An Itching for Sun and Sand

For the past couple of days I have been on a quest for unadulterated sun, sand, and adventure qualified by great booze and rough talking men all in my cold and obnoxious apartment. Last week a conversation in a bar well after the witching hour sparked a fond memory of the work of Ernest Hemmingway, and thus led me back to one of his greatest works, Islands in the Stream. The novel, published posthumously by his publisher and his sons, is a biographical piece of fictions that describes men acting like boys and boys becoming men. The rich descriptions of the dandy life on an island in the Gulf Stream beg for envy on these grey days in January.