Those of you who know me (and those of you who don’t, do now) know that I have a degree in
English, and anything to do with rhetoric and the language is like written
aphrodisiac to me! To be able to
manipulate words in such a way that you can elicit feelings of your choice by
making the reader believe it’s theirs, is crafty and downright SEXY! In speech, as well as delivery, the
masters: Abraham Lincoln, Winston
Churchill, Dick Cavett, Dennis Miller, and Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter, who
took 2 phrases from the 1941 poem “High Flight” by JG Magee, Jr.
, and wrote his way into history when he said about the astronauts in the Challenger disaster: that they had "slipped the surly bonds of
earth" to "touch the face of God." Brilliant.
Wheeeeere
are you going with this, Christine??
Right here...
I’m reading
the best book, and I can’t put it down! It’s called Mrs. Hemingway, by Naomi
Wood, and I offer you this, from both the back of the book and Amazon:
In the dazzling summer of 1926,
Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley take refuge from the blazing heat of Paris
to a villa in the south of France. They swim, and play bridge and drink gin
with abandon. But wherever they go they
are accompanied by the glamorous and irrepressible Fife. Fife is Hadley’s best
friend. She is also Ernest’s lover. Hadley is the first Mrs. Hemingway, but
neither she nor Fife will be the last.
Narrated by Hemingways four
wives—Hadley, Fife (Pauline), Martha and Mary—and peopled with members of the
fabled “Lost Generation”, Mrs. Hemingway paints a complex portrait of
the man behind the legend and the women behind the man, a riveting tale of
passion, love, and heartbreak. Told in
four parts and based on real love letters and telegrams, Mrs. Hemingway reveals the explosive love
triangles that wrecked each of Hemingway's marriages.
So, we all
know about Hemingway. Tough, rough
around the edges, a man’s man who smoked cigars and drank too much. Hunted game and fished for tuna. Wrote novels that were way too long with ridiculously short sentences. But what
we find out in this book is that he was also surprisingly childlike. And when these two facets of his personality come
together, they’re chock full of betrayal, deceit, and disaster. Because while he’s genuinely cherishing the
wife of choice, he’s cheating on her with the woman who would become his next
wife, each time. Lara Feigel writes “He
once told F. Scott Fitzgerald that his vision of heaven comprised two
lovely houses in town, one containing his wife and children, where he
would "be monogamous and love them truly and well", the other
"where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different
floors"*.
In honor of Paris and that wonderful time in history when the expatriots Fitzgerald and Hemingway took up in France and Spain, let's make one of my favorite French dishes together this weekend: Salad Nicoise. As its name suggests, it is a salad (usually composed, but I like mine all mixed together) in the style of Nice, which is on the South East coast of France, on the Mediterranean Sea. It's perfect for this time of year because it's served cold, and even though it's "just a salad", the flavors are hearty and bold. I can't wait to share it with you!
PS: Funny how natural segues present themselves, isn't it?: Hemingway wrote the novel To Have and Have Not, which is a big part of my previous post on Lauren Bacall. And incidentally, “segue” itself is French-- a big part of THIS post. See how that works??...lol…
*The Guardian 2.20.14
Salads are nice on these hot days. Can't wait to see it
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