This month It’s Lit! discusses the (mythical) life of literary icon Ernest Hemingway.
I have to admit… Yes, you know what’s coming. I write that line whenever one of these interesting videos covers an author or book I haven’t read.
Anyway, my exposure to Hemingway is decidedly limited. The very helpful Hemingway App is supposedly named for his love of clarity and precise sentence structure, creating simpler, clearer writing. Yet the short stories I have read of his have decidedly complex sentences that are often pushing that clarity level to its limits.
Or to say it another way, similar to what was discussed in the video, there is a myth around Hemingway’s style of writing.
Maybe it’s time to give one of his novels a read.
Here’s the problem with tackling Ernest Hemingway—Ernest Hemingway himself. While the iconic author is mostly known for his feats of literary prowess, from The Sun Also Rises to For Whom the Bell Tolls, to countless short stories—perhaps his greatest fiction of all is his own self-mythologizing. As his brand grew in the 1920s and 30s, so too grew his celebrity and, well, his ego.
So, with Ernie all the while throwing so much self-mythologizing in the mix that it became nearly impossible to separate the Man from the Myth.
But gosh darn it, we’re going to try.
Tyson Adams 