The greatest 20th century fiction writer
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Iceberg theory
14 min read
Hemingway's signature 'theory of omission' literary technique is central to understanding his minimalist style discussed in the article. Learning about this specific writing approach would deepen appreciation of the tension between what Hemingway says and leaves unsaid.
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Lost Generation
12 min read
The article mentions Hemingway's Paris circle including Stein, Fitzgerald, and Pound. Understanding this literary movement and its post-WWI disillusionment provides essential context for why Hemingway's early work resonated so powerfully.
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Bullfighting
17 min read
The article uses bullfighting as a key example of Hemingway's themes—danger, masculinity, and fear. Understanding the actual traditions, rituals, and cultural significance of bullfighting illuminates why Hemingway was so drawn to it as a subject.
Ernest Hemingway was the most important and influential 20th-century American fiction writer. He is our Kafka, our Proust, our Borges, our Joyce, our Premchand, our Hamsun, our Lu Xun, our Soseki, our Achebe. If we look at the impact that various 20th-century American fiction writers had on our literature and our national consciousness, there’s Hemingway far up at the top, and maybe Faulkner or Morrison in a distant second place.
His truly great work was written over a period of about fifteen years, from 1925 to 1940. After that point, he became much more famous with the general public, but he also became a bit of a joke. You can see this in the Lillian Ross profile of him in The New Yorker, where she follows the man around town, and records the stuff he says, subtly satirizing him:
[Hemingway] said he didn’t smoke. Smoking ruins his sense of smell, a sense he finds completely indispensable for hunting. “Cigarettes smell so awful to you when you have a nose that can truly smell,” he said, and laughed, hunching his shoulders and raising the back of his fist to his face, as though he expected somebody to hit him. Then he enumerated elk, deer, possum, and coon as some of the things he can truly smell.
Hemingway had made a reputation writing about war, bull-fighting, boxing—epic, manly pursuits. But it was possible for a long time for people to ignore how much Hemingway lived like he wrote. When they realized he actually spoke like he was in a Hemingway story, the literary world began to cool on him somewhat.
But in Hemingway’s best fiction, there’s a lot of depth. Although he obviously believes it’s good for men to face danger, fight bulls, go to war, and do all that stuff—his fiction doesn’t shy away from the ugliness.
For instance, one of his most famous stories: “The Capital of the World” is about a second-rate inn that’s full of run-down bullfighters.
Second-rate matadors lived at that pension because the address in the Calle San Jeronimo was good, the food was excellent and the room and board was cheap. It is necessary for a bull fighter to give the appearance, if not of prosperity, at least of respectability, since decorum and dignity rank above courage as the virtues most highly prized in Spain, and bullfighters stayed at the Luarca until their last
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