In Today’s Journal
* About Hemingway, Part 2
* Of Interest
About Hemingway, Part 2
You can find the first post here.
If I can switch over to being a critic for a moment, maybe Hemingway used the dual meaning of guano to subliminally invoke the sense of smell, which he already also invoked with the “dust” (which he doesn’t specifically mention) with regard to the walls and the roof and the dirt floor. That’s all part of the iceberg that’s below the surface of the story.
Now, so you don’t have to switch back and forth between posts, here’s the excerpt from The Old Man and the Sea again:
The shack was made of the tough budshields of the royal palm which are called guano and in it there was a bed, a table, one chair, and a place on the dirt to cook with charcoal. On the brown walls of the flattened, overlapping leaves of the sturdy fibered guano there was a picture in color of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another of the Virgin Cobre. These were relics of his wife. Once there had been a tinted photograph of his wife on the wall but he had taken it down because it made him too lonely to see it and it was on the shelf in the corner under his clean shirt.
In the second sentence of the excerpt, we “see” (and maybe even smell) the “brown” wall and the “flattened, overlapping leaves of the sturdy fibered guano.” So we also see that the walls are “flattened, overlapping leaves” just in case we couldn’t picture that from the first sentence. Then he switches gears and focuses down again (and refocuses our attention) with the “picture in color of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another of the Virgin Cobre.”
Did he have to add “in color”? No. He focused down for an instant to be sure we saw the red of the Sacred Heart.
And when you first read the passage, could you even picture “the Virgin Cobre”? I couldn’t. Not without looking it up separately. But if I remember right, he mentions that again later in the story, or maybe he mentions something that refers back to it. (I honestly can’t remember.)
The last two sentences of the paragraph invoke a mood and emotion, yet they do so without mentioning any emotion other than “lonely.” Absolutely incredible. “These were relics of his wife” is almost strong enough that we don’t need the final sentence, so the final sentence seems almost a gift to the reader.
Anyway, all of that is a LOT of detailed description in very little space (one paragraph of only four sentences). That is great depth from an absolute master.
I also have no doubt the structure of that paragraph was intentional: Two longer, almost rambling sentences followed by a third very terse sentence followed by a fourth almost rambling sentence.
This sort of thing I why I refer to Hemingway as a master and a Stage 5 writer. But again, avoid labeling or ranking yourself. That’s best left to critics, whose opinion, in the final tally, doesn’t matter at all. The only individual opinion of your work that matters, including your own, is the opinion of the reader.
All of that said…
Hemingway (like Stephen King et al) does things in his writing that I suspect you aren’t really noticing yet. But please don’t be annoyed that I said that. I suspect there are still things I don’t notice as I read his work. That’s exactly why I keep going back to it. I grow a little through my own writing and my own epiphanies, and then I go back and reread Hemingway.
In fact, I recently ordered and received a brand new copy of The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: the Finca Vigia Edition because pages are starting to fall out of the one I’ve been reading and rereading for years. If you don’t have that book in one edition or another, I definitely recommend it.
(Full disclosure, I didn’t order the copy the link above will lead you to. It’s a different edition. I searched eBay and ordered a brand new copy of the one that had the same cover as my old one so I’d be sure to get an exact duplicate.)
Anyway, you’ll notice more details about how he applies the craft of writing fiction every time you revisit his work—as long as you continue practicing and putting new words on the page. That’s the key.
So to summarize this long-winded response….
While the language Hemingway uses in his writing is definitely clear, bare-boned, and to the point, he doesn’t actually skimp on description. The clear, concise words he uses might cause the reader to think he’s skimping, but he fully invokes the physical and emotional senses.
By so thoroughly invoking those senses, he invites or pulls the reader into the story and makes the reader care. But he writes the description (sort of sneaks it in) so stinkin’ well that even as a long-time fiction writer I have to really search for those sensory clues in order to see what he’s doing with them. Again, that’s exactly why I revisit his work again and again.
Turns out there will be an “About Hemingway, Part 3.”
Talk with you again then.
Of Interest
Point of View Is Not Just a Choice A lot of terms coined and used by critics in this, but I guess that’s how people think now.
What It Was Really Like to Ride an Old West Stagecoach Interesting article, but the author never delivered on the title. Zero mention of dust, smells, etc.