Ernest Hemingway

[biodroid]

I personally have never read a classic (at least I don't think I have). I came across one of his books, For Whom the Bell Tolls and was wondering what it's about. I know he was a master at his craft but not sure what type of stories and styles he writes in. Is he into romance or war or...?

 

[Sparrow]

If you're into humorless bravado, then indeed, Hemingway is your man.

If you want something a bit more substantial from the same era then try F. Scott Fitzgerald.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Hemingway wrote like an emotional cripple, but there is a certain resonance to A Farewell To Arms. For Whom The Bell Tolls is indeed humourless bravado, while The Old Man And The Sea is a very elaborate narrative with very little point to it except to further Hemingway's obsession with killing living things as some sort of epiphanic act.

 

[biodroid]

Ok, so why is he so revered when it seems most people actually cannot stand him?

 

[Connavar]

I think he is one of those writers read,acclaimed for his style than his substance.

At least thats how it sounds people talking about how he wrote.

See for yourself and forget how the critics rate him. They love authors people dont read even.

I have seen people who won big awards for their story type than their actual writing ability,storytelling. Like how you win an oscar for a drama and not how good it is compared to all films. Talking more about contemporary writers.

Havent read Hemingway yet. I'm trying to get away from american,brit authors for now. More european,world lit when i read classic authors.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

He probably is still revered; by chance the two people who responded to you first do not revere him.

He has an important place in the canon for a variety of reasons; his brevity of style has been hugely influential on whole generations of American writers, his obsession with machismo helped make a certain kind of tough guy posturing find its way into what people called serious literature and so forth.

I used to like his work a lot more at one point; now I appreciate it at an arm's length as it were. Having said all that, do read A Farewell To Arms; it is an interesting book, an honest one and a powerful one at times. The style is not at all difficult to follow and the length is only moderate.

 

[j d worthington]

Even where someone doesn't like Hemingway, one can learn from him. His style showed to an intense degree how to be brief, even abrupt ("kill your darlings") while still having resonance on various levels by the very careful choice of which words to use and which to discard. He was a painstaking writer, however alienating some of his themes and modes may be to modern readers, and his craft is something well worth studying (i.e., reading closely to see how he does what he does).

You might want to try a collection of his shorter tales to begin with, before moving on to novels. And yes, this particular novel has been descibed well above....

And yes, he had a tremendous effect on twentieth century literature. Hemingway, in many ways, made possible the relatively quick acceptance of writers such as Hammett and Chandler, for instance.

As for Fitzgerald -- he had his "airy nothings", too; but when he was good (which was quite often) he was damn good....

 

[thepaladin]

I like SOME of Hemingway, note the word "some". His short stories at times have things to recommend them, and he is chiefly remembered for his literary "voice". Personally I don't generally care for him as he has the same nihilistic "voice" as the other well known writers who were his contemperieries such as Fitzgerald and Steinbeck. He was somewhat close to Ezra Pound whom he once called a saint and who was involved in getting some of Hemingway's work published in periodical form. He was talented, but I don't find a lot of his work to my taste.

 

[Sparrow]

knivesout ~He has an important place in the canon for a variety of reasons; his brevity of style has been hugely influential on whole generations of American writers, his obsession with machismo helped make a certain kind of tough guy posturing find its way into what people called serious literature and so forth.

I would agree on that point, and as JD mentions Hammett & Chandler with their "Hardboiled" Detective Noir were certain beneficiaries of Hemingway.

But, back to Hemingway bashing... there just isn't enough heart in his work.
He was a man consumed with posturing and much of his work comes off that way, to me at anyrate. While we're discussing the golden age of Classic American Literature I need mention John Steinbeck. If I were to compare him to a very English writer, one that you've all read, it would be Rudyard Kipling. Sort of like putting Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling in a blender, you get John Steinbeck.

If you've gone your whole life and never read Steinbeck, you really should give him a try.

 

[thepaladin]

I really can't agree with that...Love Twain, like Kipling....realy dislike Steinbeck. All a matter of taste I suppose. Twain near the end of his life (Letters From Earth) gets more like steinbeck, but not his earlier and prime work. Kipling is (in his own way) far more "hopeful". He exemplfies hope in the face of trouble at times. Steinbeck along with many of his contemporaries exemplifies nihilism (the "it's all pointless anyway"-"Life is crap and then you die" school of thought). Look at Of Mice and Men (struggle, struggle...bang your dead) or Grapes of Wrath (ending in one possibly not futile act, the rest of the book rife with the pointlessness of life).

Just my openion.

 

[ghostofcorwin]

Hemingway wrote like an emotional cripple, but there is a certain resonance to A Farewell To Arms. For Whom The Bell Tolls is indeed humourless bravado, while The Old Man And The Sea is a very elaborate narrative with very little point to it except to further Hemingway's obsession with killing living things as some sort of epiphanic act.

The arrogance of some of the posters here is really unfortunate, especially given that they apparently haven't a clue about what they're reading. Old Man And the Sea is a good example. I'll mention just a couple of points:

It's in principle a fairy tale, not in the childrens' sense, but in its structure and intention. Joseph Campbell defined a cycle of the hero = the calling of the ordinary man; his testing in the wilderness; his descent into the darkness to retreive treasure; and his return to the community to enrich it. Parallel that cycle with Hemingway's old man, who goes out onto the sea, struggles with a great fish, is joined with his adversary in killing it, then returns after great travail and suffering to that telling little scene where a tourtist sees the mere skeleton of the fish devoured by sharks and doesn't recognize it for what it is. Hemingway was writing as a modern who had been to war and suffered trauma. For him, the old fairy tale cycle of heroic transformation and capture of treasure no longer works. His old man is a warrior who has merely suffered, his prize is destroyed, and he comes back from his journey apparently empty-handed... or has he? From an existential point of view, there is no treasure, no magical transformation, no higher purpose. All the old man has is his grace and courage in the face of an otherwise "meaningless" struggle. That is his heroism. Heroism that creates meaning out of nothingness.

Of course, this is all of "very little point" for our poster. Sad that he has brought a great author down to his level only to dismiss him.

Another point: Hemingway was a master of the precise detail, the avoidance of clutter, the beauty of omission, which he stated he learned at the feet of Checkhov. It's a very careful, poetic approach to the language of narrative. Zen-like. For some, the demands of Hemingway are entirely missed because they skim the surface and remain unaware of the 9/10s of the iceberg below the surface. He's a great writer. Truly great. But to approach him as if he's some superficial hack is a terrible injustice.

Re the issue of "killing things," Hemingway was a man of another generation in this regard. And of a different value system than our run-of-the-mill humanists who are terrified of death. His appreciation of the bull fight as both tragic theatre and sport, as a vehicle for the creation of art in the face of death, was one element of his overall attraction to engaging death to understand what living really is about. Read the code of the Samurai and how they approached the drawing of their sword to take a life. On a side note, I have always been fascinated by the modern tendency to erase any connection with what makes us uncomfortable, even when it might have deep meaning. Imagine how different Judaism would be if animals were still sacrificed on the altar... our modern, and rather domesticated and tame sensibilities recoil. But the truth is that death is inextricably interwoven in life. We do our best to avoid thinking about, feeling it, or taking responsibility for it. Hemingway should be credited with at least having the courage to engage it head on and to learn from it.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I've read such interpretations of The Old Man And The Sea - I'm a literature graduate - and I don't buy it. No doubt that was Hemingway's intention, but it does not resonate for me. I am arrogant no doubt, but you in turn have hardly shown a great deal of humility in your choice of ad hominem epithets in response to me.

 

[ghostofcorwin]

I've read such interpretations of The Old Man And The Sea - I'm a literature graduate - and I don't buy it. No doubt that was Hemingway's intention, but it does not resonate for me. I am arrogant no doubt, but you in turn have hardly shown a great deal of humility in your choice of ad hominem epithets in response to me.

Yeah, me too. But that actually frightens me that you are a literature graduate and apparently can't do a basic exegesis of a novel. Hemingway never went to college, but he was a great student of literature. To be a great writer, one must be a serious reader. I'm not sure what it is that you aren't "buying." Tell me, if someone asked: "Hey, I'm planning to read that Shakespeare guy... something called Hamlet. Is it worth bothering?" And I answered: "Flowery use of language but a lot of nothing about a guy who can't make up his mind. Doesn't resonate for me..." Would you consider that a fair and useful commentary? I wouldn't. I really don't care one way or the other whether Hemingway resonates for you. That's a matter of personal taste. But dismissing the substance of his work out of hand without any support seems to me to be the height of insolence. That's offensive.

 

[thepaladin]

Try to be calm. Let me draw a little fire here re: killing things. I have hunted in my life and while i don't have any interest in it now...I'm not a vegan nor a vegetarian so I won't criticise his practices. I personally find the idea of bull fighting barbaric, but don't say that in Spain. That's all taste and personal ethics, feelings etc.

As for "Papa's" writing, he was a talented man, and (I'm sorry knivesout) but I do believe (and can see) multiple layers in his writing. I just "in general" don't care for what he wrote. His novels and stories are still widly discussed in most colleges and universities. i sat through several myself.

On my shelf I still have one volume of his short stories (mostly hunting stories). Maybe we could consider agreeing that most of his writing isn't to our taste and if the discussion goes beyond that maybe not be so, dogmatic?

 

[J-WO]

I read Old Man... recently and have just begun on Farewell

Have to say I like them both, though the latter seems written earlier and EH isn't living up to the public perception of him as much as he does with Old Man of The Sea.

He inspires the writer in me more than the reader--I think Bukowski topped his game--but his stuff certainly leaves me with a mood that lingers.

I think I'd like to see more SFF written in his style. After all, when you've got so much freaky stuff going on in the plot flowery writing gets in the way.

(NB- let's all keep this civil or it'll be a farewell to this thread if the mods see it, eh chaps?)

 

[thepaladin]

He had some writers block troubles especially late in life. It was often attributed to alchol, but it is more likely it was the electroshock he was subjected to...

Though after all that like I said, I'm really not a fan in general.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Regarding how frightening it is that my education has not taught me the art of exegesis - I am afraid that on the contrary, seeing how much it is possible to over-intepret texts on the basis of some critical framework has convinced me that such analysis is at best an amusing game. You cite Campbell: his schema of the heroic narrative is so generalised as to be applicable to almost any narrative; it boils down to nothing less than a few truisms that a story must have conflict, must show transformation, and so forth. Dressing these commonsensical observations in portentous sub-Jungian garb may make for a good pop-cultural meme, but is hardly an earth-shattering insight.

As for my inability to discern the deeper themes that may lurk in Hemingway's work; particularly in The Old Man And The Sea, I see little reason for having written that work unless Hemingway meant it as a symbolic exercise. Nevertheless, I have deep problems with his choice of symbols.

I am not a whiney college liberal; but I am a vegetarian and animal rights activist with a deep commitment to certain causes. It takes a lack of real moral fibre to face a noble beast such as the lion simply in order to slay it as a sort of cheap affirmation of one's manhood. True valour and cheap bravado are not the same thing, a mistaken identification Hemingway made time and again especially in his paeans to the supposed poetry of the choreographed butchery of the corrida.

Hemingway was a remarkable, yet flawed man; his works share both these qualities. I do not intend to re-read them any time soon.

 

[woodsman]

Never read Hemingway, but he obviously excites some sort of emotions.

Steinbeck however, I love, his style of prose, his realistic characterisation and his willingness to suggest there is no hope. Then again I'm not a big fan of happy endings, it's not something I've come across often in life.

 

[Sparrow]

ghostofcorwin ~Hemingway should be credited with at least having the courage to engage it head on and to learn from it.

Yes, that was the man and the myth he himself promoted.

One of the most notorious boxing matches of all time involved a portly, rabid self-mythologizer who had no real boxing ability, and a tubby, minor Canadian writer who, despite appearances, did. Step forward Ernest Hemingway and Morley Callaghan. They boxed at the American Club in Paris in June 1929. Their audience was the time-keeper, the writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

It perhaps went something like this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLtxG6ciA7g



There's a strange comedy undertow to Hemingway, the genius who brought a new wonderous energy to the English language, before blowing his brains out, was hopelessly past his prime for the last twenty years of his career, and probably knew it.
I must at least respect that, to put the barrel of a shotgun in your mouth and blast the back of your head across a dark room, if only for a good write-up in the New York Times.
That my friends, is a commitment to one's own legacy that can't be beat.

 

[ghostofcorwin]

Yes, that was the man and the myth he himself promoted.

One of the most notorious boxing matches of all time involved a portly, rabid self-mythologizer who had no real boxing ability, and a tubby, minor Canadian writer who, despite appearances, did. Step forward Ernest Hemingway and Morley Callaghan. They boxed at the American Club in Paris in June 1929. Their audience was the time-keeper, the writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

It perhaps went something like this...

YouTube - Morley Callaghan vs. Hemingway Boxing Match



There's a strange comedy undertow to Hemingway, the genius who brought a new wonderous energy to the English language, before blowing his brains out, was hopelessly past his prime for the last twenty years of his career, and probably knew it.
I must at least respect that, to put the barrel of a shotgun in your mouth and blast the back of your head across a dark room, if only for a good write-up in the New York Times.
That my friends, is a commitment to one's own legacy that can't be beat.

I would never attempt to validate Hemingway the man for his many poor decisions, some of which were immature, overly-competitive, and narcissistic. On the other hand, there are few great writers who were not "monsters" by any conventional standard. If the products of artists are to be judged according to how the artist lived, we're in very big trouble. Re Hemingway's suicide, you do know that he was treated at Mayo, that he had never fully recovered from the head injury he suffered in the plane crash in Africa and that he was very likely suffering from organic brain syndrome with concomitant depression. You also may know that there was an extensive family history of suicide. To call that "sefl-promotion" is perhaps tongue-in-cheek, but it is also completely silly.