A Farewell to Arms: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

This was the first book in a really long time that kept me reading past 1am.

Hemingway uses love and war to find a bit of truth. Life breaks you--it kills you--if you're "very good" or "very brave." Nature washes over humanity like a flood, merely moving over anyone that lays down for it, but crushing people who stand against it. Hemingway pits Catherine & Frederick against the tide, while taking note of those just swimming along, like Count Greffi. At ninety-four, the Count has survived so long because he, like other old men, did not "grow wise...[but]careful." He hasn't "become more devout" either--perhaps he doesn't care about anything enough to be broken by its loss. He values life because it's all he's got. Catherine dies in the end standing against the flood: she was brave and good and gentle, and those qualities are the antithesis of a world that produces such a meaningless war. Frederick had the honor the bow out of that war when it became obscene to him, and loved Catherine so much she took away his loneliness. He was broken by her death, and I wonder if it will kill him in the rain on the way back to his hotel. Hemmingway wrote a romantic story, and a realistic war novel, but he also wrote something about the difference between living and just existing. That's why this book is great.