EXCLUSIVE: The Ernest Hemingway estate has inked with Gersh for representation as the agency will look to explore opportunities for the author’s work across film, TV and digital media.
Gersh Partner Joe Veltre tells Deadline, “We are thrilled to be working with the Hemingway Estate. Hemingway is a twentieth century icon, and the most important and influential American author of our time. Considering his tremendous literary work and fascinating personal life, we believe there are great opportunities to create future projects that will both honor his work and entertain new audiences in the years ahead.”
Gersh
The Ernest Hemingway Estate added, “The heirs and descendants of Ernest Hemingway enthusiastically welcome this relationship. As active and involved stewards of Hemingway’s work, we are excited to help foster the creation of fresh adaptations that can be enjoyed by both new and lifelong fans. We feel that modern film and television mediums are better equipped than ever to bring the spirit of Hemingway’s words to life in ways never imagined before. Papa fought hard to share his version of the truth with the world, and inspired so many to do the same. We are confident that with the help of Gersh, Ernest Hemingway’s works will live on to inspire courage and self-reflection – both on the page and on the silver screen.”
Hemingway’s writing was awarded both the Nobel Prize in Literature and Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His canon includes such classics as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and A Moveable Feast, all of which continue to sell millions of copies around the globe annually, and many of which have adapted for the stage and screen. Ken Burns recently made the documentary Hemingway capturing the author’s life and iconic status as cultural touchstone.
Born in Oak Park, Ill, Hemingway began his career as a journalist at the age of 17. From there he would serve in the First World War, became a member of the 1920s ex-pats in Paris known as the Lost Generation, and reported from the front lines of the Spanish Civil war and World War II. He was also an avid sportsman, enjoying hunting and fishing, all of which factored into his writing.
Column: At Ernest Hemingway’s final home, seeking answers
Bill Maxwell
The Eagle-Tribune
1 of 2
In 1937, Michael Lerner, left, founder of International Game Fish Association, and Ernest Hemingway stand in front of a trophy catch in the Bahamas.
Ernest Hemingway at work at the Sun Valley Lodge in Idaho, 1939. The author took his own life in 1961 in nearby Ketchum and is buried there.
KETCHUM, Idaho — I came to this small town in the foothills of the Sawtooth Mountains to fulfill my childhood dream of visiting the last home of my favorite American writer, Ernest Hemingway.
In 1979, during my only trip to Paris, I went to a hotel where Hemingway had a long-term room, and I had a few drinks in some of the bars and cafes he loved. While working in Chicago, I went to the site of the author’s birthplace in nearby Oak Park. When I taught at Florida Keys Community College in Key West, I took students to Hemingway’s home and to the original Sloppy Joe’s bar where the author regularly drank.
I enjoyed these places, but they never intrigued me like Ketchum, where on the morning of July 1, 1961, Hemingway killed himself with a shotgun. Like other Hemingway devotees worldwide, I wanted to experience as fully as possible the place the author had called home for the last time, where he hunted and fished in Silver Creek Valley, where he drank and ate, and where he is buried.
Hemingway scholar Kirk Curnutt wrote that such readers look beyond the author’s printed words for understanding. We come to Ketchum “searching for traces of the personality that saturates (Hemingway’s) every sentence.” We want to know what “Papa,” as he was called in his later years, was really like. As a journalist, I have a special interest in how Hemingway, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in literature in 1954, honed his skills as a correspondent for the Kansas City Star, the Toronto Daily Star, the North American News Alliance and other publications.
As I ventured onto hillsides in Sun Valley, down into the meadows and along the banks of Silver Creek and the Big Wood River, Hemingway’s evocations of nature came alive. I imagined the cries of sandhill cranes and the honking of Canada geese as Hemingway described them. I could see mallard and cinnamon teal take flight. In the rivers and creeks, trout leaped through the surface for insects.
I remembered the photographic accuracy of a hunting scene from the short story “The Last Good Country.” I found a copy of the story in a Nick Adams anthology I bought at the local bookstore. “They were after partridges so he pulled out the tube of the magazine and poured the long-rifle cartridges into his hand and then put them into a chamois pouch and filled the magazine with .22 shorts,” the narrator says of Nick. “They made less noise and would not tear the meat up if he could get head shots.”
It was pure Hemingway.
Unaware of the procedures, I did not get permission to visit Hemingway’s house so I drove to the author’s memorial on Trail Creek Road, a mile northeast of Sun Valley Lodge. It is a fitting memorial, tucked away in a wooded area where Hemingway once fished and hunted.
From there, I went to Whiskey Jacques, rebuilt after a 2008 fire, where Hemingway loved to drink and eat steak. I ate grilled Idaho trout, feeling good to be where Hemingway hung out so many years ago.
I kept his final resting place for last. He is buried along with relatives in the cemetery on State Highway 75 near downtown. It is a nondescript grave facing the mountains. Hemingway would have wanted the setting just as it is: clean and enigmatic for its simplicity.
The author did not leave a suicide note, so scholars are still searching for answers. I stared at the grave, not really thinking of why Hemingway killed himself but about the brutal truth of his comment to A.E. Hotchner, his friend and biographer: “Every man’s life ends the same way, and it is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguishes one man from the other.”
I am one of the thousands of readers who come to Ketchum trying to discover some of the details of how Hemingway lived and how he died. Perhaps it is all too simple — like our hero’s style — for us to fully comprehend. But we will continue to come here.
Interesting article. it is a long one so am leaving the link. Our favorite of course was a problem drinker but the problem seems pervasive among writers. Best to all for the holidays. Christine
The Best Book That Amor Towles Ever Received as a Gift
Credit…Rebecca Clarke
“My wife gave me the first edition of Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ to be published in English (in 1886),” says the novelist Amor Towles, whose new book is “The Lincoln Highway.” “That the edition was in translation was just as well, since I don’t read a word of Russian.”
What books are on your night stand?
For the last 16 years, I’ve been reading with three friends. Every month, we meet in a restaurant in New York City to discuss a novel, arriving at 7 and lingering until they close the place. We typically pursue projects. One spring we read Henry James’s “The Portrait of a Lady,” Gustave Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary,” George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” and Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” a project we referred to as “19th-Century Wives Under Pressure.” Often, we’ll read five or six works by a single writer chronologically. We’re about to launch into a survey of the Australian Nobel laureate, Patrick White. So, his “The Tree of Man” is at the top of my pile.
What’s the last great book you read?
Earlier this year, I was asked to write an introduction for the forthcoming Penguin Classics edition of Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, “The Sun Also Rises.” I enjoyed rereading the book immensely. Hemingway began writing it on his 26th birthday, almost a hundred years ago. At the time, he was still married to the first of his four wives. By trade, he was still a foreign correspondent living in Paris. It was before his trip to Africa to hunt big game. Before his face would adorn the cover of Life magazine — three separate times. Before the compromising effects of fame, wealth and recognition. So, in picking up “The Sun Also Rises” today, we have the opportunity to set aside what we think we know about Hemingway as a man and writer, to set aside what we think we know about his style, to read the book as if it were newly released, and to be amply rewarded for doing so.
Can a great book be badly written? What other criteria can overcome bad prose?
Great writing can make almost anything interesting. Any subjects, any settings, any themes. But for me, bad writing is an insurmountable obstacle.
Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).
When I was a college sophomore in the early 1980s, I had the good fortune of being admitted to a fiction writing seminar with a visiting modernist named Walter Abish. As part of the class, he gave us a list of about a hundred novels that he admired. The list included an array of inventive writers and stylists, most of whom I had never heard of, including Donald Barthelme, Italo Calvino, Evan S. Connell, Julio Cortázar, Jean Genet, Elizabeth Hardwick, Knut Hamsun, Milan Kundera, Grace Paley and Alain Robbe-Grillet. With the list fraying in my pocket, I began tracking down these novels whenever I was in a used bookstore. For the next few years, as soon as school would let out, I would retreat alone to my family’s summer house, where I would sit on the porch and read one book a day. It was pure bliss. It also had a lasting influence on me as an artist.
New novels from Jonathan Franzen, Tiphanie Yanique and Gary Shteyngart are on the way.
Prefer nonfiction? Look for these essay collections, an exploration of the Marvel Comics universe and more.
Get to know your favorite actors and artists with these titles.
Six new books take up the pandemic, #MeToo and other timely topics.
Five biographies dive into the lives of Pablo Picasso, Oscar Wilde and more.
Or hear it straight from the authors: Check out these seven memoirs.
What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?
Harry Mathews’s “Cigarettes.” The only American-born member of the experimental confederacy Oulipo, Mathews often wrote about shattering conventions, and thus his work can be somewhat uneven. But in “Cigarettes” he gives us a sly, inventive and entertaining novel which is a racy investigation of midcentury New York society.
Which writers — novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets — working today do you admire most?
I admire a lot of my contemporaries as writers. But Ann Patchett is someone I admire not simply as a writer, but as an advocate for independent bookstores and new voices, as half of a grand marriage, as a graceful thinker, a sly humorist, a generous spirit. I could go on.
‘The Killers’: The only adaptation that Ernest Hemingway loved
‘THE KILLERS’ – ROBERT SIODMAK
4
A masterful example of the quintessential film noir, The Killers has gone down in history as one of the best works from the immensely popular genre. Based on a story by Ernest Hemingway, this was the film that landed Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner unprecedented fame and success. However, the greatest achievement of The Killers is that it has firmly retained its cinematic magic even after all these years.
Right from the very beginning, The Killers keeps the audience on its toes and confronts them with quasi-surreal imagery. Presented like the contents of a bizarre dream, two professional assassins casually walk into a small-town diner in order to capture and kill a man known as the Swede (Lancaster). Within minutes, the atmospheric silence ignites into a cloud of chaos. A hostage situation arises out of nowhere and is defused just as quickly. The protagonist is brutally gunned down in the first ten minutes. Everything falls apart.
This initial spiral into beautiful absurdism plays a vital role in the momentum of the film’s subsequent discursive pathways. We follow an insurance investigator (played by Edmond O’Brien) who enters a dangerous world of crime and intrigue while trying his best to pick up the fragmented pieces of the narrative. Unlike many other suspense thrillers whose success hinges on the excitement of the final destination, The Killers is all about the journey and what a journey it is indeed!
Throughout his life, Hemingway was a very vocal critic of the Hollywood factory and often criticised films that were based on his works. However, The Killers is a significant exception to Hemingway’s general disdain for the machinations of the film industry. He famously wrote: “It is a good picture and the only good picture ever made of a story of mine.”
The screenplay, although credited to Anthony Veiller, was also co-written by the likes of John Huston and Richard Brooks. A major reason behind the efficiency of The Killers is the slick screenplay which manages to capture the poetry of Hemingway’s art.
Structured through the flashbacks and recollections of various characters, we are given fleeting visions of the past life of our dead protagonist. Director Robert Siodmak arranges these accounts in the form of poignant puzzle pieces which come together to form a mesmerising gestalt instead of a mere summation. Ranging from ex-lovers to prison inmates, The Killers functions like a fictional documentary that attempts to reconstruct the impenetrable mythology of a film noir mystery.
There are philosophical reflections sprinkled in there as well, most evident in the figure of the Swede’s cellmate in prison who spends his time studying constellations which invoke the memory of Oscar Wilde’s famous quote: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
The Killers has a little bit of everything – precursors to heist films, tributes to the choreography of silent cinema as well as the ethereal presence of Ava Gardner as the delightfully self-centred femme fatale. It has moments of humour and it has just as tragic sequences which have the power to move audiences.
More importantly, The Killers stays true to the spirit of Hemingway while also fashioning its own identity. Siodmak would reach greater artistic heights with later projects like Criss Cross (1949) but it’s The Killers that will forever be remembered as the “Citizen Kane of film noir.”
Ernest Hemingway created memorable characters in his short stories and novels by drawing on real people—parents, friends, and fellow writers, among others. He also drew on real places and events to create settings and engaging plots. Whether revisiting the Italian front in A Farewell to Arms, recounting a Pamplona bull run in The Sun Also Rises, or depicting a Cuban fishing village in The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway relied on his personal experiences, friendships and observations for the content of his work.
Since Hemingway’s works reflect interests and adventures at different stages of his life, creating a ranking for his fiction is difficult. However, the following ranks his most broadly acclaimed works and comments on their contribution to the Hemingway legacy.
1. The Sun Also Rises – Hemingway’s first novel is at the top of my list because it reflects his reliance on his traditional Midwestern values as he encountered new experiences and values in post-World War I Europe. Using friends and acquaintances that populated the cafes along Boulevard Montparnasse in Paris, he reveals his concern about the valueless life of these Lost Generation characters and begins his personal and literary search for meaning in what appears to be a godless world. In the midst of their heavy drinking and meaningless revelry during a fiesta in Spain, Pedro Romero, the matador, becomes a hero. He conducts himself with honor and courage, and it is here we see the beginnings of what will become the Hemingway Code.
The book also tops my list because it reveals Hemingway’s courageous attempt to write in a new and different way by portraying the bad and the ugly as well as the beautiful. Though The Sun Also Rises was well received by the critics, it was not well received by Hemingway’s acquaintances who saw themselves portrayed as self-indulgent, alcoholic and sexually promiscuous in his unflattering, but honest, characterizations. Nor was it well received by his mother, who said he had produced “one of the filthiest books of the year.”
2. A Farewell to Arms – Hemingway’s second novel is a high on my list because it is the fictional account of events that changed and informed his world view. When Hemingway left the security of the Midwest and went to Italy looking for adventure as an ambulance driver in World War I, he got more than he had bargained for. The idealistic Midwesterner joined the war to end all wars, ready to display honor and courage, but was blown up in a trench. Then he fell in love, contemplated marriage and was rejected by the woman he loved. His confrontation with death, his subsequent wound, and his first experience with love all became catalysts for developing a code of behavior for facing life’s challenges.
A Farewell to Arms was the fictional result of Hemingway’s experiences in Italy and initiates what would become one of the most dominant themes in his novels, the confrontation of death. Though Catherine Barkley’s character seems dated to contemporary female readers, the book still demonstrates that Hemingway used what he learned in Italy to show that war brings out the best and worst in men and women.
3. The Old Man and the Sea – After the unsuccessful reception to Across the River and into the Trees, Hemingway wrote his Pulitzer Prize winning novel to defend his reputation as a writer. Based on his experiences in Cuba, he created a character of an old fisherman. Alone in a skiff, the old man catches a great marlin, only to have it destroyed by sharks. The old man, who had been a champion arm-wrestler and a successful fisherman, was, like Hemingway, trying for a comeback.
The old man embraces the code for living that Hemingway first developed based on his experiences in World War I—the experiences in which a man confronts an unconquerable element. In fighting the sharks, the old man exhibits courage and grace under pressure, believing “a man can be destroyed, but not defeated.”
The reviews and success of the book were nothing less than phenomenal. Appropriately, Hemingway was aboard his boat and out on the Gulf Stream when he heard via the ship’s radio that the book had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
4. To Have and Have Not – Hemingway’s growing awareness of financial and social strata are reflected in To Have and Have Not. The characters are based on people the now famous author met in Key West—the working class he encountered on the docks and at Sloppy Joe’s, the rich who moored their boats in Key West harbor, and the illegal Chinese immigrants who were being smuggled from Cuba to Key West to promote tourism in newly formed Chinatowns.
In this Depression-era novel Hemingway comes close to arguing for social and political changes needed to help the working man. However, Hemingway does not see the New Deal remedies as the solution. As a result, the fate of the novel’s main character, Harry Morgan, outlines the limits of personal freedom, self-reliance and the absence of grace under pressure, and the closest Hemingway comes to a solution is for Harry to say, “No matter how a man alone ain’t got no f—— chance.”
5. The Nick Adams Stories – This collection of short stories is a favorite because it provides insight into the life of the young Hemingway. As a child Ernest would accompany his father, Dr. Clarence Hemingway, as he provided pro bono medical services and attended to injured Indians, women in child-birth, and individuals in a variety of life-threatening situations in the Indian camps of northern Michigan. The memory of one of these trips appears in “Indian Camp.” Young Nick is with his father on a medical mission to deliver a baby. A Native American woman’s been in labor for two days, and Nick observes his father perform a Caesarian with a jackknife sterilized in a basin of boiled water.
Similarly, the reader gains insight into the relationship of Hemingway’s parents in “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife” and understands Hemingway’s feelings of separation from his family and life in Oak Park after returning from World War I in “A Soldier’s Home.”
6. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Based on his experiences as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War, this novel contains the classic Hemingway elements—a main character demonstrating grace under pressure and a plot that combines the interest and conflicts associated with love and war. As with his other works, Hemingway uses his friendships and personal experiences. Robert Jordan is modeled after Robert Merriman, an American professor who left his research on collective farming in Russia to become a commander in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and was killed during the final assault on Belchite. Maria is based on a young nurse of the same name who was gang raped by Nationalist soldiers early in the war. The novel’s three days of conflict takes place near the El Tajo gorge that cuts through the Andalusian town of Rondo, where a political massacre like the one led by Pablo occurred early in the Spanish Civil War.
Though some readers find the details of the battles tedious, it is one of Hemingway’s most popular novels. The book was published in October, 1940. By April, 1941 almost 500,000 copies had been sold, and in January, 1942, the movie rights were purchased by Paramount for $100,000.
Ernest Hemingway wrote lean prose but liked his burgers fatty and flavorful.
The famous author had great appetites. Food and friendships were a moveable feast for him, from Oak Park to Paris to Key West and many points in-between. On the eve of the new season of Check, Please!, I’m passing along a hamburger recipe that local kitchens ought to relish.
When Ernest Hemingway was a well-established and wealthy author, he gave specific instructions to the cooks at his Havana home on the proper way to prepare Papa’s patties.
A shopping trip in and around his hometown last week got me most of the way there. Minus one ingredient, it was still one hell of a burger.
But first: thanks and credit to Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, author and food blogger for The Paris Review. A Hemingway fan, she came across his notes to his Cuban housekeepers. The recipe had been published before in a cooking encyclopedia after his death, but I was unaware until I saw Ms. Tan’s blog post last month. I probably owe her a burger and an order of F. Scott Fitzgerald french fries.
The ingredients:
1 lb. ground chuck (fattier than I’d prefer, but more in line with what was available then)
2 minced garlic cloves
2 chopped green onions
2 tablespoons of capers
1 egg beaten
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1/3 cup of dry red wine
1 teaspoon sage
[And then it gets a little more rarified]
1 teaspoon, India Relish (a mix of pickled veggies unavailable at Caputo’s, Whole Foods or Penzey’s Spices — so I skipped it) 1/2 teaspoon Beau Monde Seasoning (basically onion, celery and salt with a touch of pepper and sweetness)
1/2 teaspoon Mei Yen Powder (a discontinued blend, but an online guide suggested part salt, part sugar and a dash of soy.)
Mix the ingredients and let them marinate for 20 minutes. Shape four burgers and fry them on a hot burner — Hemingway liked his burgers fried, not broiled. Cook for four or five minutes per side, until crispy on the edges and pink and juicy in the middle.
It took a long time to gather and prepare the ingredients, and it took about 75 seconds to devour the burger. I had to eat a second one to savor what I’d missed during the first inhalation.
It was delicious — even though my carnivorous son took one bite and labeled it: “weird.” And my vegetarian daughter never stepped into the dining room. And my wife said, “It’s good, but I don’t see how it’s worth the trouble.”
Trust me, it’s worth the effort at least once. I ate it on a toasted bun with lettuce and tomato. I wanted a taste before deciding which condiments to add. It needed nothing. I took one bite, then another, then it was gone. The ground beef was infused with flavor and moisture. A-1 sauce, ketchup or mustard would have been sacrilegious. In all Ernest-ness, it was the best burger I’ve ever made
Charles McGrath wroteabout a newly digitized collection of ephemera from Ernest Hemingway’s Cuban estate, Finca Vigía, which confirms that the famously terse writer was, as McGrath says, “a hoarder.” Ticket stubs, telegrams, Christmas cards, diary entries—all of it amassed in the twenty-plus years that Hemingway kept his house there. Amid the collection, McGrath identifies two notes that Hemingway had seemingly written to himself, in pencil. One reads: “You can phrase things clearer and better.” And the other: “You can remove words which are unnecessary and tighten up your prose.”
The above paragraph scored an “O.K.” in Hemingway, (The app) an app, created by the brothers Adam and Ben Long, which analyzes text and, as it promises, “makes your writing bold and clear.” The program highlights overly complicated words and suggests alternatives (my “all of it” could have simply been “all”). It also calls out adverbs (“newly,” “famously, “”seemingly”), difficult-to-read sentences (the first being “very” hard to read, while the second was just hard), and instances of the passive voice.
Hemingway launched in September, and gained wide notice this week after it was shared on Hacker News. The app is free, and the brothers are working, in their off hours, on a desktop version, as well as an extension for Web browsers.
Hemingway uses a formula to judge the “reading level” of a particular selection of writing, which the Longs said is “a measure of how complex the sentence structure is and how big the words you’re using are.” It scored my first paragraph as Grade 14. The app suggests that anything under Grade 10 is a sign of “bold, clear writing.”
Bold and clear, that’s the popular image of the Hemingway persona—the kind of man, as Lillian Ross observed in her Profile of him for The New Yorker, who could walk into an Abercrombie & Fitch store, and, being approached by a sales clerk, say, simply, “Want to see coat.” And Hemingway’s notes to himself from Cuba show a parallel artistic imperative: the search for blunt, descriptive, concise prose.
So would Hemingway have approved of Hemingway? Or, another question: Would he pass the tests he helped inspire? What about the visually potent opening paragraph from his short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”?
It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference. The two waiters inside the cafe knew that the old man was a little drunk, and while he was a good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave without paying, so they kept watch on him.
Bad news. Hemingway rates merely “O.K.” (Grade 15). That “very” in the first sentence might have been cut. (It may have a point there: Doesn’t the fact that everyone had left but one man suggest just how late it was?) The second sentence is “hard to read” and the third is “very hard to read.” Maybe it’s the shifting perspective? No adverbs, though. Yet, as Hemingway’s paragraphs go, that is perhaps a bit twisty. What about the famously spare early story “The End of Something”? It performs significantly better:
Marjorie sat on the blanket with her back to the fire and waited for Nick. He came over and sat down beside her on the blanket. In back of them was the close second-growth timber of the point and in front was the bay with the mouth of Hortons Creek. It was not quite dark. The fire-light went as far as the water. They could both see the two steel rods at an angle over the dark water. The fire glinted on the reels.
This passage, so Hemingway (the app) tells us, would be readily comprehensible to a fourth grader. The app likes dialogue, too, scoring the next bit of the story similarly:https://d99d5cd7ed237b7db28d60d547f15f10.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.htmlADVERTISEMENThttps://d99d5cd7ed237b7db28d60d547f15f10.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
“I don’t feel like eating,” said Nick. “Come on and eat, Nick.” “All right.” They ate without talking, and watched the two rods and the fire-light in the water.
“The End of Something” is a sharp pocketknife of a story, capturing in its seeming slimness all the depth and disorientation of young man’s stunted attempts at love and friendship—and the places where those two often overlap. Its force comes from the declarative power of its words combined with the implied frustration and muteness of its silences. It is also a prime example of a kind of writing prized by people from E. B. White to Gordon Lish, Elmore Leonard, and numberless creative-writing teachers: show don’t tell, always keep the verbs active and propulsive, never use a two-dollar word when a ten-center might suffice, leave adverbs to the nervous and the self-obsessed. There are, of course, other ways to write, even for a mass audience. Leonard’s own rules for writing (“No 10: Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip”) end with him noting that he enjoys many of the writers who break them.VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKERHow to Draw a Creepy Clown
The Hemingway app is fun to experiment with, and it’s useful in that it calls out in your writing places of friction—allowing you to decide whether they are necessary or merely sloppy. No one is above clarity. And the app, based on the experience of running examples of my own writing through it today, is, like a good editor, attuned to the places where vanity seems to be getting the better of things.
But do we want to write like Hemingway? Or, better, did Hemingway really write like Hemingway? He was able to see the humor in the public’s sense of his work; Lillian Ross caught him, at times, playacting a kind of Indian-speak version of his characters’ reticence: “He read book all way up on plane.” “He like book, I think.” His contained style, and the expectations that it engendered in the reader, made his departures from it all the more powerful. Take this description of Romero, the bullfighter, in “The Sun Also Rises”:
Afterward, all that was faked turned bad and gave an unpleasant feeling. Romero’s bull-fighting gave real emotion, because he kept the absolute purity of line in his movements and always quietly and calmly let the horns pass him close each time.
This breaks several of the Hemingway rules. The passive voice loses points, as do the two adverbs at the end. But “quietly” and “calmly,” are, of course, essential to the point. Bullfighters, masterly or not, avoid the horns most of the time. Only the artists like Romero manage it quietly and calmly. And that word, “quietly,” which is not quite literal, is a little surprise. Regarding the passive voice, it injects emotional uncertainty into the scene. “All that was faked turned bad,” scans like a melody, and in its passivity and slightly odd tense, feels like an elegy. It is not exactly clear. But it’s bold.
Travel Through Books: In times of pandemic, transport yourself to different destinations via travel books
June 27, 2021 3:00 AM
Considering that a third wave is imminent, a wiser and safer alternative perhaps would be to transport oneself to different destinations through books.
Here, we bring to you some popular travel books to read while at home.
By Reya Mehrotra
With the lockdowns ending, people have been thronging destinations like Himachal Pradesh to beat the heat and take a break, often flouting Covid protocols. Considering that a third wave is imminent, a wiser and safer alternative perhaps would be to transport oneself to different destinations through books. Here, we bring to you some popular travel books to read while at home.
A Moveable Feast The 1964 memoir by Ernest Hemingway chronicles his years of struggle as a writer and journalist in the 1920s in Paris. The personal accounts by Hemingway in the story mention many notable figures like Ezra Pound, F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. It was published posthumously in 1964. The title comes from Hemingway’s description of Paris to a friend in 1950 when he called it ‘a moveable feast’. In 1956, he recovered two trunks of his notes from the 1920s and that’s when the process of converting them into memoirs began.
What a Journey!
The Alchemist Paulo Coelho’s 1988 allegorical novel The Alchemist was originally written in Portuguese. Andalusian shepherd Santiago’s journey has been chronicled in the classic novel. When a gypsy fortune teller interprets the young boy’s recurring dream, he comes to know that he will discover fortune at the Egyptian pyramids. The boy sets out on a journey and meets several people along the way. The book is about finding one’s destiny and how the universe conspires for something to happen if you really want it. It has inspired a devoted following around the world.
The Adventures of Tintin For comic book lovers and those who grew up watching/reading The Adventures of Tintin, revisiting the classic piece of literature is like living a childhood dream, which includes travelling to different places along with the central character Tintin. A set of 24 comics created by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, the series was the most popular European comic in the 20th century. It was adapted into films, for radio, television and theatre. Tintin is a young and courageous Belgian reporter and adventurer who owns a dog named Snowy, which often helps him.
Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road Canadian author Kate Harris’ Lands of Lost Borders chronicles her explorations as she sets off on her bicycle on the Silk Road, cycling through the remotest places on earth, breaking geographical boundaries, the boundaries she set for herself and the existential need to explore. She grew up dreaming of going to Mars and this childhood yearning resulted in her explorations. The reflective book cherishes the connection between humans and the natural world.
Falling off the Map Pico Iyer’s Falling off the Map focuses on the lesser explored places and uncovers their cultural wealth while shining a light on their lack of development. In the book, Iyer talks about his travels to Bhutan, Vietnam, Cuba, Argentina, Korea, Paraguay, Iceland and many more. The book explores his experiences of travel to each country and its culture.
In Patagonia It was Charles Bruce Chatwin’s first book In Patagonia (1977) that established him as a travel writer. As a part of his job, he travelled the world to interview public figures. In 1974, he left The Sunday Times Magazine to visit Patagonia in Argentina, which inspired this book. Chatwin’s work is said to have revived travel literature and inspired writers like William Dalrymple. He spent six months in the region, travelling and meeting people who settled there from other places. The author used the story of ‘brontosaurus’ from his childhood days to frame the story of the trip.
The Innocents Abroad American writer Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims’ Progress, is a travel book that was published in 1869 and humorously chronicles Twain’s five-month excursion onboard Quaker City, a chartered vessel, through the Holy Land and Europe in 1867. It’s the best-selling travel book of all times. During the voyage, there were a number of side trips and stops along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The major theme is the conflict between history and the modern world.
Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time In 1911, Yale professor Hiram Bingham III climbed the Andes Mountains of Peru and found what we now call the ancient citadel of Machu Picchu. However, nearly a century later, reports portrayed him as a smuggler who smuggled artefacts from the site.
In the book, author Mark Adams sets out to retrace the path to the citadel along with guides. Through his journey, he takes readers on an adventure-filled tour to the historic landscapes of Peru.
The early days in PARISYoung man with all of it aheadWhere he wrote in Paris
6. One of Ernest Hemingway’s best works came about from him leaving some luggage at the Ritz Hotel in Paris.
Speaking of A Moveable Feast, Hemingway wrote it later in life (it was published posthumously) after a 1956 stay at the Ritz Hotel in Paris wherein he was reminded that he’d left a steamer trunk (made for him by Louis Vuitton) in the hotel’s basement in 1930. When he opened it, he rediscovered personal letters, menus, outdoor gear, and two stacks of notebooks that became the basis for the memoir of his youth in Paris’s café culture.
Hem and Hadley
7. The famous “Baby Shoes” story is most likely a myth.
Oddly enough, a story many people associate with Hemingway probably has nothing to do with him. The legend goes that one night, while drinking, Hemingway bet some friends that he could write a six-word short story. Incredulous, they all put money on the table, and on a napkin Hemingway wrote the words “For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn.” He won the bet. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence it ever happened. Some newspapers had printed versions of the general plotline in the 1910s without crediting Hemingway, and there’s no record of his link to the phrase until 1991 (in a book about the publishing business), three decades after Hemingway’s death.
Hem and baby bumby
8. Ernest Hemingway almost died in back-to-back plane crashes.
In 1954, Hemingway and his fourth wife, Time and Life correspondent Mary Welsh, were vacationing in Belgian Congo when their sightseeing charter flight clipped a pole and crashed. When attempting to reach medical care in Entebbe the following day, they boarded another plane, which crashed upon takeoff, leaving Hemingway with burns, a concussion, and his brain leaking cerebral fluid. When they finally got to Entebbe (by truck), they found journalists had already reported their deaths, so Hemingway got to read his own obituaries.
9. Ernest Hemingway dedicated a book to each of his four wives.
Each time he got divorced, Hemingway was married again within the year—but he always left something behind in print. The dedication for The Sun Also Rises went to his first wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson; Death in the Afternoon was dedicated to second wife Pauline Pfeiffer; For Whom the Bell Tolls was for third wife Martha Gellhorn; and Across the River and Into the Trees went “To Mary with Love.”
Hadley near the time of her wedding: He dedicated The Sun Also Rises to her
10. Ernest Hemingway’s house in Key West features a urinal from his favorite bar.
Hemingway wrote several iconic works, including To Have and Have Not, at his house in Key West, Florida. It’s also where he converted a urinal from a local bar into a fountain. Local haunt Sloppy Joe’s was a favorite watering hole of the irascible author, so when the place went under renovation, Hemingway took one of the urinals as a memento, quipping that he’d already poured enough money into it to make it his.
Want to reprint? Get permissions.
1/2 teaspoon Beau Monde Seasoning (basically onion, celery and salt with a touch of pepper and sweetness)
It took a long time to gather and prepare the ingredients, and it took about 75 seconds to devour the burger. I had to eat a second one to savor what I’d missed during the first inhalation.
Trust me, it’s worth the effort at least once. I ate it on a toasted bun with lettuce and tomato. I wanted a taste before deciding which condiments to add. It needed nothing. I took one bite, then another, then it was gone. The ground beef was infused with flavor and moisture. A-1 sauce, ketchup or mustard would have been sacrilegious. In all Ernest-ness, it was the best burger I’ve ever made
Here, we bring to you some popular travel books to read while at home.
