Your thoughts on this? HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS. This is an apolitical zone. This story was written in 1927, just about when Hem was marrying Pauline (May 1927). He converted to Catholicism as Pauline was devout. It is clear that Hemingway’s sympathies are with the woman. While criticized for not writing women well, i disagree and think he depicts this young woman’s uncertainty and fear well. And just writing about abortion in 1927 while the word is never mentioned, is astonishing. Comments welcome! Best, Christine

THE CORNERWEEKEND SHORT

Weekend Short: Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants’

Ernest Hemingway sitting at a table writing while at his campsite in Kenya, circa 1953.(Public Domain/via Wikimedia)

 

 

Author’s note: “Weekend Short” is a weekly profile of a short story. Additional analysis by the readership is encouraged in the comments section.

Welcome to the weekend!

The creatures of the yard are engaged in harum-scarum antics on a warm and sun-soaked morning here in central Wisconsin.

Today’s short is Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” originally published in 1927. Set in Spain, the story portrays a couple as they struggle to make conversation around an inconvenience — an unmentioned something related to the woman. In his characteristic style, Hemingway employs script-like sparsity, as if even the narrator is uncomfortable saying too much.Hem and Bumby

Hemingway writes:

The hills across the valley of the Ebro’ were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went on to Madrid.

“What should we drink?” the girl asked. She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.

“It’s pretty hot,” the man said.

“Let’s drink beer.”

“Dos cervezas,” the man said into the curtain.

“Big ones?” a woman asked from the doorway.

“Yes. Two big ones.”

The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glasses on the table and looked at the man and the girl. The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.

“They look like white elephants,” she said.

“I’ve never seen one,” the man drank his beer.

“No, you wouldn’t have.”

“I might have,” the man said. “Just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t prove anything.”

You can read the rest here.

Assuming you’ve now finished the story, let’s consider it. Honestly, I didn’t think much of it upon first reading. While brief, it drags and becomes uncomfortable — line after line of nothing but hedging and nothing-talk. But a slower second reading, especially aloud, turns the story from one of chatter to one of grinding selfishness.

The man in the story wishes the woman to have an abortion. The woman is uncomfortable about the idea but defers to the man. The man, trying to preserve his outward honor while still achieving an immoral end, uses a romanticized past to convince the woman that all will be well after the “operation.”Pauline Pfeffer

The woman, playing for time and not wanting to discuss the decision, remarks that the hills “look like white elephants.” We can take that line to mean: that there’s “an elephant in the room,” that her “white elephant” is an undesired gift, or that she is unmoored and reverting to childish fictions. From the man’s response to her skepticism regarding his seeing elephants in the flesh, we can understand him to be a petty, disagreeable sort — a small man in the land of imagined pachyderms.

The man’s eventual movement from the table brings us back into the wash of humanity, as he moves through others awaiting the train — musings of destruction in the everyday. Upon his return, the woman appears to have accepted the prospect of abortion. An ugly story, but a masterful recreation of life’s many unuttered subjects which we elide in debate and through distraction.

Many thanks to Michael I. and Eric R. for suggesting Hemingway’s “Elephants.”

Author’s note: If there’s a short story you’d like to see discussed in the coming weeks, please send your suggestion to .

The Short Story: Why we love them. C

The Glorious Intensity of a Great Short Story

DESIGN & LIVINGCOLUMN

Karl Lagerfeld’s Library
Karl Lagerfeld’s Library

“They mightn’t sell as much as a blockbuster novel, but our desire for an extraordinary short story that takes you to dark places prevails,” writes Ana Kinsella in her latest books column

JULY 05, 2019TEXTAna Kinsella

It may be hard to believe, but back in the 1920s, short fiction was big business. For the likes of F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, cranking out a few short stories to sell to magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, with their massive circulation figures, meant enough money to drown yourself in the finest martinis New York could offer. Today, 100 years later, the publishing industry looks a little different. When was the last time you paid for some written content on the internet, by the way? The $4,000 fee that Fitzgerald received (and bear in mind that’s 1920s money; think around £200,000 when adjusted for inflation) can only be dreamed of by authors today. But the peculiar thing is that there’s still something of a market out there, albeit one that has changed considerably.

Fitz and Hem: They could write short stories that you never forgot

Take Cat Person. Towards the end of 2017, a dark political year by anyone’s standards, the New Yorker published Kristen Roupenian’s short story and inadvertently triggered a tornado of hot takes on Twitter. Cat Person, though I probably don’t need to tell you this, latched onto some part of our collective imagination, some part shared by all the women who’d gone on bad dates with gross men and who’d looked for greater meaning in the ghosting that followed. It not only demonstrated the power of a well-written short story, but also our appetite for the format. In today’s climate of snackable content and videos that cut off after 15 seconds, it might be that a short story is just the palate cleanser we need most.

But what makes a well-written short story? For readers, they need to be tight and taut, packed with only the most necessary elements to draw us in and keep us involved over the course of a handful of pages. One perfect example is Raymond Carver, the American writer whose 1970s and 1980s stories demonstrated the value of saying less. There’s no room in a short story for fuss or frills; in a 500-page novel, on the other hand, there can be plenty of opportunity to digress. A good short story feels like a tightrope act, and by the time it ends, you can feel all the emotions of a blockbuster novel, but delivered a single smooth punch that knocks you to the ground and leaves you seeing stars. 

knock out punch

This is not to say that writing a novel is by comparison an easy feat. But dip into one of Lydia Davis’s breathtakingly lucid short stories (start with Break It Down) and tell me that there isn’t something totally unique about the heft that a mere 20 or so pages can carry, when done properly. Knowing what to condense into so little space, and bringing the reader on an emotional journey along the way, is a challenge not suited to every writer.

So all that said, why would anyone bother writing them? It’s all in the arc, as Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure and award-winning short story writer, tried to explain it to me. “Short stories are inherently more playful I think,” she mused.  “I try and see them as an opportunity to take a risk every time in some way, because if it doesn’t work out you can just go and write another one. You can go really deep into a moment in the way that a novel can’t always, and the shorter, sharper arc of a truly great story can be just completely disorienting, intense in a way I think you can’t sustain over a whole book.”

Hem and Black Dog

Reading the likes of Tenth of December by George Saunders or Especially Heinous by Carmen Maria Machado reveals the shocking fervour a well-wrought story can have. “Because you can read stories in one sitting, it’s a form perfectly suited for high-intensity experiences,” explains Thomas Morris, author of the short story collection We Don’t Know What We’re Doing. “When I finish reading a great story, I feel as if I’ve come away changed. And it’s incredible to me that I can have this kind of experience in the time between waking up and having my breakfast.” According to Thomas, the main difficulty when writing a short story is “knowing when to get in and when to get out. They’re like burglaries in that regard. Sometimes you need to linger, and keep searching for the treasure. Other times, it requires a smash and grab job.” 

They mightn’t sell as much as a blockbuster novel, but as Cat Person itself proves, our desire for an extraordinary short story that takes you to dark places prevails. The perfect short story might not exist, but the very best can feel close to ideal exemplars of what can be done with words in such a short space. Lingering in the mind, like a microcosm of relationships or heartaches or middle-of-the-night fears, the power of the short story might be found in its willingness to dive right in and explore the murky depths that lie within us. 

 

 

The Nobel Prize For Literature in 1954

Please listen. Hearing his voice was wonderful.
The Old Man and The Sea
The Old Man and The Sea
Nobel Prize to Wm. Golding
Nobel Prize to Wm. Golding

He did it.  He should have done it in 1942 for For Whom the Bell Tolls but the committee was divided; some felt the sexual content was “improper”; no prize was awarded at all that year.  It’s a bit sad that the award happened when it did, as Hem was not up to accepting it in person at that time and, I think, would have truly appreciated it.  He scoffed at the Nobel Prize for Literature calling it the Ignoble Prize but it mattered to him to be passed over.

Well, he won it for The Old Man and the Sea, his little novella that was to be part of a trilogy.

I'm appreciated!
I’m appreciated!

Listen to the speech on the above link (well it’s just the beginning of the speech) in Hem’s voice.  He enunciates his “t’s” and I’m not sure if it was for the purpose of being clear in this speech or if that was his mid-western accent.  (If anyone out there knows, please let us know.) He could not make it to the actual ceremony due to the two plane crashes he’d been in  and other health matters.  John Cabot read his acceptance speech in Sweden and Hem made this recording after.

Hem, Martha, and boys on Safari
Hem, Martha, and boys on Safari

It’s humble and beautiful–and short.

It’s funny. Words are a writer’s craft and lifeline, yet many writers are not outgoing.  Hem apparently was actually shy especially when not drinking and he was always reluctant to engage in public speaking.

Today, given the press for writers to be “out there”, I wonder how he would feel about twitter and facebook for himself.  He likely would not have done it in the later years. His privacy became more valuable but of course, by then, he was not ernest hemingway but HEMINGWAY so no need to cultivate the masses.

Hem at typewriter
Hem at typewriter

I wish he’d lived longer.

To Hem
To Hem

Thank you, Brandon King

I posted this in January but i read it again last night and it deserves to be posted again. A man after my own heart. Please read. I added some different photos. Best to all, Christine

Lessons from Hemingway: A guide to life

Brandon King / Red Dirt Report
“A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway.

YUKON, Okla. — I’m sitting an office surrounded by books I’ve read time after time. Each word, each stanza says something different yet I keep reading.

This is what it must feel like to be religious and captured by something through and through.

Each day, I attempt to write something new and original in hopes to capture the spirit of something yet to be said.

This, and many other lessons, I learned from one of the greatest American writers who ever lived.

Ernest Hemingway is more than a writer; he is something which doesn’t pass through life often.

Hemingway was a man of originality who cursed clichés and lived as though death bit at his heels. Eventually, he would give up running.

I began reading Hemingway shortly after high school. As an 18-year- old who had grown up in the small, yet growing, town of Yukon, culture was a commodity few and far between. It was as barren as it was lonely. At the time, I was reading pieces from writers like Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. They were powerful yet they lacked a punch I wanted to read.

Hem and Scott

Young Ezra

It wasn’t until a trip to Half-Price Books which my perspectives would change.

A blue book was fringed on the corners from being dropped too often. In silver letters, it read A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. As a literary nerd, I had heard the name yet the words and meanings were not there yet.

Since this time, I have read all but two of Hemingway’s pieces. In a near obsessive state, I have found a voice which echoes through the halls of time and continues to speak to those tired of the monotony of modern living.

With each novel and short story, Hemingway provides a lesson for each reader. This should be the goal for any writer worth his or her words. Without meaning, a writer is no more than words on a deaf ear.

Before reading Hemingway’s work, I would find myself asking questions that people could only speculate the answer to. By the time I was finished, I would wonder why I hadn’t thought of that solution before. Though his work deals with death and despair mixed with the feelings of age and war, Hemingway shows us that the world can be seen in any light.

Subjects like love and loss are covered in almost every piece of work. It’s easy to summarize the passing of someone you once loved as painful. It’s quite another thing to express it the way Hemingway did.

Green hills of Africa

For most readers, we all have experienced what it’s like to fall in love with someone and have the hands of death snatch them before their time.

At least I have.

the Sun Also Rises. He lost Brett.

The lessons of Hemingway can give those without a voice a map to find how to express themselves. This is the problem with society as it progresses; just because civilization continues to survive does not mean that civilization grows.

For you, the reader, when was the last time you picked up a novel and read it for what it was worth? When was the last time you enjoyed yourself as you read something so profound that you could feel it touch your heart?

According to the PEW Research Institute, 26 percent of American adults have not read a single book over the past year. This means that no new ideas and possibly no creative endeavor has been established in over a year.

I could list every reason as to why you should learn the lessons of Hemingway but nothing good ever came free. As I’ve learned from Hemingway, “there is no friend as loyal as a book.”

Lessons come by easier for those wanting more out of life. Complacency is a mutual dish that is best served to those who want to survive. For writers and free-thinkers like Hemingway, there is more to life than survival.

It’s the stakes of being original and true. Listed below are the books that have helped me deal with certain issues. If you are interested, please invest in your local library and read on.

To quote Hemingway, “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

A Farewell to Arms: Depression, death and love

The Sun Also Rises: Masculinity, maturity and adventure

The Old Man and the Sea: Aging, death, trying against all odds

For Whom the Bell Tolls: War, destruction, and courage

A Moveable Feast: Dealing with family, memories, and depression

The Garden of Eden: Skepticism, faith and originality

 

REDDIT

Brandon King

Brandon King is a journalism student at OCCC, working towards becoming a professional writer….

Hello Papaphiles!

 

Working at the Finca
Working at the Finca

HemHello Hemingway readers and fans!  Every four months, I post my opening post for those just joining in. For those who stop in regularly, I sincerely and truly thank you for reading and for being interested in Hemingway 55 years after his death and 117 years after his birth. So here is my opening post to acclimate you to what will be happening here.

  Love and thank you, Christine

 

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
Ernest Hemingway

What Will Be Happening Here? 

This will be a place to talk Hemingway and any topics related to him and his life.  That gives us a lot of material: writing, Paris, divorce, relationships, Key West, Cuba, Idaho, fishing, boats, bulls, boxing, cats, horses, dogs, the Midwest, movies, other writers.  Anything else?  Oh right, drinking, awards, depression, friends, cruelty, generosity.  Heard enough? Well, there’s still politics, women, religion, Fidel Castro, Gary Cooper, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Africa. Done yet?  Uh, no. we’ve still got mothers, hair, sexual ambiguity, sons, daughters, actresses, sex, suicide, death, clothes, honor, hygiene, the IRS, psychiatrists.

And what would Papa say about a blog?  Hmm, well, if I wanted to pull a page from Woody Allen, I’d say that he’d say: No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure. He was a journalist first and foremost and he kept up with the times so I think he’d be amused.

Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen
Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen

So what qualifies me to write this blog?  Not too much that’s going to impress you. All I can say is that I love him, just as he was, flawed and fabulous, mean-spirited bully and most gracious of men, driven wordsmith and drunken raconteur, bigot and egalitarian, all of it.  I’m no scholar. I’ll leave that to Timeless Hemingway, www.timelesshemingway.com, which does a superb job and is an unparalleled resource. However, I’ve read them all many times: the books, the short stories, the analyses, the biographies, the women, even the Hemingway cookbook which I actually cook from (the trout is delicious). I’m just an obsessed fan, uncluttered by the need to be neutral.  I hope to learn from you too.

Finally, I find him fascinating, complex, and yes, manly but I think he actually “got” quite a bit about women contrary to popular myth. That’s a topic for another day. Also a topic for another day is why the mask above on the lovely woman. Also a topic for another day is what do we call him in this blog?  Ernest, Ernesto, Wemedge, Nesto, Ernie, Oinbones,Papa, Tatie, Hem, Hemingstein, Hems, or just plain Hemingway? We’ll see. Perhaps we’ll put it to a vote. I have a Hemingway party on his birthday every year (July 21) and I’ll take a poll there too and let you know the results.

The Hemingway July birthday party in my barn
The Hemingway July birthday party in my barn

Of course, none of my friends “get” it and think Hemingway was that guy who wrote in short sentences and wanted to fight with everyone and run with the bulls.  They are partially right and mostly wrong.  But hey, you can’t throw away old friends just because they don’t really read or have an informed opinion about Hemingway–or can you?

These posts will be short and fun (I hope). I try to post at least every two weeks. I hope it’s enjoyable for Hemingway people as well as for casual observers. I’ve looked at the other blogs about Hemingway. Most are terrific but there still is room for a lighter take and for the unending discussion about why we continue to read him fifty-four years after his death. And if you have to ask . . .

Check me out when you have a chance. It’s going to be one hell of a ride.

Hem, Hadley and Bumby

 

The Snows of Kilimanjaro
The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Me
Me

A Farewell to Arms
A Farewell to Arms

.

NO PAIN, NO GAIN Theory of Writing

I just read an article about writers who make themselves physically uncomfortable—perhaps consciously or unconsciously—as a spark to their creative juices. I wrote a blog post a couple of months ago about the strange writing habits of some writers and this is a variation on that theme. Below I will give you the cite for the whole article, but here are a couple of interesting points.

No Pain, no gain.
No Pain, no gain.

  1. Some writers do all of their drafts in the font Courier for the “brutally utilitarian shape of its letters and mono spaced characters marching across the page.” Somehow they feel that when it gets transformed into New Times Roman or Arial in the final version, it looks vastly better and more professional and feels polished compared to the draft.

 

  1. As you all know if you follow this blog, Hemingway often wrote standing up. This was in part due to pain from the plane crashes and in part, he liked it. However, just as often, I see photos of him working at a large rustic table or at his dining room table.

    Writing and not standing
    Writing and not standing

3 Vladimir Nabakov liked to write in his car, hopefully while parked.

 

  1. Friedrich Schiller kept a bunch of rotting apples in his desk that filled the room with “eye watering stench.”

 

  1. Wallace Stevens jotted lines on to scraps of paper while working.

 

  1. Walter Scott wrote while on horseback. This is puzzling.

 

  1. Victor Hugo hid all his clothes save for a grey shawl to prevent himself from leaving the home until he was done meeting his writing requirements.

 

  1. Balzac drank 50 cups of coffee a day. I would think that would make him get up and down an awful lot.

 

  1. Truman Capote “couldn’t think unless he was lying down and described himself as a completely horizontal author”.

 

The theory is that discomfort promotes creativity. I’m not sure.

 

Do you have any weird habits? I feel lucky if I can sit down in front of a fire with the dogs and just write. A glass of wine is welcome, but optional.

 

Hemingway Exhibit at the JFK Library in Boston

 In a post in November, 2015, I noted that the Hemingway exhibit was on display at the Morgan Library in New York City.  It has moved to Boston’s Kennedy Museum, where it will be until December 31st

Catherine and Frederic
Catherine and Frederic

JFK elected 1960
JFK elected 1960

As those of you who read this blog know, the largest exhibit on Hemingway’s writings, notes, memorabilia and displays is at the JFK Museum in Boston.  After Hemingway’s death, his widow, Mary, was permitted to return to their home in Cuba to gather up belongings and Hemingway possessions.  Fortunately, she took drafts of manuscripts, letters, notes and all that she could.  John Kennedy had been a fan of Hemingway and, after Hemingway’s death and then President Kennedy’s death, Mary and Jackie Kennedy met and agreed that the planned JFK Library would be the repository of the largest collection of Hemingway writings and memorabilia. 

Patrick Hemingway 2013 at Hemingway Collection
Patrick Hemingway 2013 at Hemingway Collection

I was able to get to the Morgan Exhibit but only briefly while I was in NY at a writer’s conference. I’ll be heading to Boston this summer to view the exhibit in a more leisurely fashion.  

JFK, Hemingway fan.

I’m particularly interested in the drafts of various endings to A Farewell to Arms.  Hemingway apparently penned forty-seven possible endings.  Eight of those are on display at the new exhibit.  I must admit to wishing that Catherine had survived along with the baby, but that’s not the ending Hemingway chose to go with. 

Patrick Hemingway, the only surviving child of Hemingway, was on hand on the opening day of the exhibit in Boston.  He presently makes his home in Bozeman, Montana.  

Jacqueline Kennedy
Jacqueline Kennedy

 

 

Interesting trivia:  John Kennedy wrote to Hemingway asking permission to use the phrase “Grace under pressure” in the opening of his own profiles in courage.  Hemingway agreed.  Hemingway was, however, too ill to accept President Kennedy’s invitation in January of 1961 to attend the inauguration.  During that year, he killed himself.

The real deal
In Idaho

 

Some Hemingway Trivia

  1. Until Hemingway was four, his mother dressed him up like a girl to match his sister who was about year younger than he was. His hair was kept long as well.the family

    young Ernie fishing
    young Ernie fishing

 

  1. He hated the name “Ernest.”

 

  1. In World War I, he was denied entering the military due to very poor eyesight. He was only 17 at the time. He convinced the military to let him in as an ambulance driver.

 

  1. Hemingway once said of Fitzgerald that, “Scott thought that the rich are different from “you and me.” Hemingway felt they just had more money.

 

  1. Hemingway had a favorite hamburger recipe that has about 10 ingredients. I tried it once and didn’t find it worth all of those ingredients, which include garlic, green onion, India relish, capers, sage, Spice Island’s Beau Mond Seasoning, Spice Island’s Mairen Powder, one egg beaten, dry red or white wine, one tablespoon of cooking oil. He also had a notation noting soy sauce and tomato could be added at the end.

 

  1. Hemingway often wrote standing up. He liked it, but after the plane crashes in 1954, it hurt his back less to stand.

    Standing and Writing
    Hem Standing

 

  1. Hemingway was married four times and was married to his fourth wife at the time of his death, Mary Welsh Hemingway. Hadley, his first wife, remained a good friend and preferred to be referred to as Mrs. Paul Mowrer as opposed to Hadley Hemingway. Martha Gellhorn, his third wife, never liked being referred to as his third wife and required that interviews not mention him.

    Hem and Hadley
    Hem and Hadley

 

  1. Hemingway survived exposure to anthrax, malaria, skin cancer, and pneumonia. He lived with diabetes, two plane crashes, a ruptured kidney, hepatitis, a ruptured spleen, a fracture skull, a crushed vertebrae. As we all know, it was his own hand that ultimately did him in.

 

  1. For five years his wife Mary insisted that his death was accidental as opposed to a suicide.

    Mary and Hem
    Mary and Hem

 

  1. Hemingway felt strongly that it was bad luck to talk about how he wrote and the writing process.

 

  1. Hemingway initially began to wear a beard due to a skin condition that made it painful to shave daily.

 

Hem relaxed--with the beard
Hem relaxed–with the beard

More about Hemingway’s Letters

For readers of Ernest Hemingway, it can be tempting to mix the iconic writer’s fictional characters with the public persona of the writer himself. He never kept a journal and apparently integrated many of his personal experiences into his art.

More of Hemingway’s letters are being published and they are so revealing and fun. For example, Hemingway is known as being a bit of a bully to his wives yet some of the letters show great sensitivities to Martha Gellhorn  and admiration and support for her career as a writer. Please take a look when you have time.

Best, Christine

EH5598P 1940 Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn in Sun Valley, Idaho, 1940. Photographer unknown in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
EH5598P 1940
Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn in Sun Valley, Idaho, 1940. Photographer unknown in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

When More Is . . . More

Reading is my life.
Reading is my life.

Purple is not only highly coloured prose,” he wrote. “It is the world written up, intensified and made pleasurably palpable, not only to suggest the impetuous abundance of Creation, but also to add to it by showing – showing off – the expansive power of the mind itself … When the deep purple blooms, you are looking at a dimension, not a posy.”

On praise of purple prose
In praise of purple prose

This is an interesting article in praise of “purple prose,” the opposite of minimalist prose favored by Hemingway. It does not pan that prose but argues that there is a place for “more.” nice commentary. Best, Christine

More is more
More is more

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