Ernest Hemingway

Just don't have the mind to enjoy his work or get it on the level
that the experts say I should.

 

Where'd you get that picture of Charlie Pierce? Que va!

 

It's fun to press people when they say that like to read Hemingway. When asked
for more detail of why they really don't have an answer. Which tells me that
they really don't read Hemingway and were just saying so to sound sophisticated
and erudite.

 

I didn't start reading him till I was 32 or 33.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is my favorite book. The story is gripping and no one writes better dialogue.

Tarantino is the Hemingway of movie dialogue.

 

At least people read him.

Folks kept telling me what a great writer and reporter Helen Thomas was, but none of them could cite a single thing she had ever written.

 

I think he's even better at setting a scene than he is at dialogue.

 

Man, you are relentless. This made me laugh.

As for Hemingway, he overrated Dimaggio a bit. Should have gone with Hank Greenberg.

 

I bet Dick has read every work.
Dick, come tell us about Hemingway.

 

Yeah, I rarely delve into "levels" of literature unless they hit me over the head.

Sometimes you just have to read a book for its story.

It's kind of funny, really. Growing up I'd hear Hemingway or Steinbeck or other literary heavyweights and be scared off not because I wouldn't have understood the works but because there was this strange importance put upon them and that made me uncomfortable, which then made me gravitate away from them, idiotically so.

Then I started reading them in my early 30s and wondered why the fuck I waited so late.

They are simple, effective -- beautiful -- storytellers.

And yeah, as LTL alludes to, the DiMaggio thing. You have this whole fishing tale that stands on its own merit, and yet the tale is woven throughout with references to America's greatest ballplayer (subjective, of course, but you get my drift). Then again, any writer who can masterfully weave baseball into his or her story is good in my book.

 

He had DiMaggio in mind before he wrote the rest of the book. Built a whole narrative around the idea and mythology of DiMaggio.

The whole novel falls apart with anyone else.

Besides, Greenberg was a Jew. Who's going to relate to him?

 

The narrative had a narrative.