Today, I bring you Ernest Hemingway. What a fascinating man! But so tragic. :( What was your first experience with Hemingway? What is your opinion of his work? Critics still can’t agree! Hemingway is easily known as one of the greatest American authors. We have come to know him as the writer who disdained “the grandiose wordiness of Victorian prose for a clean, stripped-back simplicity, conveying emotion by what was not said as much as by what was.” In fact, I don’t think there is any living person who doesn’t know Hemingway and his “Iceburg Theory.” One article even compared his legacy to the literary equivalent to a Nike swoosh or the golden arches, asking, “Who doesn’t have a mental picture of the gray beard and safari shirt? Who couldn’t vamp a Hemingway-like sentence in a pinch?” And what a shame that perhaps because “we’ve come to fetishize this voice that we accept and even admire gnomic truisms like ‘a writer should write what he has to say’—an observation from Hemingway’s Nobel banquet speech,” we may miss what he was really good at: his “earlier, more uncertain writing—the prose that openly struggles to track and parse a mess of a life—that gets into your blood.” In short, Hemingway tried to prove that less is more (coming from his journalistic background) and taking his cue from Ezra Pound who taught him to “distrust adjectives,” that adjectives can do more harm than good in writing prose. Some critics, however, say Hemingway’s penchant for creating novels that usually follow a basic chronological order, are boring and typical for one touted as such a great American author. And when critics aren’t arguing about his genius, they argue about why he is a genius! Some argue that it is that which Hemingway leaves out, which, by proxy means, we, the reader, must put back in, that makes him a genius, while others say it’s NOT what he left out but what he left in, and that everyone has gotten it all wrong! Confused yet? 😊 I’ll never forget my first experience with Hemingway’s work. It was “Hills Like White Elephants.” I don’t think there is a more stripped-down version of a tale out there. It had a profound effect on me. Today, in my career, Hemingway is by far the most argued-about “classic” writer in my field of teaching. Many don’t teach him, sadly, and call him overrated. I hear it a lot. “I can’t stand Hemingway.” In short, it seems you either love or hate him. How about read his work? There’s a start. 😊 As a writer myself and with so many “how we should write” manuals out there, it is interesting to read about Hemingway’s method. He was most assuredly not what we call a “pantster.” He carefully analyzed his storylines, looked at every sentence and word, and if it didn’t serve a purpose or function, he expunged it. Some use the term “hard-boiled literature,” unemotional, without sentiment, to describe him and his work. But biographic research showed that “behind the macho façade of boxing, bullfighting, big-game hunting and deep-sea fishing” existed quite “a sensitive and vulnerable mind that was full of contradictions.” I think one of the most fascinating things we remember, as is often the case with legends who die tragic deaths, is his suicide, and it is these contradictions that seem to be at the root of why. Why did he do it? We know he meticulously planned his suicide, having chosen the outfit, something he called his “emperor’s robe,” before taking his double-barrelled shotgun and blowing his brains out at 7 am on July 2, 1961. Most have come to pinpoint the moment of his outward demise to his father Clarence’s suicide in 1928 of the same means, a gunshot to the head with a .32 Smith and Wesson revolver, but some trace it back much further to his childhood of abuse and identity confusion. His mother dressed him in “white frocks” and did his hair like a “little girl’s” while also praising him “for being good at hunting in the woods and fishing in the stream in boys' clothes.” It seems Hemingway had always “hated her, and her controlling ways,” referring to her as "that bitch” and presenting in a “parody of masculinity” as a result. And his father “was a barrel-chested, six-foot bully, a disciplinarian who beat his son with a razor strop. Ernest didn't retaliate directly. He bottled it up and subsumed it into a ritual, in which he'd hide in a shed in the family backyard with a loaded shotgun and take aim at his father's head.” Hemingway may have been idealized as the perfect “man’s man,” but “those who knew Hemingway well, especially in these early years, reported that his braggadocio was something of a cover: Far from being the swaggering, insouciant rake of lore, he was emotionally fragile, stirred into panics by women’s rejections, prone to insomnia…a workaholic and perfectionist.” Now, some psychologists glean that he suffered from bipolar disorder and borderline narcissistic personality traits, which led to self-harming and alcohol dependence. (Hemingway has a long list of near-fatal physical accidents, many of which were direct injuries to his head, some saying each seeming to “emulate his…father’s self-imposed head wound”). Many in his family– “his father and mother, their siblings, his own son and his grand-daughter Margaux – were prone to manic-depression,” which was clearly the case in his final years. “Hemingway's taste for chronic self-immolation was matched by his prodigious feats of drinking. The drinking got worse after his father shot himself.” His suicide may have seemed a surprise to the outside world who saw a man who had it all, but he told a lover: "I spend a hell of a lot of time killing animals and fish, so I won't kill myself." After being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954, he worried that, “after receiving the prize, most laureates never wrote anything worthwhile again.” And after 1960, he found he could no longer write. It was his writing that kept him from evading death, but when he felt he could no longer write, depression, “paranoid delusions,” electro shock treatments, and medication filled the page instead. When asked to write just one line for Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961, he said the words “won’t come anymore.” Where some of my information came from and more reading from PBS, Anders Hallengren, and Nathan Heller: http://www.pbs.org/…/ernest-hemingway-reflections-on-e…/629/
https://www.nobelprize.org/…/la…/1954/hemingway-article.html http://www.slate.com/…/ernest_hemingway_how_the_great_ameri…
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Is the internet and things like DMs and Messenger the new form of letter writing? Is it so bad? We had this discussion a bit in The Nu Romantics the other day about the handwritten manuscript, notes, or letters, that it is becoming a lost art, the beauty fading, and so, too, may be our words. Are these capabilities making interpersonal relationships and communication a thing of the past? Are we doomed to face a world like the one presented in the novel, "Ella Minnow Pea"? (If you haven't read that by the way, I highly recommend it.) For all its ills, there is something romantic about the communication of writing. Yes. I see its flaws. I see the idea that people may be losing their ability to talk face-to-face, that interpersonal skills may be lacking as a result of texting and the like. But, for me, it has freed me. It has freed me from a life of writing academically, of putting on my masks at work and even in my personal life. R.B. has freed a world of words and ideas and thoughts, free to say almost (almost because I still am me) anything I'm feeling, to embrace my dark and my light. To write. Yes. To write. I write all the time now because of technology. I speak into my phone and type it later. I pull over on the side of the road and write into my notes. I can be at work in the most boring of meetings, listening to someone who just wants to hear himself talk, see a prompt somewhere, and type into my notes app on my phone. I see a sunset. I write. I watch a ballet and I write. I go to the theatre and I write. I lie on the beach...and yes, I write. I cannot tell you how many times I had an idea or a thought and poof, it's gone, because I didn't have my notebook or pen, or if I did, it would be too obvious and maybe even rude. The phone, once a rude invasion, has become almost a part of us, to pull it out now is normal, expected...do I put it away sometimes? Of course I do. There are times and places it's unacceptable, and sometimes, even then, I scurry off the bathroom and hide and jot down a thought, a phrase, a moment. I dare say it's made me a better writer. Even these blogs I write: So many ideas flit through my mind and I lose them if I don't write them down...and so, my phone is my mind on many occasions...I write poems on it. I write micro shorts. I write these blogs. But the best thing I love about this thing we call the internet is the ability to find love, to fall in love with someone's soul rather than their looks or other things we tend to judge people on. I get to communicate with people all over the world, and get to know them, as we learn to communicate more clearly through the written word. Like a time long ago where a lover across seas or at war can only communicate through a written letter, so, too, has the internet's channels of conversation done the same. The only difference? Sometimes it even makes us closer. It's immediate. It's right there, at our fingertips. I see something, I want to share with a friend, and I can write her. I can take a picture and send it. We can "talk" about it live...and it's organic and just as real as a real-time conversation in person. There is nothing stopping us from communication but a signal. Why must in-person be the best form of communication? Says who? I challenge you to tell me why. It's a shift, I realize, in thinking...but that's life. Evolution. On Twitter last week, there was a prompt about what our phones are saying behind our backs. I laughed reading some of those. We can be naked. We can be in the tub. We can be in bed, under covers, in the dark when we're supposed to be sleeping, and have some of the most beautiful conversations. We can learn at any hour, from anyone we choose. We learn about other people and countries and ideas, things we could never do in person for myriad reasons, like money or time or space. it erases those obstacles. It opens us up to worlds this lifetime would never allow us to see. We may even fall in love with people we'll never meet. And somehow, that in itself, is one of the most romantic notions I can think of. Perhaps, even, I shall write a story and publish it about one such love affair, a couple madly in love, whose fate hangs in the balance of cyberspace. Yes. I dare say it again. The internet has made me a better writer. And this blog will now be shared with thousands of people, for better or worse. THAT could never happen otherwise. And to think, my phone and the internet made it possible...
Today I ponder what we eat. How many among us are moving towards a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle? Why is that? Why do many of us still eat meat? Is it simply because it tastes good? Is it a way to get the most nutrients and proteins as easily and quickly as possible? Do we HAVE to eat meat because of our diet restrictions as some of my friends tell me? Where do you fall into this spectrum? And why? My thoughts stem from a conversation that started with a “friend” of mine who used the word “fat” to describe someone at an environmentally-conscious-eating-healthy-and-organically event for lack of clearer description. When he used it, the whole table hushed. It was as if the word fat was a swear word, that to use it was offensive, insensitive. I remember as a child my mom saying once when watching a dance recital video back of mine that she couldn’t attend: “Who’s the fat one?” She didn’t care how graceful or perfected her form was…ballet dancers aren’t supposed to look like THAT. I’m not sure our perceptions have changed all that much. This friend (really friend of a friend) said it matter-of-factly, and people, after the hush, started to berate him as being judgmental, that he was being discriminatory against a group of people. He quickly rose to defend himself. He argued that being fat was a sign of unhealth. That it was a choice one makes. That “his taxes” were paying for "their" ailments. As the discussion got more heated (it’s a wonder, really, we all stayed seated at the table), we got onto other topics, topics of poverty and how our country makes it a luxury to be healthy. The impoverished communities having to rely on fast-food and cheap eats, and the rise of inner-city co-ops, which are a great idea, but which aren’t sustaining themselves, sadly. (at least not near me). That organic food is damn expensive. That eating healthy costs bucks. That THAT is the issue… The discussion progressed, morphed, spiraled, and it really made me think. This event I went to was all about gardening co-ops, healthy lifestyles, vegetarian eating and the alkaline charts, and living naturally with and on this Earth...and I heard a child ask: “But Mom, aren’t we killing plants too? Then what will we eat?” I stopped dead in my tracks as I often think about that too. The flowers in my vase, the many living things we kill for our aesthetics. But I thought on it and wondered how the mother might have answered. When we kill an animal to eat, that’s it. We take their life, and still, in some instances, in brutal, slaughterhouse, disgusting fashion. That's not about affordability. That's about greed. And we have evolved enough to know the intelligence and feeling capabilities of our warm-blooded friends. The pig. The cow. They cuddle. They think. They love. They feel. They are “sentient” beings. Plants are not, and science backs this. But further, some of our plant friends can bear us fruit year after year if we tend to them. That peach, for instance, grows back for us every year. The apple orchards, if tended, produce and continue to bear us fruit. And that rose oil can still bring us health benefits from afar as long as they are tended, preened, and fed.
It’s harmonious…and that, if it were my child, would have been my answer. Besides all the health benefits of going towards a more vegetarian life, it’s the ethical ones that have guided me towards my goals. I’m not hear to judge or have a contentious debate…I’m here to live my own life with my own conscience. And I ask you to think about yours consciously…after all, we're all here to grow. |
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I LOVE to write and read. I particularly enjoy reading erotic romance that has tons of emotion in it. I hope you will ask me questions and share your favorite authors and novels. I welcome all feedback.
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