Across the river and into the trees. --

by Hemingway,

Paper Book, 1950

Status

Available

Call number

813.52

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Marseille

Publication

New York : Scribner, 1950.

Description

Hemingway's reacquaintance with Venice, a city he loved, provided the inspiration for Across the River and into the Trees, the story of Richard Cantwell, a war-ravaged American colonel stationed in Italy at the close of the Second World War, and his love for a young Italian countess. A poignant, bittersweet homage to love that overpowers reason, to the resilience of the human spirit, and to the worldweary beauty and majesty of Venice, Across the River and into the Trees stands as Hemingway's statement of defiance in response to the great dehumanizing atrocities of the Second World War.

Media reviews

New York Times

"The most important author living today, the outstanding author since the death of Shakespeare, has brought out a new novel.... After the patronizing travelog ... the colonel has the rendezvous with his girl.... The novel was written as a serial for Cosmopolitan, whose demands and restrictions are

I should say, almost precisely those of the movies."

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User reviews

LibraryThing member ErnestHemingway

"Book is truly very good [Across the River and Into the Trees]. You pan it to hell if you don't like it. That is your right and your duty. But I have read it 206 times to try and make it better and to cut out any mistakes or injustices and on the last reading I loved it very much and it broke my

fucking heart for the 206th time. This is only a personal reaction and should be dis-counted as such. But have been around quite a while reading and writing and can tell shit from the other things... But pan it, ride it, or kill it if you should or if you can."
Letter to Robert Cantwell, 1950
Selected Letters, pg. 711

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12 more

LibraryThing member bareretz

I read this book a couple of years ago and have since considered it as one of Hemingway's masterpeices. Thinking about the book again I was surprised to find how many people hated it or at best thought it was average. More than that I haven't found anyone who understood the book in the way that I

understood it, so perhaps I'm the one who's wrong, but this is how I always viewed the book.

The book is about a man who lead a crappy life mostly because he always was crappy to everyone around. In his eyes he was good having given over his life to the military and fighting in two world wars. But after giving all of that the army demoted him, an act which haunts him, and he now has been shunted to a desk job while he tries to maintain some sort of the dignity he thinks he should have. He is pulling toward the end of his life and he has nothing, his marriage ended long before, the army has no use for him and he knows it, no kids, no friends. He goes to the one place he thinks he's wanted, Venice, and reminisces with old "friends". These friends however are at best acquaintances from long past, but in reality are people who are nice to him because that's their job, but he can't see the difference because he does want to confront that last ugly truth. The big "love" affair is an absurd joke, he has to keep saying he loves her and she he so he can attempt to convince himself its true, but its obvious that what he has with her isn't close to the actual love that he has missed out on his entire life. So here he is a man whose facade of toughness and acceptance has long crumbled away running to the one place that if he tries really hard he can convince himself it's true. Venice of course is the perfect setting as so but about the place has to do with facades and masks and truth hidden by water. This is a story about a feeble attempt to arrange a ones own life story in such a way that he can be less of a failure in the eyes of himself, and failing. It's about dying unloved and forgotten but wishing it wasn't true.

Seen from this all of the sloppy dialogue isn't a failure of Hemingway but rather the characters failure. The absurdness of the love story is just that, absurd. The book as written is the perspective of the main character a crappy story that doesn't hold water under scrutiny. Hemingway wrote that this book is calculus compared to algebra, Hemingway didn't write the real story he was telling, he wrote a fake story who very flaws tell the real one. He wrote a book about a man's entire life, by relating how that man saw his last day.

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LibraryThing member SplAgentsDandJ

As a long time Hemingway enthusiast, Across The River was one of the few of his works I hadn't read at the time. I was a little disappointed by the pace and depth compared to earlier works. Compared to The Sun Also Rises, A Moveable Feast or even Death In The Afternoon, Across The River plods along

lacking energy. But perhaps that reflects the disposition of the author as much as the the main character, both of whom are navigating the late years of a full and sometimes brutal life.

This book will forever hold special meaning for me personally, however, as the reading of it was shared with my own Countess - MY last and only true love. --SA Justus

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LibraryThing member Plumberti

Not one of my favorites. Kept my interest at first because of the detail and history he gives of the city. Book seemed to drag on a bit and I seemed to lose interest around the middle of the book. It seemed there was 150 pages of them just eating and saying 'I love you' over and over again. The

ending was nice, especially his explanation of the title. Not bad but there are bette rHemingway books out there.

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LibraryThing member Cheryl_in_CC_NV

I didn't understand any of the situation or the allusions. I didn't sympathize with the characters. I didn't understand the point of the story. Sorry.

LibraryThing member JBreedlove

A story about a cynical American officer and his affair for an Italian countess in post-WWII Italy. A banal subject is brought to wondrous life by a great author.

LibraryThing member fuzzy_patters

This is a good book, but it isn't great by Hemingway standards. Hemingway's greatest strengths lie in writing honestly and in portraying tragedies. The writing here is very open and honest, but the tragedy is mitigated by the fact that there is only one way for the story to end. It lacks the punch

at the end that some of his other novels had.

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LibraryThing member Artymedon

Ernest Hemingway's masterpiece. It does reach into your comfort zone hence a lot of negative written and said about this book. A meditation on life and death in the refined background of Venice's waterfront. If Lucchino Visconti was still with us, he may have had a shot at this one though the heroe

of this book would not have been his typical character as if the "Gattopardo" would have chosen to die in Venice's Harris Bar where I doubt they would play Mahler.

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LibraryThing member charlie68

A tale of a conversation between an American Colonel and his Italian. girlfriend. I drew some conclusions.

LibraryThing member Alphawoman

Reminds me of many things that have followed. Such as Before Sunrise and the Anonymous Venetian. Fluid writing and effortless dialog though most references went over my head. Hemingway writing from heart, experiences, regrets, sorrows, and sadness.

LibraryThing member lazysky

Published by New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950. First US Edition (following the British edition by a few days), first Printing with the Scribner's "A" and Seal Printed on the copyright page. 308 pages, original publishers cloth, with Hemingway's facsimile signature stamped in gilt on the

front panel, on boards. Gilt lettering generally faded on spine, binding is tight and square, and boards and spine sharp. Owners name on front endpaper.

Hemingway's last full length novel and lesser work about an American officer's infatuation with an Italian countess and nostalgic reminiscences on the past. You can hear the somewhat disappointed, tired voice of a man who believes his best years are behind him, fiercely clutching at the man he believes he used to be. Set in Venice at the close of World War II, its bittersweet story of a middle-aged American colonel, scarred by war and in failing health, who finds love at the very moment when his life is becoming a physical hardship to him. It is a love so overpowering and spontaneous that it revitalizes the man's spirit and encourages him to dream of a future, even though he knows there can be no hope for long. Spanning a matter of hours, it’s tender and moving, yet tragic in the inexorable shadow of what must come.

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LibraryThing member Elizabeth_Foster

When I first picked this up I almost put it straight back down. The main character, Colonel Cantwell, was shooting ducks, and the exquisite description of their flight and freedom, interspersed with their violent descent to earth, was a brutal juxtaposition. But I read on, lured by the setting:

Venice. This story has been widely panned for its prose and lack of plot but this is Hemingway at his most honest, reflecting on the inhumanity of war and dealing with his ageing body and failing health.

In Across The River and Into the Trees, the fifty-year-old protagonist tries to come to terms with his past as a soldier in a city that couldn’t be more different than the war zone. The beauty and tranquillity of Venice is reflected in the personality of Renata, the Colonel’s eighteen-year-old girlfriend. The story oozes with the atmosphere of post-war Venice, with the Colonel staying at the Gritti Palace and frequenting the now-famous Harry’s Bar.

I couldn’t help but draw parallels with Hemingway’s real life, and that’s when I started to connect to the story more. Hemingway as an older man was infatuated with a girl of nineteen while staying in Venice. Rather than reading Renata’s character as a fantasy, I saw her as a mirror of Hemingway himself, a way to explore the youth and innocence he felt he had lost. Hemingway first went to war at eighteen, and then spent the rest of his life chasing death, through war or safaris. How do we make up for such loss of youth and idealism – where do we even start? This is a novel full of unspoken questions such as these, winding through the story like the canals that meander through Venice itself.

The Colonel switches between soldier and lover over and over again, telling himself to be better, failing, then trying once more, as he attempts to come to some understanding of the motives and urges he has carried with him all his life. Much of the story is a recount of the vicissitudes of war. Death is everywhere in this book. Killing has been the Colonel’s ‘trade’ and in a way it was Hemingway’s too – it forms the subject of many of his stories. In the end the ducks are shot again, their helpless eyes looking into his. After reading the Colonel's recounts of the horrors of war I saw, with fresh eyes, why such a scene was so brutally rendered.

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LibraryThing member BookConcierge

At the end of WW2, a middle-aged American colonel meets a young Contessa in Venice. He spends his days reminiscing about the war, duck hunting, drinking and dining with the young lovely. He knows he’s dying, but she gives him one last season of love.

This is so typically Hemingway! I read The Old

Man and the Sea when I was in eighth grade, and I’ve been a fan of his writing since.

This isn’t his best-known work, and I read it only to fulfill a challenge to read a book that was a bestseller the year I was born. Still, there is something about his writing that captures my attention. The short declarative sentences make the work immediate and bring this reader right into the story.

But the older I get the more I’m disturbed by the way the women are portrayed … or more accurately, but the way Hemmingway writes the male/female relationships. Knowing his own history of depression (and ultimate suicide), not to mention his four wives, I see him projecting his own character on the page, and I’m getting tired of it.

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