hemingway blech
Pierrot65@aol.com
Wed, 17 Feb 1999 19:39:42 -0500 (EST)
well, i can't believe i contributed to that. i agree with the hemingway vs.
fitzgerald argument. (personally, i cannot begin to comprehend how someone who
has read "gatsby" could possibly harbor the least ... admiration, i guess is
the word, for hemingway. i loved "sun also rises" but really can't stand the
rest of it. this is not to say that my opinion is particularly informed, or
cogent, or worthwhile, or anything. one mitigating circumstance is that my
first affliction with...excuse me, exposure to hemingway was "the old man and
the sea." dear god, what a ... well, whatever. i understand that people like
or admire or even worship different authors and that that should be
encouraged. i guess what i mean is that i don't understand how someone can
have the good taste to sigh or cry or mope over gatsby and yet tolerate the
self-indulgent fish stories [i know, the connection to jerry's bananafish] of
hemingway: "the self-importance of being ernest." it's kind of like someone
liking alannis morrisette and ignoring liz phair -- it makes me go "huh?" [and
please, i beg you, noone yell at me for that one])
as you can see i am both long-winded and addicted to the parenthetical aside.
some of this resentment is that in survey classes we had to spend wholly
unfair gobs of time on henry miller (who is indefensible, in my humble
opinion) and twain and hemingway, the result being that the great Pynchon,
Vonnegut, and, yes, Salinger were for all intents and purposes ignored.
just for the record, i hope you all have had the good fortune to read "paddy
clarke ha ha ha." now there is something we could all rejoice over, no?
rick