Hemingway: True Icon or Total Farce?
the overtly irritating and slightly psychotic genius of Hemingway
“Name a book that ravished you,” my English professor once told my class.
“1984 by Orwell,” one student said. A collective murmur of agreement. “The Sound and The Fury by Faulkner,” said another. A sea of heads bobbed in approval.
“A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway,” I said.
Silence. My professor puckered her lips.
A few weeks later, standing in the kitchen at a house party, I overheard one of my classmates, blood red acrylic nails wrapped like talons around her Ranchwater, shout from a heated debate:
“Hemingway’s a misogynist AND his writing sucks!”
My relationship with Hemingway is a conundrum.
He irritates me, but I always find myself valiantly defending his genius. Do I love him? Do I hate him? Is his prose clear and concise, or barren and skeletal? Is he a creative genius, or a master at slapping the illusion of genius on oversimplified writing? How do you win the Nobel Prize for Literature writing like a third grader?
Honestly, I don’t care if he was a misogynist or not. If the man could write, he could write, and his emblematic presence in American literature confirms he was clearly up to something.
But what, exactly?
Iceberg Theory
The largest and strongest part of Hemingway’s stories are underwater, floating in the unsaid.
On the surface, we see the necessities (plot, character, and setting) but to grasp the magnitude of the story (emotions, fears, dreams, and desires) we’ve got to dive into his words and swim in their darkness before we see them for what they truly are. Crafting stories through the philosophy of omission, he coined the term “Iceberg Theory.”
“The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one eighth of it being above the water.”
“If a writer of prose knows enough of 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 best example of this is Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” a short story about a man trying to convince his girlfriend to get an abortion, while the term “abortion” is never used.
The story opens with dramatically stripped-down prose –
“The hills across the valley of the Ebro' were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes.”
– while the rest of the narrative is a terse conversation dancing around abortion.
"I'll go with you and I'll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it's all perfectly natural."
"Then what will we do afterward?"
"We'll be fine afterward. Just like we were before."
"What makes you think so?"
"That's the only thing that bothers us. It's the only thing that's made us unhappy."
The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads.
"And you think then we'll be all right and be happy."
"I know we will. You don't have to be afraid. I've known lots of people that have done it." "So have I," said the girl. "And afterward they were all so happy."
What Hemingway omits from this story is the very thing that gives it its punch. The tension, the fear, the anger, the emotionality — all surges just beneath the surface.
This is precisely why Hemingway pisses me off – he always leaves me wanting more.
But isn’t that the point?
If an artist doesn’t leave you wanting more, he might as well pack up his things – he’s failed you horribly.
Write The Truest Sentence You Know
I need you to understand how difficult Iceberg Theory is.
In a letter to The Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway wrote, “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”
Stephen King calls this “killing your darlings.” I’ve always found this term endearing, because that’s exactly what’s at play. After countless hours of brainstorming and pouring myself onto the page, I’m just going to toss it in the garbage? I might as well shove my head in the trash with it.
But Hemingway was glued to his vision: write “the truest sentence” he knew. Can you imagine the thousands of sentences he wrote to get that one “true” sentence? Now imagine writing entire novels like that. It feels insane. A little psychotic.
That’s why he’s so good.
When I watch Steph Curry – one of the most prolific shooting guards in the NBA – drain 3’s on TV, what I’m not seeing is the hours of late nights in empty gyms, clanking shots by himself so he can swish them at the buzzer in front of thousands of adoring fans.
Most of Hemingway’s career was spent in an empty gym, clanking shots. It was this uncompromising commitment to be elite that made him so.
The Genius of Hemingway
With his deceptively simple craft, Hemingway invites us to step into the story and give it meaning ourselves.
He’s not telling us what to feel - he’s drawing it out of us. As a result, we don’t read Hemingway. We experience him.
Where we go wrong is teaching young writers to emulate Hemingway’s exact style. Instead of imitating his prose on a sentence level and having it fall flat, apply Iceberg Theory to your own unique prose. Infusing deep meaning into the bare bones of a story is the hardest – and most fulfilling – thing you will do as a writer, but writing a “true” sentence looks different for everyone. That’s the magic of writing. There’s enough truth to go around.
It doesn’t matter how much Hemingway pisses me off, or how many liberal arts students can’t stand him. He was one hell of a writer. I’ll stand by that.
Thanks for reading this week’s issue of The G Word.
See ya next week,
G
(Adore Hemingway? Hate his guts? Hit me back and tell me why)
Love Hemingway. Frankly, I have always loved what Hemingway does because, like you say it draws it out of us. It shows the universality of the human experience to listen without hearing, to see without looking. I don’t think it’s necessary to tell everything to a reader.
Yes. You are right, and your professor wasn't wrong (at least, maybe half right). I'm with you: I find his work, at times, overrated and maddening; and others, I can't help but think about it over and over. There's something to an author who can evoke that in a reader, I think.
At any rate, great choice on "A Farewell to Arms." That my favorite, too. Beautifully devastating, perfectly told. A romance novel disguised as a poorly disguises war novel. Not all of Hem's stuff is genius, and I've read a lot of it, but the stuff that is, really sticks with you. I remember reading "The Sun Also Rises" and thinking about it over and over again for a week, not sure if I liked it or not or what even was the point. And yet, I couldn't stop thinking about it.
My favorite overall work of Hemingway's is probably "A Moveable Feast," as it's the one with so many lines I've never forgotten. It's not even a book as much as a series of essays, which he never actually brought to completion. And yet, there's so much there: Paris, writing, life, loss. I can relate to a lot those themes; and more than any author, I am fascinated with Hemingway. Not because he was a good person. I am sure I would not have gotten along with him. But he is, in a sense, a character unto himself. And there is something fascinating, even compelling about such a person. I've read as many bios about the man as I have read works by him.
Heh. There I go, defending him to thin air. As you can tell, I get it. ;)
Actually, I changed my mind. My favorite is "Hills Like White Elephants." Hem cut his teeth on short form, and it's where he tends to excel, IMO. Even in his novels, it's the depth of feeling he brings to a single scene (often by what he leaves out, as you so aptly illustrated) that really connects you to a story. Still, "Farewell" has my favorite of all endings ever. So much hope and heartbreak in that book, not unlike in the life of its author.