A review by msand3
پروانه و تانک by Ernest Hemingway

3.0

Hemingway's three act play The Fifth Column reminds me of my thoughts after reading Hemingway's poems: Papa needs to stick to prose! Hemingway's drama isn't as embarrassing as his poetry, but it's a far cry from his novels, and certainly not in the same league as the four short stories that follow the play in this collection, which are not top shelf Hemingway stories to begin with. Only Hemingway could toss off the character tag "Moorish Tart" (even after establishing the character's name as Anita!), only to switch the tag to "Anita" in the subsequent acts! Even if this little clue comes back to be significant in the end, it wouldn't matter at all to viewers. We are left with many unanswered questions: What happened to Preston? Who was the guy who took a shot at Phillip? (Are those two related?) Sadly, I found that I didn't really care enough to be upset by these abandoned subplots.