Ernest Hemingway

[ghostofcorwin]

Regarding how frightening it is that my education has not taught me the art of exegesis - I am afraid that on the contrary, seeing how much it is possible to over-intepret texts on the basis of some critical framework has convinced me that such analysis is at best an amusing game. You cite Campbell: his schema of the heroic narrative is so generalised as to be applicable to almost any narrative; it boils down to nothing less than a few truisms that a story must have conflict, must show transformation, and so forth. Dressing these commonsensical observations in portentous sub-Jungian garb may make for a good pop-cultural meme, but is hardly an earth-shattering insight.

As for my inability to discern the deeper themes that may lurk in Hemingway's work; particularly in The Old Man And The Sea, I see little reason for having written that work unless Hemingway meant it as a symbolic exercise. Nevertheless, I have deep problems with his choice of symbols.

I am not a whiney college liberal; but I am a vegetarian and animal rights activist with a deep commitment to certain causes. It takes a lack of real moral fibre to face a noble beast such as the lion simply in order to slay it as a sort of cheap affirmation of one's manhood. True valour and cheap bravado are not the same thing, a mistaken identification Hemingway made time and again especially in his paeans to the supposed poetry of the choreographed butchery of the corrida.

Hemingway was a remarkable, yet flawed man; his works share both these qualities. I do not intend to re-read them any time soon.

I have been told by a few zebras that they do not share your view of the "noble" lion. They think he should stop grabbing them by the throat and suffocating them to death as a sort of cheap affirmation of his lionhood.

Re the bullfight, I well recognize that there are many modern sensibilities that are horrified by it. There are elements of barbarism in it, particularly the horses of the picadors. But as a bull, I think I'd rather take a sword through my spine in the arena to being bludgeoned over the head with a sledgehammer in the slaughterhouse. You, on the other hand, would apparently prefer that all animals be garlanded in flowers and live happily in Eden with our gentle human species. when that day comes, humanity will be ready for extinction. We will be like the Eloi in Wells' Time Machine -- a vapid, spineless species, increasingly out of touch with the Darwinian realities of the world, glued to our virtual reality boxes to avoid confronting anything that makes us uncomfortable or afraid. Our aggression is what fuels our creativity and our survival. We would be wise not to lose touch with it.

 

[rai]

I've read such interpretations of The Old Man And The Sea - I'm a literature graduate - and I don't buy it. No doubt that was Hemingway's intention, but it does not resonate for me. I am arrogant no doubt, but you in turn have hardly shown a great deal of humility in your choice of ad hominem epithets in response to me.

I don't want to put anyone down, and I don't mean any disrespect.. but surely your views as a vegan has something to do with your dislike of the story. Fishing for food, you will agree, is a natural human act.

I don't think the 'old man' is out to kill the noble fish for sport or love of killing.

It is natural for people to eat animals, we have been eating fish and animals for a long time. If you don't like that it's your choice, but to say the story is just about glory of killing a noble fish is not true.

It sounds like an agenda. If a man kills an animal (even if it's for food or kill-or-be-killed) you say it's a story about a person killing for sport.

Hemingway was a hunter and surely some left-wing PETA types would splatter him with fake blood for his wanton acts if he was alive today. But then I would not expect those PETA-people to be objective about his work as a writer.

 

[thepaladin]

Well.....ahhh wait, what were we talking about again?????? Oh, yes Hemingway, right. I will probably end up repeating myself if this goes on much longer, but... We all see "things" through our own prejudices, learned attitudes, life experince, societal mores etc. I hunted regularly some years ago. I simply don't have any interest in it now. What I would do and what I believe about animal rights, consuming meat, the best way to kill cattle, etc. have little to do with "Papa" Hemingway's ability and tallent as a writer. I've mentioned I don't "in general" care for his work, stil I am forced to admit to his value in the catalog of literature.

Something not mentioned so far aside from his injury, etc is that he was "subjected" to electroshock (it was the day of electricity "healing" things). He struggled with writers block greatly late in life. It has been attributed to alcohol in the past but lately the "electroshock" has been considered more likely (wonder why?).

So, okay, I am not a fan of most of his work, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate his ability.

 

[J-WO]

I'll say this for Hemingway; he's made chasing mosquitos around my flat with a rolled up newspaper a lot more meaningful and exciting since I read T.O.M.A.T.S.

Er, maybe I should get out more...

(NB- I make no apology for killing Mozzies. I give them no mercy and expect none back.)

 

[thepaladin]

And we all respect that.

 

[J-WO]

An hour and a half, it took to kill the last one! 'You are a clever creature,' I told it, 'and a noble one. But you must die.'

After, I made seven hail Marys and watched the dawn rise. It would be a fine day.

 

[ghostofcorwin]

An hour and a half, it took to kill the last one! 'You are a clever creature,' I told it, 'and a noble one. But you must die.'

After, I made seven hail Marys and watched the dawn rise. It would be a fine day.

Lucky this thread isn't about Faulkner or Joyce. You would have taken seven pages and a single run-on sentence to describe the same thing. Hemingway has his virtues...

 

[J-WO]

Too true!

 

[thepaladin]

Thats true I could never really get into James Joyce I dont think he understood how to use punctuation very well not its uses or any purpose in it he was way into train of thought writing or possibly chain of thought and he expected everyone to keep up and be on the same page with him as he explored his own ramblings existential and otherwise






Yes, I'm finished now.

 

[ghostofcorwin]

Thats true I could never really get into James Joyce I dont think he understood how to use punctuation very well not its uses or any purpose in it he was way into train of thought writing or possibly chain of thought and he expected everyone to keep up and be on the same page with him as he explored his own ramblings existential and otherwise

Yes, I'm finished now.

To be fair to Joyce, who was so astonishly great a writer that he simply went to the stars without us there's something like this from The Dead (Dubliners). There are very very few among us poor souls who could cast spells of language like Joyce when he wanted to.....

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

 

[Sparrow]

Ulysses is a masterpiece (though you can as easily hate it to death), and Finnegans Wake is rubbish.

I haven't read much Joyce, in fact after feeling like I had been club'd over the head with the English language in Finnegan's Wake, I have never ventured again into the Joyce realm.

 

[J-WO]

Dubliners is worth checking out. I read it when I was seventeen and its always stuck with me.

 

[Sparrow]

I've heard that, and also his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are the most accessible Joyce for the modern reader.

I think most of my experimental days are behind me now and James Joyce is probably out of my league.

 

[ghostofcorwin]

I've heard that, and also his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are the most accessible Joyce for the modern reader.

I think most of my experimental days are behind me now and James Joyce is probably out of my league.

Agreed on Dubliners and Portrait, both accessible and very fine works. Add Ulysses, which is quite approachable and full of humor, while showing the incredible stylistic range of Joyce (he can write like ten different great writers). Problem with works like Ulysses is that they have been somewhat poisoned by the academy. I took a course in college that included Ulysses and it took me years to come back to it fresh as something to just read and enjoy rather than become trapped in theories and deeper meanings. It's also a great book to listen to, which I've done while driving to work and back. Finnegan on the other hand still eludes me. It's a remarkable work from the point of view of sheer linguistic brilliance (Joyce really believed he was better than Shakespeare). But it's awfully dense, slow and demanding. I admit I'm just not up to the challenge for now...