A Few Thoughts on Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway is considered not only one of the best American writers, but also one of the world’s most talented ones. His works are greatly influenced by his journalism studies and profession, so his style is rather simple, devoid of ornaments and stylistic devices. Here are some of the words other famous people had to say about Hemingway.

"During his lifetime Ernest Hemingway was very probably America’s most famous writer. His style, his "hero" (that is to say the protagonist of many of his works, who so resemble each other that we have come to speak of them in the singular), his manner and attitudes have been very widely recognized-not just in the English speaking world but wherever books are widely read. It may be that no other novelist has had an equivalent influence on the prose of modern fiction, for where his work is known it has been used: imitated, reworked, or assimilated. In addition he had an extraordinary reputation as a colorful human being, and for over thirty years his every escapade was duly reported in the press." (Philip Young- Ernest Hemingway, p. 146)

"Throughout his career Hemingway was famous for the simplicity of his literary style. He broke irrevocably with ornate and "literary" mannerisms, and cultivated short sentences, simple words and colloquial idioms. In the early work this simplicity often seems the clipped and deliberately inexpressive utterance of a man trying to conceal his own pain and despair; it lends itself to quiet irony and deliberate understatement. The simplicity of The Old Man and the Sea is of a very different order, for here Hemingway is aiming at a Biblical grandeur [..] so the story begins and the reader at once senses that he is being offered something very like a parable." (Ian Ousby-An Introduction to Fifty American Novels, p.249)

"Some novelists confess the weakness in their work; Hemingway confessed his strengths. He made his central characters men who stood apart from the terrible things they saw and studied life with cold detachment. Even when they got hurt, they were stoical about it […] Even so, he managed to produce-since we must keep score-three novels and an imposing opus of stories that have lasted, as he knew they would. For all his bluster, his conspicuous roistering in far-off lands, his stubborn production of bad books, he was an obsessive craftsman who created through sheer hard work one of the most distinctive prose styles in the English language." (James Atlas-Papa Lives)

"All of Hemingway’s work shows that his spirit was brilliant but short-lived. And it is understandable. An internal tension like his, subjected to such a severe dominance of technique, can’t be sustained within the vast and hazardous reaches of a novel. It was his nature, and his error was to try to exceed his own splendid limits. And that is why everything superfluous is more noticeable than in other writers. His novels are like short stories that are out of proportion, that include too much. In contrast, the best thing about his stories is that they give the impression something is missing, and this is precisely what confers their mystery and their beauty. Jorge Luis Borges, who is one of the greatest writers of our time, has the same limits, but has had the sense not to try to surpass them […]

That consciousness of technique is unquestionably the reason Hemingway won’t achieve glory with his novels, but will with his more disciplined short stories. Talking of For Whom the Bell Tolls, he said that he had no preconceived plan for constructing the book, but rather invented it each day as he went along. He didn’t have to say it: it’s obvious. In contrast, his instantaneously inspired short stories are unassailable. Like the three he wrote one May afternoon in a Madrid pension, when a snowstorm forced the cancellation of a bullfight at the feast of San Isidro. Those stories, as he himself told George Plimpton, were The Killers, Ten Indians and Today is Friday, and all three were magisterial. Along those lines, for my taste, the story in which his powers are most compressed is one of his shortest ones, Cat in the Rain." (Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Gabriel Marcia Marquez Meets Ernest Hemingway)