the Jerry & Ernie show
Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Wed, 17 Feb 1999 08:18:57 +0000
Trying my best, Rick, not to let your criminal neglect
of capitals put me back on the bottle I have to admit
I was much engaged by your thoughts about the Hemingway
connection.
It's my impression that, on the whole, old Ernie is not
a greatly popular writer with Bananafish members.
Am I right in this &, if so, how come? It's very hard
for someone of my advanced senility to imagine
a generation growing up who never felt the dizzying,
liberating, wind-from-the-sea experience that that
first encounter with a page of Hemingway brought
to so many of us.
I recall only vaguely reading Salinger's initial letter
of self-introduction to the older writer but I remember
it as expressing all the adulation that would have gone
into any letter from myself at that age. Is my memory
playing tricks?
They wound up writing rather different kinds of story
but I'm not so sure they might not have found quite a bit
in common - if only the miseries that all writers come
to share. Hemingway certainly seems to have been
a compulsive reader & expressed his admiration for many
writers who, at first glance, would hardly have shared
his expressed view of the world. If he could express
profound respect for a dinky little Frog like Marcel Proust
wheezing away in his cork-lined cocoon recreating
the Paris haute monde he would have had little difficulty
relating to Sergeant Salinger as he put himself together
again after Normandy.
Scottie B.