone around my age who hasn't read 1984, THE SUN ALSO RISES, ON THE ROAD, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, THE GREAT GATSBY, LORD OF THE FLIES, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and FAHRENHEIT 451. (There are certainly

And as for the Divine Caroline piece:

• I did slightly worse on this - 18/30 - attributed to the works of classic nonfiction whose excerpts I didn't count as having read the whole book.
• I had to look up FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS to figure out whether I had read it. Not an encouraging sign. (Although, once I did, I realized I had read it while I was in Spain and on a spree of "books about Spain.") 
• THE MASTER AND MARGARITA was the book my old (as in previous) Russian teacher said was the essential volume of Russian lit. Take it as you will. (I still never got to it, because I was busy swooning over EUGENE ONEGIN because that's how I roll.)
• But seriously: has anyone here actually read all of ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES? Elizabeth, this is your category to lose, I think!

Pulitzer fiction juror: It's the board's fault

Take it away, Maureen Corrigan:

"Like everyone else, we three jurors found out Monday that there would be no 2012 prize in fiction. That terrible news capped what was otherwise the greatest honor of my career as a book critic and professor of literature."

After reading 300-plus novels and short-story collections, Corrigan, Susan Larson and Michael Cunningham made their pick in November, Corrigan told the Washington Post.

"We were not told to stick to the middlebrow, nor did we egg each other on to aim for the edgy. Our directive was to nominate 'distinguished' works of fiction, published in book form in 2011 that, ideally, spoke to American themes."

She suggests THE PALE KING was taken out because it's unfinished (true), TRAIN DREAMS because it was short (true) and already published in the Paris Review (also true), and SWAMPLANDIA! because its author is young (true but specious).

"We’ll never know why the Pulitzer board declined to award the prize this year, because, as is the board members’ right, they’ve drawn their Wizard of Oz curtain closed tight. We jurors have heard only the same explanation that everyone else has heard: The board could not reach a majority vote on any of the novels. I’d like to think that THE PALE KING, TRAIN DREAMS and SWAMPLANDIA! each garnered such fierce partisans on the board that no compromise could be reached. Right. Whenever I succumb to that fantasy, the words written by the winner of the 1953 Pulitzer Prize in fiction ring in my head: 'Isn’t it pretty to think so?'"

That's a SUN ALSO RISES reference, of course. Don't mess with English professors, they will quote you. Corrigan's suggestions to fix this problem are to allow the jury final say (unlikely), allow the board to ask the jury for alternate selections (kind of icky and political) or change the voting rules so the winner doesn't need a majority (might be the best). Was Corrigan wrong to turn out the lining of all this? What do you think they should do?

"It takes great discipline to stay sloppy drunk for three hours and still be smart and engaging. I bet you’ve never achieved that. (If you think you have, your memory is lying.) So raise a brimming glass to Elevator Repair Service, which exists in what appears to be a state of perpetual and severe intoxication for the entirety of 'The Select (The Sun Also Rises),' which opened Sunday night at the New York Theater Workshop."

--Anyone want to let Ben Brantley in on the "secret" that that's likely not real alcohol up there onstage? Here's my review of the same show, which may commit errors but at least not that one.

Top 5 Books I Want To Reread Right Now

(but all I have time to do is write a blog post about them)

• Betty Smith, A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN (since last year, apparently?)
• Ernest Hemingway, THE SUN ALSO RISES (see: Tuesday)
• John Feinstein, HARD COURTS (since I went to the U.S. Open)
• Jonathan Franzen, THE CORRECTIONS (since: I read FREEDOM, probably)
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE GREAT GATSBY (perennial)

What would Hemingway drink?

The Vintage Anchor Tumblr posts a top 10 list of alcohol-fueled novels. I just saw a terrific play called "The Select" based on #5 THE SUN ALSO RISES, and after watching fictional people drink for three and a half hours I felt a little drunk myself. Also, I wondered for the 85th literature-related time what Pernod tastes like. GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT reeks with the stuff.

While we're mentioning Hemingway (who has been on my mind a lot recently) I keep going to bars that offer a "Hemingway daiquiri" and ordering it because I have doubts about its authenticity. First, it's hard to imagine Hemingway ordering something called a daiquiri, as I can barely get the word out with a straight face. It is a Miami-housewife-from-the-50s word. And second, what's so particular about it? It's just a daiquiri with no fruit flavor, or if you like, a margarita with rum instead of tequila. Food & Wine cites William Grimes referring to these as "lime slurpees"; Rumdood.com (...I know) traces it back to a bar in Havana Hemingway (I will not refer to him as Papa, please, thanks) used to frequent and says you need crushed ice to make it authentic. Now crushed ice, I can get behind, but the ones I have consumed so far did not have crushed ice in them, but were margarita-green and served in martini glasses.

The martini glass seems to be the worst affront, for it is not a practical glass. But this article on Liquor.com with its emphasis on the tartness of the so-called Hemingway daiquiri makes me think I was getting the wrong drink all along, and should have been imbibing something more in the gimlet way. (I'm a big fan of gimlets, and it's hard to get a decent one.) Or maybe they were the wrong limes. Maybe we should be asking how Hemingway was as prolific as he was if he spent all his time fussing at bartenders... or else he wasn't that picky.

Anyway, my wavering investigations into the topic suggest one should order a Dark & Stormy instead; it suits everybody. Or a caipirinha if it's available.

Hemingway would probably have gone to the theatre more if there were bullfighters.

Elevator Repair Service, the New York theatre company who adapted the entire first section of THE SOUND AND THE FURY onstage, will be back for what is billed as its final installment in the great American literature series with their adaptation of THE SUN ALSO RISES this fall. I know I've read THE SUN ALSO RISES but it took me a while to think about whether I liked it or not; I think I liked the book itself, not so much the common interpretation of what it's about as a stray scornful comment here would indicate. (Because why do I even have a blog, etc.) I guess I'm due for a re-read earlier than expected.

What I Learned About Famous Authors From Watching "Midnight In Paris" (dir. Woody Allen, 2011)

(Spoilers.)

• It's okay to call T.S. Eliot "Tom" if that's how he introduces himself.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald is a nice dude but his hair is questionable. And his wife is 12, if not in real age than in behavior and stature.
• Alice B. Toklas doesn't talk and is practically invisible.
• Ernest Hemingway would not be that much fun to hang out with, in part because he has to work his man-credentials into every conversation. Also, he hates you. He'll still get a drink with you, but he hates you.
• That Djuna Barnes, man, she can dance.
• It's fun to hang out, but in the end Gertrude Stein is the only one who will actively help you get your shit together.

Please, make this movie

"If the history of the American sentence were a John Ford movie, its second act would conclude with the young Ernest walking into a saloon, finding an etiolated Henry James slumped at the bar in a haze of indecision, and shooting him dead."

And Jimmy Buffett didn't have the correct visa to enter Margaritaville

Turns out Ernest Hemingway didn't keep cats in Key West:

[The Ernest Hemingway House] is a privately owned and operated business that has brilliantly capitalized on three things in the following order: people love cats, people love Ernest Hemingway, and Ernest Hemingway loved cats... In a 1994 interview with the Miami Herald, Patrick Hemingway stated the cats in the picture were his neighbors' who wrote in to the paper to confirm. The cat myth began with Bernice Dickson, who bought the Hemingway house in 1964 and opened the estate as a tourist attraction. At some point she started breeding and selling six-toed cats, even sending them through the mail, and claming, "they are a special Asiatic breed that Mr. Hemingway had when he was here."

--A.N. Devers for Lapham's Quarterly, "House Hunters." My life is over I'd rather see Hemingway's Cuba, frankly.

Bad romance

The Daily Beast rounds up eight great "literary love affairs," including the Shelley-Byron-Shelley love triangle, but I think we can do better. The only thing worth noting of Norman Mailer and his 18th 6th wife is that someone still married him after he tried to kill one of his other wives. But then, I'm sure that's what they said about Henry VIII. Hemingway wrote a play about his and Martha Gellhorn's relationship called "The Fifth Column" that is probably his most moving work, and (thus?) naturally very hard to see staged.

Monday Bouquet: Lewis, Sedaris, Salinger Again

Gawker: The Brad Pitt-Steven Soderbergh adaptation of MONEYBALL is in big trouble because of alleged script issues. Having read MONEYBALL last year among other baseball books, I have no reason to suspect this won't be snapped up by another studio, hopefully one that has a cool idea on how to illustrate statistical principles without putting audiences to sleep. Not loving the idea of Pitt as Billy Beane, but Demetri Martin as Paul de Podesta? Interesting.

Boston.com: NH public school pulls Sedaris, Hemingway, King, Lippmann stories from curriculum. This probably happens so often it barely merits a mention, but while we're here, listen to Sedaris reading "I Like Guys" on "This American Life," because it might make you laugh and break your heart. And since I really was assigned "Hills Like White Elephants" in high school: Do these same students have to read THE SUN ALSO RISES? 'Cause it would sure be hilarious if they were allowed to read about the tragedy of a red-blooded American male not being able to express himself in the sack, but not about the potential consequences of same.

NYT Week in Review: "Get A Life, Holden Caulfield" CATCHER IN THE RYE may not be catching as many high schoolers' eyes as it did in decades past, because the kids today, they're all about their text messagin' and "Gossip Girl" watchin' and prescription drug takin'. (All mentioned in the article!) The socioeconomic angle on it is valid, but then I hit this sentence: "Today’s pop culture heroes, it seems, are the nerds who conquer the world — like Harry [Potter] — not the beautiful losers who reject it." Why didn't any of you call me during the part of history where nerds conquered the world? Related: John Hodgman's speech at the Radio and TV Correspondents' Dinner this weekend, in which he dwells at hilarious length on the question of whether the President is a nerd. (Via @kenkrim on Twitter.)