Notes for Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway as a "Stylist"

1.) A stylist almost directly opposite Faulkner.

2.) "Eliminate all unneeded words."

3.) "A prose style built from what was left after eliminating all the words 'one could not stand to hear.'"

4.) Paraphrase: If you know it, it doesn't need to be written out.

5.) The "Iceberg Principle" -- there is 7/8 under water for every 1/8 that shows.

6.) Journalistic techniques -- compression, objectivity, and immediacy.

7.) "Telegraphic prose."

8.) Minimized narrator commentary.

9.) Mainly dialogue.  And sometimes/often "uncontextualized" dialogue.

10.) A modern, speeded-up, streamlined style.

11.) A terse, direct, and understated style.

12.) "Imagism" -- or the "Imagist" Movement -- demands "direct treatment of the 'thing' and 'the use of absolutely no word that does not contribute to the total design.'"

Hemingway as an "Expat" (expatriate)

1.) France (Paris), Spain (Pamplona, Barcelona), Africa (Tanzania), and Cuba.

2.) In Paris, he was surrounded by fellow American "modernist" writers -- Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Sherwood Anderson.

3.) Hemingway and Fitzgerald shared an editor -- Maxwell Perkins at Scribners.

4.) Hemingway's writing led Stein to coin the tem "lost generation" -- aimless young expatriates in France and Spain.

Hemingway's Best Novels

1.) The Sun Also Rises (1926)

2.) A Farewell to Arms (1929)

3.) For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

4.) The Old Man and the Sea (1952) -- Pulitzer Prize / led to Nobel Prize

Other Major Works

1.) Death in the Afternoon (1932) -- a nonfiction study of bullfighting in Spain

2.) Green Hills of Africa (1935) -- a semifictionalized account of a hunting expedition on safari across the Serengeti Plains of Tanzania

3.) A Moveable Feast (1964) -- a memoir of his Paris years

Elements of Hemingway's "Code Hero"

1.) Hard work

2.) Action -- fun and adventure -- masculine forms of self-assertion and self-definition -- e.g., big-game hunting, deep-sea fishing, wars

3.) Masculine potency

4.) Bravery

5.) Dedication

6.) Dignity -- do not make scenes -- grace under pressure

7.) Existentialism -- a philosophy that

• emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual in a hostile or indifferent universe,

• regards existence as unexplainable, and

• stresses free choice and responsibility for one's actions

8.) Live with resignation -- unresisted acceptance of the inescapable