FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

Campbell Scott’s reading of Hemingway’s great novel of the Spanish Civil War, like Hemingway’s text, is spare and dense, but layered with subtlety. Because Scott seems to withdraw from it emotionally, the reader’s investment in it is all the greater. Scott knows that the real drama lies in the understated intensity of Hemingway’s prose, the rich Spanish cadences of his lines, and in his simple yet powerful diction. Reading cleanly, without additional flourish, he mimics them perfectly, slipping flawlessly in and out of the Spanish itself, hovering only lightly in the background, like the faint, thin smoke of the campfire around which Robert Jordan sits with Pablo, Pilar, and Maria. With Hemingway, less is always more, and Scott’s presentation succeeds like no other could. P.E.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 06]