my life 2008

Help...?

I apparently lack the recessive gene which allows me to fully appreciate the depth of Hemingway's work. I admit this. Can we move on?

No. Why?

I have to teach a Hemingway every semester, that's why. I am not allowed to simply "not get it" and move to warmer climes.

But this gets worse. I work with a gaggle of people who consider Hemingway a great master. They appear to be sincere.

This cuts down on the number of colleagues to which I can run in anguish, throw myself melodramatically at their feet, and plead for release. "At least," I'd moan, "Let me smear myself with honey and stake myself to an anthill. Please. Remove my feet with a deli cutter, one slice at a time. But please. No more Hemingway."

Most of them would look upon my trembling form like they're thinking, "You ignorant clod. Hmph."

In the beginning, there was In Our Time. It was an obscure Hemingway work, with comparatively little scholarly commentary available. When I became moderately comfortable with that--a book about manly men who drink too much and never say what they feel (and neither does Hemingway)--we moved to A Farewell to Arms, which was also, I'm told, riddled with understated masterly implications. I thought it was a story about an ambulance driver who drank too much, fell in love, and lost everything. I'd worked out two or three decent lessons based upon that one, then we switched to The Sun Also Rises, which seems to record the travels of a chap who drinks too much and likes bullfights.

All right. I confess. I see some of the nuance to Hemingway. Most of his work just irritates me, though. His dialogue, for example, usually neglects markers concerning who's speaking (an important detail), even when several people are sitting around a table, drinking and talking.

Then there are sometimes two pages committed to relating passing scenery. I thought Hemingway was a minimalist. I fail to see the point in passages like: "We drove over a hill and there were plains below and there was a river shining in the sun just below the trees and the grain grew up to the very edge of the castle and it rippled in the sun...and...and...." Why didn't he just say, "We drove to Spain"?

Yeah yeah Hemingway iceberg yadda....

This stuff is just annoying. I'm not buying the idea that "less is more." I've seen this applied in poetry effectively, but I don't see Hemingway doing it. At least, he isn't clear when he does it. I don't want a story to whack me over the head with meaning, but I don't want to have to drag the backhoe out of the garage to unearth the meaning, either. Give me subtle clues, yes. Force me to insinuate my own experience to make an argument about what Hemingway meant? No. I have to do that with my freshman papers. Please don't make me do it with professional writers.

I will say this for Hemingway, however: he spawned the clearest crop of scholars the world has ever known. the average Shakespeare scholarship is riddled with important-sounding academic words and is often virtually indecipherable. Hemingway scholars, however, seem to have bought into his notion that simple words are better than complex ones. They write commentary on his works that are easy to read and quite often far more engrossing than Hemingway's works themselves.

By the way...is it just me or does reading Hemingway make you unaccountably thirsty?

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