Hemingway isn’t my favorite writer, but I like him okay. I liked the simplicity and clarity of Old Man and the Sea, but I did find it over-the-top macho. So before I even opened Farewell to Arms, I was already rolling my eyes, going “here goes papa Hemingway with his big, manly war book.”

Except it wasn’t? If you haven’t read it, or haven’t read it recently, Farewell to Arms is about an ambulance driver who spends a third of the book in the hospital, a third running away from his own soldiers, and a third tending to his pregnant wife. The love dynamic between the two main characters is actually pretty sappy, even cute. The whole crux of the climax, spoilers, is a birth scene. A birth scene which is, to me, about how the common experiences of many women far outstrips the horrors of war.

I don’t really like put myself in the position of apologizing for Hemingway, but since reading the book, I don’t have as much patience for people who simply waive their hand and declare “sexist.” I find the the loudest critics of Hemingway, Tolstoy, DFW, are people who haven't read them.