'ts easy...all you need is love

    '...but his descriptions can be Spartan at times ...'

    This has always seemed to me the mystery at the heart
    of his magic. HOW do such bare statements, with scarcely
    an adjective in sight, convey reality with such heart-stopping
    immediacy?
    
    (While the more-is-less boys like JDS pile it all in till one
    can hardly breathe.)

    'You know how it is there, in Havana, in the early morning....'

    Well, I've never been to Havana, but I know EXACTLY
    how it is there in the early morning. (At least the Havana
    that Hemingway wants me to recognise.)

    Everyone trundles out the old Iceberg but that really does
    seem to be the way it's done. Know & love everything
    there is to know & love about the place, the object, the individual,
    you are trying to show - then cut & cut & cut until all you have left
    is muscle & bone. It will be locked away then, waiting unseen
    to be delivered as fresh as the new day by the next bloke to turn
    the page.

    (If this happens to be Jim Rovira he'll fondly believe it's
    himself doing the work, in the same way the experimental
    mouse thinks he's invented the pleasure button. It won't,
    of course. It'll be you.)

    Scottie B.

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Received on Tue Feb 11 03:30:49 2003