From Today in Literature: Ernest Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls
On this day in 1940 Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls was published. It had been over a decade since A Farewell to Arms, and though there had been a handful of books since, the critics had not thought much of them. About this one, many agreed with Edmund Wilson: "Hemingway the artist is with us again; and it is like having an old friend back." Sales kept pace, with half a million copies sold in the first six months, and a record-setting film deal. There were dissenting voices, some of them raised at Hemingway's view of the Spanish Civil War, some of them at his love-making. This is the famous moment in chapter thirteen when everything goes "red, orange, gold-red" for Maria and the earth moves for Robert Jordan:"For him it was a dark passage which led to nowhere, then to nowhere, then again to nowhere, once again to nowhere, always and forever to nowhere, heavy on the elbows in the earth to nowhere, dark, never any end to nowhere, hung on all time always to unknowing nowhere, this time and again for always to nowhere, now not to be borne once again always and to nowhere, now beyond all bearing up, up, up and into nowhere, suddenly scaldingly, holdingly all nowhere gone and time absolutely still and they were both there, time having stopped and he felt the earth move out and away from under them."
Song for Woody, by Bob Dylan. This was one of two songs writtenby Dylan on his first album ("Bob Dylan"), recorded this day in 1961:
Posted by Vanderleun at October 20, 2003 10:19 PM...I'm out I'm out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin' a road other men have gone down
I'm seein' your world of people and things
Of paupers and peasants and princes and kings.Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
'Bout a funny old world that's comin' along
See, it's sick and it's hungry and it's tired and it's torn
It looks like it's dyin' and it's hardly been born.
