Hemingway

I have not read Hemingway before this and unfortunately the book The Sun Also Rises does not make me want to read any more of his works.  To me it was slow and uneventful.  I am still not sure what the plot was.

     The gist of the story is that Jake is a reporter and well off financially.  He hangs around with all sorts of people, but doesn't really appear to be sociable.  He is in love or so he appears to be with Brett, but she is not in love with him, although she calls on him throughout the book.  To me he was in lust not love, because if it was love, then he would have stood up for himself and told her that he loved her and married her.  Instead, he allows her to walk all over him and even has him set her up to be with a very young Matador.  Plus she flaunts that she was with Cohn (a Jewish boxer who is deeply infatuated with her) to him.  And all the while she is doing this, she is engaged to Mike. 
     Brett is definitely the center of the story because she is lusted after by all of the men.  Throughout the book, she is in the center of something...she is surrounded by the dancers at the fiesta and not allowed to dance; she is stared at by women through the windows; and men stare at her and try to be with her.  She leads on everyone, especially Jake, for she knows that he supposedly loves her.  Plus she sleeps with way too many people...feminism is great, but she is just plain slutty.  I mean she sees the Matador, doesn't know him and asks Jake to introduce her to him, because she is in love with him.  When he does introduce him, she sends Jake away and goes back to the hotel with the young Matador and has sex with him.  This character definitely has issues.
     The men in the story are no better, because they knew how she was and they put up with her.
     The end of the story was quite predictable.  One knew that he would be called to rescue her, because he was told that she did not have any money with her and his reaction was that he continued to repeat the statement that she had no money.  Plus he made sure that the hotel forwarded his messages to him in hopes that he would be called on to rescue the damsel in distress.  And he went back to Spain, even though he really did not want to, because he wanted to be near if she did call upon him to rescue her.  Which of course is exactly what happened.  Did he get the girl, no, because she said she was going back to Mike to marry him. 
     Can anyone tell me what the word "Tight" has to do with anything?  It was throughout the story and appeared to have many meanings.  Quite frankly the word was starting to annoy me and I wondered why the writer could not come up with any other words.  I get that those he associated with did not use a bunch of words, but surely they had more than just the word "Tight" to describe their feelings.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz"

Fitzgerald's story "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" was not what I was expecting; it was better.
     The story about a fairly wealthy boy from Hades, aka Hell is not necessarily interesting, except when the author turns this seemingly uninteresting place into a place of refuge.  I say that, because John T. Unger found that the Hades he was from was not Hell, but his visit to El Dorado in Montana was actually the epitome of hell.  Here he discovers that his new friend Percy is not really his friend.  If he had been then Percy would have never invited John to visit, especially since no outsider ever leaves El Dorado alive!
The story of the founding of El Dorado is interesting...to have a man from the south discover a large diamond by accident normally would not be that interesting; yet in this case it was because that diamond was as big as a mountain.  This man and subsequent generations kept the secret of their wealth by doing some heinous crimes and by keeping their own families brainwashed as to what is right and what their place is in the world.  The fact that they had a 'bowl' with prisoners in it reminded me of hell in that it would represent the pits of hell. 
     I loved the picture that Fitzgerald painted of the house-the diamonds covering the walls and the tub in the floor that was surrounded by an aquarium.  It makes this place appear to be a refuge, but as John learns it is no refuge, but hell itself.
     The ending was probably the best part of the story, at least for me.  John and the two girls are running for safety after the planes have bombarded the home and they see Braddock Washington, his wife, Percy and two slaves entering a secret passage-presumably to escape-kind of like the underground railway, however we soon learn that the whole place is wired as the mountain explodes.  Then John asks Kismine (nice play on the name here -kiss mine or kiss me) for the jewels she was to take with her so that they could see how wealthy they would be and he discovers that she took rhinestones and not diamonds.  She valued these more than diamonds, because to her they were precious.
     The whole story was about love and greed.  John and Kismine fall in love, but that love is in jeopardy because John is an outsider and all outsiders will be put to death to keep the family secret-kind of reminded me of Romeo and Juliet.  And the greed was apparent throughout the story, and we see this when Fitzgerald informs us that the family will do anything to keep their home, wealth, and way of life a secret.
     I really liked this story, because it made you think at first that it was going to be a simple story of young love, but then it turns the tables and you realize that it is a story of life and death.  Plus I really liked how Fitzgerald made the town of Hades a haven while El Dorado becomes Hell!