One of my professors sent me the link posted below, which I found to be insightful and entertaining. I have been reading so much about Hemingway lately and it is interesting to learn about all of the artists (Cézanne, Miró, Homer), and writers who influenced him. Just wrote my paper on Hemingway’s use of realism and naturalism in his work. I have written a couple of short stories, that I may share soon, but as an artist, I feel that I learn so much from writers. Stephen King and Hemingway have much in common as American authors who took realism to another level.
A Little About the Author:
Hemingway really begins to take form as a writer by working with the Kansas City Star where he learned to write well through a basic set of rules he was given. These rules are still regarded highly today. Stephen King’s “On Writing,” for example, introduces the reader to the same set of rules he acquired and are very similar to Hemingway’s rules. It has been said that Hemingway was influenced by many movements of art. As a romantic, he knew that many of the deepest feelings he felt and wrote about were universal and so should transcend our current time. Maybe he was not that aware of this in his work. He was a realist because he depicted everything he saw without adding any fluff, like a historian. He was an impressionist because he knew that no person could objectively define a thing in itself, but could only acquire knowledge of a thing through certain experiences with that very thing. He captured naturalism in his work with his belief that every person should come to know a thing by absorbing the material environment around that thing. He cannot help hold to a modernist’s perspective because he is a product of his age—Gertrude Stein knew this about Hemingway very well. He learned from the contemporary writers of this time, Sherwood Anderson, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. His imagery makes you feel as you were breaking bread with him. Hemingway’s writing relies “. . .on simple structures and diction to focus our attention on concrete details that paint a picture in primary colors of an American landscape” (Ulrich). Hemingway, like Stephen King, is an artist.
Gertrude Stein once sated that Hemingway is like a “modern museum” because he drew from old work by studying the classics as a child and captures themes that are timeless. He is modern because he was a part of the “the lost generation,” a generation that had lost the belief that there is an objective set of truths that one should hold. In other words, he is an author that has brought together many forms of art into one, and we could all pick a part of his work and trace any part back to something old, but yet that part is still relevant. I really love this idea and it has certainly influenced the way I think about my own art.
Work Cited
Ulrich, Stephen. “Lecture: He Smells of Museum I.” American Military University.
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