So I’m currently reading ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ by Hemmingway which frankly is a pretty mediocre book. I mean yeah it’s a nice portrayal of the Spanish civil war and all and of course the theme of “never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee” is worth reading about but frankly after the first 100 pages or so the book really loses steam and plods along for far too long. Anyway, enough of that waffle - what I really wanted to talk about was the following passage.

Background: So Maria and Roberto are spending possibly their last night together before they go to blow the bridge but Maria confesses that she can’t have sex with him (most likely due to the abuse she suffered some time before). Roberto then engages in the following internal monologue on page 355 (of my copy) about his own sperm:

“I’ll keep any oversupply of that for tomorrow. I’ll need all of it that there is tomorrow. There are no pine needles that need that now as I will need it tomorrow. Who was it cast his seed upon the ground in the Bible? Onan. How did Onan turn out? he thought. I don’t recall ever hearing any more about Onan. He smiled in the dark.”

This one passage made the rest of the book bearable for me - I didn’t realise he could be so funny!