I Confess to Reading Hemingway

Recently, I read Across the River and Into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway.  It was like coming home.  So, imagine my disappointment when I learned the cognescenti panned it.  The cognescenti just cannot relate to the quote by the main character, Richard Cantwell, who was a brevet general when WWII ended and was then demoted to colonel, probably for following orders.  (I did NOT think there was anything Freudian about his name.)

Love is love and fun is fun.  But it is always so quiet when the goldfish die.