H is for Hemingway

 

I like this picture because he's smiling, a rather mischievous smile, at that

My cousin and I recently discussed Hemingway. There are few famous writers whom I appreciate less than him. Faulkner and James Joyce, being two. I must admit that I think the failing is mine in their cases. I simply can’t follow their stories. John le Carré fits in that group, now that I think about it.

          Ernest Hemingway and Henry James, however, I do not like because I do not like their writing styles. They both tell good stories, but it’s the way they tell them.

Henry James’ run-on sentences bring out the editor in me. I heard someone once describe him as “chewing more than he bit off.”

Hemingway, on the other hand, never met a complex sentence he liked. And very few compound ones. In The Old Man and the Sea he makes me crazy with his uninspired attributions: “and the old man said,” “and the boy said,” “and the old man said.” But it is a good story and it’s a skinny little book so I wasn’t frustrated with it as long as I was with James’ The Golden Bowl.

Generally speaking, I am not interested in authors’ biographies. If I like their work then I don’t want to know much about them, because I might not like them and that would color my enjoyment of their work. If I don’t like their work, then who cares about their lives?

 Call it inspiration or curiosity or maybe just a way to avoid working on my own book – I found myself reading Wikipedia’s entry on Hemingway. His story would make an epic novel, filled with sex, violence, exotic locations, famous people (some wealthy and powerful), and a tragic ending.

 After all this complaining, I can recommend For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms. Plus, I think his short fiction is excellent. Now I think I’ll read A Moveable Feast, his autobiography, and see what he thought of his life.