Hemingway, on writing

[abathur]

Interviewer: How detached must you be from an experience before you can write about it in fictional terms? The African air crashes you were involved in, for instance?

Hemingway: It depends on the experience. One part of you sees it with complete detachment from the start. Another part is very involved. I think there is no rule about how soon one should write about it. It would depend on how well adjusted the individual was and on his or her recuperative powers. Certainly it is valuable to a trained writer to crash in an aircraft which burns. He learns several important things very quickly.

[Ghost-Girl]

I don't like Hemingway.

[fripping]

I do.

[lbloom]

I do too. Very much.

[Ghost-Girl]

Why? He has clear, consise, newspaper-like writing that lays down the fundementals and leaves the rest to imagination. I guess some people like that, but I like to be told a story.

[lbloom]

I don't know - to me, his prose is more poetic than simply precise. His style is capable of evoking more vivid imagery in my mind than sheets and sheets of verbosity. It's genuinely and intensely artistic, and crafted with care. It is not clinical.

[fripping]

There are two poles on the continuum of writing- the Hemingway end which just gives the bare facts and leaves it up to the receiver to fill in the gaps with their imagination, and the baroque end which just lays everything out there in explicit, excruciating detail.

It's pretty much just a matter of preference, but I prefer less verbiage to more because the simplicity strikes me as elegant. It's a balance between writing so little as to retard coherance or meaning and writing so much as to drown the reader in a tedious barrage of words.

[Mr.Miagi]

I don't like Hemingway.

that's because you're a girl and Hemingway was sexist. It's so sad. Girls don't like sexist writers, doesn't matter how good they are. Still, Hemingway is without question the best American male writer of the 20th century. Although Fitzgerald would fight him on that. But what's Hemingway's best novel? The Old Man And the Sea is more of a novella, so it doesn't count.

[Mr.Miagi]

but I like to be told a story.

If you don't like Hemingway, read his biography. That's a story in itself.

[Shimpei]

I'm not into Hemingway too much either. Not because he was sexist. Was he really? I didn't notice...
His style of writing is too simple, factual, and predictable.
Of all writings I have read by him I liked 'A Moveable Feast' the better.

[Mr.Miagi]

I'm not into Hemingway too much either. Not because he was sexist. Was he really? I didn't notice...
His style of writing is too simple, factual, and predictable.
Of all writings I have read by him I liked 'A Moveable Feast' the better.

I also didn't know he was sexist until a couple of radical feminists pointed it out.

[Ivy]

I'm embarassed to say that I just read my first Hemingway a couple of days ago. I was an English major but I focused on the British Romanticists and fulfilled my AmLit requirement with an early American class and a "AmLit since 1960" class that focused mainly on the beats and counterculture writers and such. So I guess I skipped over Hemingway entirely.

Anyway, on another board there is a short story discussion section, and I read "Hills Like White Elephants." I really like it. It has layers, and layers are good. It has made me want to read more Hemingway.

[distraction tactics]

I try to like Hemingway...?

I don't much about literature. The Old Man and The Sea and The Sun Also Rises were enjoyable. I think I get a kick out of who Hemingway was as a person. Bullfighting, plane crash, suicide... well-respected for his art, but a trainwreck in progress.

[attila_the_hunny]

Why? He has clear, consise, newspaper-like writing that lays down the fundementals and leaves the rest to imagination. I guess some people like that, but I like to be told a story.

Sounds boring.

[Ivy]

What should I read next? I'd like to tackle a Hemingway novel but I'm not sure which one to do.

[lbloom]

Any of them will do. Maybe start with the early stuff and make your way down. Save A Moveable Feast for the end, it probably benefits from the reader being a fan.

To Have and Have Not was made into a charming Bogie/Bacall vehicle.

[Claverhouse]

Hemingway is without question the best American male writer of the 20th century.

Who says 'without question'. I'd put James Branch Cabell up there instead.

Hemingway was just a laconic stumbling mumbler, the equivalent of Gary Cooper. I've never read him through, anymore than I've watched the latter.


Claverhouse :ph34r:

[Ghost-Girl]

that's because you're a girl and Hemingway was sexist. It's so sad. Girls don't like sexist writers, doesn't matter how good they are. Still, Hemingway is without question the best American male writer of the 20th century. Although Fitzgerald would fight him on that. But what's Hemingway's best novel? The Old Man And the Sea is more of a novella, so it doesn't count.
I don't care if he was a suicidal sexist, I just don't like his writing. I had to do a report on him once, so yeah I know a bit about his life, pretty interesting I guess.

Try some Thomas Pynchon.

[sbw]

I read the sun also rises and for whom the bell tolls, and enjoyed both. I should probably read more of his books.

Scott

[azurwarrior]

[QUOTE=Mr.Miagi] Hemingway is without question the best American male writer of the 20th century. Although Fitzgerald would fight him on that.
William Faulkner would get my vote.
I just can't sit back and let Hemingway get all the credit...
There's Mark Twain (who died in 1910). Some people would point out: Arthur Miller, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Thomas Pynchon, Phillip Roth, Saul Bellow.
On the other hand, Hemingway was a genius of portraying a certain machismo that no one else seems to capture so very aptly.
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber(sp.) is a short story I read in High School that I have framed a certain life philosophy on.
(So if I kick the bucket prematurely, you know whose to blame). (Better ban him now).
JK, please...
Anyway, I can see why people like him.

[last_caress]

Hemingway is like reading a newspaper.

Henry Miller, stylistically speaking, utterly spanks most modern writers.
Too bad I don't give a shit about most of his meandering stories.
"Henry Miller on Writing" is pretty decent though.

[Mr.Miagi]

Hemingway is like reading a newspaper.

Henry Miller, stylistically speaking, utterly spanks most modern writers.


I would say Hemingway, and these; Henry Miller, Scott Fitzgerald and J.D. Salinger; are the pioneers of the modern fiction we read today. No writer has been immitated more than Hemingway. That has to account for something. The problem I have with Henry Miller is that he weren't as productive as Hemingway. Hemingway kept on writing, kept on producing masterpiece after masterpiece. He wrote some crap along the way too, most writers do in fact, but for me Hemingway stands out above everyone else. He influenced me more than any other American writer.

[sbw]

I like (both) the hemingway books I read (I think I mentioned that earlier), but fitzgerald is better. I haven't read anything by henry miller.

Scott

[Ivy]

I tried to plow my way through Tropic of Cancer but I just couldn't do it. On a micro level the prose was really pleasing, but at the macro level, it just wasn't doing it for me.

[cheney27]

Hemingway was one of my favoriate writers while i was in college and high school. Although I just re-read The Sun Also Rises and was a little disappointed. I hope to read A Moveable Feast soon.

[nomir_dva]

I like Hemmingway precisely for the restrained quality of his prose. I find some similarity between his writing and Steinbeck's, whom I also enjoy.