Hemingway's Chair
by Michael Palin

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Book Summary Information

• ISBN13: 9780312205508
• Condition: New
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Book Reviews of Hemingway's Chair

Book Review: A story that might be any of us
Summary: 5 Stars

The writing of Michael Palin is quite at odds with the man of Monty Python skits. For me, Palin struck a chord that might be there in all of us. A desire to be in the same room with a great figure. Palin's charecter to me, doesn't want to be Hemingway, rather he would be quite happy just being in the same room with him. Seeing him, listening to him, basking in the relected glory of the man. Is this a religious zeal? I don't think so. Rather it is almost a love of the man and all he stands for.

Palin's cahrecters are all believeable. We all know the bustling new boss who wants to drag a perfectly serviceable work situation into the fast lane of the GPO. To him, this is his opportunity to excel and move up the ladder of success. No matter that there are people already in place who have long service in one office, know all the customers, thier children and their varied stories. To the boss, this is of no value; streamline, moderinize and economize are his watchwords. I don't like him. He ignores the history of the people around him and the place in which he is in the process of destroying. The rest of the charecters are just as true to life, including the American woman who intrudes on Martin's life and eventually awakens in him a Hemingwayesque way of dealing with the turmoil that has so changed his life.

I found this to be a book that made me think, not just about Palin's charecter, but my own outlook on life. It is not a book for someone who is looking for a printed version of the goofy charecters from Palin's sketches. Rather it is a thought provoking book that will make you sit and think afterwards and even during your reading of it. This is not a quick read but it is engrossing. It is a book, I hope that people will revisit periodically for a recharge in their batteries, the better to deal with reality.

Summary of Hemingway's Chair

Two things happen to shatter Martin's equilibrium. First, a new, corporate-style postal manager takes the job that by rights should have been his, promptly beginning a campaign of privatization and modernization that threatens all Martin holds dear. Second, an American woman outbids him on Hemingway memorabilia; a scholar, "not a fan," of the writer, Ruth Kohler lives in seclusion nearby while she works on a book about the women in Hemingway's life. Martin and Ruth engage in some increasingly heated role-playing as the conflict over Threston's post office comes to a slow boil. Deprived of his position, his cozy world crashing down around him, Martin finds himself acting more like the he-man writer than he ever thought possible. Palin's debut is in some ways a surprise: poignant rather than funny, skillfully paced and couched in workmanlike but hardly spectacular prose. Readers expecting Pythonesque absurdity might find themselves disappointed--but only at first; with patience, this book unfolds its more subtle pleasures with understated aplomb.

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