James Salter is (was) an impressive technical writer and this collection of short stories, Last Night, certainly bears this out. But the writing here, and much of his writing, is so marred by misogyny and just casual disregard of women as anything else but a) sexual playthings of men and b) some post or ladder that a man uses to further his own goals and/or achievements, that the collection is spoiled.
There is little reason to read them.
It is not Steven Nadler’s fault that his book Manasseh ben Israel: Rabbi of Amsterdam (Jewish Lives) is a bit boring. Manasseh ben Israel, unfortunately, is not a very compelling figure. He seems to have been, perhaps, the world’s first celebrity rabbi for non-Jews. That is his claim to fame.
Many Jews seemed to dislike him – sometimes rabidly. Others were suspicious of his interactions with Messianic Christians. If anything, perhaps Manasseh ben Israel was ahead of his time: an ecumenical man living in a still very narrow religious world.
Say what you want about Hemingway the man, or even about the particulars of his writing: his treatment of woman characters, his casual, 1920-style antisemitism. All of this is true. But when you pick up a collection of his early writings like the collection of short fiction In Our Time, it feels as cool and crisp as ever. He had such an impact on the prose style of the twentieth century, yet this book still feels artistically radical, nearly a hundred years after its publication.
Smothering tender moments
Of blond hair in twines
Minutes
to hours to days
Even already gone now
All
the sense of love
And nothing but nothing
Of the promises and vows
Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises by Lesley M. M. Blume, exposes nothing really new about Hemingway or his roman à clef. We know that Hemingway was a jerk. He started early in life, and it continued until he died. I do not feel particularly sorry for any of the real-life people who Hemingway turned into characters in this novel. They knew Hemingway – they were artists or writers or fellow travelers – did they not know he would write about them if the story was good?
That said, I feel bad about the fate of Lady Duff Twysden. The author does an admirable job searching
for evidence of her life (both before and after The Sun) and there is
little remaining. She died young, and her
possessions appeared to have been thrown away. There is a very sad story about her we will probably never learn.
