An Ode To Hemingway

"The mountain that was beyond the valley and the hillside where the chestnut forest grew was captured and there were victories beyond the plain on the plateau to the south and we crossed a river in August and lived in a house in Gorizia that had a fountain and many thick shady trees in a walled garden and a wistaria vine purple on the side of the house."

Ernest Hemingway is the only author I know who can use three weak verbs in a 68 word sentence and still be considered a "good" writer. That, and either he lived in a dark age before the comma was invented, or nobody bothered to tell him that there is indeed a literary device used to denote pauses mid-speech. If I had a dollar for every time Hemingway used a comma in A Farewell To Arms, I'd have roughly 75 cents. If I had a nickel for every time he used a weak verb, Bill Gates would have some serious competition.

Hyperbole aside, I don't think Hemingway is that bad. Thus far in A Farewell To Arms, I have wholeheartedly enjoyed a few sections where Hemingway details the events, thoughts, and psychological what-nots between Henry and Catherine. The biggest problem for me is that those enjoyable passages are sandwiched in between chapter-thick packing peanuts of bland, bland description. I'm fully aware of the Hemingway iceberg analogy that I'm supposed to keep on tap whenever I'm reading Ernie, but I have some pretty intrinsic disagreements with that concept.

"If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water."

Okay, the idea seems elegant on the surface. Next time I get a C+ on a research paper, I'm going to tell my professor that I know so much about what I write, that I purposely omit key points, and really, the fault lies with him not being a perceptive enough reader. I'm sure that'll go over great. I simply don't see the virtue in deliberately omitting important things in your writing, for the express purpose of 'dignity'. If I'm going to read a book, I don't want to have to go through a motif-mapping section where I draw a bunch of red lines all over the paper, make a note every time the author uses the word "bedsheet" and finally unlock my golden key, only to realize the story about a sailor and his wife is actually an allegory for the merits of communism. To me, that's just silly.

Although, again, I give Ernie a little too much flack. We're talking about the opposite ends of two writing extremes here: One is Hemingway--the author who describes sparingly, leaving breadcrumb clues so you can follow his trail of repetition and weak verbs all the way to the treasure chest at the end of the book. The other is Dafoe, who spends 5 goddamn chapters talking about the awesome rowboat he made. If Hemingway is an iceberg, then Dafoe is Snooki, because there is nothing below the surface. I can definitively say that I'm enjoying Ernie much more than I enjoyed Dafoe--but is there no middle ground?

The answer to that question is obviously "yes", because I'm in a class where we deliberately read and analyze different styles of novels, and the only way to accurately represent them is by providing stark contrasts between various eras. But, hey, it's more fun on my part to complain about being submerged to my cheekbones in weak verbs. 

So, while I do think Hemingway's style sets an odd precedent for readers and writers, I think it's a valid precedent, because I'm sure there's someone--probably more than someone--out there who thinks my stuff is worse than Hemingway's. Just ask my past couple English teachers. Ha!