Reading "The Sun Also Rises" |
Grandpa loved to read. He'd read at last a few newspapers before going to work each day, and plenty more on the weekend.
It was through his reading of Vincent Van Gogh's biography in 1928 while living in Paris, where he envisioned his life as a supporter of artists.
In his later years he loved to read Hemingway.
I filled the shelf with all his classics: A Moveable Feast, The Old Man and The Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms, The Snows of Kilimanjaro. When I made this photograph towards the end of 2009, at the age of 106 and a half, he was working his way thru The Sun Also Rises for the fourth or fifth time. He read voraciously, for hours and hours at a time. He took a journey into these novels of Paris and Africa, adventure and daring. If you disturbed him in the middle of a riveting section, he would good-naturedly shoe you away and dive back in.