Humphrey Bogart Book:

Editorial Review:
Harry Morgan was hard, the classic Hemingway hero, rum-running, gun-running and man-running from Cuba to the Florida Keys in the depression. He ran risks, too, from stray coastguard bullets and sudden double-crosses. But it was the only way he could keep his boat, keep his independence, and keep his belly full. "This active, passionate life on the verge of the tropics is perfect material for the Hemingway style, and the reader carries away from the book a sense of freshness and exhilaration; trade winds, southern cities and warm seas all admirably described by the instrument of precision with which he writes." - "New Statesman".

Description of To Have and Have Not: Starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Cast:
First things first: readers coming to To Have and Have Not after seeing the Bogart/Bacall film should be forewarned that about the only thing the two have in common is the title. The movie concerns a brave fishing-boat captain in World War II-era Martinique who aids the French Resistance, battles the Nazis, and gets the girl in the end. The novel concerns a broke fishing-boat captain who agrees to carry contraband between Cuba and Florida in order to feed his wife and daughters. Of the two, the novel is by far the darker, more complex work.

The first time we meet Harry Morgan, he is sitting in a Havana bar watching a gun battle raging out in the street. After seeing a Cuban get his head blown off with a Luger, Morgan reacts with typical Hemingway understatement: "I took a quick one out of the first bottle I saw open and I couldn't tell you yet what it was. The whole thing made me feel pretty bad." Still feeling bad, Harry heads out in his boat on a charter fishing expedition for which he is later stiffed by the client. With not even enough money to fill his gas tanks, he is forced to agree to smuggle some illegal Chinese for the mysterious Mr. Sing. From there it's just a small step to carrying liquor--a disastrous run that ends when Harry loses an arm and his boat. Once Harry gets mixed up in the brewing Cuban revolution, however, even those losses seem small compared to what's at stake now: his very life.

Hemingway tells most of this story in the third person, but, significantly, he brackets the whole with a section at the beginning told from Harry's perspective and a short, heart-wrenching chapter at the end narrated by his wife, Marie. In between there is adventure, danger, betrayal, and death, but this novel begins and ends with the tough and tender portrait of a man who plays the cards that are dealt him with courage and dignity, long after hope is gone. --Alix Wilber

To Have and Have Not: Starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Cast Reviews:
solid Hemingway novel
2009-10-14 - To Have and Have Not is not one of Hemingway's masterpieces but it is a solid novel.The story is basically a sea adventure story involving an owner of a small boat named Harry Morgan who specializes in giving tours to wealthy people but delivers contraband on the side to make ends meet. The last section is in many ways the most substantive of the book in contrasting haves like the novelist Richard Gordon and the decadent yachtsmen one of them is the man who ruins Harrys cable and dose damage to his boat while fishing. The potrayal of Harrys wife is one of the best female characteriztions Hemingway ever did .The narrative point of view changes throughout the novel and is not always handled smmothly. The disjointedness is why I give this novel 4 stars instead of 5

To Have & Have Not
2009-08-14 - Book was not is as good of shape as advertized. But all I wanted to do is read it, which I did. Title is mentioned in recent Kenny Chesney song. I wanted to know more about it.

Depressing and Disjointed
2009-05-15 - The theme of this book seems to be "life sucks and then you die." Seriously, it is hard to believe that Ernest Hemingway who is considered one of the great writers of the 20th century wrote it.
The novel begins with chapters about a charter boat captain who is down on his luck. He becomes involved in more and more criminal behavior to make money for his family after one of his customers skips out on the bill.
The novel then takes a detour through a number of vignettes about brittle, rich sops who hang out at a bar and on yachts and are mostly miserable. Some fight scenes with war veterans also happen in the bar.
Then the novel lurches back to the sea captain's ignoble fate at the end, kind of like getting seasick on a small boat.
Woven throughout are lots of racial slurs spoken mostly by the sea captain, Harry Morgan.
This book was written during the Great Depression and interestingly mentions suicide several times so perhaps Hemingway was depressed when he wrote it. He did end his own life many years later.
All in all it was not worth the time I spent reading it after picking it up at the Hemingway House on Key West. Don't read this if you are in a bad mood as it will make you feel even worse.
I am giving this three stars with respect to the fact that Mr. Hemingway wrote it. Otherwise I would give it one star.

STILL HAVE NOT RECIEVED BOOK- NO REPLY TO MY EMAIL
2009-04-13 - i STILL HAVE NOT RECIEVED THE BOOK - I HAVE NOT GOTTEN A REPLY TO MY E MAIL INFORMING THEM THAT I DID NOT RECIEVE THE BOOK - PLEASE HELP

MEL SCHURSKY

That not so distant mirror, the `30's...
2009-04-10 - I re-read this book after some 40 years and found it more "topical" today than when I read it the first time. So many themes literally tumble out of today's headlines. There is the American-Cuban relationship, engendered by proximity, and of course economics, before America erected its economic version of the "Berlin Wall" against Cuba. There is the subject denoted by the title, the "haves" and "the have nots," with the emphasis on the later. There is an incisive vignette on one of the "haves," who had managed to steal from many of his fellow "haves," a la Madoff, driving some to suicide. There is a sexual predator of a wife who "collects" writers. There are veterans who have fought in America's foreign wars, misused and mistreated by their own government. There is illegal immigration, and why it was more contained in the `30's, due to the stiffer penalties. The central character is Harry Morgan, a hard-luck, but ethical fisherman, trying to scrap a living during the Depression, who is ripped off by an inept, but economically "successful" "have", which commenced Morgan's decent into crime and guns. Yet a topic which could fall out of today's websites as a "post-mortem," literal and figurative, on another mass killing by an economically marginal figure - some, but not all, driven to despair by one of the "Sun King" "haves." And then there is the wildly speculative, but an item for consideration concerning the organizational membership of the two Presidential candidates in the 2004 election: "the type of man who is tapped for Bones is rarely also tapped for bed; but with a lovely girl like Frances intention counts as much as performance."

Other reviewers have evaluated the novel as not up to Hemingway's other works, even making the point that supposedly he said, and meant so, himself. They also criticized the shifts in narration, the supposed "Faulknerian rambles," the shallow portraits of the "haves," and a supposed "cut and paste" nature of combining some short stories and vignettes. All of the above "worked" well for me. The novel is primarily about Harry Morgan, inarticulate as many are of his economic class, but admirably portrayed by Hemingway through his actions. The portrait of his wife, Marie, a woman who "stood by her man," is succinct and successful; almost certainly the most insightful portrait of a woman in any in Hemingway's works. Often the rich are vapid and shallow, and so Hemingway's description is accurate. The woman in the bar scene, accompanied by her husband, deserves Morgan's contempt and reaction. And the novel is another view of a "Margaritaville," or at least one version of same, Key West, Florida, where Hemingway is still fondly remembered.

The novel has withstood the test of time, and can be read, or read again with greater appreciation today. Highly recommended.