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- 16-MAY-2024 | Excerpt from “To Have and Have Not” by Ernest Hemingway
16-MAY-2024 | Excerpt from “To Have and Have Not” by Ernest Hemingway
Excerpt from “To Have and Have Not” by Ernest Hemingway
I’ll warn you, it’s a tad dark. But man, what a passage.
Beautiful repetition by embellishment. Crisp joinery between each string, as one deepens into the next.
You can really feel Hemingway ruminating here.
Some made the long drop from the apartment or the office window; some took it quietly in two-car garages with the motor running; some used the native tradition of the Colt or Smith and Wesson; those well-constructed implements that end insomnia, terminate remorse, cure cancer, avoid bankruptcy, and blast an exit from intolerable positions by the pressure of a finger; those admirable American instruments so easily carried, so sure of effect, so well designed to end the American dream when it becomes a nightmare, their only drawback the mess they leave for relatives to clean up.
“some” - “some” - “some” [do it with a revolver] → [now, what the revolver does]
“end” - “terminate” - “cure” - “avoid” - “blast an exit” [from what the revolver does] → [the qualities of said revolver]
“so” - “so” - “so”