Since he joined us on the site Dale has submitted some great prose. He is outstanding as a commenter and a pleasure to communicate with. Thank you Dale. Here for the Sunday treat we have another of his fascinating and enjoyable reviews. We give you:
Hemingway Begins
Imagine spending three or four years creating dozens of short stories by hand. Computers for writing don’t yet exist. So you do everything with your other tools: pencils, pens, piles of paper: and the typewriter. For rough drafts, you mostly use pencils. When the pencil gets worn down, you have to sharpen it. When your entire supply gets worn down, you need to sharpen them all. Usually you spend your time standing up as you’re writing, although sometimes you write while lying in bed. And the paper piles up: letter after letter, word after word, phrase after phrase, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph: story after story. You get blisters on your fingers and sometimes your back aches from the effort.
You write for years, and you create much juvenile work, work you know is juvenilia. But you also feel yourself getting better. And you begin to create a few things that almost look like masterpieces. At least when compared to the rest of your work.
Then your wife loses everything on a train. For some reason, you kept it all in the same suitcase, plus the typed copies, and entrusted it to her. Someone stole the suitcase. Or, your wife just lost it.
Your new best friend tells you not to worry. You can now rewrite only the best stories, AND: only the ones you remember. The tragedy with the suitcase was not a tragedy at all. It was a blessing. Whatever you don’t remember was not WORTH remembering, your friend tells you. Whatever you do remember will be written much better the second time around.
The writer was Ernest, the wife was Hadley, and the friend was Ezra Pound.
Ernest Hemingway’s first book, “Three Stories & Ten Poems,” was published in Paris in 1923 in an edition of 300 copies, and was the result of the true story above. While much of the work in this book is still considered juvenilia, this is advanced juvenilia of a very, very interesting kind.
The poems are mostly not worth much these days. Two of them can be said to be much better than that. But the stories, while perhaps not as advanced as much of his later work, are three of Hemingway’s most memorable pieces. Because he wrote them when he was so young (early twenties, in the early 1920s), and because he later became Ernest Hemingway.
“Up in Michigan,” the first story, upends many cliches about Hemingway, because it’s told, very sympathetically, and believably, from a woman’s point of view. It’s a story of young love gone horribly wrong, as young love will do. It describes an awkward, perhaps brutal, sexual encounter between two people. At times, the prose is almost as good as Joyce in “Dubliners.”
“Out of Season,” the next piece, is a husband-and-wife story which began Hemingway’s famous “iceberg technique,” when he deliberately truncated the end, thereby making the whole much more ambiguous and believable. In this piece, you can truly feel the future Nobel Prize winner beginning to come into his own.
The third story, “My Old Man,” is a very curious case. While this piece is clearly juvenilia in most of its aspects, it’s also good enough, and well-developed enough, to have inspired two films so far, one a full-length feature from Hollywood, and one a tv movie starring the great and under-appreciated Warren Oates.
The two poems that are really worth reading these days are “Along with Youth” and “Roosevelt.” The first poem, set in northern Michigan, captures the passing of youth in a wistful, sad and true manner. The next piece is about Teddy Roosevelt, the great adventurer, who much influenced the young Hemingway.
Its ending is prophetic: “And all the legends that he started in his life / Live on and prosper, / Unhampered now by his existence.”
Wallace Stevens and Ernest Hemingway once shared a bout of angry fisticuffs on the docks of nighttime Key West, Florida. Hemingway, twenty years younger, knocked the large and formidable Stevens down (both were wildly drunk). (Stevens later admitted that he started the fight, and Hemingway finished it.)
Stevens also later proclaimed Hemingway one of America’s greatest poets in prose. He had (drunk) wanted to fight Hemingway because of how good he was. (William Carlos Williams delivered Hemingway’s first baby and claimed the big tough guy went weak in the knees.)
Hemingway was a massive, lifelong fan of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible. When we look through “Three Stories & Ten Poems,” we can enjoy seeing a young writer begin to create a style that influenced everyone afterward, as American literary critic Harold Bloom and many others have pointed out: whether that writer has actually read Hemingway or not.
literally stories 
Hi Dale
I have read the early book and found Up in Michigan extremely well done. He began at a high standard. As for the poems, well, Up in Michigan is still a fine story and I will leave it at that.
As for your technique and structure for this, both are first rate. You breathe new life into older topics that often suffer in the hands of pedantic writing. You are a tremendous asset to writers of the past, you keep them fresh and prevent a fossilized point of view.
Great work!
Leila
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Leila
Thank you for publishing, and inspiring, “Hemingway Begins”!
In looking through some of the vast writings about Hemingway, I realized that “Up in Michigan” is one of his most commented-upon short stories of all time, along with “Hills Like White Elephants,” “Indian Camp,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” which can all be called brutally realistic love stories.
I realized what a Romantic Hemingway really is, but actually I mean that as romantic with a small r. The majority of his best work is based on, or is, some kind of love story, including his two best novels, THE SUN ALSO RISES and A FAREWELL TO ARMS, both of which have two of the absolutely saddest, most tragic, most realistic, and most heart-breaking love story endings of all time.
Many, many, many critics have lambasted him for being “only” a man’s writer, or only writing about men or so-called manly pursuits. It’s very true that his most realistic character, by far, is the same character who very much resembles Ernest Hemingway and continually appears as the protagonist in one different guise after another in all his major works. But his female and women characters are the second-most realistic creatures he created.
My favorite novel by Hemingway, as a 57-year-old, is THE GARDEN OF EDEN. This book was so ahead of its time regarding the romantic/love relations between women and men, and women and women, that it was only published posthumously, and it deserves to be more known as one of his best works, and possibly, his best work.
His most famous work is about the friendship between a little old man and a little boy, and a little old man and a series of gigantic fishes, including sharks.
But, again, when you look at his work as a whole, the love story between women and men, and, in a few cases, between women and women, see THE GARDEN OF EDEN and a few short stories, is his greatest theme, not bullfighting, war, fishing or hunting. Hemingway is a writer of love stories first and foremost, as surely as Tolstoy was and as surely as Bob Dylan is, or Leonard Cohen, both of whom also love/d Hemingway. As Tolstoy had it, “The greatest tragedy is the tragedy of the bedroom.”
Hemingway called A FAREWELL TO ARMS “my Romeo and Juliet.” Sexual “dysfunction,” latent homosexuality (of both men and women), onanism, transgender rumblings, infidelity, “sex in the head,” artistic vows of chastity that resemble the Christian saints, and a displaced sexuality where EVERYTHING is poured into the art as seen in the work of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, are just a few of the sub-themes that help to power Hemingway’s greatest stories, which are love stories, starting with “Up in Michigan,” a great depiction of a “crush” and its disastrous, realistic results, told from the young woman’s point of view, an “ordinary” young woman who works as a waitress in a small, northern Michigan town! In many ways, this very brief tale really can be seen as the fount from which all of his other works spring…
Dale
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Hi again Dale
Hemingway gets unfairly knocked for his female characters, but he created several good ones. Brett is a good character in Sun, but I must say Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls is his best. She was strong and somewhat unpredictable. Overall, he did better when there was no romantic connection.
Good job again!
Leila
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This is a fantastic review, Dale. Thank you for sharing it with us. The critiques of the stories / poems and the personal Hemingway anecdotes are woven together masterfully. I don’t think I’d heard the striking one about the lost briefcase. If I did, I must’ve lost that memory on a train!
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David
Thanks for your kind words!
I tried to re-frame the tale of the lost manuscript suitcase as the parable about revision in writing which it essentially is in real life. If I remember correctly, Hemingway’s initial reaction to the suitcase loss, was at the level of being suicidal (and threatening to divorce his wife for what she had done, or not done in protecting the suitcase, even though he was the one who gave her the suitcase in the first place). It was his new friend Ezra Pound who talked him down. And there’s that famous story about George Plimpton asking Hemingway how many times he re-wrote the ending to A FAREWELL TO ARMS, the answer being: “Thirty-nine times,” which is probably not accurate in the literal sense but it gets its point across. Thanks again, deeply appreciated!!
Dale
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Hey Dale
Very cool topic. I like the idea of “Hemingway Begins.” That’s a great title. His hard work was lost, not like now in some fairly rare wrong click on the keyboard, but lost in a suitcase on a train. No less by his wife! It sounds clandestine and who found it? What did they do with it? Jeez the possibilities… Then the comforting words of Ezra Pound. The way you described this writing process of pencils, sharpening, stacks of pages, standing, his back aching makes it seem much worse. Like working forever in the mill and losing your paycheck or paychecks.
The process of juvenilia in his early writing career is also fun to explore. The bright promise and a hint of his famous Ice berg theory. “Up in Michigan” that sounds complex, especially for a young writer, and from a woman’s perspective. E. seemed to be the picture of masculinity that lives on and on. Somebody that might bust your head open over the last drink of Tequila.
And we get that fight scene, which is pretty exciting! He cleans the floor with another literary giant, and a giant man, Wallace Stevens. This we expect from Hemingway who covered wars as a journalist and may have fired weapons in anger. The brawling aspect of Hemingway catches me off guard sometimes when I read his stories. It doesn’t quite compute with his high art and genius sometimes sympathetic prose, and long reaching influence.
I found this essay rewarding to read! Your perspective on Hemingway makes me want to read more of his work. I already checked out the poems. You write some great essays, my friend!
Christopher
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Christopher
Thanks for your great comments!
Yes indeed, Hemingway, like his heir Bukowski, had that manic-depressive, drunken hyper-masculinity aggressive aspect to him that we all need to grapple with and either deplore, or admire, or both, depending on the mood! There’s that picture of him where he looks far more than half mad and is pointing his shotgun barrel straight into the face of the viewer. Much of this has to do with coming from America, land of “cowboys and Indians,” and even more of it has to do with the alcohol consumption and the manic depression, which neither he nor Bukowski ever got over. William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson either got their obsessions with guns straight from old Ernie, or I’m not sitting here in Berwyn, Illinois, with Boo the Siberian laying on my feet (on, not at)!
He also said he wished he were a bullfighter and not a writer, or a boxer and not a writer. He was also known to love the circus. He, literally, had his arm mangled severely one time while wrestling with not one, but two, circus lions. Everyone else was standing way the hell back in a circle while he was in the middle wrestling with two lions, one of whom decided to claw the hell out of his arm! If that ain’t macho, macho doesn’t exist. While drinking, the man could be fearless. Probably not while drinking, too.
He once saved one of his sons from a shark attack by putting himself directly in front of the shark, and when he got blown up in World War One, it was while going back into the line of fire to rescue an injured, unconscious soldier, which was not one of his duties. (He was an ambulance driver who also delivered chocolate and cigarettes to the armed and fighting troops, i.e. the regular soldiers.)
Of course, one could go on and on with this kind of thing about Hemingway. No doubt, it’s a large aspect of why he’s so famous to this very day. He was also fearless about J. Edgar Hoover, who both admired him and hated his guts because he believed old Ernie was a communist. (And old Ernie did indeed admire, though also disagree with in some ways, Fidel Castro.)
They say that when Hunter S. Thompson visited Hemingway’s house in Idaho, he only cared about seeing one thing: the room where Hemingway killed himself.
While I don’t support suicide on the literal level, I’d be lying if I said I don’t stoically admire some people who off themselves because they believe their time on this earth is up. I believe the Ruler of the Universe gives such things a pass, for sure. At least I think so.
Wallace Stevens, in his own way, was just as much of a bad-ass as Hemingway and Bukowski ever were, and in many ways, he was far more of a bad-ass than either of them put together. He broke his hand in that fight with Hemingway. He was fearless about challenging the guy who everyone else thought was the toughest dude on the planet!
Thanks again for great comments!
Dale
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Dale
That’s some great insight into Hemingway, and these other writers! Macho dudes for sure. Makes me wonder what they would make of these times? Ghoulish about H. Thompson… I’d probably want to see it too at some point of the tour, lol. Suicide in those circumstances are not for me to judge. I think there is a history of suicide in E’s family.
I saw that movie with Al Pacino as Dr. Kevorkian John Goodman was in it too.
Christopher
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Dale
I enjoyed your piece on Hemingway. There is a Ken Burns documentary that covers the missing stories incident. The first section is brilliant, then gets into the author’s total weirdness. But I never heard the Ezra Pound story. Great advice! If you can’t recover a lost scene or story, it probably wasn’t that good.
It happens to me all the time, when I hit the wrong button or send something to the wrong computer devil, and it’s lost forever. It’s usually fortuitous if I don’t remember what it was. — Gerry
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Hi Gerry!
Thanks for reading and commenting…
Yes, I think one of the greatest fears for most writers is that they will somehow lose everything they’ve labored on so carefully and with so much soul…Ralph Ellison once lost the entire manuscript to a 500-page novel he’d spent years on, and there were no other copies…in a house fire. That kind of loss, for a writer, is like a death.
So it was rather Zen of Ezra Pound to figure out that it really ain’t such a big deal after all and the universe always has its reasons! Hemingway never turned on Pound, and remained totally loyal to him, to the end.
I hate Pound’s antisemitism (having two Jewish daughters, their mother is Jewish), and his fascist tendencies, but one also must give credit where it’s due, and for modern poetry, he’s as important as Picasso is to visual art. Later in life, Pound was in despair about his former opinions, and apologized to Allen Ginsberg, a Jew, on the record, calling it “my stupid suburban antisemitism, which I renounce.”
Thanks again Gerry!
Dale
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Dale,
What a crazy time — from world shattering poetry to Nazism. Have you read “The Bughouse?” Before you assume my scholarly erudition, it’s the only thing I’ve ever read on Pound. About his time in an insane asylum after the war. Hemingway had his antisemitic moments as well, didn’t he?
Thanks! Gerry
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Great post, Dale. You chose a good way in: the writer’s juvenile struggles. And I liked your emphasis on the importance of getting good advice from those more experienced. If I remember right, Scott Fitzgerald also advised with ‘The Sun Also Rises’ (Ernest: ‘Lose that Crap Beginning’ – Scott). Haven’t read the first book – you’ve intrigued me, I’ll check it out. Thanks,
Mick
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Hi Mick
Thanks for reading and commenting! Yes, I believe you’re right, Fitzgerald delicately told Ernie that the beginning of his novel was a piece of sh-t. He was also influenced by Ernie’s emerging style when he revised a novel that is probably greater than any novel Ernie ever managed when he penned The Great Gatsby. It’s funny to think that The Great G was roundly attacked by most critics at the time, and that it was a severe commercial failure that plunged FSF’s professional writing career straight into the toilet. During the last year of his life, all of Scott’s books were out of print and his royalties from remaining left-over sales amounted to a whopping thirteen dollars and thirteen cents. The Great Gatsby, like Moby Dick, was a complete flop and failure in terms of worldly (not writerly) success. One of the few people who knew that The Great Gatsby was a great book was named: Ernest Hemingway. Thanks again!
Dale
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The only book of Hemingway’s that I have read is ‘A Farewell to Arms’ I found it mesmerizing and depressing in equal measure – actually probably that’s the wrong word I found it very sad. The story about losing all the work on the train was interesting – I wonder if his wife didn’t really want him to be a writer? hmm. I thoroughly enjoyed this review written with such knowledge and skill thank you. As someone who backs things up twice after every chapter the idea of such a loss makes me shudder but then It is probably true that if you can’t remember it then maybe it wasn’t worth remembering and the second draft is often better anyway. I do tend to release work that I’m not happy with back into the ether – I don’t go for the ‘keep it because you might use it somewhere else’ school of thought. If it’s not working off it goes. I think the biggest jettison was about twenty five thousand words and no regret. Anyway, as I say I enjoyed this review very much. dd
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Dear Diane
I have to admit, or can happily admit, that I find much of Hemingway’s writing to be embarrassingly bad, right up to and including entire books, such as Death in the Afternoon and Across the River and Into the Trees. Despite his famous artistic achievements in brevity, Death in the Afternoon is one of the wordiest American books ever penned (or penciled and typed, in Hemingway’s case) and Across the River and Into the Trees is an example of a writer repeating himself while adding almost nothing new AND blowing up what should be a short story into the length of a full-blown novel. It’s funny to think how wordy the great writer of brevity can truly be. Much of that has to do with the “great sin” Hemingway, in denial for himself, repeatedly accused Faulkner of doing, which is, drinking while writing (or, not writing while drinking, but writing while fully intoxicated, which are really two very different things.)
A FAREWELL TO ARMS, then, is (with a few other things) the best of Hemingway, and it’s worth everything just for its opening and closing chapters. The middle sections of the book, like where he describes escaping from the military police, are exceedingly realistic, and the prose style and dialogue in this book are like are a “how-to” manual for any writer. Still, for me this was a young person’s book. I would be hard-pressed to go back and read the whole thing now. Same goes for his other greatest novel, THE SUN ALSO RISES. I devoured it as a youngster (reading it many times in my teens, twenties, and thirties). I can’t read the whole thing through any more.
In that way, EH is much like one of his biggest and most famous fans, J.D. Salinger. Some of EH’s short stories and essays are still very much readable for me, but the majority of his novels do play better with the younger crowd. And that is not to impugn him for anything. Being able to reach the younger folks is extremely important. I’ve known a lot of people who read Hemingway in youth and never forget him.
But a lot of times when I pick up Hemingway now, I’m reminded of the Oscar Wilde quote about one of Dickens’ works. “Anyone who can read the death of Little Nell without laughing has a heart of stone.”
Thanks for reading, commenting, and publishing “Hemingway Begins”!
Dale
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Quite apart from anything else, what a terrific readaloud this is. (Do try this at home.) How it would kick-start or juice-up any number of creative-writing workshops. And the build up to the blessed loss of that suitcase so described as to give it a kind of parable-power. It’s Hemingway the meticulous & painstaking craftsman comes into view, those three stories mentioned sounding fresh & vibrant. Your essays, Dale, always a pleasure to read.
Geraint
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Geraint
This is one of the best, most encouraging comments on my writing I’ve ever heard from anyone. The way you described what I would like this essay to do and be in such a few, pungent, and accurate words is really something that means the world to me. This essay is directly aimed at other writers, especially the first half of it, and you picked up on that with great mental, readerly penetration and handed it back to me with true grace and style. I can’t thank you enough for reading, and understanding, my writing, not to mention the great comments you never fail to produce. Thank you exceedingly, as always!!
Dale
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I’m old enough to have spent years of manual typing so I can appreciate the comparative difficulty of manual to computer.
Not read much Hemingway, but I’m a big fan of brevity. I suspect most novels could be cut in half (I see you Stephen King) and not lose much.
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Hi Doug
Thanks for reading and commenting!
Fun to think back even farther than the typewriter too, and imagine what it must have been like to pen everything with a bird feather and a large bottle of indelible ink. Like WS writing around 40 plays, two long narrative poems, and 154 sonnets using nothing but his goose quill (or however he did it) locked away alone in a little room, often with the plague raging outside his door. Then there’s the internally exiled and poverty-stricken, and blind, John Milton, writing it all in his head at night, remembering it, and being able to recreate and dictate it to his three daughters or a few friends, none of whom was very happy about having to write it all down for him and read it back to him morning after morning after morning for many, many years.
In many ways, computers, by making writing so, or too, easy to do, have helped destroy writing, or at least the vast, vast majority of it! Making those far-flung, little islands of quality like LS even more crucial, amazing and important.
Dale
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Hi Dale,
Interesting, infectious and enlightening as always!!
A couple of observations (Probably nonsensical!!) I’d like to make.
The friends comment of ‘Whatever you don’t remember, isn’t worth remembering.’
That could make a brilliant mash-up / parallel story about that idea on the written word and a loved ones dementia!!
I’ve always been interested when writers (Especially!) state that they are influenced by whoever. Should we ever be influenced? And if we are, should we state it? Surely it beggars the question, how far into influence does imitation rear it’s head??
I wonder if Gene Roddenberry tweaked the ‘Live on and prosper’ line??
You enhance the site Dale with your input, knowledge and excellent writing!!
All the very best.
Hugh
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Hi Hugh!
Thanks for everything you do, including reading, commenting upon, and publishing “Hemingway Begins”!
I helped take care of my mother for ten years when she had dementia (hers started at 59), staying with her and my father for much of that period, so I know whereof the world speaks when the topic of dementia gets brought up!! I also spent a ton of time across a span of years in various dementia wards with her once she could no longer be taken care of at home (visiting her religiously a minimum of two times a week for every single week she was in there across a few years). Her kind of dementia was the rarest form there is, where the patient retains many aspects of the original personality, never forgets who people are, and begins to engage in extremely bizarre behaviors that look totally mad to the rest of the world but have a deep inner meaning to the person who’s experiencing them. One of the things I learned is that the world is never a good judge of what’s really going on in someone’s private head, even, or especially, when that person is deemed “mad” by the rest of society. The Native Americans used to believe (still do believe) that only the crazy ones were/are truly sane and I started to get that feeling from her on many occasions. She seemed to become more and more wise the crazier and crazier she became (and the more she left the world and its materialistic concerns behind). Some of the people who helped take care of her in the dementia ward would also go to her and ask her for her advice on various issues. (All of those people were so-called “illegal” immigrants which is one reason I’ll be in the streets protesting if Trump tries his deportation tactics in my state of Illinois, just like I was in the streets protesting, with my daughters, during the George Floyd days.) (I tried to make them stay home but they refused, and they are both extremely strong-willed creatures.)
I know you had a special relationship with your father so I feel good sharing that story with you.
Don’t know if you’ve ever seen this one, but Gary Cooper does a great job in the 1930s film of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms!
That was where Ernest and Gary became pals, I believe.
Ernest was a Karl Marx-loving, far-left liberal, and Gary was an affable right-winger from American cowboy country, but they agreed, I believe, NOT to discuss politics between them. Those were the days of pre-second-civil-war mentality when opposite sides of the spectrum in the USA didn’t always hate each other’s guts too much. Bob Dylan claimed Barry Goldwater was his favorite politician at one point!
There’s a great line in the Gary Cooper movie which I don’t remember being in the novel, which is: “I got blown up while I was eating cheese.”
Thanks again, Hugh!!
D
PS,
Another interesting factoid about Hemingway is that the income he received from his rich wives was always far, far bigger than his royalties were, EVEN AFTER he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was a sponge off rich women and (generally) much less of a best-seller than most people think. (He always refused to write for Hollywood, which never helped his pocketbook, and he made more money from journalism than fiction, overall.) The vast majority of his European and African travels were paid for by his generous, loaded (with both money, and liquor), and wildly intelligent (alcoholic, chain-smoking) wives. His mother, who he hated with a true passion and never visited after his father’s suicide (not even once in twenty years), never stopped believing that her little Ernest had turned into nothing but “a drunken bum who writes dirty books.” The few times he tried to make overtures to her, she again informed him robustly that he was a drunken bum who wrote dirty books (true to a degree, after all). When he heard of her death he walked into the little town and asked them to ring the church bells in her honor, but he did not attend the funeral and he never relented in telling everyone he hated her, and his favorite, oft-repeated words for her were f—ing b-tch. He believed, and said, that she had been the very direct cause of his father’s suicide with her endless, judgmental carping, opinions, and demands. His relations with his own kids were extremely tempestuous but also much more loving on all sides.
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I am a big fan of Hemingway’s short stories, have read some probably over a dozen times. Up In Michigan is a great one, brutal and clear and real. Funny though I haven’t heard of the other two mentioned, so I’ll check them out. Hemingway was a big built guy himself, so I could see how he’d beat Mr. Stevens. I wonder if they’d publish any of his stuff today.. it could be quite controversial…. .well, they would for sure in “Literally Stories!” he he.
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Hi Harrison!
You bring up two great points, first about re-reading, second about what gets published where these days.
First, rereading, which, for a writer, is so truly crucial, critical and important that it bears repeating numerous times even tho’ it’s been said before. Writers need to REREAD the things they love numerous times, in order to learn how to do it! When I read your fictional prose, for example, I seem to be able to tell that you have indeed read and reread Hemingway many times. Something about his great writing (and he didn’t get there easily, far from it, as I try to point out in “Hemingway Begins”) has seeped into your own prose in the good way, probably without the writer even realizing it. And that’s a GOOD thing, since Literature is a communal practice that’s created by solitary workers. (The best workers in this field are extremely solitary, at the very least while they’re working. For some of us, that solitude ends up dominating our entire lives, or maybe that’s why we chose this field to begin with! because we like to be alone.) But if it ends in solitude without readers, it can’t quite be called Literature. (The best creative writing, like poetry and fine short stories, does not need a lot of readers, but it does need readers).
Or as Nietzsche said: “Some men are born posthumously.” (He meant women, too.)
Hemingway’s best short stories (and the best of his work is probably in his short stories) are, many of them, very, very close to good poetry, as Wallace Stevens later pointed out. One thing this means is that every time you return to it with an open heart and an “on” mind, you see and learn something more, and something new. It’s a matter of depth and subtlety. Without depth and subtlety, the rereading experience becomes worthless, irritating, pointless, or boring…And of course that point about the “on” mind and the “open” heart is exceedingly important…
Regarding what gets published where these days, I recently watched a doc’ about Tom Wolfe (author of The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test etc etc.) One of the main themes, and crucial points, of this documentary, which they proved with very good evidence and testimonial from well-known writers, is/was that TODAY WOLFE’S WORK WOULD ABSOLUTELY NOT, not, not!, BE PUBLISHED BY MAINSTREAM PUBLICATIONS, including both periodicals, and book publishers.
A crucial reason the documentary gives for this is that Wolfe’s best work is NOT Politically Correct (far from it)…Other reasons they give include that his writing style is too wild and unrestricted, that he often failed to stay “on topic,” that his opinions are far too controversial when he starts talking about mainstream materialism and the worship of technology in the good old USA, that he’s too challenging to read for many different reasons, and that he attacked venerated US institutions with such verve and fervor that the “tame” mainstream publishing industry in the USA today (both periodicals and book publishers) would slam the door in his face immediately, with great trepidation, fear, and trembling, and confusion!
On the other hand, it’s not a new story. James Joyce couldn’t find a book publisher for ULYSESS, and his friend Sylvia Beach had to publish it at her own expense in a very limited edition of 1,000 copies, to her eternal credit and immortal renown. Marcel Proust had to pay for the publication of his first few books himself, and he always lived on his own money, not what he made from writing, because he made very, very, very little. George Orwell wrote 1984 without an advance or former royalties or indeed any income from his writing at all, since he had quit doing journalism, which he said he quit because the restrictions of it were literally killing him. Etc etc etc…
Thanks for thought-provoking comments, Harrison, it’s deeply appreciated!
Sincerely,
Dale
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Thank you Dale. I’ve always enjoyed Hemingway’s short stories more than his novels, and his style of course is inimitable. A particular favourite is Cat in the Rain – which, for me, is as close to a perfect short story to be found.
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Paul
Thanks for reading and commenting! I agree with you about his short stories. Thanks for bringing up “Cat in the Rain.” “The Sea Change” can be placed beside it as another great, lesser-known tale. Neither of these stories deals with the kind of material the general population usually thinks about when they think of Hemingway. He had a multitude of sides that are totally lost in the mainstream (one-sided) image of him. Thanks again!
Dale
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