Re: hemingway blech
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Wed, 17 Feb 1999 23:30:44 -0500
At 7:39 PM -0500 on 2/17/99, you wrote:
> well, i can't believe i contributed to that. i agree with the hemingway vs.
> fitzgerald argument. (personally, i cannot begin to comprehend how
>someone who
> has read "gatsby" could possibly harbor the least ... admiration, i guess is
> the word, for hemingway.
But isn't that a bit like saying you can't understand why someone who likes
spicy Indian food could also appreciate a bowl of plain oatmeal? There is
a lot of room for both.
> i loved "sun also rises" but really can't stand the
> rest of it. this is not to say that my opinion is particularly informed, or
> cogent, or worthwhile, or anything. one mitigating circumstance is that my
> first affliction with...excuse me, exposure to hemingway was "the old man and
> the sea." dear god, what a ... well, whatever.
I don't at all mean this to sound condescending, but it may be that as you
become more exposed to fiction, and as you have new experiences (notice
that I make no assumption about your age, because I don't know what it is),
you may see Hemingway differently.
> i understand that people like
> or admire or even worship different authors and that that should be
> encouraged. i guess what i mean is that i don't understand how someone can
> have the good taste to sigh or cry or mope over gatsby and yet tolerate the
> self-indulgent fish stories [i know, the connection to jerry's bananafish] of
> hemingway: "the self-importance of being ernest."
I can see how you might interpret The Old Man and the Sea that way, but how
can you dismiss A Farewell to Arms in the same way? Or A Moveable Feast,
which is a knock-out, drag-down achievement?
> opinion) and twain and hemingway, the result being that the great Pynchon,
> Vonnegut, and, yes, Salinger were for all intents and purposes ignored.
I hope that perhaps in the future -- not on someone else's terms -- you can
reapproach Hemingway and see him in a different way.
> just for the record, i hope you all have had the good fortune to read "paddy
> clarke ha ha ha." now there is something we could all rejoice over, no?
Ah, yes. Just about anything by old Roddy Doyle, I'd say. "Paddy Clarke"
was, well, as one of the characters says, "just brilliant!"
--tim o'connor