A Boring Post
Looking back on it I realize I have bored people quite a bit with "writing" posts. I'm thinking this and I'm thinking that. I'm doing this now. Watch as I do THAT! ha-HA! Big deal RW. Sit down shut up and write it already yeah?
But I'd be a liar if I didn't say it seems somewhat important that the manner, method, and mechanics of it have been changing the last few weeks. I know... another "big deal." This just seems something I have to get down is all. Nobody has to say anything, really.
Have you ever read "The Old Man and The Sea"? I read it a couple of years ago when a couple of blogging friends chided me for never having read anything by Hemingway. And... OK... it was an iconic story and certainly a good one. Nice and short - 120 pages or so. I noted that it certainly was "tight" writing; meaning no bullshit.
I read it over this weekend again. You know what? Jesus Christ that was good. I mean that was really something. For a writer to get it down like that. Man. That's art.
So I was looking up what the old man who wrote the Old Man had to say about the craft and it turns out quite a bit. I like these and plan to use them...
(This is all from his letters and therefore all sic...)
"This (The Old Man and the Sea) is the prose that I have been working for all my life that should read easily and simply and seem short and yet have all the dimensions of the visible world and the world of a man's spirit. It is as good prose as I can write as of now."
"Remember to get the weather in your God damned book - weather is very important."
"If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader - if the writer is writing truly enough - will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places..."
"I can write it like Tolstoi and make the book seem larger, wiser, and all the rest of it. But then I remember that was what I always skipped in Tolstoi."
"Boiling it down always, rather than spreading it out thin."
"Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm. The sea is the sea. The old man is the old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolysm people say is shit."
Got it.
posted by RW @ 11:21 PM
13 Comments
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13 Comments:
I used to do silly things like read Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" every year on Christmas Eve. The last time I did something like that was when I had a free day to myself in Key West with "The Old Man and the Sea". I just carried it around with me, reading it wherever I stopped for a while. Even read a chunk of it by his old home on Whitehead Street.
I never really got into any of his other works, but that one worked for me from the very first time I read it when I was a teenager.
Not a bad go-to when it comes to inspiring yourself to write and to write better.
Wait... who the hell am I then?
I love Old Man and The Sea. I never thought Hemmingway was writing symbolism in it, I always believed he was writing time.
Thanks for the quotes. I've copied a few.
I LOVE that book, and I love Hemingway, in general. He wrote so succinctly and I wish I could get that style of writing down, but...
I can't even leave a well written comment!
Maybe I should have read that one instead of The Sun Also Rises because I absolutely LOATHED that book and haven't gone near Hemingway since. But I could certainly stand to learn something about writing tight.
And that last quote - even without having read the book - makes me really happy.
earl - That would be a perfect venue to read it, since we can't easily get to Cuba.
Dave - after all these years you've finally stumped me. Huh??
Steph - Figured you'd like.
Sybil - It's just his best is when it's clear and straight without any frills. Plus he never wrote drunk, so there is that... :-)
Britt - Old Man is far and away his best. It's simple and direct and absolutely no bullshit. You should hit it. :-)
Over the years, I've read probably everything Hemingway's written. While many were simply grand, the one that stands out in my mind is "A Moveable Feast," about his years in Paris. I highly recommend it.
/r
Moveable Feast is the Paris book and I think different from Old Man for two reasons; it is by and large non-fiction along the lines of Death In The Afternoon I believe, and it was done much earlier than Old Man and carried a different sensibility. Though I liked it - especially the parts with and about Gertrude - I'd have to say Old Man was his peak performance. I think he brought his fully developed powers to the front on that one.
Oh, I agree with you. "Moveable Feast" is simply my favorite read of his just because of the era...There's another volume I enjoy along the same lines, though considerably different from a geographic perspective, "Minutes of the Last Meeting."
With regard to somewhat religious re-reading, Bellow's "Herzog" is my choice...at least once a year and my volume was so tattered, well...I'm waiting for the Kindle version.
Thanks.
/r
Your posts have always intrigued me, except when they didn't.
"All the symbolysm people say is shit." Goddamned Hemingway, he never had to apply for a tenure position, obviously.
This is a good post.
Interesting...I am more than inspired now.
I read it in high school and I remember it was hard for me to get through, but the imagery of his loneliness and that fish have stayed with me all these years.
I just recently re read Catcher in the Rye, a book I LOVED in high school and I was disappointed.
A classic tale, indeed, but the content did not have the same magical effect on me as a teen.
It is quite possible I may find the reverse with Hemingway.
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