To Have and Have Not [Hardcover]

To Have and Have Notis the dramatic, brutal story of Harry Morgan, an honest boat owner who is forced into running contraband between Cuba and Key West as a means of keeping his crumbling family financially afloat. His adventures lead him into the world of the wealthy and dissipated yachtsmen who swarm the region, and involve him in a strange and unlikely love affair.
In this harshly realistic, yet oddly tender and wise novel, Hemingway perceptively delineates the personal struggles of both the haves and the have nots and creates one of the most subtle and moving portraits of a love affair in his oeuvre. In turn funny and tragic, lively and poetic, remarkable in its emotional impact,To Have and Have Nottakes literary high adventure to a new level. As theTimes Literary Supplementobserved, Hemingway's gift for dialogue, for effective understatement, and for communicating such emotions the tough allow themselves, has never been more conspicuous. Chapter 1

You know how it is there early in the morning in Havana with the bums still asleep against the walls of the buildings; before even the ice wagons come by with ice for the bars? Well, we came across the square from the dock to the Pearl of San Francisco Café to get coffee and there was only one beggar awake in the square and he was getting a drink out of the fountain. But when we got inside the café and sat down, there were the three of them waiting for us.

We sat down and one of them came over.

Well, he said.

I can't do it, I told him. I'd like to do it as a favor. But I told you last night I couldn't.

You can name your own price.

It isn't that. I can't do it. That's all.

The two others had come over and they stood there looking sad. They were nice-looking fellows all right and I would have liked to have done them the favor.

A thousand apiece, said the one who spoke good English.

Don't make me feellC¯