I dunno, I’m pretty sure A Farewell To Arms is still being assigned in high schools and colleges alike. Whether that makes it “iconic”…it’s still being assigned. And I think for the most part, young people are only being assigned to Gatsby as far as Fitzgerald goes. Not the rest of his stuff (it doesn’t help that a lot of it, as you said all those years ago on Creative Noise, pales in comparison to his classic.)

I am not a Hemingway fanatic, but I think he’s written some good stuff, and once again: I HATE how he’s always described as “macho,” how that’s his reputation, is “tough guy.” A book about sadness like The Sun Also Rises is not something I’d expect from a the 1920s equivalent of a “bro.” Even The Old Man And The Sea is hardly something I’d expect out of a “tough guy,” the moral be damned. When there was stuff like Mickey Spillane around, who cares how “macho” Hemingway was? I do agree that his spare style is something you’d have to get used to.

I’d have to re-read For Whom The Bell Tolls but I thought it was definitely his best book. You have a point that I can’t remember much of what happened in it, or many of the characters. But I remember reading Sun Also Rises for a second time and really feeling that malaise shining through in a way I didn’t get the first time, because, as you said, nothing much happens, but I didn’t realize that was the point. I don’t know what you mean about “nothing interesting to say,” unless you think the Lost Generation’s misery after WWI is “nothing interesting to say.”