Oh, that sounds like a super fun teacher. The ones you both learn from and can collectively poke fun at are the best!
TSAR is the one about interesting people getting drunk in Paris, which is more fun than war, certainly. I didn't read Catalonia, but I did read Burmese Days, and Down & Out in Paris & London, during my Orwell kick...
Hemingway is underrated, regardless of what is said about him. Writing, for him, was like a boxing match, every sentence a punch, and he was the greatest at it. Thanks for reminding me. I think I love your columns on literature more than the ones on politics, although the eternal verities are clear in both.
He has become underrated, for sure. Apart from all else, he just knows how to string the words together. I enjoy these columns, too...hopefully one day they can be the bulk of what I do, again...
I believe he once said that the hardest job a writer has is keeping his butt in the chair. So it’s delicious irony that he had a standing desk built for himself. A New England cabinet maker used to advertise the “Hemingway Standing Desk” in The New Yorker, as though it would help you write like him. Regardless, he can teach us a lot about the craft of writing. If you compare Hemingway with the deeply troubled Fitzgerald, it’s pretty easy to see which one was able to “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
When I shared this on my FB page today (you are well known to my friends, btw), I did so with a warning NOT to read it if anyone has the slightest feelings of depression today. That's how Hemingway always washed over me. As John Yearwood wrote below, there's a "punch" in his style and if one is very sensitive or emotional, that punch can feel like a knockout!
I find him much less depressing than others, I think BECAUSE of that punch. There's so much vitality there. But yes, it's good to have a trigger warning. And a spoiler alert! I did ruin the ending here...
Ernest 'Papa' Hemmingway simply can't be ignored when speaking of great American writers. My personal favorite anecdote is how he dropped everything to help the war effort, tooling around the Caribbean in his motor launch hunting Nazi subs
I appreciate these Sunday columns, maybe most of all. They both make me feel dumb and open up my life (at this late date) to authors and literature that I've not encountered. So, what did I read in high school? Well, who knows? It was almost 40 years ago, and I only remember the teacher of the course called "Rhetoric." Mr. Mellen was also a coach of one of the sports and seemed a little "slow" to me at the time, so I dreaded the class and obviously didn't get much out of it. I couldn't name one book we were assigned that year, but I know that even after high school and into college, I wasn't exposed to "Great American Literature," of the dead white guys and it's only in the past decade or so that I regret not seeking it out for myself. Stephen King was publishing then, and Hemingway just had to wait.
In college I switched majors three or four times in the first two years, finally settling on Theater: Acting/Directing sequence. You'd think I would have then been exposed to Shakespeare, but no, it was more an Edward Albee, Anton Chekhov, Samuel Beckett kind of school at the time. I got to play George in "Virginia Woolf," and tried my best NOT to be Richard Burton, but my co-star showed up to most rehearsals stoned, so it was an interesting interpretation. The column a few weeks ago on Shakespeare was eye-opening, but I generally don't comment if I'm not familiar with the subject matter, and I didn't. Besides that, Shakespeare is hard - too many words!
So, circling back, I just wanted to express my deep appreciation for these columns. There are still at least a few people walking around that, although steeped in modern literature and non-fiction, need to also be familiarized with the classics. I'm 64 soon and my education continues! Thank you, Greg.
Chiming in with the chorus about what a special treat your Sunday lit forays are...if a particular class' sensibilities lean towards cynicism and alienation, I teach Hemingway's lesser known short story Soldier's Home, about a returning WWI soldier who's sick and tired of lying and pretending everything's normal. Not a mystery why it resonates with our new "lost generation...."
Thank you for the Sunday dose of Hemingway, Greg. He was an author who always hit me the hardest when I was looking the other way. For all of the bullfights, fistfights, boozing and sexual tension in “The Sun Also Rises,” when I got to the part near the end when Jake was swimming in the ocean, the feeling of the scene washed over me like the waves he was swimming into. To me, it felt like the point of the whole book: We live a life of illusion and action and fantasy, but in the end we are just solitary beings bobbing in an endless sea.
Which also reminds me of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”:
“What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too.”
*sigh*
I don’t mean to bring the party down here. Quite the opposite. I find these words bracing, invigorating and charged with energy. Life is ugly, terrifying, beautiful, miraculous.
Thank you, as always, for reminding us of all it is to be human.
Oh, that sounds like a super fun teacher. The ones you both learn from and can collectively poke fun at are the best!
TSAR is the one about interesting people getting drunk in Paris, which is more fun than war, certainly. I didn't read Catalonia, but I did read Burmese Days, and Down & Out in Paris & London, during my Orwell kick...
"Ahead was a mounted policeman directing traffic. He raised his baton." Such poignant symbolism from Hemingway.
He was happy to see Brett. Or Jake.
Perfect how he sneaks it in.
Hemingway is underrated, regardless of what is said about him. Writing, for him, was like a boxing match, every sentence a punch, and he was the greatest at it. Thanks for reminding me. I think I love your columns on literature more than the ones on politics, although the eternal verities are clear in both.
He has become underrated, for sure. Apart from all else, he just knows how to string the words together. I enjoy these columns, too...hopefully one day they can be the bulk of what I do, again...
I believe he once said that the hardest job a writer has is keeping his butt in the chair. So it’s delicious irony that he had a standing desk built for himself. A New England cabinet maker used to advertise the “Hemingway Standing Desk” in The New Yorker, as though it would help you write like him. Regardless, he can teach us a lot about the craft of writing. If you compare Hemingway with the deeply troubled Fitzgerald, it’s pretty easy to see which one was able to “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
When I shared this on my FB page today (you are well known to my friends, btw), I did so with a warning NOT to read it if anyone has the slightest feelings of depression today. That's how Hemingway always washed over me. As John Yearwood wrote below, there's a "punch" in his style and if one is very sensitive or emotional, that punch can feel like a knockout!
I find him much less depressing than others, I think BECAUSE of that punch. There's so much vitality there. But yes, it's good to have a trigger warning. And a spoiler alert! I did ruin the ending here...
I idolize Hemingway. Even though I can see his flaws, it makes no difference to me. His writing is sublime. The earth moves.
It is! And it does!
Hemingway was so cool. I remember he was an American turned Paris bohemian for a short time that loved raging bullfights, writing, drinking.
I read "The Sun Also Rises" in HS over 20 years ago.
Old Man & the Sea I re-read every decade of my life.
My gem of an English teacher that assigned both to our class will forever hold a special place in my heart.
He was cool, in the purest sense of the word...he was authentically him.
Ernest 'Papa' Hemmingway simply can't be ignored when speaking of great American writers. My personal favorite anecdote is how he dropped everything to help the war effort, tooling around the Caribbean in his motor launch hunting Nazi subs
That tracks. The Nazis burned his books, BTW.
I appreciate these Sunday columns, maybe most of all. They both make me feel dumb and open up my life (at this late date) to authors and literature that I've not encountered. So, what did I read in high school? Well, who knows? It was almost 40 years ago, and I only remember the teacher of the course called "Rhetoric." Mr. Mellen was also a coach of one of the sports and seemed a little "slow" to me at the time, so I dreaded the class and obviously didn't get much out of it. I couldn't name one book we were assigned that year, but I know that even after high school and into college, I wasn't exposed to "Great American Literature," of the dead white guys and it's only in the past decade or so that I regret not seeking it out for myself. Stephen King was publishing then, and Hemingway just had to wait.
In college I switched majors three or four times in the first two years, finally settling on Theater: Acting/Directing sequence. You'd think I would have then been exposed to Shakespeare, but no, it was more an Edward Albee, Anton Chekhov, Samuel Beckett kind of school at the time. I got to play George in "Virginia Woolf," and tried my best NOT to be Richard Burton, but my co-star showed up to most rehearsals stoned, so it was an interesting interpretation. The column a few weeks ago on Shakespeare was eye-opening, but I generally don't comment if I'm not familiar with the subject matter, and I didn't. Besides that, Shakespeare is hard - too many words!
So, circling back, I just wanted to express my deep appreciation for these columns. There are still at least a few people walking around that, although steeped in modern literature and non-fiction, need to also be familiarized with the classics. I'm 64 soon and my education continues! Thank you, Greg.
Thanks for this, Steve. It's so haphazard, what we read and don't, what hits us and doesn't. I'm sure you were great in Virginia Woolf!
Chiming in with the chorus about what a special treat your Sunday lit forays are...if a particular class' sensibilities lean towards cynicism and alienation, I teach Hemingway's lesser known short story Soldier's Home, about a returning WWI soldier who's sick and tired of lying and pretending everything's normal. Not a mystery why it resonates with our new "lost generation...."
Thank you for the Sunday dose of Hemingway, Greg. He was an author who always hit me the hardest when I was looking the other way. For all of the bullfights, fistfights, boozing and sexual tension in “The Sun Also Rises,” when I got to the part near the end when Jake was swimming in the ocean, the feeling of the scene washed over me like the waves he was swimming into. To me, it felt like the point of the whole book: We live a life of illusion and action and fantasy, but in the end we are just solitary beings bobbing in an endless sea.
Which also reminds me of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”:
“What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too.”
*sigh*
I don’t mean to bring the party down here. Quite the opposite. I find these words bracing, invigorating and charged with energy. Life is ugly, terrifying, beautiful, miraculous.
Thank you, as always, for reminding us of all it is to be human.
Hemingway's suicide was understandable. I suspect he would be angry about today.