The theme this week is “all-time-favorite authors.” Rather than just listing ten authors in a single short post, though, I thought I’d write full-length posts throughout the week for each of my favorites.

Ernest Hemingway

The back-cover blurb on my copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls claims that “Ernest Hemingway did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer in the twentieth century.” I agree, and—though I realize Hemingway’s style doesn’t appeal to everyone—I am struck by Hemingway’s mastery of language every time I read him. I think it was Faulkner who once said sourly of Hemingway that he never used a word that would drive anyone to pick up a dictionary. True, but for that reason Hemingway’s prose has an unmatched sense of realism and urgency—and I would also argue that Hemingway can convey more emotion with “simple” words and matter-of-fact sentences than anyone writing in flowery language. His depiction, in A Farewell to Arms, of the Italian retreat after the Battle of Caporetto is, I think, the best thing he ever wrote, and it’s written very detachedly, nearly all of it descriptive rather than narrative. At this point in the story we don’t get inside the protagonist’s head; we don’t get told his thoughts—unusual for a first-person narrative. Much is left for the reader to fill in:

“Where’s Bonello?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you,” Piani said. We went up the ladder. Up on the hay we set the things down. Piani took out his knife with the corkscrew and drew the cork on a wine bottle.

“They have sealing-wax on it,” he said. “It must be good.” He smiled.

“Where’s Bonello?” I asked.

Piani looked at me.

“He went away, Tenente,” he said. “He wanted to be a prisoner.”

I did not say anything.

“He was afraid we would get killed.”

I held the bottle of wine and did not say anything.

“You see we don’t believe in the war anyway, Tenente.”

“Why didn’t you go?” I asked.

“I did not want to leave you.”

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know, Tenente. He went away.”

“All right,” I said. “Will you cut the sausage?”

Piani looked at me in the half-light.

“I cut it while we were talking,” he said. We sat in the hay and ate the sausage and drank the wine. It must have been wine they had saved for a wedding. It was so old that it was losing its color.

“You look out of this window, Luigi,” I said. “I’ll go look out the other window.”

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms: The Hemingway Library Edition (New York: Scribner, 2012), 187-8.

I think the passage is stronger for letting the reader imagine what’s going through Lieutenant Henry’s mind at this point, rather than trying to fill it in for us. There are other places in the book where the narration nearly delves into stream-of-consciousness, but for good reason this isn’t one of them.

Hemingway has a sharp sense of humor, too:

“I feel better now,” Catherine said. “I felt terrible when we started.”

“We always feel good when we’re together.”

“We will always be together.”

“Yes, except that I’m going away at midnight.”

A Farewell to Arms, 131.

Or:

“I’ll bet they throw the benches at you,” Ettore said. “Did you hear how they threw the benches at him in Modena?”

“It’s a damned lie.”

“They threw the benches at him,” Ettore said. “I was there. I threw six benches myself.”

“You’re just a wop from Frisco.”

“He can’t pronounce Italian,” Ettore said. “Everywhere he goes they throw the benches at him.”

“Piacenza’s the toughest house to sing in the north of Italy,” the other tenor said. “Believe me that’s a tough little house to sing.” […]

“I’d like to be there to see them throw the benches at you,” Ettore said. “You can’t sing Italian.”

“He’s a nut,” said Edgar Saunders. “All he knows how to say is throw benches.”

“That’s all they know how to do when you two sing,” Ettore said.

A Farewell to Arms, 105.

All that said, honestly I think there are times when Hemingway gets lost in his own mythos of Swaggering Manly Hemingwayness. He has some genuinely, cringe-worthily bad material, particularly in his short stories—to me certain of his stories read as though they were written to maintain the myth, not from conviction. He has, on occasion, a casually indifferent attitude towards racism and misogyny: his portrayal of women and minorities is often problematic. There are times when, as with his characters, it’s hard to tell what Hemingway the Author is really thinking—especially when Hemingway the Author is overshadowed by Hemingway the Myth. Behind the mythos, though, Hemingway is a keen observer of humanity, and in consequence a master of Story.