Anonymous asked: What's Hemingway's deal, anyway?
Hemingway’s “deal,” huh?
Well, let me lay it on you. I hope you brought an umbrella, because it’ll be raining cold hard facts up in here.
This is how most of his books go:
Man: “I’M A MAN. I SHOOT THINGS WITH GUNS. I DRINK FANCY LIQUORS YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF. I PROBABLY HAVE A INJURY FROM THAT TIME I WAS IN A WAR SHOOTING THINGS! KILLING! DRINKING! WOMEN!
Woman (usually with a masculine sounding name, like Brett or Mike): “I love you.”
Man: “OK. BUT IT WON’T WORK OUT IN THE END.”
Woman: “Why not?”
Man: “BECAUSE BY THE END OF THE NOVEL I, OR YOU, OR OUR LOVE (OR ANY COMBINATION OF THE THREE) WILL BE DEAD.”
Then we go on to get graphic depictions of war, fistfights, and births. It never ends happily for anyone, because where would be the fun in that? If the novel doesn’t end on a battlefield, then it ends in the rain or a cheap hotel.
We also get the modern writing style, which might be called “the understatement of the century.” It goes a little like this:
Hemingway: “We are sitting in chairs in a cafe and drinking wine and talking about the way things used to be in that cafe when we would sit there drinking wine and talking a few years ago when I knew that guy and the world was a little younger and I felt younger but now I feel old because I am getting older and my knee hurts.”
The Reader: “What does this passage mean, like, symbolically, for the main character?”
Hemingway: “LOL.”
There’s also a fair amount of cursing in every book, but I have it on good authority from my English major friends that cursing is the sign of an instant classic. (And Snooki’s book is no exception.)
Hemingway operated on what he called the “iceberg theory,” which is that a writer can write one thing on the page while something entirely different is going on beneath the surface. So, anytime you are confused with a Hemingway passage, just look on the back of the page. He’s hidden what’s really going on somewhere under it. Or just move on. He really didn’t want you to figure it out anyway.
A Moveable Feast is my favorite work of Hemingway’s, but I think that’s mostly because it’s about Paris, which is my favorite work of humanity’s. I have no trouble picturing him writing these things while sipping alcohol in little cafes on Place St. Michael. He complains a lot about money. He meets people and writes about how he hates them. It’s nice. I also like The Sun Also Rises for mostly the same reasons.
We can talk about how Hemingway’s view of masculinity was attached to sex and violence, and how he was probably anti-Semitic and that he objectified women. But let’s leave that to the English majors, ok? For us Normals, it’s a nice read.
Any books about “The Lost Generation,” as Gertrude Stein’s mechanic called it, I like. It’s so sad and beautiful. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Eliot. Nom nom nom.
Anyway, that’s Hemingway’s deal. But what do I know? I have dollar signs for a soul.
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wyatto posted this
