![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Lawyers, Bankers, Literary Executors
May. 28th, 2012 05:10 pmThis afternoon, I'm a little more than 400 pages into The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, having just finished the one called "One Trip Across." I'd read several of his novels in the past, as well as two or three biographies, and didn't feel much affected by the former. In fact, it may simply be that I've allowed what I've read about the man to affect how I've felt about his writing. Or maybe it's just that I've never read the right one of his novels to finally connect.
Anyway, this last story of his really did it for me. Which, to confuse the issue further, could also be because of how I feel about the Gulf Coast and Key West, even though I've only been there once. But somehow this story, about a charter boat captain who finally resorts to human trafficking and murder to finance his trip back to the Florida Keys from Cuba, absolutely riveted me with the visceral reality of Hemingway's prose.
Now, with those words before me on the screen, I immediately regret having described it in this way because it's been this characterization of him, and his ultimately failed efforts to live up to it in real life, that I've found so off-putting about the man and his work. Ironically, it was Gioia Diliberto's blunt but insightful treatment of Hemingway's machismo, in her book about his relationship with Hadley Richardson, that made me decide to come back to him for a second look.
And even though I'm not completely on board with him, at least I'm not ready, as I once was, to dump his weighted carcass overboard with the hapless Mr. Sing. I may even try another novel of his, Islands in the Stream, which is set in the same locale as "One Trip Across." Because it still could be that in writing, as in real estate, it's "location, location, location."
Meaning, of course, that the islands in Hemingway's novel are in the same Gulf Stream where Mr. Sing's body has long since floated up and been consumed as fish bait. (In this way, I subtlely signal my reservations about works published posthumously, especially ones with a history like Islands.)
Because it's important to me, especially with Hemingway, to hear the genuine voice. Not one that has been edited, and otherwise tampered with, by lawyers and bankers and and ex-wives acting as literary executors...
LPK
LiveJournal
5.28.2012 (b)
Anyway, this last story of his really did it for me. Which, to confuse the issue further, could also be because of how I feel about the Gulf Coast and Key West, even though I've only been there once. But somehow this story, about a charter boat captain who finally resorts to human trafficking and murder to finance his trip back to the Florida Keys from Cuba, absolutely riveted me with the visceral reality of Hemingway's prose.
Now, with those words before me on the screen, I immediately regret having described it in this way because it's been this characterization of him, and his ultimately failed efforts to live up to it in real life, that I've found so off-putting about the man and his work. Ironically, it was Gioia Diliberto's blunt but insightful treatment of Hemingway's machismo, in her book about his relationship with Hadley Richardson, that made me decide to come back to him for a second look.
And even though I'm not completely on board with him, at least I'm not ready, as I once was, to dump his weighted carcass overboard with the hapless Mr. Sing. I may even try another novel of his, Islands in the Stream, which is set in the same locale as "One Trip Across." Because it still could be that in writing, as in real estate, it's "location, location, location."
Meaning, of course, that the islands in Hemingway's novel are in the same Gulf Stream where Mr. Sing's body has long since floated up and been consumed as fish bait. (In this way, I subtlely signal my reservations about works published posthumously, especially ones with a history like Islands.)
Because it's important to me, especially with Hemingway, to hear the genuine voice. Not one that has been edited, and otherwise tampered with, by lawyers and bankers and and ex-wives acting as literary executors...
LPK
LiveJournal
5.28.2012 (b)
