Subject: Re: What Would Jerome Do?
From: Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Date: Mon May 22 2000 - 22:39:36 GMT
On Mon, May 22, 2000 at 03:05:17PM -0700, Robbie wrote:
> I forgot to mention this in my last post, Tim, but I'm happy to be
> sharing a plank with you and I think there's enough of us dangling out
> here to mount a sizable mutiny. What do you say?
I think that if you like or love Salinger's stories, you can't help but
be knocked over by the gorgeous craftsmanship of Hemingway's. Watching
him at work, particularly in the early days when he bled slowly, is like
watching a master carpenter or stonemason at work. And if you can't get
enough of that, there's always A Moveable Feast, where you can enjoy his
descriptions of trying to write those very stories.
In the MP3LIT clip, he verges on self-parody, as he lists all the places
he was that were good to work in, and says (as he does in a written
intro to his stories) something to the effect that "other places were
not so good to write in, or maybe we were not so good in them." It
always sounded to me the way a presidential candidate does (finding it
impossible to use the first-person singular), and excessively mannered,
but by the time he wrote that introduction he was well into his
manly-man period of self-mythologizing. And I don't mind making
allowances for his mannerisms when he's not writing fiction.
And silly as that mythologizing may seem, the stories, ah, the stories
... they are still (as he might have said) fine and good and alive and
clear the way the water is clear where the trout collect in the river
in the shade of an oak tree.
I've read the novels, and while I return to The Sun Also Rises every
year or so (I like to read it with Gatsby), I turn to the stories much
more often. I keep a copy now of the big anthology and A Moveable Feast
at work and at home, so that I can dive into it when the urge strikes
me.
--tim
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