For Whom the Bell Tolls
discussion
Does anyone agree with Gore Vidal's assessment of Hemingway as a Novelist.
I think I agree with him with regard to some of Hemingway's stuff: The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea and Islands in the Stream, but For Whom the Bell Tolls, and A Farewell to Arms are brilliant, and have quite a lot to say about war (contrary to Vidal's assertion), and indeed quite a lot to say about being human in general.
I think he might have a point. The more short stories I discover by Hemingway the more I realise he was a better short story writer than a novelist. I'm still a fan of his novels.
Ben wrote: "I think I agree with him with regard to some of Hemingway's stuff: The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea and Islands in the Stream, but [book:For Whom the ..."I agree, that Hemingway has a lot to say about the human condition (Especially the story recounted by Pilar about the townsfolk taking revenge on their oppressors) but what does he really say about war? I gave this work a glowing review and talked about it a bunch, but it has been a while since I read it.
Gore Vidal has had a history of denigrating the competition. He`s had classic battles with other American writers-one in particular back in the 70`s and I believe it was with Capote, (correct me if I am wrong if anyone out there is as old as I am and can remember the details. It was about the time he wrote the biography of Aaron Burr and he was beginning to lose his literary powers).So I automatically discount any thing he has to say as I have never liked him, nor his writing. Myra Breckingridge was better on the second reading and was a good book, but not a great one. It is generally regarded as one of his best, if not.
So it sounds like once again, sour grapes beyond the foxes reach, for Vidal never was a major writer, only a very good one.
But taking it seriously, prejudice aside against the man with little character, badmouthing the competition, I disagree. Hemingway, despite his limitations as a wordmaster in that he did not indulge in much literary pretense, literary devices such as allusinon,simile, foreboding, metaphor on a minor scale, nor was his style rich in verbiage like a Nabokov, Dillard, or Vollman, he was able to portray a philosophy of life that came clearly across in all of his writing. The machismo, the fatalism, the compassion were all there in ample abundance.
As far as I can tell, Hemingway wrote one great book, a few that pass and the rest are self-absorbed drivel.
And which would you consider that one great book, Karen? The Old Man and the Sea? If so, I agree with you. His genius however lies in his short stories, not the novels. As far as I am concerned the two are equal, disregarding popular acclaim that novels are on the top of the pedestal.
Geoffrey wrote: "Gore Vidal has had a history of denigrating the competition. He`s had classic battles with other American writers-one in particular back in the 70`s and I believe it was with Capote, (correct me if..."Is it really denigrating if he is paid as a critic to comment on the work of others?
I" think that the more you know the world and the wider the net you cast in your society, the more interesting your books will be, certainly the more interested you will be". That is nonsense imo, writing great books is not something you can learn like science.
Many important authors wrote special books despite they didnt know alot about the outside world. It has nothing to do with how interesting your books will be. Being inward has not much to with the quality of of your books. Every book doesnt have to say important things about war.
Mohammed wrote: "I" think that the more you know the world and the wider the net you cast in your society, the more interesting your books will be, certainly the more interested you will be". That is nonsense imo..."
Hey Mohammed,
I think you took Vidal up wrong there. He is a harsh critic against schools and colleges who think you can design a novel. I can actually send you a youtube link (Can't do it now, as I am in work) and he discusses novels and writers really well there.
Bascially, He thinks a great writer should be a great reader. "Teaching the novel" is insane to him, considering all the classics where written because people wrote them on their own volition, and didn't learn them from colleges.
You can't design a novel.
Haha thats what i thought being a great reader can help you become a great writer. That you didnt have to go out there in the world with your body to learns things about the world.My bad i misunderstood part of the qoute.
I too think "teaching the novel" is insane and very comical. I hear people trying to learn by college to become a writer. When most real authors that become published learned by writing, reading.
I always smirk at people doing creative writing courses. It's like they are purposely delaying actually doing some writing!
I have read one novel by Vidal. I have read several by Hemingway.At the moment Hemingway is winning...
Vidal: "Hemingway chased after wars, but he never had much of anything to say about war, unlike Tolstoy or even Malraux"I read For Whom the Bell Tolls this Summer, and sure, the setting for the novel was the Spanish Civil War, but not once did I ever think I was reading a 'war novel'. To me this was a study of human nature, I loved understanding how the characters thought. Some books grow the reader, and I definitely felt like a learned much about humanity..
Robert Jordan became a man I wanted to be alongside; Anselmo became a man I wanted to be my grandfather; Pilar I wanted to be my fat aunt. And María was definitely a girl I wanted to be my girlfriend. I guess Vidal wanted me to learn about war instead of learning about myself.
Vidal is jealous because his books didn't sell as well as Hemmingway's
Geoffrey wrote: "And which would you consider that one great book, Karen? The Old Man and the Sea? If so, I agree with you. His genius however lies in his short stories, not the novels. As far as I am concerned the..."Yes, The Old Man and the Sea is a wonderful story. I will try more of his short stories on your recommendation. Thanks.
Karl wrote: "I always smirk at people doing creative writing courses. It's like they are purposely delaying actually doing some writing!"
Yeah, when most advice from rated authors are write,write and write.
I would amend your comment by adding READ READ READ, as well as Write write write.The more one reads, the more you know how stories work.
I am lucky enough to have met a few times someone that was a very close personal friend of Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, and some other classic SciFi authors. He said as a youngster his group of friends would go off to movies or museums, and Heinlein would always part ways with the group to go write, and that Heinlein made sure he wrote a minimum of 2 hours every day - no exceptions.Karl is right to, about reading, and I strongly feel a hopeful writer needs to read a very wide variety, and not just the type of works that hope to write. Through some bookclubs and recommendations from people on this site, I'm starting to read a much wider variety and reading books I'd never pick on my own. And while I don't always like them as much as my own personal choices, I'm glad I gain that experience. You grow as a person no matter what you are reading
An aspiring writer should read everything he gets his hands on.Letters, articles, reviews, novels, short stories, plays, screen plays, prose poems, regular poems, verse, plays! songs! History books, text books, user manuals!
The key thing I think Vidal misses is this: what sort of person, after having lived an interesting life, would focus most intently on "sensuous activities" like killing and fucking etc?Fatalism really the key to all of his writing; you are going to suffer and the measure of you as a person is how you cope with that.
So if you cope by living a robust life full of fucking and fighting instead of trying to posit yourself as a public intellectual who could solve the puzzle of life if you'd only listen to him (as Vidal does) then all the happiness you're experiencing is really the result of you knowing you're ultimately doomed. Why try to capture insight or prattle on about deep thoughts if we're all fucked? And if we're all fucked, why not do some fucking?
And that, I think, despite what Vidal says, is really very interesting.
And of course slitting the throats of Tauruses, Trey.
As someone born in April, ie a Taurus, I don't know about all that.Geoffrey wrote: "And of course slitting the throats of Tauruses, Trey."
Gore Vidal is surpassed only by Ayn Rand for his egomania. I'd go with Hemingway's writing over Vidal's any day in a New York minute. So, apparently, did the judges of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.
War is clearly a valid and important topic for a writer to tackle and Hemingway does it well and I also think he is a great short story writer, but some of the novels I found very limited. I've always foung Vidal stimulating, even when I disagree with him, but his novels (those that I have read, not enough I admit) did not stand out. I think he is better as an essayist; someone to react to, thus sharpening ones own thinking.
I have been entertained by some of Vidal's books, but I have little respect for living writers who diss Hemingway. What is to be gained by trashing a dead guy who can't respond, other than a kind of self-satisfied revenge for the fact that you'll never be that good? Sure, some of Hemingway's novels are crappy (Across the RIver and Into the Trees is all but unreadable), but some of them (The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms and, yes, Islands in the Stream) are among the best ever written in English. I advise the armchair critics to look to your own work, rather than trashing Hemingway. It's bad form and bad karma to kick a man when he's down.
IMO, when you dissect Hemingway's work, you have to consider context. You have to remember that when he began, most popular novels were verbose and flowery and hard to read. Since he began as a newspaper reporter, he brought journalistic style to fiction writing, which was revolutionary. Also, the commercial avenue for authors was in magazines rather than books, thus he wrote shorts. Some of his longer works were serialized in magazines. Whether you like his subject matter or his stories in general is not even the point. He streamlined storytelling and introduced what authors now call "pacing." IMO, commercial fiction wouldn't be what it is today if Hemingway hadn't led the way....If you read about him and writing as he practiced it, you learn how he searched for just the right word to say the most about whatever his subject.
I read a lot, but to this day, I can't think of an author who can say as much in as few words. I'm a huge Hemingway admirer, not so much for what he wrote as how he wrote it. Wish I were able to mimic him.
As for Gore Vidal, I've tried to read a couple of his books. His pomposity comes across in his voice, which is a quick turn-off for me. Both of his books I've tried have become wallbangers.
Anna wrote: Mimic"I think that happened quite a bit years after Hemmingway passed away.
Mimics appeared everywhere, but none half as good.
Read "Julian" and you'll see his pomposity put to good use.
I think Hemingway is right up there with Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain as the greatest of all American writers. It's true that some of his books are limited (The Sun Also Rises) or even sophomoric (A Farewell to Arms), but For Whom the Bell Tolls is a masterpiece. The way that Hemingway gradually reveals character is astonishing; at first some of his characters do things that seem to be inconsistent with what you know of them, but then more is revealed. To Have and Have Not is also a lovely book and A Moveable Feast is probably the best book about a place that I've ever read.
Grant wrote: "I think Hemingway is right up there with Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain as the greatest of all American writers. It's true that some of his books are limited (The Sun Also Rises) or even sophomori..."Respectfully, what novel isn't limited, in some way? Fiction is all about choices after all, what to include, what to leave out. I happen to love TSAR, and AFTA, which I read as incredibly poetic rather than sophomoric. Maybe with Hemingway it depends on your mood, or the age you were when you read it?
One's subject matter is simply one's subject matter. Just because Vidal didn't like Hemingway's, too bad. Go read your Proust or whomever then. Vidal's comment seems to ignore Hemingway's astonishing gift for subtext. Hemingway was enormously adept at evoking moods, in saying the unsaid, far more than Vidal, whom I like, ever was. The critic always wants someone's art to be something else. "Therefore," to quote the great Fellini, "the critic is usually wrong."This remark by Vidal very reminds me of the headlines VS Naipaul has recently generated in which he attacks Hardy and Austen. Vidal won't say he thinks he is a better writer than H but Naipaul does say he is a better writer than Hardy or Austen. Who, please tell me, argues to a press organ why he knows his work to be better than that of the some dead person? Ego run amok.
Karen, have you read The Sun Also Rises, For Whom The Bell Tolls, A Farewell To Arms, Islands In The Stream? If you have and can still say The Old Man And The Sea is the only good novel written by Hemingway then I have no idea what your criteria might be in rating great literature.
Karl wrote: "I think he might have a point. The more short stories I discover by Hemingway the more I realise he was a better short story writer than a novelist. I'm still a fan of his novels."Agreed re: short stories. I always thought Hemingway was rather masterful in the short story form. I thought I hated his writing until I read "Snows of Kilimanjaro." Then I devoured every other short story I could find of his. He did such a good job expressing so much in a few words that it always seemed to me that he overdid it when faced with a novel-length format.
Though I have to say, I didn't hate Old Man and the Sea. It just wasn't a favorite and I still don't feel it is as good as some of his short work.
Some thoughtful and valid comments for the most part. I especially liked Anna's thoughts on Hemingway's "streamlined storytelling." I'm definitely a proponent of the less is more style,as opposed to writers who tend to allow their massive egos to get in the way.Don't bother trying to impress me(the reader) with your massive intellect and your annoying use of obscure words that believable characters would never use in actual conversations.(Except perhaps pompous windbags like Vidal)I admire writers like Elmore Leonard for his crisp dialog and his ability to put story and characters first and foremost,foregoing over-descriptive passages and repetition, which I find gimmicky, lazy and frankly insulting to the reader.I recently read about Humphrey Bogart continually cutting out dialog so that he could get to the heart of his on screen characters.I suspect that is the opposite of most actors who are likely lobbying for more words to dazzle us with.
For me, Hemmingway wrote much in the way that men think. We don´t jam a lot of unnecessary words into our inner thoughts. So this was part of his genius.Why does his work stand the test of time? Obviously I was not part of his "lost generation" but when I read his books I identify on a very basic level. They´re romantic but tough. They give me a chance to explore emotions against a rugged backdrop thus producing an irresistible alchemy. We are all vulnerable but want to be seen as strong.
Is that what tortured you so much in the end Ernest?
Karen wrote: "As far as I can tell, Hemingway wrote one great book, a few that pass and the rest are self-absorbed drivel."And which of those would be the "great" one?
Vidal is like Dorothy Parker and Truman Capote--talented people who ended up caring more about their status as celebrities than continuing to develop their craft. This quote reminds me of Capote's famous quote about Kerouac not writing, merely typing. Typical. A clever little put-down. But truly, which writer will stand up? People still read Kerouac and draw inspiration. Capote's fame is reduced to this snide little remark and his link to Studio 54
Sorry, I am ranting. I also see Hemingway being re-evaluated critically. I think people were leary of praising him because of his alleged misogyny and what was seen as the simplicity in his style.
And so now Francis Ford Coppola talks about Nicholson and DeNiro as having done their best work decades ago and he is sitting in his own black kettle.
Anna wrote: "IMO, when you dissect Hemingway's work, you have to consider context. You have to remember that when he began, most popular novels were verbose and flowery and hard to read. Since he began as a new..."This was very informative, thank you! I read for Whom the Bell Tolls a long while back, but my memory of it was a great read, probably because of its easy read!
Have to agree with you, Karen. The Old Man and The Sea is the one good one I'd vouch for. :) Geoffrey wrote: "Gore Vidal has had a history of denigrating the competition. He`s had classic battles with other American writers-one in particular back in the 70`s and I believe it was with Capote, (correct me if..."
I think Gore Vidal just liked picking a fight - and playing the devil's advocate. By coincidence, in his obituary today, he's described as "the elegant, acerbic all-around man of letters who presided with a certain relish over what he declared to be the end of American civilization". I think he thought that gave him street cred when it came to criticizing the greats like Hemingway.
It has become very popular of late to denigrate Hemingway but as Anna said so well, whwether you like him or not, you must understand the revolutionary nature of his writing within the context of the time. What writers before spent paragraphs trying to convey he articulated in one crisp, sentence of simple beauty. . Every modern writer today owes something to the style he created. Gore Vidal was a pompous ass and not in the same league as Hemingway or any great writer for that matter. Someone here said Hemingway was self-absorbed What great artist isn't? On the other hand Vidal wasn't just self absorbed, he was self delusional and self obsessed. I've read Burr and I think one other equally forgettable novel by him. Some of his essays are well done and interesting and I liked his play "The Best Man.". But to paraphrase the old saying "those who can't do are critics." In 100 years when people are still relishing the beauty of "The Sun Also Rises," Vidal will only be remembered (if at all) for his family relationships to various political figures (stepbrother to Jackie K, feud with William B and cousin to Al G). Or to quote Hem "isn't it pretty to think so?"
The only thing I know about Hemingway is that the women he wrote are completely unbelievable; in a bad way.
When I returned from Vietnam as a 21 year-old war veteran, I was in pretty bad shape. My personality was blown apart and lying in pieces all around me. This was 1969. I never felt so alone, angry and alienated from my country and my self-absorbed 60's generation as I did at that time. I had just enrolled in college as a freshman under the G.I.bill. With no friends at school, and no girlfriend, I had no idea what to do with the rest of my life. One perfect Spring day, while lying on the grass at the University of Illinois campus in Chicago, I began reading Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River" parts one and two. On that day, while Hemingway's words marched across the page in front of me as I read them for the first time, I found his writing to resonate very deeply within me, and his amazing story began, for me, that mysterious process we call healing. At the time, I didn't know why this particular story had such a profound effect on me -- why it touched the deepest part of my soul. After all, wasn't it just a backpacking/trout fishing story? Later I learned that the story could be interpreted as a metaphor for PTSD recovery -- the burnt and destroyed town of Seney representing Hemingway's past life in the war, while the hike into the wilderness, the pristine trout stream, and the awareness of nature and detail while fishing offered a therapy of healing and recovery -- and a new beginning, a new life for him after the war. It's interesting how great literature can reach deeply into the subconscious using metaphor, as it did for me, without a person even realizing it. As far as Vidal is concerned, I never could get into his books. He always seemed like a pompous know-it-all. I couldn't get past that. Perhaps I need to be more open-minded. May he rest in peace.
Nicely said George. Hemingway has a power to move me in a way that few if any other authors are able to achieve. Some books I want to analyse and dissect, but with Hemingway at his best it sails straight to my heart, bypassing my head.
That's the great thing about literature, how it reaches people on different levels and speaks to them at different times. Have you read Philip Caputo? You might like Rumor of War, his eloquent and moving memoir about the dislocation of serving in Vietnam. He also writes fiction - "In The Forest of the Laughing Elephant" is one of the best stories about Vietnam I've ever read. George wrote: "When I returned from Vietnam as a 21 year-old war veteran, I was in pretty bad shape. My personality was blown apart and lying in pieces all around me. This was 1969. I never felt so alone, angry a..."
Its the points that Vidal makes that I belive strengthen the aptitude of Hemingway as a writer. As each day passes in our modern time, the idealistic dreams and inherent hope for a brighter future slips further out of the fingers of her pursuers. When lifelong ideals crumble into an unsalvageable pile, all that could possibly remain is a Willy Loman like reality of better times and a place of comfort. Hemingway writes for those people lost in a shattered world, thirsty tongues reaching for a blessing of the water of a past life. His simple writing style further fuels the starving souls of the defeated into creating their own fantasy of his world, escaping their own. Where Hemingway finds killing things and fucking in this illusion of his history, his readers find their own paths away from the turmoils of life.
Ian wrote: "Its the points that Vidal makes that I belive strengthen the aptitude of Hemingway as a writer. As each day passes in our modern time, the idealistic dreams and inherent hope for a brighter future ..."Excellent
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"One of the reasons that the gifted Hemingway never wrote a good novel was that nothing interested him except a few sensuous experiences, like killing things and fucking—interesting things to do but not all that interesting to write about. This sort of artist runs into trouble very early on because all he can really write about is himself and after youth that self—unengaged in the world—is of declining interest. Admittedly, Hemingway chased after wars, but he never had much of anything to say about war, unlike Tolstoy or even Malraux. I think that the more you know the world and the wider the net you cast in your society, the more interesting your books will be, certainly the more interested you will be".
Gore Vidal.