1937 Club Review: To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

The 1937 Club is jointly hosted by Kaggsy Bookish Ramblings and  Simon at Stuck in a Book  and runs from April 15th to 21st, 2024

My Interest

I had a huge moment of immaturity in high school over Hemingway. I decided a few years ago to give him another try. That was one reason. The second reason was length of the audio book, and the third was the availability of the audio from the library. I knew I’d get it done this way. The only other 1937 choice available was Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, but I’d seen the recent movie and, frankly, an Agatha feels like a cop-out since I’ve done a few of them for Year Clubs. My final reason for reading this one was the movie of it is where Bogey met Becall. You can click to read more about them here in my post on them.

The Story

What they’re trying to do is starve you Conchs out of here so they can burn down the shacks and put up apartments and make this a tourist town. That’s what I hear. I hear they’re buying up lots, and then after the poor people are starved out and gone somewhere else to starve some more they’re going to come in and make it into a beauty spot for tourists.

This is a gritty story set during the Great Depression in both Key West, Florida and Cuba. It cover both the “haves” and the “have nots” as we say today.  Have-not Harry is a fisherman who takes tourists out for deep sea fishing trips. He ends up destitute and turns to running booze, illegal immigrants, and anything else he can to feed his family.

Harry’s story is set off against those of a few wealthier folks–his fishing clients, then other rich people who frequent yachts or at least have a far more glamourous life than Harry’s. But in their stories, too, we see the effects of the Great Depression. Those who used to have high-flying jobs now sell whatever and their wives no longer have any household help.

It is Harry’s desperation, though, that is the story’s catalyst. All else is viewed in that gag-able modern phrase through the “lens of Harry’s woe.”

My Thoughts

No matter how great the author, some books don’t age well. Being assaulted by references to “The N—-r” almost constantly through the first part of the book got old and oppressive. Even for the era of lynching, the word was badly overused.

Hemingway is reviled today for his so-called “toxic masculinity” and his Colonial era opinions of “the natives”–both of these were well in evidence in this story.

The quote at the top of this review shows, once again, that history goes in cycles. We have priced normal families out of many cities both by gentrification, refusing permission for reuse and modification of office buildings and other structures to be housing, and by allowing the AirBNB industry to take so many units out of the housing market. That quote is as relevant today as it was in the 1930s.

The “normal” wealthy today have had to cut back to. Meanwhile, all of us suffer as the billionaires–the modern day Robber Barons, the Fortune 500 CEOs and others like the, have done nothing what-so-ever but grown richer. And, a man in a red tie wants to let them go on paying less tax (%) than the average school teacher pays. Robber Barons, indeed.

Nonetheless, this was my least favorite Hemingway book to date. Sadly, I can’t see the others I have left to read being as irritating as this one was with the gritty crime and the slurs.

My Verdict

3.0

To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway