So today's Obsessed with Tuesday is focused on my obsession/love for Ernest Hemingway - the man and his writing, both.
So Hemingway is my dead, old man crush. I don't know why, because as many people tell me "he hated women." While I think that he did "hate" (hate is such a strong and definitive word) some women, I don't think he hated all women. My reasoning for this is that if he hated all women, as people claim he did, he wouldn't have been able to write these brilliant and moving romances - A Farewell to Arms, the masterpiece - like he did. Now some would not be fans of his writing, so they wouldn't view him writing these successfully novels like I did. But that's beside the point.
So I first got into Hemingway when I was a Freshman in college. My English professor had us all go around and list our "favorite" author, or a book/author that we were recently reading at the time. At this point I hadn't done much "leisure" reading and couldn't think of anything I had recently read - completely forgetting my favorite book from high school, Catcher in the Rye. I wanted to claim someone that is respectable and "famous" as my "favorite" and the first name that came to my mind was Hemingway, even though I had never read his writing before. His name was one of those names that I SHOULD have read by then. So after I stated that Hemingway was my favorite author, I thought that now I should probably read something of his, just so I know whether I really like him or not. The Sun Also Rises was my first experience of Hemingway and I fell in love immediately.
Over the years I have grown to love all of his work and have developed this odd passion for him. I talk about him and his writing as if I would talk about a lover at times. I discuss the amount of emotion, passion and just information that he could fit into one small sentence, one small paragraph, one small space. I envy this. I wish I could write like this. Some people view it as minimalistic - I'm not sure if that's the right term for Hemingway. Some think of it as simple. Even though the sentence structure is simple, with subject, object, verb, the writing is not simple at all. I actually view it as more complex as someone like Faulkner because Hemingway crams all of what he is trying to say in a few words, where as someone like Faulkner rambles on for five lines - all in the same sentence, using words, often, that not a lot of people (especially these days) don't know what it means unless they look it up.
So I'm not sure what it is about Hemingway the man that I love - maybe just the "macho, manly-ness" of him is what I love. I don't know that. But I can go on and on about what it is about his writing that I love, but at the same time, I'm not sure if I'd be able to do it justice. Not sure if I'd be able to explain it enough.
Why this comes up now is because I was looking at classes that are being offered next semester, getting ready to register, and I noticed that there is finally going to be a class on just Hemingway. I have been waiting for this since the first time I read The Sun Also Rises. I had taken an American Literature course at Penn State (that studied writing at his time) and was shocked, appalled, and amazed that we did not read one thing by Hemingway. I still to this day don't understand how that could happen. But whatever, it did. So now not only will I be able to read Hemingway in class, but it's a whole class devoted to his short fiction - AND it's taught by one of my favorite professors - Ron McFarland, who is awesome. I can't wait!
Anyways, enough about Hemingway - for now at least. Come back tomorrow for Welcome to... Wednesday!
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