Ernest Hemingway

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gregintenn

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I've always heard people fawning over his writings, and what I've heard about the man made me interested, so I recently read three of his works. I enjoy reading, but I for one was left wondering what all the fuss was about. I imagine there are several Hemingway fans here. Am I the only one who doesn't really get him?
 
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Hemingway led a life of superlatives maybe that was some of the appeal. I like Stienbeck more my self. Don't forget reading was a more popular pastime when he was writing so tastes may have been more varied.
 
What I learned from Papa was how to properly drink alcohol.

A recipe of his. "Death in the Afternoon"..

"A shot of absinthe in a champagne glass. Fill to the top with chilled champagne... drink slowly..."

I've tried it once since my brother gave me a bottle of absinthe last year. If you're a long-time drunk, and in need of a good buzz quickly, I recommend it wholeheartedly.
 
I believe he started as a newpaper man. He carried that sparse style over to writing short stories and novels.
 
I'm with GREGINTENN. I never saw much in Hemingway's writing that floated my boat. I guess his transitional style just doesn't suit me.

As for Steinbeck, he was too much the socialist for my taste.
 
Hemmingway was the darling of the literary world back then. First real big seller was "Big Two Hearted River."I've read "Green Hills of Africa twice before I understood his message. Great writer but old fashioned now.
 
Read "Farewell" and a couple of his short stories. Never could get much out of his work. Writers fall in and out of fashion anyway.

He was a war correspondent in WWII, ETO. Give me Ernie Pyle any day.
 
Watch "Midnight in Paris" some time, and the young, angry, Hemingway comes to light.... sort of...
 
Robert C. Ruark was better, improving Hemingway's basic style.

But Hemingway did okay with The Old Man and the Sea. I read it first when I was about ten. I grasped the drama then, but related to it better in later years.
 
As for Steinbeck, he was too much the socialist for my taste.[/QUOTE]

A socialist as Grapes of Wrath demonstrates but able to have great humor from life as in Cannery Row and Tortilla Flats.
 
I like Hemmingway's writing. I think the world's most interesting man on the dos equis adds is based on him. I think, and have read, that he was self agrandizing, and with all his pride in being a pugelist, he only fought people smaller that him, under his weight class. All that said, his stories are a fun read that take you places and times beyond your own experience. Oh, he also loved crazy women. I relate.
 
Texas Star said:
Robert C. Ruark was better, improving Hemingway's basic style....
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Somewhere, wherever he is, Ruark must be very happy to see you write that! As I am sure you know, he was forever being compared unfavorably to Hemmingway, seen as "a poor man's Hemmingway," etc.

I do like Hemmingway, but now that I think of it, I have read more of Ruark, and have read him more frequently. Also read a biography of him a couple of years ago. In some ways -- the insecurities and the alcoholism that lead to his early death, for example -- a tragic figure.

I do think The Horn of the Hunter will always remain Ruark's best. That is so wonderfully atmospheric.

When a grad student, staying in Tokyo with nothing in English to read, I once read a translation of a Hemmingway short story in Japanese. About he easiest Japanese to read I ever came across. Too bad the Japanese don't write Japanese that way!
 
I am trying to appreciate Hemingway but it sure is a tough climb. Kind of disjointed at times. Sometimes the dialog drives me nuts; "Yes my darling, of course I will always be with you, no I don't think you are a cheap easy slut for meeting me in the bushes". Well that last one was mine, but you get the picture.

Give me Ruark's "Honey Badger", "Something of Value", "The Old Man's Boy" and I'll be up all night reading.
 
LazyKB said:
I am trying to appreciate Hemingway but it sure is a tough climb. Kind of disjointed at times. Sometimes the dialog drives me nuts; "Yes my darling, of course I will always be with you, no I don't think you are a cheap easy slut for meeting me in the bushes". Well that last one was mine, but you get the picture.

Give me Ruark's "Honey Badger", "Something of Value", "The Old Man's Boy" and I'll be up all night reading.
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Bob Ruark was perhaps the only major US journalist/author to be honest about African politics and to accurately present both the Kenya natives and the white settlers. His accounts of the Mau-Mau violence in, "Life" and in, "Something of Value" was almost too graphic for some, I think. But I believe that he was dead accurate about what went on, from both sides.

I share Onomea's admiration of his own (Ruark's) safari chronicle, "Horn of the Hunter", and shortly before his death, as Travel Editor at, "Playboy", he penned a really good article on what to take on safari and what to expect. In it, he gave an eerie account of how a witch doctor told him where to find three big bull elephants, and warned him that he would see no more on that trip. It turned out to be true, leaving him feeling a little weird.
 
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