I Can't Do This
As I read "The Sun Also Rises" again for comfort food (kind of a "For Whom The Bell Tolls" chaser), here's the challenge:
Do not try to write like Hemingway. Do not try to write like Hemingway. Do not try to write like Hemingway. Do not try to write like Hemingway. Do not try to write like Hemingway. Do not try to write like Hemingway. Do not try to write like Hemingway.
Because, like, it's really hard!
"She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things."
I could give an example where the trout are jumping out of the stream and the white wine is chilling under the water and it gets so cold it's painful, and those are minimalist and great, too. But the paragraph above is a different kind of Just The Facts that finds a way to turn at the end...fearlessness isn't *explicitly* invoked when he says "she looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that"...it could also mean she didn't care, or that she was unaware what looking like that might mean, kind of building on the question of whether Brett even sees out of her own eyes...but the "...and really..." at the end is so good, it explains what came before (that one apparent reason Brett can look like that is that she's unafraid of anyone), it contradicts it (she actually *is* afraid), and also makes us wonder *how* Jake knows this about Brett. I know Hemingway is a Bad Man and we should hate him -- and as I said earlier in this blog, of *course* some of his writing and many of his life's deeds are "problematic," they definitely are -- but this is the stuff that a lot of writing since 1926 is founded upon.
When I try and write like this it comes out like a Hardy Boys book.
Also I love this:
"You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes."
Do not try to write like Hemingway. Do not try to write like Hemingway. Do not try to write like Hemingway. Do not try to write like Hemingway. Do not try to write like Hemingway. Do not try to write like Hemingway. Do not try to write like Hemingway.
Because, like, it's really hard!
"She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things."
I could give an example where the trout are jumping out of the stream and the white wine is chilling under the water and it gets so cold it's painful, and those are minimalist and great, too. But the paragraph above is a different kind of Just The Facts that finds a way to turn at the end...fearlessness isn't *explicitly* invoked when he says "she looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that"...it could also mean she didn't care, or that she was unaware what looking like that might mean, kind of building on the question of whether Brett even sees out of her own eyes...but the "...and really..." at the end is so good, it explains what came before (that one apparent reason Brett can look like that is that she's unafraid of anyone), it contradicts it (she actually *is* afraid), and also makes us wonder *how* Jake knows this about Brett. I know Hemingway is a Bad Man and we should hate him -- and as I said earlier in this blog, of *course* some of his writing and many of his life's deeds are "problematic," they definitely are -- but this is the stuff that a lot of writing since 1926 is founded upon.
When I try and write like this it comes out like a Hardy Boys book.
Also I love this:
"You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes."
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