In these two books, started seventeen years apart, at least three that I recall of Hemingway's fetishes, or obsessions, or curious somethings, are repeated. One is drinking. Hem as Frederic Henry drank as much at 19 as Hem as David Bourne drank at 47. I am, therefore I drink. That was Hem's Way.
Another is hair. He loved women's hair; loved watching women brush their hair; often watched them surreptitiously when they were not aware, or in mirrors, the other recurrent curiosity (e.g. Eden 43); "She saw herself in one of the mirrors and put her hands to her hair. I saw her in three other mirrors." (Farewell 152). "'You have beautiful hair,' I said"... "I was going to cut it all off when he died" (a previous lover). "No." (Hemingway/Frederic Henry (Fairwell p. 19.) "I watched her brushing her hair...the light over the head of the bed shone on her hair and on her neck and shoulders. I went over and kissed her..." (Farewell 258) It WAS a fetish!: "The woman was waving her hair. I sat in the little booth and watched. It was exciting to watch...my voice was a little thick from being excited." (Farewell 292). In Eden, Catherine Bourne cuts her hair to look like a boy; dies her hair; takes Hemingway/David Bourne to the same hair artist (the only term for it so obsessed is she and Hemingway with hair) that she went to; insists the hair artist cut and die Hemingway/David Bourne's hair exactly the same way. In 26 years hair had become an obsession. The drinking is alcoholism, the hair was a bit fetishistic and became full-fledged, the mirrors are a bit voyeuristic.
Hemingway had already burst onto the literary scene in 1926 with The Sun Also Rises. Farewell just three years later reinforced both his standing and his writing style, stream of consciousness thought, carried off wonderfully in Farewell; the dialogue as people speak, not as auditors or fiction writers translate it sensibly into print. Speakers are often unidentified so readers who have to go back to see who spoke first in the communication pas de deux. That was Hemingway's style. Hemingway seems to express emotion in a unique (to me) repetition. "Please let's be slow and slow and slow" on page 169 of Eden; "I love you always always always--" (Eden, 55). "Couldn't you tell now and now and now..." (Eden 49). "I wouldn't mind him if he wasn't so conceited and didn't bore me, and bore me, and bore me." (Farewell, 125) Okay, that one is not emotional)). It sounds biblical to me, maybe because of the threes, although I am not a bible student. "Don't talk" (Eden, also p 169), "You don't have to keep saying it" (Eden 55), and variations, "Let's not talk about it", are Hem's Way. It's post-literate literature.
There is more symmetry in Hemingway's writing in Farewell than I can remember in any of his other works, at least in Eden. Farewell, chapter one, first sentence:
"In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village..."
I underlined and later, when I was near the end, went back and notated See p. 289:
"That fall the snow came very late. We lived in a brown wooden house in the pine trees..."
Hemingway plays with the yin and yang, how opposites can be made one: life and death, male and female, and so on. He wasn't the first, he wasn't the last.
In Eden, p 17 (1946) Catherine Bourne penetrates her husband David and says, "Now you can't tell who is who can you?"
Catherine Barkley in Farewell (1929):
"I'll say just what you wish and I'll do what you wish...I'll do what you want and say what you want...I want what you want. There isn't any me any more. ..."
I put an * by that passage and noted at the bottom of the page, the end of Chapter XVI, the first time I was sure:
Like Catherine (?) Bourne. It is [I underlined twice] Catherine! Catherine Barkley @ age 30 (Hemingway, Catherine Bourne, in his last years.
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