What I’ve Been Reading This Week<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A book that, to my surprise, violated my \u201csummer read\u2019s gotta move<\/a>\u201d edict. Don\u2019t get me wrong, there was action and adventure and fascist-killing. It\u2019s a book with some truly spectacular sentences. It\u2019s also a book that\u2019s 490 goddamn pages. I\u2019ve read it once before, about 14 years ago, but I forgot how dense it is. Of this author\u2019s major works, it\u2019s maybe my least favorite to read, but it\u2019s still real good and fits into punk rock\/antifascist theme of this year. Because what\u2019s more punk rock than traveling across an ocean to blow up a bridge with fascists on it? Well, lots of things<\/a>, but lemme get a rhetorical flourish. I\u2019m talking, of course, about For Whom The Bell Tolls<\/em> by Ernest Hemingway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t feel like rehearsing plot, because I know this is assigned reading for a lot of people. It\u2019s a well-wrought modernist novel about a USian named Robert Jordan fighting on The Good Side of the Spanish Civil War. He is ordered to go into the Sierra Mountains with a guerrilla band to blow up a bridge behind enemy lines. Over the course of three days, he falls in love with a 19-year-old survivor of horrific war crimes, gets betrayed by the guerrilla leader, meets some other guerrilas, and\u2014how exciting for Robert and Maria\u2014has a bunch of sex. In the end, he blows up that fascist bridge. I suppose that\u2019s sort of a spoiler, but come on. You know that the bridge-blowing isn\u2019t the biggest thing that happens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Obscenity, I guess I did a plot summary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reason I don\u2019t want to do a plot summary is because I don\u2019t feel like re-litigating the baked-in misogyny2<\/a><\/sup> or the thin politics3<\/a><\/sup>. A bunch of fascists get shot, sometimes that\u2019s enough politics. I wanna talk about language. Are you wondering why I said \u201cobscenity\u201d up there? Well, that\u2019s because it\u2019s just one of the strange tics of this novel. What passes with thou and thy Spanish? Canst thou recall the informal\/formal conjugations? Did you ever think you\u2019d read a novel that did such literal, clumsy translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to Hemingway\u2019s already signature style\u2014generally short sentences but also many run-on sentences and we find the run-on sentences are good\u2014we have this odd thing where he\u2019s treating Spanish translation more literally than you might think someone should. It\u2019s vibes-based translation, or using the syntax of another language for aesthetic purposes. Anne Carson does something like this in her work. According to the FWTBT<\/em> Wikipedia<\/a>, many critics didn\u2019t like this choice. My hot take, I guess, is that I enjoy big linguistic swings like this. It\u2019s the same part of me that\u2019s drawn to Jessica L\u00e9vai\u2019s vampire opera in sonnets or a bro-down translation of Beowulf. The strange squeamishness around curse words, paired with literal translations, results in wonderful sentences like \u201cI obscenity in the milk of thy mother.\u201d This is why I\u2019ll always defend Hemingway4<\/a><\/sup>. Dude is really underrated for what he does with language, which is ironic because his style is so groundbreaking and oft-imitated\/parodied. Give him a try if you haven\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Something to listen to while you browse? Erik Hansel, one of the guitarists from Chon, is putting out a solo album under the name Betrayflip. These first two singles are, uh, all I’m going to be listening to for a while. The Chon Discord seems to be saying the album is coming out this morning<\/em>, but as I write on a Thursday when my own show was canceled, I’m not chicken-countin. Check these two singles. Summer instrumental vibes, my dudes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_7462-1024x768.jpg\")
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