Sad Young Man

A lot of people expected a big novel from burly young Author Hemingway. His short work ( In Our Time , 1925) bit deeply into life. He said things naturally, calmly, tersely, accurately. He wrote only about things he had experienced, mostly outdoors, as a doctor's son in northern Michigan and as a self-possessed young tramp in Europe. Philosophically his implication was: "Life's great. Don't let it rattle you."

Now his first novel is published and while his writing has acquired only a few affectations, his interests appear to have grown soggy with much sitting around sloppy café tables in the so-called Latin (it should be called American) quarter of Paris. He has chosen to immortalize the semi-humorous love tragedy of an insatiable young English War widow and an unmanned U.S. soldier. His title is borrowed from Ecclesiastes ; his motto about "a lost generation," from Gertrude Stein; his widow, Lady Brett Ashley, from Michael Arlen's Green Hat . She is repeatedly called "a nice piece," and "a good chap." She has a grim wit and not a shred of reticence. The hero failing, her other men are many, including a Princeton Jew and a Spanish bullfighter. The story, such as it is, comes from the eunuch, Jake, who is very generous, patient, clever and, of course, very sad.

The picture of cosmopolitan castaways going to prizefights, bars, bedrooms, bullrings in France and Spain is excessively accurate but not as trite as it might be. The ironic witticisms are amusing, for a few chapters. There is considerable emotion, consciously restrained, quite subtle. Experts may pronounce the book a masterpiece of sex-frustration psychology. But the reader is very much inclined to echo a remark that is one of Jake's favorites and, presumably, Author Hemingway's too, "Oh, what the hell!"