A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway · 1929
The novel where Hemingway's iceberg theory fails to suppress the grief beneath. Lieutenant Henry's retreat from Caporetto and his love for Catherine Barkley produce the most devastating final paragraphs in American fiction. War makes everything meaningless. Love makes it worse. Published in 1929.
The case against
Catherine is a fantasy of devotion who speaks in baby talk; the lovers' dialogue ('There isn't any me. I'm you.') has launched a thousand parodies, some written by Hemingway. The war chapters are immortal, the romance reads thin beside them, and you can feel the style hardening into the mannerism that would eat his later books.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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