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To Have and Have Not
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Manufacturer: Scribner
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Publisher: Scribner
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $10.20
You Save: $ 4.80 ( 32% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Scribner
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Publisher: Scribner
Average Customer Rating:
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To Have and Have Not Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780684818986
ISBN: 0684818981
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 272
Publication Date: 1996-03-20
Publisher: Scribner
Studio: Scribner
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780684818986
ISBN: 0684818981
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 272
Publication Date: 1996-03-20
Publisher: Scribner
Studio: Scribner
Editorial Review of To Have and Have Not
First things first: readers coming to To Have and Have Not after seeing the Bogart/Bacall film should be forewarned that about the only thing the two have in common is the title. The movie concerns a brave fishing-boat captain in World War II-era Martinique who aids the French Resistance, battles the Nazis, and gets the girl in the end. The novel concerns a broke fishing-boat captain who agrees to carry contraband between Cuba and Florida in order to feed his wife and daughters. Of the two, the novel is by far the darker, more complex work.
The first time we meet Harry Morgan, he is sitting in a Havana bar watching a gun battle raging out in the street. After seeing a Cuban get his head blown off with a Luger, Morgan reacts with typical Hemingway understatement: "I took a quick one out of the first bottle I saw open and I couldn't tell you yet what it was. The whole thing made me feel pretty bad." Still feeling bad, Harry heads out in his boat on a charter fishing expedition for which he is later stiffed by the client. With not even enough money to fill his gas tanks, he is forced to agree to smuggle some illegal Chinese for the mysterious Mr. Sing. From there it's just a small step to carrying liquor--a disastrous run that ends when Harry loses an arm and his boat. Once Harry gets mixed up in the brewing Cuban revolution, however, even those losses seem small compared to what's at stake now: his very life.
Hemingway tells most of this story in the third person, but, significantly, he brackets the whole with a section at the beginning told from Harry's perspective and a short, heart-wrenching chapter at the end narrated by his wife, Marie. In between there is adventure, danger, betrayal, and death, but this novel begins and ends with the tough and tender portrait of a man who plays the cards that are dealt him with courage and dignity, long after hope is gone. --Alix Wilber
Customer Reviews of To Have and Have Not
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Smuggling and...Social Commentary?
Review: Typical of 1930's Hemingway, To Have and Have Not is a frustrating novel, equal parts exhilaration and disappointment. The main story involves the tragic life of Harry Morgan who shuttles back and forth between Key West, Florida and Havana, Cuba, taking odd-jobs so that he can support his family. No job is too dirty or too dangerous for Harry, and he quickly gets caught up in smuggling, kidnapping, and anything else that will make him decent money. Harry's sections of the novel are violent and grim, full of double-crosses and bloody shoot-outs. It may be a little bit shallow for Hemingway's talent, but all the action and adventure make for a fascinating read. Rounding out the story of Harry's exploits is the beautifully drawn character of Marie Morgan, his devoted wife. Nowhere else in Hemingway's fiction will you find a female character so lovingly rendered.
Unfortunately, this rousing tale gets derailed about halfway through the novel by an abstract social commentary artlessly forced into the text. Describing the lives of a number of well-off residents and visitors of Key West, Hemingway spends several interminable chapters contrasting the ennui and shenanigans of the wealthy yacht-owners and writers with the down-to-earth goodness of characters like Harry Morgan. Hemingway pokes fun at the sexual intrigues and pointless drama of the wealthy, while glorifying the ernestness and devotion of the Morgans and their peers. It is a simple and banal observation, completely overblown and out of place, and it almost ruins the entire novel.
But the book concludes with Marie's painful inner monologue, written in Faulknerian stream-of-consciousness, and a tender description of the boats and the water around the Keys, causing the reader to forget all that drivel that has passed before and reflect on the beauty and danger of the world that Hemingway has created.
To Have and Have Not would have been stunning as a novella about Harry Morgan with maybe a few minor asides about the idiocy of the wealthy (which Hemingway shows perfectly in an early incident where Harry tries to teach a clueless vacationer how to fish). Or it might even have worked as a long novel (around the size of For Whom the Bell Tolls), exploring the climates of Key West and Havana in vast detail. But as it stands, the novel Hemingway wrote is too disjointed and confused to qualify as a classic (though still worth reading for fans of the author).
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Pulp Fiction Meets Faulkner
Review: After publishing back-to-back two of the most celebrated American novels ever, Ernest Hemingway waited eight years before his next. For that alone, "To Have And Have Not" could not help but be a disappointment, a judgment that lingers today. Is it merited?
Ex-cop turned charter-fishing-boat captain Harry Morgan is having a run of bad luck. Thanks to the ineptitude of his latest customer, Morgan loses his expensive fishing tackle off the coast of Cuba. The customer then skips without paying for his two-week charter. Down to forty cents, Morgan must scramble to provide for his wife and three daughters in Key West, even if it means breaking the law a little. Or a lot. Morgan's bad luck is just beginning.
Published in 1937, "To Have And Have Not" starts out reading like an Elmore Leonard novel before its time, in the conversational voice of the opening narrative and the long sections of crisp dialogue which follow. Other than the narrative's casual racism, there's nothing wrong with the first part of the book. Hemingway gets to a lot of action quickly, including a gun battle four pages in and a couple of savage marlin fights which show off his economical writing style to good effect.
If there's a problem with the first half of the book, actually two Hemingway short stories he stuck together and added a novella to form this novel, it's with the character of Morgan, an unsympathetic guy who carries a lot of issues but no backstory to help us understand him. He's simply dislikable and dangerous, becoming more so as the story progresses.
"You don't care what happens to a man," Morgan is told at one point by a gun-shot companion. "You ain't hardly human."
This might have worked if Hemingway kept the story on its pulp-fiction track. Instead, he goes for creative dissonance, widening the lens of his story to encompass multiple story arcs and contrasting Morgan's tale with unrelated ones featuring other Key West characters, jaded rich folk and poor World War I vets struggling to extract some pleasure and value from their variously blasted lives.
Hemingway seems to be making a contemporary point about the income gap, hence the title, but never ties it into Morgan's individual story beyond that he needs money and is struggling to earn it. Morgan is an offstage non-presence in the novel's two longest chapters, featuring a long parade of here-and-gone characters. Hemingway's lingering descriptions of each, along with some uncharacteristically long run-on sentences, suggest a misguided attempt at channeling William Faulkner rather than working in his own singular style.
Yet there are good things to say about "To Have And Have Not", like Hemingway's finding inspiration from the ocean, describing the smell of sea grape and the sight of passing ships hauling cargo across the horizon: "Brother, don't let anybody tell you there isn't plenty of water between Havana and Key West." It's a locale Hemingway returned to in two later novels, "The Old Man And The Sea" and "Islands In The Stream", and you get a feeling for why he liked it so.
Also good reading is some of the barroom dialogue, though Hemingway like many alcoholics doesn't know when to quit and keeps it coming for too long, until you feel like you are going to have the speaker's hangover the next morning.
Hemingway was too great a writer to write a worthless book. "To Have And Have Not" is not a must-have by any means, but it has its moments.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Disjointed - a story that doesn't really know where it wants to go
Review: I've got to agree with Papa on this one, this is definitely not Hemingway's best work. This novel is actually two short stories and one novella, with the main character Harry Morgan (a smuggler and fisherman going between Cuba and the Florida Keys) linking the three together. The short stories were written well before the rest of the text, then tied together to make a single novel. The first two `sections' (short stories) are fine adventure-type tales about the shady characters of pre-WWII Cuba. The novella starts off as an adventure tale as well in the same vein, but evolves into an introspective story about the value of life, the things the people hold valuable, and what it means to lose them. The latter half of the novella has very little to do with the first half or the other two short sections. I got the impression that EH changed his mind about what he wanted to do with this novel halfway through writing it, but instead of editing the first half for consistency, he just gave up. This makes the overall tale disjointed and puzzling. There are definitely some glimmers of Hemingway at his best in this novel (e.g. the chapter in which Morgan faces the bank robbers on his boat, or the last chapter about what people hold valuable and loss), but EH would have been better served to write to separate, complete tales about each of the threads. I would agree with one of the other reviewer's comments that if this is EH's worst, it is still better than most author's best, but I think that some of the glowing reviews are grossly overstated. This is a flawed work by a great writer in my view, not on the same planet as `For Whom the Bell Tolls' and other EH greats. This is also one of the few cases in which the movie is better than the book.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: NO WHISTLES HERE
Review: If, like me, your first experience with Hemingway's classic sea tale To Have or To Have Not was the steamy (for the times) Bogie/Bacall movie version where the main character, Captain Morgan, is the put upon object of the local French Resistance in World War II then this the original will surprise you. Actually the only similarity between the two works is the captain's name. That said, this tale is really about a gritty, hard-bitten, down at the heels sea-going man who will try everything to keep his family and himself above water (no pun intended). Starting out with a little illegal, just a little, activity he winds up.... well you can read the rest. Is this a major Hemingway production? I think not but it is also not the `throwaway' that Hemingway in his lifetime considered it. Face it if you want to get an approximation of the life on the sea, the real sea, and the language of the waterfront Hemingway is one of your sources.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Hemingway: An American Literary Icon
Review: I am someone who came late to appreciating the literary genius of Hemingway, perhaps because like many in my generation I viewed his literary aura as overly slanted towards man's macho nature.
The story revolves around the doings of a rather shady ex-cop engaged in smuggling in and around Cuba and the southern Keys. Beneath his corrupt veneer, however, rests a loving family man seeking to support an adoring wife and three young daughters. Unfortunately for our protagonist, a band of Cuban Coast Guard officials catch up with him during one of his intrigues, resulting in him being shot and eventually having one of his arms amputated. In the face of bankruptcy, will he find economic salvation in that one last great heist?
This review is but a speck of what could be said in interpreting this fine piece of art. Above all else, upon reading "To Have and Have Not" I found someone, in Hemingway, who could instill an incredible sense of drama with a ringing clarity of purpose in his tersely woven prose.
Review Summary: Smuggling and...Social Commentary?
Review: Typical of 1930's Hemingway, To Have and Have Not is a frustrating novel, equal parts exhilaration and disappointment. The main story involves the tragic life of Harry Morgan who shuttles back and forth between Key West, Florida and Havana, Cuba, taking odd-jobs so that he can support his family. No job is too dirty or too dangerous for Harry, and he quickly gets caught up in smuggling, kidnapping, and anything else that will make him decent money. Harry's sections of the novel are violent and grim, full of double-crosses and bloody shoot-outs. It may be a little bit shallow for Hemingway's talent, but all the action and adventure make for a fascinating read. Rounding out the story of Harry's exploits is the beautifully drawn character of Marie Morgan, his devoted wife. Nowhere else in Hemingway's fiction will you find a female character so lovingly rendered.
Unfortunately, this rousing tale gets derailed about halfway through the novel by an abstract social commentary artlessly forced into the text. Describing the lives of a number of well-off residents and visitors of Key West, Hemingway spends several interminable chapters contrasting the ennui and shenanigans of the wealthy yacht-owners and writers with the down-to-earth goodness of characters like Harry Morgan. Hemingway pokes fun at the sexual intrigues and pointless drama of the wealthy, while glorifying the ernestness and devotion of the Morgans and their peers. It is a simple and banal observation, completely overblown and out of place, and it almost ruins the entire novel.
But the book concludes with Marie's painful inner monologue, written in Faulknerian stream-of-consciousness, and a tender description of the boats and the water around the Keys, causing the reader to forget all that drivel that has passed before and reflect on the beauty and danger of the world that Hemingway has created.
To Have and Have Not would have been stunning as a novella about Harry Morgan with maybe a few minor asides about the idiocy of the wealthy (which Hemingway shows perfectly in an early incident where Harry tries to teach a clueless vacationer how to fish). Or it might even have worked as a long novel (around the size of For Whom the Bell Tolls), exploring the climates of Key West and Havana in vast detail. But as it stands, the novel Hemingway wrote is too disjointed and confused to qualify as a classic (though still worth reading for fans of the author).
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Pulp Fiction Meets Faulkner
Review: After publishing back-to-back two of the most celebrated American novels ever, Ernest Hemingway waited eight years before his next. For that alone, "To Have And Have Not" could not help but be a disappointment, a judgment that lingers today. Is it merited?
Ex-cop turned charter-fishing-boat captain Harry Morgan is having a run of bad luck. Thanks to the ineptitude of his latest customer, Morgan loses his expensive fishing tackle off the coast of Cuba. The customer then skips without paying for his two-week charter. Down to forty cents, Morgan must scramble to provide for his wife and three daughters in Key West, even if it means breaking the law a little. Or a lot. Morgan's bad luck is just beginning.
Published in 1937, "To Have And Have Not" starts out reading like an Elmore Leonard novel before its time, in the conversational voice of the opening narrative and the long sections of crisp dialogue which follow. Other than the narrative's casual racism, there's nothing wrong with the first part of the book. Hemingway gets to a lot of action quickly, including a gun battle four pages in and a couple of savage marlin fights which show off his economical writing style to good effect.
If there's a problem with the first half of the book, actually two Hemingway short stories he stuck together and added a novella to form this novel, it's with the character of Morgan, an unsympathetic guy who carries a lot of issues but no backstory to help us understand him. He's simply dislikable and dangerous, becoming more so as the story progresses.
"You don't care what happens to a man," Morgan is told at one point by a gun-shot companion. "You ain't hardly human."
This might have worked if Hemingway kept the story on its pulp-fiction track. Instead, he goes for creative dissonance, widening the lens of his story to encompass multiple story arcs and contrasting Morgan's tale with unrelated ones featuring other Key West characters, jaded rich folk and poor World War I vets struggling to extract some pleasure and value from their variously blasted lives.
Hemingway seems to be making a contemporary point about the income gap, hence the title, but never ties it into Morgan's individual story beyond that he needs money and is struggling to earn it. Morgan is an offstage non-presence in the novel's two longest chapters, featuring a long parade of here-and-gone characters. Hemingway's lingering descriptions of each, along with some uncharacteristically long run-on sentences, suggest a misguided attempt at channeling William Faulkner rather than working in his own singular style.
Yet there are good things to say about "To Have And Have Not", like Hemingway's finding inspiration from the ocean, describing the smell of sea grape and the sight of passing ships hauling cargo across the horizon: "Brother, don't let anybody tell you there isn't plenty of water between Havana and Key West." It's a locale Hemingway returned to in two later novels, "The Old Man And The Sea" and "Islands In The Stream", and you get a feeling for why he liked it so.
Also good reading is some of the barroom dialogue, though Hemingway like many alcoholics doesn't know when to quit and keeps it coming for too long, until you feel like you are going to have the speaker's hangover the next morning.
Hemingway was too great a writer to write a worthless book. "To Have And Have Not" is not a must-have by any means, but it has its moments.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Disjointed - a story that doesn't really know where it wants to go
Review: I've got to agree with Papa on this one, this is definitely not Hemingway's best work. This novel is actually two short stories and one novella, with the main character Harry Morgan (a smuggler and fisherman going between Cuba and the Florida Keys) linking the three together. The short stories were written well before the rest of the text, then tied together to make a single novel. The first two `sections' (short stories) are fine adventure-type tales about the shady characters of pre-WWII Cuba. The novella starts off as an adventure tale as well in the same vein, but evolves into an introspective story about the value of life, the things the people hold valuable, and what it means to lose them. The latter half of the novella has very little to do with the first half or the other two short sections. I got the impression that EH changed his mind about what he wanted to do with this novel halfway through writing it, but instead of editing the first half for consistency, he just gave up. This makes the overall tale disjointed and puzzling. There are definitely some glimmers of Hemingway at his best in this novel (e.g. the chapter in which Morgan faces the bank robbers on his boat, or the last chapter about what people hold valuable and loss), but EH would have been better served to write to separate, complete tales about each of the threads. I would agree with one of the other reviewer's comments that if this is EH's worst, it is still better than most author's best, but I think that some of the glowing reviews are grossly overstated. This is a flawed work by a great writer in my view, not on the same planet as `For Whom the Bell Tolls' and other EH greats. This is also one of the few cases in which the movie is better than the book.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: NO WHISTLES HERE
Review: If, like me, your first experience with Hemingway's classic sea tale To Have or To Have Not was the steamy (for the times) Bogie/Bacall movie version where the main character, Captain Morgan, is the put upon object of the local French Resistance in World War II then this the original will surprise you. Actually the only similarity between the two works is the captain's name. That said, this tale is really about a gritty, hard-bitten, down at the heels sea-going man who will try everything to keep his family and himself above water (no pun intended). Starting out with a little illegal, just a little, activity he winds up.... well you can read the rest. Is this a major Hemingway production? I think not but it is also not the `throwaway' that Hemingway in his lifetime considered it. Face it if you want to get an approximation of the life on the sea, the real sea, and the language of the waterfront Hemingway is one of your sources.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Hemingway: An American Literary Icon
Review: I am someone who came late to appreciating the literary genius of Hemingway, perhaps because like many in my generation I viewed his literary aura as overly slanted towards man's macho nature.
The story revolves around the doings of a rather shady ex-cop engaged in smuggling in and around Cuba and the southern Keys. Beneath his corrupt veneer, however, rests a loving family man seeking to support an adoring wife and three young daughters. Unfortunately for our protagonist, a band of Cuban Coast Guard officials catch up with him during one of his intrigues, resulting in him being shot and eventually having one of his arms amputated. In the face of bankruptcy, will he find economic salvation in that one last great heist?
This review is but a speck of what could be said in interpreting this fine piece of art. Above all else, upon reading "To Have and Have Not" I found someone, in Hemingway, who could instill an incredible sense of drama with a ringing clarity of purpose in his tersely woven prose.