My latest client engagement carries with it the benefit of less than a full week spent at the client site near Philadelphia. While I get more nights at home, I also spend far more time in the car, making high-speed roundtrip runs from New York to Philly generally twice a week. Growing quickly bored with listening to the news or music for the six hour roundtrip, I’ve turned to audio books to pass the time and hopefully feed my noodle.

The time in the car makes for quick progress through even the unabridged editions I prefer, always suspicious of some faceless editor deciding which pieces of fine literature make the cut for “abridged” versions. Lately I’ve been on a Hemingway streak, having listened to Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls, after having only skimmed them in school in order to complete the required assignment at the time. Being able to trade the drab scenery on the NJTP for a hillside in Spain, or the grim and smelly refining towers in Newark for the flash of a mortar and thick stench of high explosive certainly makes the drive go faster.

Papa, who I do not think would mind me using his familiar nickname since we’ve spent the last thirty hours or so of driving together, has had a profound effect on me. The hard-drinking lead in Farewell to Arms had me drinking brandy one evening, while considering Hemingway’s stark portrayal of life, love and of course, death. There are no feel-good endings, and you are left with a vaguely disconcerting feeling after finishing each. The leading men hold a certain appeal to me, quietly taking a stand for what they believe in, maintaining their composure while still representing the ultimate in self-assured manliness. The kinder, gentler recent times that have coined terms such as metro-sexual would have no room for a Robert Jordan, clutching a submachine gun waiting to kill just one more fascist as he lay waiting to die, hemorrhaging internally from a snapped thighbone, and quietly contemplating his impending death. The romanticized man portrayed by Hemingway does his duty, not out of necessity or circumstances compelling him, but because it is the right thing to do according to his internal compass. Once that duty is done, he dies, quietly and alone, or sees those that are dear to him suffer that fate.

Papa and I are going to take some time off while I contemplate his message, lest he provides any further encouragement to pack up and ship off to fight for a lost cause in some distant land. We will see what the holiday driving season has in store next. For fear of snow slowing down the roads, my car will be packed with literary greats to keep me company.

Categories: Travel
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