A Farewell to Arms discussion

This book is one of the worst that I ever read, the characters, plot, flow, and especially writing style, infuriated, confused, and annoyed me. So why is Ernest Hemingway a "literary genius"?

Noah wrote: "This book is one of the worst that I ever read, the characters, plot, flow, and especially writing style, infuriated, confused, and annoyed me. So why is Ernest Hemingway a "literary genius"?"

Try reading some of the reviews. The information is there. We don't need to re-invent the wheel.

The book does show that war is not all about killing, heroic or otherwise. The human costs of war touch on all kinds of relationships. That message is one thing that seems valuable about this book.

I don't look at this novel as one of Hemingway's best, but there are some strengths. Consider the idea of restraint, which is dealt with stylistically, ironically and philosophically in the text. If we look at the book as being about holding back so that we can hold on to those things about our lives we find precious/precarious, the book becomes something a nuanced statement, I'd say.