Ernest Hemingway

No, same for me and I can confirm I'm not a sperg

Hemingway is a fantastic short story writer. His full length novels are great too, but the impact of his style comes through with more immediacy in his short stories.

I absolutely loved the old man and the sea, but for whom the bell tolls is one of the worst novels I read this year.

What is his style?

Lean, restrained prose. Writing on the "principle of the iceberg." Believing fiction should convey a certain truth without lush descriptors. Short, simple sentences.

That style sounds easy to achieve. Is it?

Depends. More about saying the most with the fewest words as opposed to just writing terse, observational sentences.

I've read the main novels from him and enjoyed them all. In particular, sun also rises was really good. The whole lost generation idea resonates with me and it wasn't as tedious and long as for whom the Bell tolls was.

Yeah, Hemingway is very direct. His style is very simple, it's the way he uses it that's impressive.

Okay, thank you. But what was his underlying philosophy behind his style? Do you know? Why did he prefer that style?

How does he use it? Can you give an example?

Niggas name is fucking Ernest

Truth , he felt, was expressed in the feelings and goings on behind words, not the words themselves

I'm sure it came from his emphasis on conveying a truth through writing. He was also trained in journalism so he used short sentences, short paragraphs, and vigorous English.

Last sentence in "The Sun Also Rises:"

"Isn't it pretty to think so?"

Obviously more profound and heartbreaking in context, but you get the idea.

It's something that on first glance appears to be astonishingly easy to achieve, but is truly difficult to execute. Much of the story is told in the blank spaces of the text, as corny as that may come across. It allowed Hemingway to ease the reader into finding the nuance of what is said with these simple sentence, only to blindside them with plain spoken and powerful truths.

Thank you for your explanation. What author is at the opposite end of the spectrum? Someone like Nabokov? I'm new to literature, so I am still learning these things.

More like Wilde who championed perfume and flowery writing. He was big on aesthetic.

i just finished "the garden of eden" and it was the shittiest novel i've ever read. the story is a infinite loop of sex, drink and food. all the chapters begin with the main caracther waking up, having some breakfast, chilling out on the beach, fucking his wife, having some drink in the bar and that's what it is. it was pretty deceptive considering that i was into hemingway because of "the old man and the sea". now, i don't know if i should read the "for whom the bells toll".

A Farewell to Arms > The Sun Also Rises > For Whom the Bell Tolls > The Old Man and the Sea > A Moveable Feast. Honestly don't concern yourself with any of Hemingway's other works.

Talking to Callaghan one day, Fitzgerald referred to Hemingway’s ability as a boxer, and remarked that while Hemingway was probably not good enough to be heavyweight champion of the world, he was undoubtedly as good as Young Stribling, the light-heavyweight champion. “Look, Scott,” said Callaghan, “Ernest is an amateur. I’m an amateur. All this talk is ridiculous.” Unconvinced, Fitzgerald asked to come along to the gym at the American Club and watch Hemingway and Callaghan box. But Callaghan has let the reader in earlier on one small point. Hemingway, four inches taller and forty pounds heavier than Callaghan, “may have thought about boxing, dreamed about it, consorted with old fighters and hung around gyms,” but Callaghan “had done more actual boxing with men who could box a little and weren’t just taking exercise or fooling around.”

So on an historic afternoon in June in Paris in 1929, Hemingway and Callaghan boxed a few rounds with Fitzgerald serving as timekeeper. The second round went on for a long time. Both men began to get tired, Hemingway got careless. Callaghan caught him a good punch and dropped Hemingway on his back. At the next instant Fitzgerald cried out, “Oh, my God! I let the round go four minutes.”

“All right, Scott,” Ernest said. “If you want to see me getting the shit knocked out of me, just say so. Only don’t say you made a mistake.”

According to Callaghan’s estimate, Scott never recovered from that moment. One believes it. Four months later, a cruel and wildly inaccurate story about this episode appeared in the Herald Tribune book section. It was followed by a cable sent collect by Fitzgerald at Hemingway’s insistence. “HAVE SEEN STORY IN HERALD TRIBUNE. ERNEST AND I AWAIT YOUR CORRECTION. SCOTT FITZGERALD.”

Since Callaghan had already written such a letter to the paper, none of the three men could ever forgive each other.

As the vignettes, the memoirs, and the biographies of Hemingway proliferate, Callaghan’s summer in Paris may take on an importance beyond its literary merit, for it offers a fine clue to the logic of Hemingway’s mind, and tempts one to make the prediction that there will be no definitive biography of Hemingway until the nature of his personal torture is better comprehended. It is possible Hemingway lived every day of his life in the style of the suicide. What a great dread is that. It is the dread which sits in the silences of his short declarative sentences. At any instant, by any failure in magic, by a mean defeat, or by a moment of cowardice, Hemingway could be thrust back again into the agonizing demands of his courage. For the life of his talent must have depended on living in a psychic terrain where one must either be brave beyond one’s limit, or sicken closer into a bad illness, or, indeed, by the ultimate logic of the suicide, must advance the hour in which one would make another reconnaissance into one’s death.

That may be why Hemingway turned in such fury on Fitzgerald. To be knocked down by a smaller man could only imprison him further into the dread he was forever trying to avoid. Each time his physical vanity suffered a defeat, he would be forced to embark on a new existential gamble with his life. So he would naturally think of Fitzgerald’s little error as an act of treachery, for the result of that extra minute in the second round could only be a new bout of anxiety which would drive his instinct into ever more dangerous situations. Most men find their profoundest passion in looking for a way to escape their private and secret torture. It is not likely that Hemingway was a brave man who sought danger for the sake of the sensations it provided him. What is more likely the truth of his long odyssey is that he struggled with his cowardice and against a secret lust to suicide all of his life, that his inner landscape was a nightmare, and he spent his nights wrestling with the gods. It may even be that the final judgment on his work may come to the notion that what he failed to do was tragic, but what he accomplished was heroic, for it is possible he carried a weight of anxiety within him from day to day which would have suffocated any man smaller than himself. There are two kinds of brave men. Those who are brave by the grace of nature, and those who are brave by an act of will. It is the merit of Callaghan’s long anecdote that the second condition is suggested to be Hemingway’s own.

Literally just read Hills Like White Elephants for class, very good short story. I want to read more Hemingway, is The Sun Also Rises a good place to start?

Well, that's great to hear.

It was just so dull.

The modern staccato style, which he helped usher in and which has become very popular because it's more forgiving of ineptitude.

The perfect place to start with Hemingway novels.

Thomas Wolfe. Hemingway hated him. Funny because they had the same editor.

Did he pretty much jack this from Gertrude Stein? What's the deal with that relationship?

I just read The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, so I know they hung out and Stein definitely had a "meaning in simplicity" sort of style. Now I'm reading The Sun Also Rises. It seems like the exact same style, but a little easier to digest and with an actually interesting plot.

Did he steal her style or was it just artistic influence or something?

She was a mentor, although I believe they became estranged later on.

I don't like his style.