I have a misguided friend.
He is smart, witty, funny and awfully cute, but tragically misguided.
He recently posted on his blog asking the question of who exemplifies more perfectly the “American experience,” F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Miller Hemingway. He argues that Hemingway’s overly simplistic noun-verb structure simply will never be enough to bring him as a reader to true understanding of a moment. He feels eluded with Papa Hemmie. He then turns to a quote, (which he is known to whip out on sleepless nights trotting along the Seine in Paris. This was the first time we had this H v. F discussion) from Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in which Nick, near the end, swoons over a girl who, when she played tennis, “a faint mustache of perspiration appeared on her upper lip.” How romantic.
Hemingway had what he called his iceberg theory of writing. He says, “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. The writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.” Perhaps Hemingway isn’t for those who lack the imagination to fill in the required seven-eights.
I realize a bias I present here, but let me return to the original question of the “American experience.” When I look at the love stories of the main characters in A Farewell to Arms and The Great Gatsby (Robert Jordan and Nick Carraway, respectively), I am approached by two very different reactions to initial attraction. Hemingway’s Robert Jordan is attracted to a young Spanish woman and within twenty pages of meeting her, has her in his bed, and continues with her there for the remaining 200 or so pages of the book. Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway also meets his woman, Jordan Baker, early on, and then proceeds to pussy foot around her, insult her driving, and never quite seal the deal.
Nothing to me cries American experience more than the Revolution. The American experience has been defined by that initial defiance. They held truths to be self evident, that all are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and fervently fought for these truths. And frankly, if freedom from tyranny, the pursuit of liberty, were a beautiful woman, Hemingway was in bed with her quick and Fitzgerald was lamenting over how to tactfully end the relationship-that-never-quite-was from miles away.
[...] response to fitzgerald/ hemingway daringly entitled hemingway/ fitzgerald brings up some good points, namely, ernest was pretty [...]
I know what your misguided friend means about the confusing noun-verb structure of Hemingway. I actually just read a short essay by James Thurber this morning about that. I’m gonna copy down some of it to prove your friend’s point that it’s impossible for the reader to fully grasp the moment:
“A Visit from Saint Nicholas; In the Ernest Hemingway Manner:
It was the night before Christmas. The house was very quiet. No creatures were stirring in the house. There weren’t even any mice stirring. The stockings had been hung carefully by the chimney. The children hoped that Saint Nicholas would come and fill them.
…
‘Father,’ the children said,
There was no answer. He’s there, all right, they thought.
‘Father,’ they said, and banged on their beds.
‘What do you want?’ I asked.
‘We have visions of sugarplums,’ the children said.
…
‘Can we have any sugarplums?’
‘You can’t have any sugarplums,’ said mamma.”
Okay, you get the idea. There’s something very immediate in his writing, but it also gives you the sense that you are watching the events transpire through a lens. It’s certainly more removed, and it ellicits a feeling of helplessness, much like you get when reading Marguerite Duras, who famously wrote many of her works in script-form, even though she had little intention of them being used as a script. She wanted that Hemingway-ian distance.
At any rate, capital job. You are a phenom writer.
erin,
hmmm…. i’d be curious to see writing that doesn’t seem to be seen through a lens. but i definitely agree on the distance. and as much as it his writing technique, i can’t help but think that this was his philosophy on life. hemmie was a poet constantly shifting the world through his lens… he would fish and not quite let himself get caught up in his excitement, but rather, feel his excitement and go about noticing the things that led up to it, the things he felt, and the reactions of those around him as the fish would come in… i feel like as a writer, he forced that sense of removal. it’s almost a buddhist-like meditation. you see your thoughts and feelings, and experience them, but you watch them go by as a flowing stream. and with that, you aren’t swimming in them, but existing just outside.
whether or not he was trying to do this, or failing at doing something else and ending up with this… i dunno. but this is why i like reading him, and why forcing myself through pages of misogynistic banter is sometimes worth it.
anyway. you’re one of my favorites right now.
[...] 2, 2009 by timpadraic When Hemingway was 29 years old, his young life in Paris ended. On a warmer than usual March night, after too much [...]
Seems like you might have your Farewell to Arms mixed up with your For Whom The Bell Tolls, joe.
Nick doesn’t seal the deal? Really? Bet he does. You need a sex scene? If he doesn’t fall for Jordan, surely he beds her. But he doesn’t fall because she’s a lightweight, because she’s dishonest and a cheater, and she, like Daisy, “smashes things up” and then “retreats into [her] vast carelessness.” She’s a fling, an erstwhile lover in a paired-up summer. She’s the hot but simple-minded blonde you meet while vacationing at your uncle’s: you gotta have her, but you don’t wanna keep her.
Best TGG line? “The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens – finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run.” Like to write me one sentence that vivid in my life…
(And now I await “moderation.” Indeed.)