Papa Hemingway’s Gift to the Fire-in-the-Belly Crowd
Robert Jordan is a left-wing radical, or was modeled after several of them. He palled around with terrorists, or at least people whom many Americans, of his era and beyond, so thought. His specialty is blowing things up for a cause. He is at minimum a socialist, someone so eager to spread wealth around that he’d lose his life to do it.
Robert Jordan is also honorable, steadfast, selfless, determined, stoic, generous, tolerant, courageous, conscientious, forgiving, altruistic, tender, wise, loyal, independent, taciturn, disciplined, dutiful, patient, exacting, empathetic, idealistic, introspective, charismatic and handsome. No wonder the beautiful Maria falls for him the first time she sees him, and the earth moves beneath the two the first time they make love.
Robert Jordan is the hero of Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” an American fighting Franco’s Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. And despite his radical roots, he’s a literary sensation during this election season. Senator Barack Obama told Rolling Stone that Hemingway’s novel, published in 1940, is one of the three books that most inspired him. As for Senator John McCain, few men, real or fictional, have influenced him as much as Jordan.
Mr. McCain begins his 2002 book, “Worth the Fighting For” (a phrase lifted from Jordan’s dying soliloquy), with an extraordinary paean to the character, whom he first encountered at age 12. Having found two four-leaf clovers, young John pulled “For Whom the Bell Tolls” off his father’s bookcase so he could press them. He and Robert have been together ever since, even in Hanoi. “I knew that if he were in the next cell to mine, he would be stoic, he would be strong, he would be tough, he wouldn’t give up,” Mr. McCain said in a radio interview in 2002. “And Robert would expect me to do the same thing.”
America never embraced the more than 3,000 of its sons and daughters — many of them Communists and more than half of whom were killed — who fought in Spain between 1936 and 1938. Rather, they were persecuted, subpoenaed and passed over for jobs when they came home. As late as 1984, Ronald Reagan said that most Americans still believed they had fought on the wrong side. The few veterans of that fight still alive remain unapologetically to the left; Mr. McCain won’t find many votes among them. “He’s the very antithesis of what we stood for,” said Mark Billings, a mechanic during the Spanish Civil War who now lives in El Cerrito, Calif. (He says he is only guardedly optimistic about Mr. Obama.)...
Read entire article at NYT
Robert Jordan is also honorable, steadfast, selfless, determined, stoic, generous, tolerant, courageous, conscientious, forgiving, altruistic, tender, wise, loyal, independent, taciturn, disciplined, dutiful, patient, exacting, empathetic, idealistic, introspective, charismatic and handsome. No wonder the beautiful Maria falls for him the first time she sees him, and the earth moves beneath the two the first time they make love.
Robert Jordan is the hero of Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” an American fighting Franco’s Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. And despite his radical roots, he’s a literary sensation during this election season. Senator Barack Obama told Rolling Stone that Hemingway’s novel, published in 1940, is one of the three books that most inspired him. As for Senator John McCain, few men, real or fictional, have influenced him as much as Jordan.
Mr. McCain begins his 2002 book, “Worth the Fighting For” (a phrase lifted from Jordan’s dying soliloquy), with an extraordinary paean to the character, whom he first encountered at age 12. Having found two four-leaf clovers, young John pulled “For Whom the Bell Tolls” off his father’s bookcase so he could press them. He and Robert have been together ever since, even in Hanoi. “I knew that if he were in the next cell to mine, he would be stoic, he would be strong, he would be tough, he wouldn’t give up,” Mr. McCain said in a radio interview in 2002. “And Robert would expect me to do the same thing.”
America never embraced the more than 3,000 of its sons and daughters — many of them Communists and more than half of whom were killed — who fought in Spain between 1936 and 1938. Rather, they were persecuted, subpoenaed and passed over for jobs when they came home. As late as 1984, Ronald Reagan said that most Americans still believed they had fought on the wrong side. The few veterans of that fight still alive remain unapologetically to the left; Mr. McCain won’t find many votes among them. “He’s the very antithesis of what we stood for,” said Mark Billings, a mechanic during the Spanish Civil War who now lives in El Cerrito, Calif. (He says he is only guardedly optimistic about Mr. Obama.)...