Filling Up Pages

Chapter XI, to me, felt a hundred percent like a filler chapter. Actually, my honest opinion is that a lot of the book is Hemingway rambling on and on and on. In quite a few paragraphs throughout the novel so far, I feel like he loses his train of thought and consequently, forgets the point he is attempting to make. In much of his writing, he either goes into way too much detail, causing me to get totally lost, or not enough detail, causing me to be out of the loop. By this chapter, it is really starting to get on my nerves. I do not think it is necessary to write a step-by-step narrative of Jake's travels. He writes "we passed through a town and stopped in front of a posada, and the driver took on several packages" (pg 111). That sentence is in no way adding to the story; in fact, I believe it detracts from the novel because it has no relevance. An additional annoyance is how he continues to repeat himself. For instance on page 109, in Chapter XI, he says "it was baking hot" at the beginning of the paragraph; however, four sentences later (in the same paragraph!), he states again "it certainly was hot." The redundancy of these two sentences is ridiculous. I know that much of this novel is flying over my head, even though I read each page about three times. I am surprised by the fact that this novel is so difficult to get into, for Hemingway is one of the most famous American writers. Almost every American can identify who Hemingway was/is; this novel makes me wonder if his other books are as difficult to get through as this one. Is he actually infamous for long, boring novels?