I’m reading A Farewell to Arms. It’s OK so far, but it turns out I’m not a real big fan of Hemingway I guess. His romantic dialog seems like something George Lucas would write (Oh snap!).
Anyway, I hope I haven’t poisoned the well! I came across the line below. It happens after the Lieutenant arrived at the nearly empty hospital. He gets into a little argument with Nurse Van Campen. She leaves, and Miss Gage comes in. Here’s the line:
What the hell? Did Miss Gage give the Lieutenant a handy?
Well, could be, but it’s all about context. They’re in a hospital. Maybe he needed a cut stitched up, or a bandage applied, and she was able to oblige?
Maybe, but he never seems to shy away from talking about cleaning up bandages in other parts of the story. Also, I thought the nurses had said that they don’t want to do much with the bandages until the doctor showed up, and he hadn’t showed (shown?) up at that point.
My guess is that he needed a bedpan.
I agree. Censors of that generation were even touchier about scatology than about sex.
My assumption was sex. God knows that when he did write about it, he was just as clumsy as that.
I run hot and cold on Hemingway - some of his stuff is awful, but stories like The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber are some of the best I have ever read. But he can write about sex - that one chapter in For Whom the Bell Tolls - Chapter 36? Has a long paragraph that really works.
When I first saw this thread I thought it was going to be about a different line - since the OP is reading the book right now, I will actually Spoiler it 
When Henry goes to see Cat in the hospital towards the very end of the book, she greets him with “Here’s Othello, back from the wars.” to which he replies “Othello was a nigger.”
I just hate that line - totally takes me out of the book and shows Hemingway to be a cluelessly-racist idiot. THAT’s the line your guy uses to connect with his gal and be charming?"
Could it be catheterization? Or would that need to have been done by a physician?
Unlikely. He specifically mentions using a bedpan in that book, just a few pages before the quote in the OP, in fact.
Some Hemingway is great. Some isn’t so hot. I wasn’t the biggest fan of A Farewell to Arms either. The Old Man and the Sea was my favorite. Also, he’s got a lot of really fantastic short stories.
Well, scratch that guess.
I reread the book recently. The famed Hemingway voice is overpowering in some places, but mostly works. The surprise lay in the mind-boggling awfulness of the female characters. The men have crisp dialog and deep understanding of their situation. The women aren’t even cardboard. They are wisps of leaves that the wind blows occasionally into a scene. The novel is based heavily on Hemingway’s six months in an Italian hospital and his relationship with nurse Agnes von Kurowsky yet he apparently never listened to a word she said or noticed a detail of her work - exactly the attention to reality he built his reputation on. The disparity eliminates all possible appreciation for the novel.
Gatsby holds up magnificently in comparison. Take that, Papa.
I am enjoying The Old Man and The Sea on re-read, and also liked The Sun Also Rises. I have tried to like A Farewell to Arms…so far not so much. As faar as the line in the OP, my first thought was hand-job. It just seems phrased that way.
Really? I’m thinking about the scene from “To Have and Have Not”…‘Go ahead. Go ahead now. Put the stump there. Hold it there. Hold it. Hold it now.’
Ouch.