The language of Hemingway

When I lived in Spain, I often heard it said that English is the language of Shakespeare (and Spanish is the language of Cervantes), but I really write in the language of Hemingway. These days, in fact, most people who write in English write like Hemingway, whether they realize it or not and whether they know much about him: a style that is simple, direct, controlled, economic, and if possible, authentic and honest. Perhaps, with luck, even elegant. Nothing like the excesses of the Victorian era. Hemingway was a groundbreaking artist with words.

He was also a legend in his own time, the most famous living writer in the world, a man who wrote about war, hunting, fishing, and bullfighting. The running of the bulls in Pamplona would not be world famous without him. He also was — and still is — a myth, a myth that I think is false, especially about his suicide. The myth says he was macho, adventuresome, active, a drinker, and a womanizer: strong and earthy.

But when I read his works, I doubt he was the man of the myth, which is nothing new. A lot of readers confuse the works with the writer. He wrote about brave, almost savage men, like war heroes and bullfighters — or so the myth says. But in his fiction and even in his news reporting, he was concerned about the feelings of his characters and their struggles to save their souls and hearts. That is not macho.

Hemingway said over and over he was not brave. He wrote that when he first went to Pamplona in 1923, it was a mistake to take his wife to a bullfight because she could see that the bullfighter was truly brave and that her husband was not.

His advice for other writers was excellent. His humor was wise and truly funny.

And he killed himself in 1961. The myths say his bad habits left him incapable of writing. They say he was depressed, that his father and grandfather also committed suicide and he had a character flaw, that his philosophy for life had failed, that he had looked for death during his whole life and finally he found it.

But he had never looked for death: he said that in 1954 when many people thought he had died in an airplane accident in Africa. He did suffer serious injuries in the accident. He lost the use of his kidneys. He had to take blood pressure medication that caused terrible depression, and to counteract the depression the doctors gave him shock therapy, which left him incapable of recalling his own name.

Because of that, he couldn’t write. He begged his wife on his knees not to make him get more treatments. And if that were not enough, he was going blind.

Today, no doubt, he could get better medical treatment. But in 1961, he was a very sick man with no future, and he decided to end his suffering. Perhaps it was an act of a strong man who took responsibility for all the aspects of his life, including the final moment. Perhaps he was an ordinary man who couldn’t stand it any more — that’s what I think. He was just a man, not a myth. Many people couldn’t withstand a physical nightmare like his.

The characters in his works were people who were physically and emotionally hurt, not heroes at all but ordinary people in situations that revealed their strengths and weaknesses and fear and courage.

I think the myth about Hemingway tries to balance the value of his life with the tragedy of his death, something understandable, but I think it is a mistake. Myths seek a just and sensible world. Works of fiction have meaning, which is their charm. Real life is not fair and does not need to make sense.

But, as Hemingway said and wrote again and again, life is worth living. He tried to show that in his works. That’s why he’s still worth reading.

A HEMINGWAY READER

from The Flight of Refugees, April 3, 1938, Barcelona

[A news report from the Spanish Civil War.]

Somewhere up ahead, the bridge across the Ebro was being held against the enemy, but it was impossible to get closer, so we turned the car back again toward Tarragona and Barcelona and passed the refugees again. The woman with the baby born yesterday had it wrapped in a shawl as she swung with the walking gate of the mule. Her husband led the mule, but he looked at the road now and did not answer when we waved. People still looked up at the sky as they retreated, but they were very weary now. The planes carrying the bombs had not come, but there was still time for them and they were overdue.

from The Christmas Gift, 1954

[After an airplane accident in Africa, rumors claimed that he had died.]

In all the obituaries, or almost all, it was emphasized that I had sought death all my life. Can one imagine that if a man sought death all his life he would not have found her before the age of 54? It is one thing to be in the proximity of death, to know more or less what she is, and it is quite another thing to seek her. She is the most easy thing to find that I know of. You can find her through a minor carelessness on a road with heavy traffic, you could find her in a full bottle of Seconal, you could find her with any type of razor blade; you could find her in your own bathtub or you could find her by not being battlewise. There are so many ways of finding her that it is stupid to enumerate them.

If you have spent your life avoiding death as cagily as possible but, on the other hand taking no backchat from her and studying her as you would a beautiful harlot who could put you soundly to sleep forever with no problems and no necessity to work, you could be said to have studied her but not sought her. Because you know among one or two other things that if you sought her you would possess her and from her reputation you know that she would present you with an incurable disease. So much for the constant pursuit of death.

Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, 1954, read by John C. Cabot, United States Ambassador

[Hemingway was not well enough to accept the prize in person.]

Having no facility for speech-making and no command of oratory nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this Prize.

No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and his conscience.

It would be impossible for me to ask the Ambassador of my country to read a speech in which a writer said all of the things which are in his heart. Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it. Again I thank you.

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The trade paperback edition of my novel Dual Memory comes out on April 16 and is available for pre-order from your favorite bookseller. Hardcover, ebook, and audiobook editions are also available.

The third book in the Semiosis trilogy, Usurpation, will be published in October this year, and you can pre-order it with links to your favorite bookseller here, in hardcover and ebook.