literary pruning

[In sff.net, they're talking about books put together after the author's death . . . ]


Hemingway "produced" three posthumous novels -- Islands in the Stream, The Garden of Eden, and True at First Light – and the pseudofictive autobiographical essay A Moveable Feast. Some of the stories in The Nick Adams Stories are cobbled together out of stuff he never thought worth finishing.

It's all stuff scholars can be grateful for, but most of the work hasn't done Hemingway's reputation any good. He was a careful rewriter and, before mental illness warped him, was a pretty sharp critic of his own work.

Anybody who wants to can learn something about writing and revision by reading two stories out of The Nick Adams Stories – "Indian Camp" and "The Big Two-Hearted River." In the edition of The Nick Adams Stories that I have, the parts cut out by Hemingway are left in, but italicized.

There's nothing wrong with the parts he omitted. But both stories are tremendously improved by leaving those parts unsaid.

I'm sure there are semester-long writing courses that teach less. I've probably taught a couple myself.

Joe