I sat now in the chair and an orderly of some sort looked at me disapprovingly from behind a desk while I looked at the marble floor, pillars with the marble busts, and the frescoes on the wall and waited for Miss Barkley. The frescoes were not bad. Any frescoes were good when they started to peel and flake off.
When I first read it I thought it was clever and true: no matter how bland a fresco is, to the untrained eye they all look good once they get old enough. The cracks and peeling make them legitimate. Then I remembered that one of the things Hemingway is known for is his use of subtext, so I thought about what he might be saying a little more. Maybe we can take frescoes and replace it with lives. All life seems interesting when we get to see the peeling and flaking. And given we're looking at a flashing love in the middle of a war we'll probably see a lot of interesting situations where people start to show their cracks. And, maybe more importantly, we've all got our peeling paint, so if you look close enough you'll see all of us are "not bad."
Just some thoughts. Carry on.
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