Ernest Hemingway

papa

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

(First of all, this is about Ernest Hemingway, not my father, who was definitely never “Papa.”)

I avoid television as much as possible, but occasionally there’s something I can’t resist watching, and this is probably going to be one of them.

I may not watch the whole thing — I’ll see how it goes. I’ve read a few Hemingway biographies, and if I see too many inaccuracies or hear too much hokum (hokum — both pro and con — is always likely when people talk about Hemingway) I’ll bail. But I am curious (though I think it’s likely that my curiosity won’t be enough to get me through six whole hours).

By the way, I am always suspicious when people call Hemingway a “womanizer.” Merriam-Webster defines “womanize” as:
1. to make effeminate [which is a wonderful idea with regards to Hemingway, as I’ll discuss below, but that’s not what they mean here].
2. to pursue casual sexual relationships with multiple women.

Did Hemingway take on a lover when married, then marry the new lover as soon as he’d divorced the previous wife? Yes, at least twice (I think he was divorced from Martha Gellhorn before he started his relationship with Mary Welsh). Four is an unusual number of wives, yes, but that doesn’t make one a “womanizer” (let alone that he didn’t seem to have been “casual” about much of anything in his life). But that’s one of those journalistic clichés, like the rule that any headline about someone having cancer has to include the word “battling.”

I don’t know if I’ve been influenced by Hemingway’s writing, but I started reading him when somebody observed that I wrote like him. So, I think I was influenced by a lot of the 20th century American detective fiction which was influenced by him — so an indirect influence more than a direct one. And, as I commented recently, I’ve been moving away from that influence in recent years.

One thing that’s always stuck with me is an article in the New York Times Magazine called “A Farewell to Machismo.” One thing it talks about is The Garden of Eden, a novel which Hemingway never finished. From Wikipedia: “The Garden of Eden indicates Hemingway’s exploration of male-female relationships, shows an interest in androgynous characters, and ‘the reversal of gender roles.'” I’d be interested in reading that. (A truncated version of the book, with two-thirds of the story removed and many apparently questionable edits made, was published after his death. I’ve never read it. I’ve also never seen the movie which was made from the published book.)

So, if they meant “womanizer” in that sense that would be an interesting and provocative thought. But they mean it the other way.

By the way, looking through “A Farewell to Machismo” as I wrote this post, I noticed this paragraph:

Gregory Hemingway, who grew up to be a doctor, wrote in his book, ‘Papa’: “His liver had been in poor shape for years. Even in the male, the adrenal glands produce estrogen, or female hormones, which are normally broken down by the liver. But if the liver is badly damaged, there can be a high concentration of estrogen in the bloodstream. . . .” Perhaps Papa came to feel that he contained both Catherine and David [the main characters from “The Garden of Eden”] inside himself.

“A Farewell to Machismo” was written in 1977, and more is known now about Gregory Hemingway, the youngest of the three Hemingway children.

Anyway, I will check out the show, and I’ll report back here if there’s anything worth commenting on.

Also, slightly off topic, I do have to mention that Ernest Hemingway may have been an avid skier, but he never sang “One Day More” from Les Misérables while skiing with Lindsey Vonn.

the real thing

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 4 Comments

Ernest Hemingway knew Lady Duff Twysden when he was young. He used her as the model for Lady Brett Ashley in his first novel, The Sun Also Rises. I read an interview with him once, from later on in his life, where he said he could barely remember Duff Twysden anymore — when he thought about her, he remembered Brett Ashley instead.

It just occurred to me that I’m in the same situation. Several characters in my early stories were based on a group of girls who I’d known years earlier — who I now realize that I barely remember.

Vicki has now almost completely replaced the real Vicki in my mind. SarahBeth has replaced the original, who I barely knew back then (and in any case most of the character’s personality came from someone else, from much later). SarahAnn, SarahBeth’s older sister, was, I’m pretty sure, based on a girl named Sarah, but I’m not even 100% sure about that at this point. I remember nothing else about her.

And, in going back over this, I remembered that there had been a guy character in that group as well, SarahBeth’s boyfriend, named Johnny Mac, and I’d forgotten about him completely (though I do remember who he was based on).

So, maybe when you base your characters on real people, you can end up with only one of the two later on, either the original or the character.

I find I’m okay with this. Maybe it’s not so much a failure of memory as an indication that you’ve created a pretty good character. 🙂

 
On an entirely different topic, here’s an interesting article from the New Yorker:

“Why Are All ‘Star Wars’ Movies the Same?“

I liked it mostly for this section:

In 2015’s “The Force Awakens,” the director J. J. Abrams told a completely derivative “Star Wars” story, placating fans who were desperate for the “magic” of the originals, while boring everyone else. Last year, Gareth Edwards went out on a limb with “Rogue One”—an atmospheric, sombre, and tragic film in which (spoiler alert) all the heroes die.

As I get more and more tired of franchise films these days, I have increasingly have the feeling that making a successful installment in a franchise has ended up at odds with making an actually good movie (which Rogue One is). And when social media is everywhere, ready to amplify the smallest complaint from the faithful…

On other hand, here’s a Star Wars article that really caught my interest:

“We capitalized ‘Porgs,’ but it was a tricky decision: A message from The A.V. Club copy desk“

words: complex, but not frightening

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 4 Comments

I was reading an article in the New York Review of Books called “A Hemingway Surprise.” It’s about an exhibition at the Morgan Library called “Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars.”

It’s a very interesting article, but one thing that particularly caught my attention was this, talking about a page of revisions to the story “Indian Camp,” where the word “frightened” was replaced by “afraid”:

“There is visible art in the substitution of ‘afraid’ for ‘frightened’—taking the stronger and more grown-up word to repeat the fear…”

This caught my eye — the distinction between “frightened” and “afraid.” I’m not sure about “more grown-up,” but the thing that strikes me is that “afraid” is an adjective, while “frightened” is an adjective based on a verb, so it implies action.

If someone is frightened, then someone or something must have done some frightening. If someone is afraid, then that’s just their state of being — no initiating action is implied.

I think about this because this is what’s struck me about the difference between “complex” and “complicated.” (I’ve talked about this in other places, but I don’t think I’ve talked about it here.)

The Chicago Manual of Style has a section called “Good usage versus common usage,” and “complex” and “complicated” aren’t included there. The dictionary (Merriam-Webster Colegiate, of course) notes that “complex” “does not imply a fault or failure” (implying, therefore, that “complicated” and the other synonyms do).

This is how the distinction appears to me:

Complex is an adjective, a state of being. Some things are naturally complex, such as ecological systems, meteorological systems, and so on. No fault or failure is implied.

On the other hand, if something is “complicated” (based on a verb), that implies that somebody has been doing some complicating. When somebody’s relationship status on Facebook changes to “It’s complicated,” that usually means somebody did something.

Anyway, is this one of those old-fashioned distinctions that most people ignore these days, or am I just making this up?

I’m prepared to follow it either way, of course. 🙂

papa in paris, and slang (old and new)

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

1. Two articles about Ernest Hemingway recently reminded me of how careful we have to be about taking people and things at face value.

The first is an opinion piece from the New York Times which, among other things, repeats Hemingway’s own statements about how poor and happy he and Hadley (his first wife) had been in Paris in the 1920s.

The second is a review of a book of Hemingway’s letters from that period, which makes it clear that they had not been particularly poor or happy, and that Hemingway’s loudest assertions of how great his marriage was came when it was actually falling apart.

 
2. Also from the New York Times: “Slang for the Ages”

That reminds me of one of the Nero Wolfe mysteries, where he’s taking to a character who’s something of a neighborhood sharpie, and the guy uses the word “sennight” (meaning “week”).

Wolfe, of, course, stops the conversation cold in order to ask where this guy had learned “that fine old word.”

The guy asserts that it’s “making the rounds” — everybody is using it these days.

“Extraordinary,” Wolfe says, and regular readers will easily be able to tell that this fact is, for Wolfe, the most interesting part of the whole case.

 
3. Oh, and here’s a good piece about the word “unique.”

the steps, or the finish line?

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 6 Comments

I saw an interesting article in the New York Times called, "To Use and Use Not." It's about a new edition of Hemingways A Farewell to Arms. In addition to some other material, it will include the fifty-seven different endings Hemingway wrote before he got to the one he wanted.

The actual ending ("It was like saying goodbye to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.") is famous. Probably not as famous as the beginning of Moby Dick or the ending of The Great Gatsby, but still quite well known.

I can't think, however, that reading all the failed attempts is really going to be that informative, except perhaps to give more evidence that writing can be difficult but worth the effort. Watching deleted scened on DVDs can be fun (and sometimes you can second-guess the decisions that went into the final cut), but if you're really studying film you'd be better off watching the actual film a few more times. That's where the most important lessons are.

(Also, typing the last two sentences up there, specifically "I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain," reminded me that when I write a sentence that has "aaaaaa and bbbbbbb and cccccc" rather than "aaaaaa, bbbbbbb and cccccc" (or, of course, "aaaaaa, bbbbbbb, and cccccc")...

Where was I?

Oh, yes, when I do the "and and and" thing, which I do despite the occasional disapproving email, I got it from Hemingway. Oh, well. That was one lesson I learned, and I didn't have to read fifty-seven other versions of the ending to learn it.


Speaking of Hemingway, he used to dislike semicolons, and for years I avoided them as well, though I've now become more flexible in that area. I do use them sparingly, however.

I just read an article about them at the New York Times blog called Drafts, which also posted the articles about commas that I linked to here. I'm definitely going to follow that blog from now on, in addition to "After Deadline," which I've read for years.

Also, in terms of Vonnegut's put down of semicolons, comparing them to transvestite hermaphrodites, I do have to wonder what he had against transvestite hermaphrodites. What had they ever done to him, to be compared to semicolons?